The Daily Dispatch: December 23, 1865., [Electronic resource]

The atrocities committed by the Indians in the West demand summary and severe chastisement. The great overland route to California has become almost unsafe as the precincts of Richmond in a dark night. The savage rivals in the suddenness of their onsets and the barbarity of their butcheries the garroters and highwaymen who infest the dark alleys and retired streets of this metropolis, and who have never exhibited in their whole black career of crime more than one single instance of human forbearance. That instance occurred a few nights ago, when a bend of these enemies of society, incited, perhaps, by the influences of Christmas to perform one kind action, garroted a couple of local reporters, in order to furnish the press an item.

The North American Indians seem to die hard. Their character is essentially unamiable. They have none of the finer feelings of our nature. There are those who are given to exclaim, "Lo ! the poor Indian is!" The poor Indian is a great rascal, and as big a humbug as Barnum. It is altogether nonsensical to touch up the American savage with the hues of sentiment and romance. The colors will not stick. The paint therewith he bedaubs his own visage gives him a much more natural and life-like appearance. The red race has disappeared from this continent, not so much on account of the wrongs and injustice of the white man, as on account of their inordinate laziness, their love of rum, and their general untraceableness and imperviousness to the influences of civilization. They may be described generally as a water-proof race; the gentle droppings of mercy, the fructifying showers of education, and the refreshing waters of springs and wells, could never finds access to their arid natures. Nothing that the white man brought with him but whisky was ever absorbed by a red-skin.

The indolence of the negro is nothing to that of the American savage. No earthly persuasion can induce him to work; no reasoning can reconcile him to habits of industry; no force can compel him to fulfill the great primal law, "By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn thy bread. " He would rather die than obey that law, and therefore it is that he dies, and deserves to die. "He that will not work, neither shall he eat," and he that does not eat must perish, of course. As soon, therefore, as the Indian had exhausted such resources as hunting, fishing and robbery supplied, he began, as the poets say, to fadeaway like a cloud toward the setting sun. We are very glad, indeed, to see that cloud fade away — a cloud that contain no beneficent principle, nothing but wind and thunder, and even as it departs, drops down angry lightnings upon the miserable way fairer on the plains.

The great highway to California ought no longer to be rendered dangerous by the remnant of these American Ishmaelite. We cannot allow such a "hell-gate" to interrupt any longer that channel of migration to the Pacific slope. It may be to the credit of the Indians that they die game, like buffaloes and bears, but they must not be permitted in dying to make game of white men. Their history affords a useful lesson to all races. Industry is the condition of existence on this earth. There may be some portion of the universe where people can live without other employment than to smoke tobacco and drink rum, but not on this planet.