Treaties had been made with the Rogue Rivers and the Umpquas but in a true sense were not treaties, but, on the part of the Government, merely bribes to be good.  They moved to reservations, enjoyed the blankets and other good things provided by the Government so long as it suited them.  Then they would steal out of the reservations, rob, murder and plunder the settlers, and return to the protection of the agents.  Tracked to the reservations, the agents refused to surrender them.  The red tape here interposed and red handed murderers were saved, that more murders might be committed.  Instead of the Government and the agents being a protection to the settlers, they were the protectors of the Indians, and as sometimes happened, troops were called upon to lend a helping hand.  Such conditions could not last—­such outrages could not be endured.  Hence when bands were caught off the reservations they were destroyed like dangerous, noxious beasts.

Apologists of murder and rapine have held up their hands in holy horror at such acts on the part of the settlers.  The “poor, persecuted people,” according to them, were foully wronged, massacred and exterminated.  They saw but one side, and that was the side of the savages.  With the close of the Rogue River war, the Indian question west of the Cascade mountains was settled forever.  John and Limpy had made a heroic struggle for the hunting grounds of their fathers and incidentally for the goods and chattels, and the scalps of the white invaders.  But, moralize as you may, the fiat of God had gone forth; the red man and the white man could not live peaceably together; one or the other must go.  And in obedience to the law of the survival of the fittest, it was the red man that must disappear.  It was, in my opinion, merely a continuation of the struggle for existence—­a struggle as old as man, which began when “first the morning stars sang together,” and will continue till the end of time.  That law applies to all creatures.  Take for instance, the lower order of animals.  In the tropics the deer is small, not much larger than a coyote.  The weakling as well as the strong and vigorous can survive.  Further north, where conditions are harder, the deer is larger.  Continuing on north, where only the strong and vigorous can survive the rigors of winter, we find the caribou.

It may be pointed out that the largest animals of earth are found in the tropics, where the struggle for existence is least severe.  Yet in the frozen mud of Siberia and Alaska we find the remains of animals the elephant and the mastodon—­compared to which old Jumbo was but a baby.  And imbedded in the asphalt of Southern California is found the remains of the sabre toothed, tiger, by the side of which the royal Bengal is but a tabby cat.  But I am getting into deep water, and will leave this question for the naturalist, the geologist and the theorist.  And the passing of the “noble red man” to the gentleman in silk gown and slippers—­and to the sentimental novelist.