During the next twelve months the Indian question promises to be one that will quite absorb as much interest and attention as any other, especially among the people of the border. Should the present winter campaign prove successful, the war policy will prevail; the Indians will be chastised and be compelled to accept such terms as the Government may choose to dictate. Should the campaign prove a failure the war policy will be at a discount, from the very magnitude of the efforts now being made to force a peace by military power. Our telegraphic columns this morning indicate to some extent the arguments that will be used and the pressure brought to bear upon Congress to return to the peace policy, as being the cheapest in the end and more in accordance with the ideas of the age and the theories of civilized governments. The Topeka Record in common with border papers generally, has inclined to the war policy. The following article from that journal would seem to indicate something of a modification of its former views:

    "In coming up from Leavenworth Wednesday night, we met Col. Wynkoop, the agent of the Kiowas and other wild tribes of Indians. He has been among the Indians a great deal during the past ten years, and is well acquainted with their character. That there are bad Indians, and those that should be punished he acknowledges, but he has a higher estimation of the Indian character than is usually given them by border men. He states it as a fact that it is universal, that when troops are sent against the Indians, they never reach the guilty ones, but always punish the innocent. We believe Col. Wynkoop to be a gentleman of the highest sense of honor, and that he is actuated by exalted sentiments of justice to all, and, we have no reason to doubt but that his views of Indian wars are true. He is certain that every treaty ever made by the United States with Indians, has first been broken by whites, and that, every Indian war has been brought about by men on the plains, who have an idea of right, and whose interest it is to create a war that they may make money out of it.
    He is now under orders from the Interior Department to proceed to Fort Cobb, and to gather his tribes into and near that Fort, to be fed and to be protected from the massacre that is threatened them by the five columns of troops that are now on the move, and all coming together in the Indian country. He says that if he sends his scouts among the Indians, assuring them of his protection that they will believe him and come in, but his sense of right and justice will not allow him to do it, for the reason that they will be intercepted by squads of soldiers who will massacre them, a la Chivington. We appreciate the delicate situation that he is in, and urge him not to resign as he sometimes is inclined to, but to do his best to save our government from the wickedness of another indiscriminate slaughter of Indians, without reference to right and justice. We are aware that these sentiments are antagonistic to the views prevalent in the West, but in the face of these wide spread views, and believing that there exists a just God who will punish wrong acts, or in other words that evil, injustice and wrong never goes unpunished, we can not refrain from saying what we believe."

Source:

Unknown, "The Indian Question", The Daily Kansas State Journal, Lawrence, Kansas, Tuesday Morning, 1 December 1868, Vol. IV, No. 116, p. 1, col. 1.