Until the Indians fully submit to the white man's law they are and were a present danger in our company. The Indian Wars lasted for well over two hundred years. They have forsworn murder and murderous terror against us, and that has been demonstrated. Fine.
Generals Jackson and Sherman understood that dynamic. That mortal danger. Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce came to understand. Here are his words:
I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohulhulsote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead.It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are--perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.
Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.
Without men like Sherman, like Jackson, men who did things in ways that good people honestly question today, (such as you are doing), we'd have had far more death, terror, misery in aggregate. And NOT for any more moral or spiritual worth either, imo.
Now I think, I reckon after considerations, that Sherman and Jackson did those things that still seem bitter, because their vision, their understanding of the fulsome ramifications of a failure to so act was clearer to them. They had a wiser vision than we do, or even can. In the moment of needed action, the spiritual vision can sometimes be clearer to the commander at that moment, clearer than any later diligent and energetic historian or judicial review panel might make of it.