Hills territory belonged to the Dakotas only a few years ago. You
remember the story. Reports of mineral wealth reached the outside
world. Emigration commenced. But that country had been set apart
by treaty to the Dakotas. “Yet,” say Felix R. Brunot, “every
step from the moment of making that peace with the Indians, has
been in the direction of depriving them of the very land which
the Peace Commission gave them.” Though there were wealth in
the Black Hills, our nation should have said, and stood by the
declaration—“Gentlemen, that Black Hills country belongs to the
Indians. If those mountains were built of solid gold, and those
river beds were paved with diamonds, not one of you should be
allowed there, unless in honorable trade you had purchased the
right.” But adventurers crowded in, and, because they had white
skins, the sacred covenants of the nation were broken. What wonder
that when the land was assigned them they eagerly asked, “How long
will it be that the President will keep his promise?” Why should
they be loyal to the Government? The Rev. Mr. Sherrill, of Omaha,
writing in the _Advance_, says, “The commonly accepted report is,
that when Commissioner Hayt visited Spotted Tail on the Upper
Missouri, and attempted to misinterpret his promise to the tribe,
Spot shook the written document with Mr. Hayt’s name at the foot of
it in the Commissioner’s face, called him a ‘bald-headed liar,’ and
walked out of the tent indignantly refusing to have anything more
to do with such a forked tongue.”
The reservation system has not secured to the Indians permanent
homes; it has not preserved them from molestation; it has not
improved them either morally or physically; it has not relieved the
Government of care or expense; from beginning to end, it has been a
stupendous fraud and failure.
III. I turn now to the Indian treaty system of the United States,
one of the most fearfully and wonderfully concocted systems that
human stupidity ever devised. It was in operation until 1871.
More than three hundred and sixty-six treaties with native tribes
are recorded in the statute books since the adoption of the
Constitution. If it is remembered that in many of these covenants
several tribes were united, the actual number of treaties is
multiplied to nearly one thousand. It would puzzle a philosopher
to get at the true inwardness of this system. The fact is, that in
colonial days, and almost ever since, the Indians have been treated
with as if they were independent and sovereign States. As such,
they were distinct from United States subjects, and could only be
reached under the forms of international law. In the language of
Justice McLean of the Supreme Bench, “The President and Senate,
except under the treaty-making power, cannot enter into compacts
with the Indians or with foreign nations.” That is plain; and if
the Indians had always been treated according to that decision,
there would have been less trouble. But Congress has claimed
jurisdiction over them, and while the President and Senate were
making treaties, has held each member of the tribes individually
amenable to such laws as it might choose to enact. The Court
decides that they are to be treated with as independent tribes,
and Congress proceeds to manage them as a portion of our dependent
population.
Two illustrations. The Wyandotte Treaty of 1855 declared the
Indians of that band to be citizens of the United States. The
treaty with the Pottawatomies in 1862 placed it in the power of the
President to confer citizenship upon the members of that tribe.
Now, if the Indians were foreigners, they could become citizens
only by naturalization, according to rules prescribed by Congress.
The treaties with them imply that they are foreigners; but the
courts have decided that naturalization laws do not apply to them;
therefore it is evident that it is competent for Congress, and no
other power, to confer upon them political rights. Yet, in the
instances cited, the treaty-making power assumed these rights.
The Executive and Senate abandoned, at length, the process of
making citizens by simple declaration. In 1866, they compelled
the Delawares who wished to become citizens, to appear in the
United States District Court, and take out naturalization papers
the same as aliens. They first made them foreigners in order to
make them citizens. But that was of doubtful legal validity.
Then, to crown this wonderful achievement, it was decided that
the children of those thus naturalized were still foreigners, and
must choose for themselves whether they would enter the tribal
relation, or seek citizenship by naturalization. A white man who
could unravel this snarl would be a genius; to an Indian, it must
have been transparent as the waters of the Missouri. I give this
instance to illustrate the utter confusion which has characterized
the administration of our Indian affairs, and the absolute
impossibility for any one to be elevated by such stupidity.
