enter into any project for their good, if they could only
believe it would be carried out in good faith, but utterly
wanting in confidence in the agent, the government, or the white
man. Lethargy, starvation, and disease were leading them to the
grave. I found, in fact, that the reservation was a rehash of a
negro plantation; the agent an absolute dictator, restrained by
no law and no compact known to the Indians. During my stay the
superintendent visited the valley. He stayed but a few days. We
had drinking and feasting during this time, but no grave
attention to Indian affairs; no extended investigation of what
had been done or should be done. The _status quo_ was accepted
as the _ne plus ultra_ of Indian policy. He, too, appears to
think that annihilation is the consummation of Indian
management. If the reservation was a plantation, the Indians
were the most degraded of slaves. I found them poor, miserable,
vicious, degraded, dirty, naked, diseased, and ill-fed. They had
no motive to action. Man, woman, and child, without reference to
age, sex, or condition, received the same five pounds of flour
per week, and almost nothing more. They attended every Monday to
get this, making a day’s work of it for most of them. The oldest
men, or stout, middle-aged fathers of families, were spoken to
just as children or slaves. They know no law but the will of the
agent; no effort has been made to teach them any, and, where it
does not conflict with this dictation, they follow the old forms
of life—polygamy, buying and selling of women, and compounding
crime with money _ad libitum_. The tribal system, with all its
absurd domination and duty, is still retained. The Indian woman
has no charge of her own person or virtue, but her father,
brother, chief, or nearest male relative may sell her for a
moment or for life. I was impressed that really nothing had been
done by any agent, or even attempted, to wean these people from
savage life to civilization, but only to subject them to
plantation slavery.”
The official volumes from which we are taking our information contain
the successive annual reports of the various Indian agents and
superintendents, who are 88 in number, and the reports of many councils
held between the Indians and the Board of Indian Commissioners, agents,
army officers, and special commissioners. The Hon. Felix R. Brunot,
chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, is the Mercurius in many
of these councils. He does nearly all the talking on the side of the
government, and before he talks he always prays. Thus: “Gen. Smith
announced that Mr. Brunot would speak to the Great Spirit before the
council began. Mr. Brunot offered a prayer.” In the interests of
religion it is to be regretted that councils thus begun sometimes
appeared to have been designed for the purpose of inflicting new wrongs
upon the Indians. But we mention the councils here only for the purpose
of taking from the reports of their proceedings, as well as from the
annual reports of the agents, a very few of the remarks made by the
Indian chiefs concerning themselves, the government, the agents, and the
whites generally. The limits of our space compel us to string these
together without further introduction:
RED CLOUD: God raised us Indians. I am trying to live peaceably.
All I ask for is my land—the little spot I have left. My people
have done nothing wrong. I have consulted the Great Spirit, and
he told me to keep my little spot of land. My friends, have pity
on me, if you would have me live long. My people have been
cheated so often they will not believe.
BUFFALO GOOD.: If you are going to do anything for us, do it
quick. I saw the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington,
and he told me he was going to fix it up, but I have heard that
so often I am afraid it is not true. I have been disappointed,
and I think Washington is not so much of a chief after all.
Because we do not fight, he takes away our lands and gives them
to the tribes who are fighting the whites all the time.
HOWLISH-WAMPO (“the Cayuse chief, a Catholic Indian, in dress,
personal appearance, and bearing superior to the average
American farmer”): When you told me you believed in God, I
thought that was good. But you came to ask us for our land. We
will not let you have it. This reservation is marked out for us.
We see it with our eyes and our hearts; we all hold it with our
bodies and our souls. Here are my father and mother, and
brothers and sisters and children, all buried; I am guarding
their graves. This small piece of land we all look upon as our
mother, as if she were raising us. On the outside of the
reservation I see your houses; they have windows, they are good.
Why do you wish my land? My friend, you must not talk too strong
about getting my land; I will not let it go.
HOMLI (chief of the Walla-Wallas): My cattle and stock are
running on this reservation, and they need it all. It is not the
white man who has helped me: I have made all the improvements on
my own land myself.
WENAP-SNOOT (chief of the Umatillas): When my father and mother
died, they gave me rules and gave me their land to live on. They
left me to take care of them after they were buried. I was to
watch over their graves. I will not part from them. I cultivate
my land and I love it.
PIERRE (a young chief): I do not wish money for my land; I am
here, and I will stay here. I will not part with lands, and if
you come again I will say the same thing.
WAL-CHE-TE-MA-NE (another Catholic chief, as, indeed, were the
three last named): You white chiefs listen to me: you, Father
Vermeerch, are the one who rules my heart. I am old now, and I
want to die where my father and mother and children have died. I
see the church there; I am glad to see it; I will stay beside it
and die by the teachings of the father. I love my church, my
mills, my farm, the graves of my parents and children. I do not
wish to leave them. (Happily, the firmness of these Catholic
Indians, the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla-Walla tribes, carried
the day, and they were permitted to remain on their little
reservation).
TENALE TEMANE (another Catholic Indian): We cannot cheat our own
bodies and our own souls. If we deceive ourselves we shall be
miserable; _only from the truth can we grow ourselves, and make
our children grow_. Of all that was promised to me by Gov.
Stevens I have seen nothing; _it must have been lost_.
THE YOUNG CHIEF: What you promised was not done; it was as if
you had taken the treaty as soon as it was made, and torn it up.
The treaties made with the Indians on all the reservations have
never been kept; _they have all been broken_. I do not want to
teach you anything about God; you are wise and know all about
him. (The irony of this is exquisite.)
TASENICK (a Wascoe chief): The people who are put over me teach
me worse things than I knew before. You can see what we were
promised by the treaty: we have never got anything; all we have
we bought with our own money. Our Great Father may have sent the
things promised, but they never got here.
CHINOOK: When we made the treaty they promised us schoolmasters
and a great many other things, but they forget them. We never
had any of them. They told us we were to have $8,000 a year; we
never saw a cent of it.
MACK (a Deschutes chief): It is not right to starve us; it is
better to kill us.
JANCUST: I cannot look you in the face; I am ashamed: white men
have carried away our women. What do you think? White men do
these things and say it is right.
NAPOLEON (a Catholic chief of the Tulalip reservation, who “came
forward with much dignity and laid before Mr. Brunot a bunch of
split sticks”): These represent the number of my people killed
by the whites during the year, and yet nothing has been done to
punish them. The whites now scare all the Indians, and we look
now wondering when all the Indians will be killed.
JOHNNY ENGLISH: We like Father Chirouse very well, because he
tries to do what is right; when he begins to work he does one
thing at a time.
HENRY (a Catholic on the Lumni reservation): I have been a
Christian for many years. We have some children at school with
Father Chirouse; we want our lands for them to live on when we
are dead.
DAVID CROCKETT (a Catholic chief): I ought to have a better
house in which to receive my friends. But we want most an altar
built in our church and a belfry on it; this work we cannot do
ourselves.
SPAR (a young chief): All the agents think of is to steal; that
is all every agent has done. When they get the money, where does
it go to? When I ask about it they say they will punish me. I
thought the President did not send them for that.
PETER CONNOYER (of the Grande Rondes): About religion—I am a
Catholic; so are all of my family. All the children are
Catholics. We want the sisters to come and teach the girls. The
priest lives here; he does not get any pay. He teaches us to
pray night and morning. We must teach the little girls. I am
getting old. I may go to a race and bet a little, but I don’t
want my children to learn it; it is bad.
TOM CURL: We want to get good blankets, not paper blankets. I
don’t know what our boots are made of; if we hit anything they
break in pieces.
When, in 1870, President Grant announced the inauguration of his new
Indian policy, the sects saw in it an opportunity of carrying on their
propaganda among the Indians with little or no cost to themselves, and
of interfering with, and probably compelling the total cessation of, the
work of the Catholic Church among many of the tribes. To begin with,
here were 72 places in which they could install the same number of their
ministers, or laymen devoted to their interests, with salaries paid by
the general government. Once installed as Indian agents, these men would
have autocratic power over the affairs of the tribes entrusted to them;
and they could make life so uncomfortable for the Catholic missionaries
already at work there that they would probably retire. If they
disregarded petty persecutions, the agent could compel them to depart,
since it is held by the Indian Bureau that an agent has power to exclude
from a reservation any white man whose presence he chooses to consider
as inconvenient, as well as to prevent the Indians from leaving the
reservation for any purpose whatever. There were, it was known, many
Indian agencies at which the Catholic Church had had missions for many
years, and where all, or nearly all, the Indians were Catholics. If
these agencies could be assigned to the care of the sects, how easily
could the work of converting the Indian Catholics into Methodists,
Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, or Unitarians be accomplished! The
priests could be driven away and forbidden to return; the sectarian
preachers would have full play; and the Indian appetite for Protestant
truth could be sharpened by judicious bribery and intimidation. On the
borders of the reservation there might be—as there are—Catholic churches
and Catholic priests; but the Catholic Indians on the reservation might
be—as they have been—forbidden to cross the line in order to visit their
priests and to receive the sacraments.
The new Indian policy which furnished this opportunity was probably not
original with President Grant, and we are not disposed to call in
question the purity and kindness of his motives in adopting it. At the
time of its inauguration, however, he was surrounded by influences
decidedly hostile to the Catholic Church; and it is probable that from
the beginning the men “behind the throne” had a clear conception of the
manner in which the new policy could be worked for the benefit of the
sects. It was based upon an idea plausible to non-Catholics, but which
no Catholic can ever accept—the idea that one religion is as good as
another, and that, for example, it does not make much difference whether
a man believes that Jesus Christ is God, or that he was simply a
tolerably good but rather weak and vain man. This idea has been carried
out in practice-for even to the “Unitarians” have been given two Indian
agencies: those of the Los Pinos and White River in Colorado, whose
entire religious education for 1876, as reported by the agents,
consisted in “a sort of Shaker service of singing and dancing held for
two or three days.” The chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
Mr. Brunot, appears to have been anxious to spread abroad the doctrine
of indifferentism among the Catholic Indians. Whenever, in his numerous
“councils,” he found himself in company with such Indians, he undertook
to enlighten them after this fashion:
“A chief said yesterday: ‘I don’t know about religion, because
they tell so many different things.’ Religion is like the roads;
they all go one way; all to the one good place; so take any one
good road and keep in it, and it will bring you out right at
last.” ... “I heard an Indian say that the white man has two
religions. In one way it looks so; but if you will understand
you will see it is only one.” ... “It is not two kinds of
religion, but it is as two roads that both go the same way.”
We scarcely think it is within the province of the federal government to
pay a gentleman for preaching this kind of doctrine to Catholic Indians.
But what was the new Indian policy? It was explained by President Grant,
in his message of December 5, 1870, in these words:
“Indian agents being civil officers, I determined to give all
the agencies to such religious denominations as had heretofore
established missionaries among the Indians, and perhaps to some
other denominations who would undertake the work on the same
terms—that is, as missionary work.”
There is an undesirable lack of exactness in these words—for, as they
stand, they might be understood as promising the agency of a tribe to a
sect which had established on its territory a missionary station years
ago, and had subsequently abandoned it. This, however, was certainly not
the intention of the President; if he intended to act in good faith in
the matter, he proposed, doubtless, to assign the agencies to churches
that had established _successful_ missions—missions actually existing,
having churches, schools, and converts. It is impossible to believe that
it was the intention of the executive to transfer tribes of Catholic
Indians to Protestant sects, under the pretence that the sects, at some
remote period, had made feeble and fruitless attempts to establish
missions among them. This, however, has been the construction placed
upon the President’s policy by the sects; and, strange to say, they have
experienced no difficulty in persuading successive Commissioners of
Indian Affairs to agree with them in this interpretation, and to carry
it out in a manner productive of the most wanton cruelty and injustice.
There are seventy-two Indian agencies: three in Arizona, three in
California, two in Colorado, fifteen in Dakota, eight in the Indian
Territory, one in Iowa, two in Kansas, one in Michigan, three in
Minnesota, four in Montana, five in Nebraska, five in New Mexico, one in
New York, two in Nevada, six in Oregon, one in Utah, seven in Washington
Territory, two in Wisconsin, and one in Wyoming. According to any fair
construction of the new policy, no less than forty of these agencies
should have been assigned to the Catholic Church. In all of them the
church had had missions for many years; in many of them all of the
Christian Indians, or the great majority of them, were Catholics; in
some of them the Indians had been Catholics for centuries, and their
civilization was wholly due to the instruction they had received from
Catholic priests. The following is a list of these agencies, with their
location and the number of Indians embraced in each:
Name of Agency. No. of
Location. Indians.
Yakima Washington 3,000
Fort Hall Idaho 1,500
Tulalip Washington 3,950
Puyallup Washington 577
Skokomish Washington 875
Chehalis Washington 600
Neah Bay Washington 604
Colville Washington 3,349
La Point Wisconsin 646
Pottawattomie Indian 1,336
Territory
Flatheads Montana 1,821
Blackfeet Montana 14,630
Papagoes Arizona 6,000
Round Valley California 1,112
North California ——
California
Mission Indians California 5,000
Pueblos New Mexico 7,879
Osages Indian 2,823
Territory
Cœur d’Alenes Idaho 700
Quapams Indian 235
Territory
Was, Peorias, Indian 217
etc. Territory
Hoopa Valley California 725
Pimas and Arizona 4,326
Mariscopas
Moquis Arizona 1,700
Warm Spring Oregon 626
Grande Ronde Oregon 924
Siletz Oregon 1,058
Umatilla Oregon 837
Alsea Oregon 343
Malheur Oregon 1,200
Nez-Percés Idaho 2,807
Navajoes New Mexico 9,114
Mescaleros New Mexico 1,895
Milk River Montana 10,625
Crows Montana 4,200
Green Bay Wisconsin 1,480
Chippewas Minnesota 1,322
Mackinac Michigan 10,260
Grand River Dakota 6,269
Devil’s Lake Dakota 1,020
———
Total 117,585
Within the jurisdiction of these agencies there are 52 Catholic
churches, 18 Catholic day-schools, and 10 Catholic boarding industrial
schools. The Catholic priests and teachers employed among the Indians
during the year 1875 numbered 117; while for the same year the
Protestant sects had only 64 missionaries employed in all the agencies
under their control. Would it not have been supposed that a fair
interpretation of the new policy of President Grant—nay, that the only
fair interpretation of it—would have awarded these 40 agencies to the
Catholic Church? The missions of the church, in 1870, were in almost
uncontested possession of these fields of labor. Her priests had borne
the labor and the heat of the day; asking and expecting no aid from the
state, and receiving very little from any other source, they had given
themselves to the work of Christianizing these Indians; and while the
sects had from time to time made spasmodic and desultory attempts at
Indian missions, our priests and their coadjutors, the sisters of the
teaching orders, had remained steadfast in their self-denying and
arduous labor. But the sects were now inspired with a new and sudden
zeal for the salvation of the Indians. They were not content with the 32
agencies in which, although there were many Catholic Indians, the church
had not been able to establish permanent missions. They set up claims to
the agencies we have enumerated, and it was observed that the fervor
with which these demands were pressed was in exact proportion to the
richness of the reservation and its desirableness as a future home for a
missionary with a large family and with a numerous corps of needy
relations. So fierce was their onslaught, and so rapidly were their
demands conceded by the then commissioner, that, almost before the
authorities of the church had been informed of what was going on, no
less than 32 of the 40 agencies which, by any fair interpretation of the
President’s policy, should have been assigned to Catholic care, were
divided among the sects. Fourteen of the agencies, with 54,253 Indians,
fell to the Methodists, the sect then, and perhaps now, most in favor
with the administration; five, with 21,321 Indians, went to the
Presbyterians; the same number, with 5,311 Indians, were awarded to the
Quakers; the Congregationalists received three, with 2,056 Indians; the
Reformed Dutch Church were given two, with 6,026 Indians; the “American
Missionary Association” (a Congregational society) obtained two, with
2,126 Indians; and the Protestant Episcopal Church was gratified with
one agency, the Chippewas of Missouri, 1,322 in number, who had been
Catholics all their lives. There remained eight of the agencies to which
the Catholic Church possessed a claim, and these were left in her
possession, not, however, without a threat that they also would be taken
from her—a threat already carried into execution in one case, the
Papagoes, a tribe of 6,000, residing in Arizona, having been kindly
transferred to the care of a sect called the “Reformed Church.” The
agent of this tribe, in his last report, says:
“There is no school at present taught among these Indians. The
intellectual and moral training of the young has been, for a
long time, in the hands of the Roman Catholics, and the school
hitherto kept by the sisters of the Order of St. Joseph.”
The school is now closed, it appears; and the “Reformed Church”
seemingly does not intend to open another, as their agent remarks that
“there is, perhaps, but little use to establish schools, or look for any
considerable advance in education among them.”
