Note V-12 — Chapter V · CORRESPONDENCE AND CONFERENCES.[V-1]

"As they were wont to be" is a particularly fine rhetorical climax to what our young friend so innocently prides himself on having accomplished. It must have made the most stolid savage of them all smile in his sleeve,—or whatever article of nether apparel he wore,—as there never had been a time in his memory, or in the memories of any of his ancestors as far back as his tribal traditions went in the dim past, when the Sioux and Chippewas were not hereditary foes, who killed and scalped each other with alacrious and comprehensive reciprocity. It is true that in rare sporadic cases, when both sets of red brethren were exhausted in war, or when each found it necessary to let up a little on the other for a chance to hunt in peace for the necessaries of life, temporary truces had been agreed upon. But such spasms were supposed by neither party to last longer than suited the convenience of either; nay, the very councils in which such a peace was patched up sometimes ended in fresh bloodshed on the sacred spot; and the annals of all the Indians of North America might be sifted through and through to discover a more notable case of inveterate, perpetual, and ferocious warfare than is afforded by the hereditary hostility of these two powerful nations. Pike was no doubt sincere and veracious in his representations of the happy results of his peace-making; but his ignorance of the facts in the case must have been complete, or he would have known that such a truce as he effected was sure to be broken as soon as his back was turned—if not sooner. Furthermore, the expediency of interfering with such affairs may reasonably be doubted; for, paradoxical as it may appear, a patched-up peace between tribes whose hostilities are hereditary costs more lives than it saves, and makes more trouble than it prevents. The vigilance of both parties is relaxed, private enterprise replaces public policy, and individual murders multiply rapidly till the normal equilibrium of forces is readjusted by open declaration of the always existent intertribal hostility. War is the necessary and natural state of affairs among savages; it is the main business of their lives, and the principal if not the only means of attaining all that is dearest to their hearts; and it is better for all parties to proceed on that understanding in a straightforward, businesslike way than to bushwhack for surreptitious scalps. Such trophies of prowess must be had in any event and at all hazards; and secret assassinations to secure them represent in the aggregate a higher death-rate than that resulting from pitched battles. Meddling with unmanageable things is never good policy, and interference with intertribal relations of savages is generally inhumane as well as impolitic.