My second illustration is the Indian Territory itself. A civil
government exists there, subject to Congressional dictation. Yet
Congress never had anything to do with it, and never authorized it.
Its powers have never been defined or controlled by statute. It
was a scheme of the treaty-making power of government alone. It is
an organization devised between tribes, recognized as independent,
and is to take cognizance of matters “relating to the intercourse
and relations of the Indian tribes and nations resident in said
territory and represented, but can pass no act inconsistent with
the Constitution of the United States, the laws of Congress, or
existing treaties; or any act affecting the tribal organizations,
laws, or usages.” Each tribe is independent of this so-called
legislature in all its own affairs. Each tribe has its own laws;
and its own courts, both civil and criminal, are the last resort;
and by treaty, Congress is denied the right to interfere with, or
annul, their present tribal organizations, rights, laws, privileges
and customs. Thus, if an Indian commits murder in his own tribe, he
can be brought to justice only by his own tribe. “The non-treaty
Indians can freely rob, murder, trade with each other, without
incurring responsibility to United States authority.” (Otis, page
115.) If a white man joins an Indian tribe and commits murder, who
tries him, the United States courts or the tribal? Exactly that
issue has arisen. A United States marshal was condemned because he
attempted to take forcible possession of a United States citizen,
who was also a citizen of the Cherokee nation, and who was accused
of the murder of a Cherokee squaw. Other inconsistencies might be
enumerated. Treaties have guaranteed privileges that only Congress
had the right to grant. When the United States court comes in
conflict with the treaty, then confusion and bloodshed follow, and
the absurd clumsiness of official action is hidden beneath the cry
of shocking cruelties by Indians, when they are only defending
rights guaranteed by solemn covenant.
Two other facts may be barely mentioned. Treaties have been
repeatedly solemnized which both parties knew perfectly well could
not be kept; as in the case of the covenant with the Mississippi
and other bands of Chippewas in 1855, when the treaty included a
thousand little details of moral conduct; or the treaties of 1855
and 1865 with the Indians of Oregon and Washington Territory, where
all sacredly promised to take a temperance pledge.
The other fact is that, when Congress has ratified Indian treaties,
the prerogative has been repeatedly asserted of changing the treaty
without consultation with the Indians. In the Cheyenne Treaty
of 1861, the Senate struck out article eleven, one of the most
important articles, and then held the tribe to the treaty as it
chose to amend it.
IV. Two changes must be wrought in our Government before these
wrongs can be permanently righted.
1. The people must be aroused. In 1862, Secretary Stanton said to
a committee who went to him demanding justice for the Indians: “If
you come to Washington to tell us that our Indian system is a sink
of iniquity, and a disgrace to the nation, we all know it. This
Government never reforms an evil until the people demand it. When
the hearts of the people are touched, these evils will be reformed,
and the Indians will be saved.” When the people demand justice to
the Indian, and officers know that swift retribution will be meted
to those who longer trifle with his interests, Indian Commissioners
will no longer dare to condone corruption, and Interior Secretaries
will cease to stand in the way of righteousness.
2. There must be a reform in our system of civil service. In
British Columbia, for the last hundred years, there has been spent
not one dollar for Indian wars, and not one life has been lost. In
the United States, thousands of lives have been lost, and more than
$500,000,000 expended. What do these facts signify? That in British
Columbia they have had able and honest men in the civil service;
and in this Republic, imbecile and corrupt men. Contrast parts of
the two systems. With us the Indians are under the control of the
Secretary of the Interior, and the Indian Department is but one of
numerous important and complex departments under the supervision
of that officer—each one enough to tax to the full the ability
of a trained statesman. With us, the Indian Department must take
its chances with others, and he who ought to give it his entire
attention is “Jack-of-all-trades and master of none.” In British
Columbia, the Minister of the Interior is the actual superintendent
of Indian affairs, and directly responsible for them as the most
important part of his official duties. With us, in our Indian, as
in our civil, service, which is as vicious as any system can be,
officers are continued only during party supremacy.
In the Dominion, officers are continued for life or good behavior,
with the obvious benefit, in matters requiring special skill and
experience, produced by a civil service well established, on a
correct system of selection, which with us has only recently been
attempted.
