It was openly advocated about this time that the policy of extermination was the only one that could be followed, and this must be brought about either by actual warfare, or by driving the hostiles into the mountains and there starving them to death. Brig.-Gen. J. H. Carleton, who was in control of the department of New Mexico, determined upon a thorough and complete change in our treatment of this haughty and proud people. They had made six treaties at different times with officers of our Government and had violated them before they could be ratified at Washington. He strongly counselled drastic measures in a letter which is historically of sufficient interest to justify a large quotation from it:-- "At the Bosque Redondo there is arable land enough for all the Indians of this family [the Navahoes and Apaches have descended from the same stock and speak the same language], and I would respectfully recommend that now the war be vigorously prosecuted against the Navahoes; that the only peace that can ever be made with them must rest on the basis that they move on to these lands, and, like the Pueblos, become an agricultural people, and cease to be nomads. This should be a _sine qua non_; as soon as the snows of winter admonish them of the sufferings to which their families will be exposed, I have great hopes of getting most of the tribe. The knowledge of the perfidy of these Navahoes, gained after two centuries of experience, is such as to lead us to put no faith in their promises. They have no government to make treaties; they are a patriarchal people. One set of families may make promises, but the other set will not heed them. They understand the direct application of force as a law; if its application be removed, that moment they become lawless. This has been tried over and over again, and at great expense. The purpose now is, never to relax the application of force with a people that can no more be trusted than the wolves that run through the mountains. To collect them together, little by little, on to a reservation, away from the haunts and hills and hiding-places of their country; there be kind to them; there teach their children how to read and write; teach them the arts of peace, teach them the truths of Christianity. Soon they will acquire new habits, new ideas, and new modes of life; and the old Indians will die off, and carry with them all latent longings for murdering and robbing. The young ones will take their places without these longings, and thus, little by little, they will become a happy and contented people; and Navaho wars will be remembered only as something that belong entirely to the past. Even until they can raise enough to be self-sustaining, _you can feed them cheaper than fight them_....