The Indians | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 8, 1867

The Indians.

Later dispatches from Fort Laramie leave, unfortunately, little room for doubt that the massacre of United States troops near Fort Philip Kearney in Dakota, which we reported on Friday, was full as horrible as it was first represented. Eighty-seven men were drawn into an ambush by the savages, and every one of them was slaughtered. It is of little avail now to wonder how an experienced officer could lead his troops into such a trap when the hostile disposition of the surrounding Indians was well known; if the commander of this unfortunate detachment was to blame, he is already punished beyond his deserts. But the frequency of Indian outrages during the last few months, and the fact that the disturbances are confined to no particular locality, but extend over the whole region from New Mexico to the northern border, and from the westernmost settlements of Kansas to the frontier town of California, demand of us a very careful and intelligent consideration. We expressed our conviction, some three months ago, that a general Indian war was imminent, but many people, deceived by the lying reports of those who find their profit in the wretched system of Indian misgovernment which is responsible for these horrors, made light of our apprehensions. Now, we believe there are few who will question that a war is inevitable, and that the only way to secure the future safety of our Western settlers and emigrants is to make that war short, sharp, and decisive. A Fort Laramie dispatch mentions a rumor of a coalition of twelve tribes, numbering 11,000 warriors, against the white settlers of Dakota and Montana; and a few weeks ago we had a report of a similar confederation among the Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and other savages of Southern Kansas. Every mail brings us accounts of raids and massacres, now in Arizona, now in Idaho, now in Kansas or New Mexico. Supply trains for the mining regions are cut off; mails and telegraphs are interrupted, and emigrants who are fortunate enough not to leave their bones rotting on the plains, only get through to their destination by sheer fighting.—N. Y. Tribune, Jan. 1.