As fighters these Indians are entitled to every admiration. As marauders they merit nothing but censure. The Indians of the early days of the nation, when Pennsylvania and New York were border states, and across the Alleghenies lay the frontier, were cruel enough, as the chronicle of the times abundantly testify; but they were angels of light compared with the Sioux and Cheyennes, the Kiowas, Arapahoes and Comanches, and these in turn were almost admirable beside the Apache. The first-named group were as cruel as they knew how to be, and they did not lack knowledge, either. The Apaches were more ingenious and devilish in their practices than the others. The Sioux and the Cheyennes were brutal with the brutality of a wild bull or a grizzly bear. To that same kind of brutality the Apaches added the malignity of a wildcat and the subtlety of a snake. The men of the first group would stand out and fight in the open to gain their ends, although they did not prefer to. They were soldiers and warriors as well as torturers. The Apache was a lurking skulker, but, when cornered, a magnificent fighter also.[30] General Crook calls him “the tiger of the human species.” However, from the point of detestableness there wasn’t much to choose between them. Perhaps we ought not to blame the Indians for acting just as our ancestors of, say the Stone Age, acted in all probability. And when you put modern weapons and modern whisky in the hands of the Stone Age men you need not be surprised at the consequences. The Indian question is a terrible one any way you take it. It cannot be denied they have been treated abominably by the United States, and that they have good cause for resentment; but the situation has been so peculiar that strife has been inevitable. As patriots defending their country, they are not without certain definite claims to our respect. Recognizing the right of the aborigines to the soil, the government has yet arbitrarily abrogated that right at pleasure. At times the Indians have been regarded as independent nations, with which all differences were to be settled by treaty as between equals; and again, as a body of subjects whose affairs could be and would be administered willy-nilly by the United States. Such vacillations are certain to result in trouble, especially as, needless to say, the Indians invariably considered themselves as much independent nations as England and France might consider themselves, in dealing with the United States or with one another. And the Indians naturally claimed and insisted that the territory where their fathers had roamed for centuries belonged solely and wholly to them. They admitted no suzerainty of any sort, either. And they held the petty force the government put in the field in supreme contempt until they learned by bitter experience the illimitable power of the United States.