The trouble with us has been, we have not chosen our best men to do
our most difficult work. We have had two vast problems to solve in
our history—the problem of Reconstruction and this Indian problem.
“In both cases, where France, England, Russia, would have used the
flower of their educated youth, their most honored soldiers, their
wisest lawyers and scientific men, we collected a large horde of
broken-down men of all trades and callings, and men of none, the
riff-raff of caucuses and nominating conventions, in fact, the very
refuse of our busy and prosperous society,” and gave to them to
solve, the most difficult and delicate questions of public policy
which statesmen have ever faced on this continent. The failure was
inevitable in the one case as in the other.
V. In the light of the experience of the last century, I think we
may safely make the following affirmations.
All tribal distinctions ought, as soon as possible, to be abolished
by the Government, and the Indian treated the same as any other man.
The Reservation system should be given up, and Indians be allowed
to go and come whenever and wherever they may choose. Land should
be allotted in severalty. If the Indian has a hard time, the
discipline will probably educate him.
Education should be compulsory, and for a reasonable time, under
patronage of the Government.
All the rights and penalties of citizenship should be accorded to
the Indian, as to the Italian, Irishman, and Negro.
The Indian should understand that this is a final settlement of
his case, and that now he must shift for himself as other citizens
have to do. With justice, and the protection and penalties of law
awarded to him, let the Indian take his chances in the struggle of
life. The germ of civilization is obedience to law. Put him under
state and national law. The fittest will probably survive, Darwin
or no Darwin.
So much for the Government. Then let Christianity, through its
voluntary agencies, do the rest, as it well knows how to do, and is
so grandly doing through the American Missionary Association. There
are difficulties attending the execution of these suggestions. This
consideration would require time that I have not at my disposal.
They are not insuperable to a wise statesmanship.
When Dr. Riggs was visiting and preaching in the Indian Territory,
one day there sat before him an old chief, nearly a hundred years
of age, listening attentively. It was the missionary’s last sermon
before leaving. When the service was over, the old man went up to
Dr. Riggs, and reaching out his scrawny hand to the missionary’s
snow-white beard, grasped it firmly, and turning him to the full
sun-light gazed intently into his face for a long time. “What
do you do that for?” at length said the Doctor. “Because I want
to know you in the resurrection,” the old chief slowly replied.
His people had been scattered, his children killed, his horses
stolen, he had been driven from the home of his childhood to a
strange land. While he waited to die, this noble old apostle, in
whom Christ dwelt, crossed his pathway. The speech and tenderness
were so strange, coming from a white man, that he wanted to be
sure of recognizing him after death. “I want to know you in the
resurrection.” How many white men will the Indians want to meet in
the resurrection? It is time these awful wrongs were righted. It
is time we learned with the wise fool in _A Fool’s Errand_, “The
remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for wrong,
righteousness.” It is time the people were roused. It is time a
tide of public opinion, demanding justice for the Indian, was
rolled in upon our rulers, too strong to be longer resisted. If the
Government never reforms until the people demand it, let us be sure
that we voice our part of that demand, loud and clear, at once and
unmistakably.
* * * * *
LETTER FROM GENERAL FISK.
[It was anticipated up to a late day by the committee of
arrangements that General Fisk would be present at the meeting and
would make an address upon the Indian Report. In his unexpected and
compelled absence he kindly sent the following letter:]
It is almost two hundred and fifty years since Captain John Mason,
at the head of ninety men, more than half of the fighting force of
the Connecticut Colony, marched against Sassacus, and almost within
bow-shot of where your Annual Meeting is to be held, fought the
Pequods. It was the first Indian war in New England. Thomas Hooker,
“the light of the Western Churches,” famed as “a son of thunder,”
delivered to Mason the staff of command. The very learned and
godly Stone spent nearly the whole night in importunate prayer for
success to crown the expedition, which on the morrow sailed past
the Thames, hoping by strategy to reach the Pequod fort unobserved.
