The American Missionary — Volume 32, No. 10, October, 1878Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 32, No. 10, October, 1878
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
The salary ranges from $1,000 to $2,000 per annum, according to
the responsibilities and duties of the agencies. Bonds for the
faithful performance of duty will be required by the government,
varying from $15,000 to $20,000.
Applications or inquiries may be addressed to Rev. M. E. Strieby,
56 Reade Street, New York.
* * * * *
“INDIAN WARS.”
And so the latest Indian War is over! It is absurd to call such
chases and skirmishes by so dignified a name. Small bands of ten,
twenty, sometimes a hundred or two outlaws in revolt, are hunted
to death or surrender in the wildernesses of the Far West. We
call them nations, and this undignified pursuit a war. It is, in
reality, only the same thing which is continually being done in
our great cities by the police. Law-breakers, and men who avenge
their own wrongs, must be chased to their dens, and either caught
and chained, or shot like dogs. Only that, on the frontier, the
facilities for the violence, and then for the escape, are so much
greater than in the city; and that we have to send generals and
colonels in the army after them, instead of sergeants of police.
We pity the “braves” of the Territories more than we do the
“roughs” of the bloody sixth ward, because they are more ignorant
and more wronged, and because the hindrances to a better life are
even greater for them. And we pity the gallant men of the army, who
are compelled to do this police work, in dogging criminals to death.
Among the recent dispatches is one, telling of an encounter
between six cow-boys and eight Indians on the Nueces River, in
which four Indians were killed and one captured; one of the boys
had a flesh-wound, and the others only wounds in their clothing.
Generalship does not go for much in such guerrilla warfare. West
Point tactics are not of much avail. Often, in the brooks of New
England, the farmer’s boy, who goes fishing with a stick and a
string, when it rains too hard to work out of doors, will bring
home ten times as many trout as the city sportsman with eight-ounce
rod, a Conroy reel and a choice assortment of flies. Perhaps a
small army of cow-boys would serve us best on the frontier. It is
not fit work for real soldiers. We do not mean a word of disrespect
to them. They have our sympathy and admiration for their fidelity
and obedience, and for not resigning when they are set to such work.
But how much better it would be if, by fair treatment and
honestly-fulfilled pledges, we had made these Indians both friendly
and law-abiding—or, even, if now, with patience and forbearance,
we should be persistently kind and true, and see how long it would
be before we and they should find each in the other, “a man and a
brother.”
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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