The answer seemed patent enough to a good many thoughtful Westerners, who were not cruel men. "The experience of those who have seen most of the Indians," said the Oregonian, "has been neither flattering to the efforts of the Government, nor consoling to the hopes of the true Christian philanthropist; but the purposes of the red man's creation in the economy of nature are well nigh accomplished, and no human hand can avert his early extermination from the face of the North American Continent. Silently but irresistibly the purposes of Providence take their way through the ages, and across the line of their march treaties would seem but shreds, and the plans of men on the tide of history but waifs upon the sea."[3] A belief in such predestination, however exculpatory for white men, would scarcely help in the working out of any system looking toward the upraising of the Indians. Mullan's type of predestination was more blunt: "The Indian," he said, "is destined to disappear before the white man, and the only question is, how it may best be done, and his disappearance from our midst tempered with those elements calculated to produce to himself the least amount of suffering, and to us the least amount of cost."[4] The writer in the Oregonian, quoted above, held that it was a fundamental error in the treatment of Indians to acknowledge their rights to the soil and to make treaties with them as if they were nations. Governor Ashley, of Montana, also declared that treaty-making with Indians ought to cease.[5] To the same effect C. H. Hale, Superintendent of Indian affairs in Washington Territory, wrote as follows: "I am well satisfied that a radical change should be made in our mode of treatment towards the Indians. I do not consider the language as any too strong when I say, that for us to negotiate treaties with them as it is usually done is little better than a farce. We profess by such an act to recognize their equality in status and in power, and to clothe them with a national existence that does not at all pertain to them. Instead of thus exalting them in mere form, they should be treated as they really are, the wards of the government."[6]