152                     ANCESTRY, LIFE, AND TIMES OF
sional Globe, unsurpassed by any ever heard by congressional
ears.    To attempt to analyze it is to destroy it, it is so agglu-
tinated in the progress and the process of its thought.   The
problem before the government, with respect to the Indian,
Mr. Sibley declared to involve but two alternatives in its so-
lution, either (1) the entire civilization of the Indian tribes,
or (2) their entire extermination, a solution intimately con-
nected with the peace, safety, and prosperity, or oncoming
unparalleled disaster of the territories in whose midst, or on
whose frontiers, the Indian tribes are found.    He reviews the
policy of the government, reminding the nation that it is not
now what it was in earlier times.    He suggests the remedy for
existing evils.    As to the policy of the government, it is one
of injustice, cruelty, treachery, violation of treaties the most
sacred, stipulations and promises being regarded as conven-
ient means of public robbery and private fraud, the will of
the stronger ever the rule of action, the dictation of the pur-
chaser ever the price of the soil, the red man forced to sur-
render his possessory rights in immemorial tenures of country
endeared by the traditions and graves of his tribe, or bayo-
neted, rifled, shot, or driven from one so-called "reservation"
to another, until, at last, turning enraged on his foe, he sought
vengeance in massacre, crime, and deeds of brutality, for
which   the   government itself,  and its horde of vagabond
"Indian agents," worse than the Indians themselves, were
alone responsible.   "With great power, he pointed the house
to the fact that, unlike the ancient Greeks and Romans, and
later Franks, or the British Empire, who never withheld from
their conquered captives the means to endow them with privi-
leges indispensable to their existence and civilization, it re-
mained for the Anglo-Saxons, and even the sons of the Pil-
grim Fathers, escaped from persecution, to wrest by cruelty
and crime the soil itself that gave to the red man birth, nur-
tured his youth, and cheered his manhood, and contained in its
breast the ashes of his sires, without even once seeking to lift
him to a level high as their own, or laboring to incorporate
him into their own community.    Still more, under no other
nation of conquerers were the conquered ever known to
become extinct, while under the policy of the American Gov-
ernment, a race of men of noble natural virtues, with whose
heroic efforts in defense of their wives and children, their
homes and rights, history had dealt falsely, were fast becom-