Under cover of night, the soldiers of Connecticut made the attack
upon the Indians. “We must burn them,” shouted Mason, who himself
cast a firebrand to the windward among the light mats of their
cabins. The helpless natives climbed the palisades as their blazing
encampment assisted the English marksmen in taking good aim. Six
hundred Indians, men, women and children, perished, most of them in
the hideous conflagration. Capt. Miles Standish had twenty years
earlier slaughtered Witawamo and others of the Massachusetts tribe,
the knowledge of which, as it reached the gentle spirited Robinson
in Leyden, caused the pastor to write to Bradford, “concerning the
killing of those poor Indians, of which we heard at first by report
and since by more certain relation. Oh, how happy a thing had it
been if you had converted some before you killed any.”
“The principle and foundation of the charter of Massachusetts,”
wrote Charles II. at a time when he had Clarendon for his adviser,
“was the freedom of liberty and conscience, not only for the
Puritan but for the natives, whom the ministers might win to the
Christian faith.” The instructions to Endicott as to the rights
of the Indians on the far-away Atlantic coast, and their duty to
them, were clear and emphatic. “If any of the savages pretend right
of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our
patent, endeavor to purchase their title, that we may avoid the
least scruple of intrusion. Particularly publish that no wrong or
injury be offered to the natives.” The colony seal was a wandering
Indian with arrows in his right hand, with the motto, “Come and
help me.” For more than two hundred and fifty years, from our
Indian tribes, as they have been steadily driven before the surging
tide of civilization from the Atlantic to the Pacific, has there
been the constant cry of the weaker to the stronger forces of the
continent, “come and help me.” Many who will be in attendance upon
your Annual Meeting have seen “Standing Bear” of the Poncas, who
was wantonly and wickedly driven from his home on the banks of the
Missouri by the Government, and heard him tell his simple story
of wrong endured, and heard his appeal, “Come and help me.” With
sublime faith that God intended all men to be free and equal, all
men without restriction, without qualification, without limit, let
us listen to their appeal, and respond with the best help in our
power to contribute.
Never before in the history of this country has there been such
an awakening in behalf of the Indian. Never before such healthy
sentiment for justice and fair play for the original owners of the
soil over which our fifty millions of prosperous people unfurl the
flag of the free. The Indian question, like the Ghost of Banquo,
is at every banquet. It will not down until “Birnam wood do come
to Dunsinane.” Hundreds of years of broken faith, during which
ambuscades, massacres, fired Indian camps, blazing wigwams and
smouldering embers of burned villages, have strewn the pathway of
our march of empire, until now upon every lip is the interrogatory,
What shall be done with the Indian? All the Indian asks, all his
friends ask for him, is a _fair chance_.
It has been well said that in good faith and good feeling we must
take up this work of Indian civilization, and at whatever cost
do our whole duty in the premises. We owe them protection of the
property they own, endowments of money, forbearance, patience,
care, education, _citizenship_.
Let not another Indian be removed from his home, except as he
removes himself by his own volition.
Let every acre of land now occupied under treaty, or by any other
document by which the United States have “ceded and relinquished”
the same, be held sacredly theirs forever, unless the citizen
Indian chooses to sell it.
Let there be no more the policy of seclusion, but rather that of
absorption.
Let all covenants between the Government and the Indian be executed
as promptly and faithfully as with any other person.
Let the Indian citizen have his own home with all the protection of
National and State Governments.
Let the Indian citizen have the same protection of law, and require
from him the same obedience to law as governs in the case of the
white man and the black man, and then the Indian will work out his
own destiny.
Let us say with that quaint philosopher, Hosea Bigelow, that
“This is the one great American idee,
To make a man _a man_, and then to let him be.”
Trusting that the American Missionary Association will keep its
standard on the Indian question “full high and advancing,” I remain,
With very great respect,
Your obedient servant,
CLINTON B. FISK.
* * * * *
THE CHINESE.
* * * * *
“CALIFORNIA CHINESE MISSION.”
Auxiliary to the American Missionary Association.
PRESIDENT: Rev. J. K. McLean, D.D. VICE-PRESIDENTS: Rev. A. L.
Stone, D.D., Thomas C. Wedderspoon, Esq., Rev. T. K. Noble, Hon.
F. F. Low, Rev. J. E. Dwinell, D.D., Hon. Samuel Cross, Rev. S.
H. Willey, D.D., Edward P. Flint, Esq., Rev. J. W. Hough, D.D.,
Jacob S. Tabor, Esq.
DIRECTORS: Rev. George Mooar, D.D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. E.
P. Baker, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, Rev. John
Kimball.
SECRETARY: Rev. W. C. Pond. TREASURER: E. Palache, Esq.
* * * * *
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
Your Committee, to whom was referred that part of the Report of the
Executive Committee which concerns the Chinese, beg leave to report
as follows:
1. That in estimating the success of their work, the difficulties
under which it has been prosecuted must be borne in mind; the fact
that it has been carried on in the face of an intense hostility
to the presence of Chinese upon our shores, extending not only to
the lower classes, but also, in not a few localities, including
influential clergymen and laymen, and became so far a dominant
sentiment, that both the great political parties have yielded to it
by inserting anti-Chinese planks in their platforms.
2. That this work ought to be not only generously supported and
vigorously maintained, but, so far as practicable, extended,
especially by the establishment of schools and mission work among
the Chinese in the mines.
3. That while your Committee recognize the difficulties in the way
of establishing a mission in China, they also see that there would
be great advantage, both direct and indirect, in thus connecting
a foreign with the home work, and they recommend the Board to
give serious consideration to the proposition, and to carry it
into execution, if, on a more thorough inquiry, it shall be found
practicable to do so without interfering with the other work of the
society, or with the work of other Evangelical missions in China.
LYMAN ABBOTT, _Chairman_.
* * * * *
THE TWO METHODS.
REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D., NEW YORK.
* * * Let us recognize, then, that there is a possibility of
danger to us, religious danger from the influx of a godless and
atheistic people, political danger from the influx of a vast amount
of cheap labor, danger from a deluge coming from an ocean almost
unfathomable and immeasurable. How shall we meet that danger?
Looking down the vista of the years, how shall we prepare ourselves
for it and protect ourselves from it?
There are two methods; and I wish simply to set these two methods
before you as clearly and as distinctly as I can.
The one method is that of self-protection by force; the method of
building a Chinese wall and saying, “You shall not come upon our
shores;” the method of the brick-bat; the method of the mob; the
method which has been succinctly put in Dennis Kearney’s platform,
“The Chinese must go,” and more genteelly and courteously put in
the Democratic and Republican platforms, which mean the same thing;
the method which declares, “We will not allow this people upon our
shores to live among us, to work with us, to share our benefits;”
the method of a prohibitory legislation.
In respect to that method, _first, we have no right to adopt it_.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Go through
the first five books of the Bible and find how it is iterated and
reiterated again and again, that the soil of this earth belongs to
God. No people have a right to set themselves down upon a territory
and say to their brother people, “You shall not come.” We have a
right to say that if they come they shall come subordinate to the
laws and the institutions that have been established here; that
they shall behave themselves; that they shall obey the system of
laws which we have found good for ourselves and for our children;
but we have no right to build a wall of adamant around the land and
say, “Keep out.” By what right do the children of the immigrants of
1620 say to the immigrants of 1880, “You shall not set foot upon
this soil”? By what right do the sons of the Pilgrim Fathers say
to the pilgrims of this generation, “You shall keep off”? When did
that right come to us? Could we have said it in 1700, in 1750, in
1800? At what epoch in our national history accrued to us the right
of drawing the line, building the wall, closing the gates, and
saying, “Thou shalt come no more?”
I shall not enter in detail into the argument on this subject. I
know what is the reply: “If I have a farm of a hundred acres, may I
not keep tramps off?” No nation has found itself without difficulty
and threatened danger, that has attempted to keep the laborer off
of land which was not being worked. To-day Ireland is wrestling
with the labor problem, and England is wrestling with the labor
problem, because there are vast tracts of unoccupied, untilled,
uncultivated land from which the laborer is excluded. So long as
our mines lie undug; so long as our prairies lie uncultivated; so
long as our streams run their course and no music of the mills
sings along their lines, so long industry has a right to its home
under our flag and within our borders.