To the typical frontiersman, the Indian was a savage, ready to pounce on careless settlers, scalp them, burn their homes, and carry off their loved ones—in short, a “varmint.” To the romantic writers, the Indians were children of nature, dwellers in shady forests and peaceful plains, earth’s true nobility! Of course, the romantic writers seldom saw the natives and never lived with them. These errors, and many others, have been accepted as first-hand accurate observations. Indeed, the whole American Indian policy has been called a tragedy of errors, beginning with the naming of the race “Indian.”[164] Given this background of Indian ways, what might reasonably have been expected in the way of biracial adjustment? So little was the question of Indian welfare considered before 1880 that one cannot yet determine just what course might have solved the problem and brought about successful assimilation. First the English, and then the Americans, just muddled along, bribing here, cajoling there, and ultimately forcing everywhere, until this once proud and militant race was reduced to an inconsolable remnant, broken, defeated, and forlorn, but not forsaken. Even when the white man’s heart was good toward his red brother there was conflict in policies. Some thought his only salvation was in the adoption of agriculture and stock raising, but such a program was ruinous to the fur traders. The natives were the sinews of that business. The contrast in economy and culture, rival claims to land, and mutual feelings of superiority presented a gulf too vast for peaceful desires to overcome. It was the realization of this fact that impelled the wise Alexander Ross to say, “Peace in reality was beyond our power; it was but an empty name.”[165] White men’s activities and aggressions, under whatever guise, progressively deranged the Indians’ economy. From every frontier came incessant demands for the reduction of Indian lands. Memorials to Congress, complaints to Indian commissioners, blistering editorials in local newspapers, all mark a stage in frontier development. Settlers were intolerant of checks upon their expansion, and few, indeed, were the officials who had the temerity to “arrest the tide of empire in the Territories.” Against this ominous force the Indians could only writhe and twist. The uneven contest waged for two and a half centuries, extending from Jamestown to the Pequot War and from Tippecanoe to Custer’s defeat in the battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. It is a tale of red fury and white vengeance such as might properly appertain to an age of barbarism but which presents an incongruous picture in a Christian land. It is correct to say that Indian-American relations were never improved but always embittered until the natives were reduced to the point of decimation.