Just as they do with us. Dress in woolen and buckskin. Get a pony and learn to ride like a Centaur without a bridle or saddle and regardless of the laws of gravitation. Procure a rifle and learn to hit the bull's eye with deadly certainty on a gallop or standing on the head. Get a tomahawk, pipe, killikinick, scalping knife, a blanket and some jerked meat. Thus equipped take to the bush and forget that there are soft beds, nice houses, ice water, women, or luxurious food in the world. Remember only that there are Indians who are to be killed. Learn to bear hunger and fatigue as if made of iron; learn to read Indian signs in the leaves of the trees, in the sky, in the air, and water. Learn to be wary, and watchful, and treacherous, and withal brave, and devoted only to one thing under the sun--getting Indian hair, at whatever cost and under whatever circumstances. Learn fortitude, to shed water, to endure torture and captivity, to escape from both and take sweet vengeance an hundred-fold. There have been such whites, Kentucky and Illinois and other States produced them in great numbers, Indian hunters, who made the exploits of the best Indian that ever tangled his claws in a white woman's hair pale into insignificance. Nor has the race become extinct. This country is full of such men, once they should find and enter upon their mission. The Indian is afraid of a white man who is not afraid of him. He instinctively acknowledges his superiority. He avenges it by torturing him whenever he gets him in his power. Our raids and pursuits of them only make them laugh at us. They lie in the hills, the brush and ravines, while a white band of red-handed avengers ride rapidly through the country on some trail or stream, and as soon as they have passed come out from their cover and steal and kill and burn with absolute impunity. They furnish an advance and rear guard for our men, flanking forces even; and as for spies, every tree and hillock in the country has Indian eyes in it. They know how many head of stock there are on Running creek, on Plum creek, on Kiowa, on the Fountain, the Purgatoire, Clear creek, the Boulders, and the Cache-a-la-Poudre. They know how many men there are on each. They see our settlers and towns-people band together and scout through the country, anxious only, after being three or four hours in the saddle, for something to eat and to get back to bed again. It is natural to us, we can do no better, we can't live without eating, and must sleep regularly between sheets--we have no heart for the Indian chase because it is hard work and dangerous. They know all this. A little squad of them gather from the nearest cover, and lead us anywhere, furthest from the scene of whatever raid is in contemplation or progress. Another little squad follow on our trail to see that there is not straggling. The rest, secure from molestation, go on with their toll gathering. This will never do. We must learn to carry on hostilities as they do. Watch them, surprise them, kill and scalp them, gobble their ponies, trail them to their retreats, get a scalp or two, and if they can be caught off their guard, attack them in force, the force invading their haunts as they do ours, singly or in little squads, concentrating on a signal breathed by the winds, ambushing them, always taking them at a disadvantage, and then exterminating life and destroying property as the followers of Joshua did in Canaan of old. Our present tactics are seen and acknowledged to be a failure. The General Government is acting better than ever before,--keeping still--and our immediate officers are doing all that can be asked. But Congress meets soon, and it is quite likely the war policy will be condemned and Tappan and Wynkoop will again be the heroes of the hour. At any rate, military operations do not and cannot immediately protect our settlers. It is time our Wild Bills and men of his kidney, the "mute inglorious" Kit Carsons of the future, should take to the Indian war-path in earnest, that is to say, that they adopt Indian hunting in the old Daniel Boone style as a profession, calculating to live on their enemies or on air as the Indians do. And if any one of them will do it, and will present fifty Indian scalps at this office within a year, we promise to use our influence to send him to Congress, to elect him Governor, or to any other high office he may want, regardless of his politics. Also to use our influence at the next session of the Legislature to have him paid fifty or one hundred dollars for every scalp, the same to be taken as O'Camb's was--from ear to ear and from the brow to the nap of the neck--so that there shall only be one scalp for each Indian sent to Hell, where he of right belongs. These are the volunteers wanted, we call for them, we will stand by them through thick and thin, regardless of who makes peace when "there is no peace." Who responds to the call? Who will become the Daniel Boone of Colorado? It is only so we can come to possess our country in peace. It is only so any of the States have been possessed by our race. If we don't mean to give it up, to be driven out, let us fall to for business as our fathers did before us.

Source:

Unknown, "What Shall be Done With Them?," Daily Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, Wednesday, 30 September, 1868, page 1.