We stigmatize the Indians, also, as cowardly and treacherous,
because they use stratagem in warfare in preference to open
force; but in this they are fully justified by their rude code of
honor. They are early taught that stratagem is praiseworthy; the
bravest warrior thinks it no disgrace to lurk in silence, and
take every advantage of his foe: he triumphs in the superior
craft and sagacity by which he has been enabled to surprise and
destroy an enemy. Indeed, man is naturally more prone to subtilty
than open valor, owing to his physical weakness in comparison
with other animals. They are endowed with natural weapons of
defence, with horns, with tusks, with hoofs, and talons; but man
has to depend on his superior sagacity. In all his encounters
with these, his proper enemies, he resorts to stratagem; and when
he perversely turns his hostility against his fellow-man, he at
first continues the same subtle mode of warfare.
The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy
with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be
effected by stratagem. That chivalrous courage which induces us
to despise the suggestions of prudence and to rush in the face of
certain danger is the offspring of society and produced by
education.
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