Until the end of the eighteenth century … native American groups were sought as allies by the rival European powers … The Indians were still independent military and political agents – “nations,” in the parlance of the time whose support had to be gained with supplies of goods … As a result the exchange of goods and services between Indians and Europeans resembled the giving of gifts more than an exchange of commodities.

As we are more powerful, and more enlightened than they are, there is a responsibility of national character, that we should treat them with kindness, and even liberality. It is a melancholy reflection, that our modes of population have been more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. The evidence is the utter extirpation of nearly all the Indians in most populous parts of the Union. A future historian may mark the causes of this destruction of the human race in sable colors.

Ultimately, the white man's sympathy was more deadly than his animosity. Philanthropy had in mind the disappearance of an entire race.