OUR TREATMENT of the Indians is very much like the way a kindly parent allows his judgment to be at the mercy of the pranks of his mischievous boy. The boy takes a stick, and chasing a dog, pokes it and pounds it till the maddened brute turns upon his tormentor and bites him. This enrages the father, who forthwith takes his gun and shoots the dog. In strict justice he ought to have taken the stick and applied it to the back of the boy. The good man had no ill will whatever toward the dog, nor would he ever have thought of shooting it had the poor brute been let alone and not tantalized into biting the boy. But the dog having been enraged so as to become dangerous, there was nothing left but to destroy it. White men––some of them not even citizens of the United States––in violation of law enter the Indian reservation, steal the Indians’ ponies, drive off their cattle, shoot down a few of the Indians for resisting them, or perhaps for the mere fun of the thing. The Indians, maddened by the wrongs inflicted upon them, go on the war-path. The savage stirred with anger strikes back, and the innocent with the guilty––if indeed the guilty do not go scot free––are made to suffer. Had the Indian been let alone he would have remained peaceful and quiet and friendly. But by desperadoes he has been maddened to go on the war-path in vengeance, to retaliate for wrongs he has suffered. Then follow the blood-curdling stories of ambuscade and massacre. Popular indignation is roused. Extermination of the Indian is demanded. There is nothing left now for Uncle Sam to do but to send his army and put the Indian down. A pity that the chastisement cannot be inflicted on those whose wickedness started the mischief. BISHOP WHIPPLE bears the following testimony to the good effect of making the Indians feel the responsibility of individual distinctive effort for themselves by vesting them with individual rights of property and by compelling them to live by their own labor: