The Indian question is this: education in its broadest sense or
extermination. But at least one white man must fall for every
Indian who is shot, and it takes as much money to kill one red man
as it would to train a hundred of their children in civilized ways.
To educate is economy.
Fifty thousand Indians receive every day from the Government a
pound and a half of fresh beef, with flour and coffee and sugar
and tobacco to match, and a fair outfit for all purposes of decent
living and good farming, and the number will increase. An agency
warehouse is a huge store filled with utensils of every kind, from
which the ex-warrior draws gratuitously at the agent’s discretion.
There is no treatment like this in any other country on the globe—a
stupendous wholesale charity to a people, of whom a large portion
are thus hired to keep the peace.
When first fed they are modest and satisfied, gradually they get
importunate, and finally become most grievous beggars. There is
an unevenness of treatment in this matter, based chiefly on the
varying difficulties of settlement; the strong and wicked Sioux
getting the maximum in return for their good behavior. The quiet
and thrifty Fort Berthold Indians, who are doing as much, if not
more _per capita_ than any others, complain; for Indians visit much
and discuss things; they have not yet discovered that virtue is its
own reward.
Yet I have seen and heard of agencies where, notwithstanding
gratuities, there has been steady improvement in houses, crops and
herds. Good management on the one hand and the good sense of the
better class of Indians on the other hand, at certain points led
to remarkable results; but a forward move along the whole line
of the Indian population is not to be looked for till they shall
have the same motives to industry that other men have and that all
men need. Agencies, reservations and rationing are and long will
be a necessity, lessening only as by wise use of public bounty,
and by proper legislation and care, the Indians shall approach
self-support and citizenship. The persistently indolent should
not remain as they are now, unless the nation has pledged itself,
by solemn treaty, to feed forever the savage who squats on his
haunches and refuses to work.
First-class men, and no others, can settle the Indian question. The
want of them is the bottom fact in our Indian troubles. Government
pays the market price for good beef and sugar and tobacco, but will
not pay for good men. There is only one answer to the question,
“Can a superior man afford to be an Indian agent?” No! There are
excellent Indian agents, thanks to their noble impulses, but
Government should buy and not beg what it is bound to get. Salaries
are from $900 to $2,200, depending principally upon the number of
Indians under the agent’s care. Hence, the more liberally he feeds,
the more the roving bands of the plains seek his care and swell his
income. Pressing self-support upon them may scatter them and lessen
his salary.
Congress will appropriate hundreds of thousands of dollars to feed
Indians, millions to fight them, but will not give the nominal
additional sum necessary to induce men who can make a living in
any other way to become Indian agents. We tell the Indians to take
the white man’s road and refuse to open it. He needs ideas; he
is capable of citizenship, but is unfit to hold lands or manage
property till he can read and write, and knows something of our
language.
Of the forty thousand wild children of the plains who are looking
to the nation for education, not over eight thousand are enrolled
at school. The average is far less. We are rich and paying all our
debts but those to the illiterate of the land, whose ignorance is
not their fault. The little children will one day lead. Honor and
interest demand a care for their welfare. The point of sending
children to Carlisle and Hampton should not be that they may learn
trades so much as to acquire our language and habits, and see and
comprehend civilization—a temporary sojourn away from their people,
that all interested in them declare to be most desirable. Settling
Indians on homesteads, encouraging mechanic arts, agriculture,
and especially cattle-raising, for which this race is peculiarly
adapted, and has, at the beginning, in its fitness for it, an
advantage over white men, turns more than anything else on the
wisdom, skill and perseverance of the agent.
It should be said that there has been for the past ten years
a steady improvement in the morals of the agencies, the ideas
and habits of Indians, and in the character and efficiency of
Government employees. The chief who once said, “We can’t eat
schools and teachers, and don’t want them,” and afterward sent his
son to Hampton, illustrates the change in Indian thought that is
steadily going on. Progressive Indians have suffered persecutions.
To abandon the dance, put away wild costumes, and rub the paint off
his face, has cost many an Indian suffering and loss. The “white
man way” is not even more fashionable or comfortable, ridicule
being one penalty, which, to an Indian is hard to bear.
The quiet missionary work done for the red race during the past
forty years is the seed sowing, of which it and the nation will
reap a harvest of good results. The Indian is a worshiper; “the
blue sky and high bluffs are their church edifice, the medicine man
being their minister.” With selfishness and vindictiveness running
through their religion, it contains a recognition of one God, a
Spirit which may be readily expounded by Christian teaching into
an adequate conception of the true God. No heathen in the world
offer so little to obstruct and so much to encourage the work of
the missionary. Four years’ experience at Hampton has shown them
to be remarkably open to truth, and not to be in any marked degree
revengeful. They are like other people, their special weakness
being physical. Christians of America have a duty to the Indian
that they have not done. Their work in the West should be doubled
at once. United effort by the great religious societies would do
much for the welfare of this race, through persistent pressure upon
Congress for a proper legal status.
In citizenship is the salvation of the Indian; wardship tends to
emasculate him. The effect of the ballot would be to make a man
of him as it did of the negro. To be brought out of his present
condition into fitness to vote is a work of the utmost delicacy
and difficulty, but it can be done. They are not dying out—at any
rate, the 50,000 Sioux are not. Twenty-eight Sioux Indian youth,
who had spent three years at Hampton, have just been returned
to their Dakota home. Of these young men six are farmers and
assist in general work, getting from fifteen to twenty dollars
per month; two are employed in offices at the same wages; six are
teachers, getting twenty dollars a month; two are blacksmiths,
two are shoemakers, and seven are carpenters, getting a dollar
a day apiece; all have rations besides. All refused to go to
camp life, and have been provided by the Government agents with
separate buildings, which they have cleaned and fitted up as best
they could. The Indian Department has seconded their efforts very
heartily. The next twelve months will decide their success. Their
course will be watched with interest, as a test of the methods at
Carlisle and Hampton schools, and indeed of the Indian’s ability to
make good use of our education.
The “General Survey” for the year suggests suitable accommodations
for Indians in some other of our institutions. This would be wise.
The 370 negro youth at Hampton are a wonderful help to their 90
Indian schoolmates both directly and indirectly. The mingling of
the races has proved a success, reacting happily on both. Increase
the good work of your institutions and they will grow in favor with
God and man.
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