The tender mercies of the Government to the Indian are cruel; the much-talked-of treatment of the slave owner was tender by comparison. The self-interest of the Southern barons was humanity itself, in contrast with the course of men sent in the name of a high duty, many of whom have been tempted, if not forced, into corruption. I would throw no slur on the better class among them, of whom the country is not worthy. The Indian is a child and needs a Father; physically mature, he is mentally an infant. He stands proud but helpless on the track of a locomotive. He will not heed the advice of whites inferior in natural force to himself, and such, as a rule, he has to deal with. No wonder the young prefer their own leaders. In the school of civilization only object lessons are good for anything. What lessons we have given the Indians! Recent agitation has chiefly concerned the education, lands and rights of the race, and progress has been made in the way of opportunities offered, but the Indian has not moved. He must be touched; the high and low must come together. Virtue will go out of the one into the other as it entered into her who touched the hem of a sacred garment. There is no salvation in acts of Congress; it is from the springs of action within. To awake these in the bosom of the Indian and consummate it in Christian character is the work of individual men by their contact and by their personal influence. The Indian question is, first, one of organization, second, one of executive duty; of conditions and of action. In the former, of late years, there has been much progress. Respecting the latter there has been little. Crops and herds have somewhat increased and education has advanced, especially in the East; but the executive work drags, because there is nobody to do it. Men are the need of the hour, and money to provide for their wants. At the northern frontier outposts, this summer, for the first time, the soldiers remained in their barracks. At the forts in Montana and Dakota which I visited, there was general respect for Indian prowess, and belief in his capacity and in his wrongs. “Were I an Indian I would fight” seemed the feeling of all. So far as army officers are gentlemen of character, force and experience, and of humane ideas (for there are opposing views), I believe they are better fitted than any others to settle the Indian question. Their destructive work is nearly over: it has fitted them for the constructive work to be done. As officers they have peculiar advantages over civilians of the same capacity and worth, far less temptation and far stronger standing ground for the control of Indians. One-half of the sixty agencies might well be put at once under selected officers; not that it is strict military duty, but it is not an “old woman’s work,” as one of high rank said of Capt. Pratt’s effort. The latter is doing, indirectly, more than any two regiments for the pacification of the Indians—the army’s special business.