The Brutal Doctrine of 'Root Hog or Die'
A Seattle newspaper editorial argues for the forced assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous people, mirroring the era's harshest colonial policies.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The other day there was trouble threatened with the Navajo Indians, and the government has sent several troops of cavalry to the agency to enforce order. This is all well enough, but the time has come when it is a duty of the government to see that our Indian affairs are peremptorily stamped out. The Indian as a ward of the government ought to be extinct, just as the freedman at the South became long ago extinct. The Indian reserves should be divided in severalty, and every Indian made to understand that it is 'root hog or die.' The Indian dead or in exile was the Puritan's idea of a 'good Indian.' Civilization cannot stave or halt in its march to consider the sentimental birthright of barbarians to perpetual darkness. When the freedom of a strong civilization finds itself stopped by the filthier freedom of barbarism, the freedom of the strong fairly forces the freedom of the weak to fight and die, to fly or surrender. It is better that they should die and make room for their betters.
“It is better that they should die and make room for their betters. The survival of the fittest is the law of nature.”
This editorial captures the explicit white supremacist ideology that justified the Dawes Act and the systematic destruction of Indigenous land rights. It remains a stark artifact of the 'Manifest Destiny' rhetoric that fueled Seattle’s early growth and its ongoing struggles with historical land dispossession.
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