No effort seems to have been made to study the nature and character of the Indian, nor the inherited traits that governed him in his dealings with others. The nomadic Indian of the central and western part of the United States was, in most matters, merely a child. His sole occupation from youth to old age was following the chase and fighting his enemies. Almost the sole topic of conversation in their tents and around their camp-fires was the details of their hunting expeditions and of their battles; and from his earliest days, every Indian boy was taught that his one hope of glory and the making of a reputation depended upon his ability to kill other human beings. Every tribe had its hereditary enemies with whom it was in a state of continuous warfare. During the summer-time, it was one continuous round of war-parties going out to attack their enemies, and parties returning, bringing with them the scalps of those they had killed, together with squaws and children they had captured, and frequently with large herds of horses they had stolen. If the raids were against the whites, they would return with all sorts of plunder taken from wagon-trains and ranch houses, and oftentimes with captive white women and children. It must be understood that no white man who understood the character of the Indian would ever permit himself to be taken a prisoner, for that meant torture of the most horrible character. For that reason, white men, engaged in battle with the Indians, seldom failed to reserve one last shot in their revolvers, with which to end their lives if capture was imminent, and in many instances men have shot their wives and children rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the Indians. The fate of the women captured by the Indians is indescribable.
After a successful raid, there would ensue a series of scalp dances, accompanied by a period of frenzied rejoicing, in which unspeakable cruelties were perpetrated upon their captive victims. The fiendishness of these cruelties it is almost impossible to describe. In these orgies the squaws always participated, and as a rule were even more diabolical than the warriors. With such examples and with such mothers, how could an Indian child grow up to be anything but fiendish? The Indians had no conception of such a thing as mercy, compassion, or humane treatment of their enemies. Any exhibition of sentiment of that sort would have been considered an evidence of weakness, and any act of forbearance shown toward them by the whites served only to make them more difficult to control thereafter. They gave no quarter and they asked no quarter.