The seven agencies still left to the care of the church are those of
Tulalip and Colville, in Washington Territory; Grande Ronde and
Umatilla, in Oregon; Flathead, in Montana; and Standing Rock (or Grand
River) and Devil’s Lake, in Dakota. These agencies, according to the
last report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, have a population of
12,819 Indians. No less than 7,034 of these wear “citizen’s dress”; they
have 825 frame or log houses; they have six boarding-schools and three
day-schools, taught by 19 teachers; 382 of the adults can read; they
have 12 churches, and 7,510, or more than half the whole number, are
“church members.” Nothing like this can be shown at any of the agencies
under Protestant control, save the five civilized tribes in the Indian
Territory. The whole of the Indians on the Grande Ronde reservation—755
in number—are so far civilized that all of them wear citizen’s dress.
They have 375 houses, and 690 of them are “church members.” Their agent
speaks of them in glowing terms; last year, without receiving a penny of
the sums due them by the government, they not only supported themselves
in comfort, but were able “of their charity” to relieve the necessities
of two neighboring tribes, the Salmon River and Nestucca Indians, who
were starving to death “in consequence of the failure of the government
to fulfil the promises made by the honorable Commissioner Simpson.” The
parsimony of the government compelled them to dispense with the services
of their regular physician; but, writes the agent, “we have been
fortunate in securing the services of a sister, who has, in addition to
her duties as a teacher, kindly dispensed medicines with the most
gratifying success.” “The school,” he adds, “is in a very prosperous
condition under the efficient management of Sister Mary, superior, and
three assistants.”
The Indians on the Tulalip reservation, 3,250 in number, are equally
well advanced; the whole of them wear citizen’s dress; they have 2
boarding-schools, with 6 teachers, and 2,260 of them are “church
members.” We look in vain for statistics like these among the agencies
under Protestant control; when there is anything like it, it is found in
the reports from the tribes which have been civilized and Christianized
by the Catholic Church and then stolen away by the sects.
In addition to the 33 agencies which belonged by right to the church,
but were distributed among the sects, 30 others were portioned out among
them, so that, according to the last report of the commissioner, while
the church, entitled to 40 agencies, has but 7, the Quakers have 16; the
Methodists 14; the Baptists 2; the Presbyterianscc 7; the
Congregationalists 6; the “Reformed” 4; the Protestant Episcopalians 9;
the Unitarians 2; the “Free-will Baptists” 1; the “United
Presbyterians,” who seem to be disunited from the other Presbyterians,
1; and the “Christian Union,” which is not in union with any of the
other sects, 1. If our space permitted, we should point out the
miserable results after a seven years’ possession of these agencies. The
four agencies under the care of the “Reformed” body, for example,
embrace 14 tribes, numbering 17,049 souls. Among these are the Papagoes,
5,900 in number, already tolerably well-civilized by Catholic
instruction, and all of whom wear citizen’s dress. With the exception of
these, the “Reformers,” after seven years’ labor, have 50 Indians who
wear citizen’s dress, 2 schools, 1 church building, and 4 church
members! As they have not thought it worth while to send out any
missionaries, one wonders what they do with their church building, but
it is probably used as a store-house by the “Reformed” agent.
The Hicksite Quakers have 5 agencies in Nebraska, with 4,098 Indians.
They have 392 “church members,” but 348 of these belong to a civilized
tribe—the Santee Sioux, who are 793 strong. After seven years of labor
the Quakers have got only 44 out of the other 3,300 Indians under their
care to call themselves “church members.” In the Hoopa Valley
reservation, given to the Methodists, there is a “school building,” but
no school, no teacher, and no pupils; there is a “church building,” but
no missionary and no “church members.” The poor mission Indians in
California, the children of Catholic parents for many generations, also
under the tender care of the Methodists, have neither houses, nor
school, nor church, nor missionary. The 6,000 Indians on the Red Cloud
agency in Dakota, under the charge of the Protestant Episcopalians, have
a “school building,” but no teacher, no scholars, no church, no
missionary, and no “church members.” The 3,992 Cheyennes and Arapahoes
in the Indian Territory, in charge of the Quakers, have a school-house,
but no church, no missionary, and no “church members,” and so with the
rest.
In selecting a few typical illustrations of the injustice perpetrated by
the assignment of tribes of Catholic Indians to non-Catholic sects, we
are embarrassed by the richness and plenitude of our facts. We mention
only two—the Chippewas of Lake Superior, and the Osages.