The Missouri Democrat has always advocated a judicious, mild, and peaceful policy in the treatment of the Indians, but thinks the time has fully come to protect the settlers by visiting “the sternest punishment” upon the “malcontent squads” who are making their hideous depredations upon our border:
Disbelieving entirely, as we have often said, in “extermination” as a remedy for any general or wide-spread Indian outbreak, which has always behind it a real or fancied grievance, and can usually be met more cheaply, as well as more justly, by peaceful than by warlike measures, we judge that the settlers do exactly right when they organize hunting parties to chase down these squads of wanderers, and trust that the Government will use all vigor in ridding the plains of them. True, the number of persons killed has not been very large, but it is the duty of the Government to give every honest settler all the protection which it can reasonably give to men who volunteer to extend the borders of civilization. Every murder on the frontier retards the settlement of the plains, and checks the flow of industrious immigrants to cheap lands and prosperous homes. Therefore, for the tribes, treaties and peace; for the malcontent squads, the sternest punishment. The Daily Journal, Lawrence, Kansas. Wednesday, June 9, 1869. Page 2. © Transcribed by Darren McMannis for the Kansas Council of Genealogical Societies, Inc.