On the 3d of March, 1871, Congress declared that "hereafter no Indian
nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be
acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power,
with whom the United States may contract by treaty."
Brave words these would have seemed to good William Penn, treating with
the Lenni Lenape, under the elm at Kensington; or even to doughty Miles
Standish, ready as that worthy ever was to march against the heathen who
troubled his Israel. Heathen they were in the eyes of the good people of
Plymouth Colony, but nations of heathen, without question, as truly as
were the Amalekites, the Jebusites, or the Hittites to the infant colony
at Shiloh. It would have been deemed the tallest kind of "tall talk," in
the councils of Jamestown, Providence, and Annapolis, to express
disdain for the proffered hand of Indian friendship, or even to object
to payment of some small tribute, in beads or powder, to these native
lords of the continent. In 1637, when Capt. John Mason marched against
Sassacus, at the head of ninety men, he had with him half the fighting
force of the Connecticut Colony. In 1653 a wall was built across
Manhattan Island to keep out the savages; though, when we say that the
line of defence just covered the present course of Wall Street (which
derives its name from that circumstance), our readers may not fail to
wonder whether the savages were not the rather kept in by it. In 1675,
when the New-England Colonies had grown comparatively strong, they
mustered for their war against Philip one thousand men, of whom
Massachusetts furnished five hundred and twenty-seven, Plymouth one
hundred and fifty-eight, and Connecticut three hundred and fifteen.
To men peering out from block-houses, or crouching behind walls,
awaiting the terrific yell of an Indian attack, it was not likely to
occur that they might compromise their dignity by treating on equal
terms with an enemy tenfold as numerous as themselves; nor were the
statesmen of that early heroic age likely to give themselves trouble
about the character and standing among the nations of the earth, of
confederacies that could bring five thousand warriors into the field.
And so the feeble colonies struggled on through those days of gloom and
fear, deprecating the anger of the savages as they might, and
circumventing their wiles when they could; played off one chieftain
against another; made contribution of malice and powder to every
intestine feud among the natives; bought off tribes, without much
scruple as to the ultimate fulfilment of their bargains; postponed the
evil day by every expedient, knowing that time was on their side: and
when they had, in spite of all, to fight, fought as men who know that
they will not themselves be spared,--planned ambuscades and massacres;
fired Indian camps, and shot the inmates as they leaped from their
blazing wigwams; studied and mastered all the arts of forest warfare;
and beat the savages with their own weapons, as men of the higher race
will always do when forced by circumstances to such a contest.
Nor during the early part of the eighteenth century, when all danger of
a war of extermination had passed from the apprehension of the most
timid, when the Colonies had become in a degree compacted, and the line
of white occupation had been made continuous from Massachusetts to
Georgia; nor later still, when the Colonies had become States, and the
representatives of the new nation of the Western world were received in
all the courts of Europe--was the policy abandoned of treating with the
Indian tribes as parties having equal powers of initiative, and equal
rights in negotiation. In nearly four hundred treaties, confirmed by the
Senate as are treaties with foreign powers, our government recognized
Indian tribes as nations with whom the United States might contract
without derogating from its sovereignty.
The treaties made with Indian tribes have, of course, been mainly
treaties of cession. Most of our readers will be surprised to learn the
extent of lands east of the Mississippi which are embraced in sales to
the United States; being no less than the entire States of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, with
considerable portions of Tennessee, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And these
treaties were not a mere form to amuse and quiet savages, a
half-compassionate, half-contemptuous humoring of unruly children. The
United States were not then grown so great that they could afford to
value lightly the free relinquishment of the soil by the native owners
of it. At the time most of the treaties with tribes east of the
Mississippi were concluded, not only did the right remain in the
Indians, but enough of power, to make it as much a diplomatic triumph to
obtain a cession on favorable terms, as it would be to negotiate a
successful treaty with one of the States of Central America to-day. The
United States were clearly the stronger party in every such case; but
the Indians were, in the great body of instances, still so formidable,
that to wrest their lands from them by pure, brutal violence would have
required an exertion of strength which the government was ill prepared
to make. So that, while it is true that the Indians were generally made
ready to negotiate by the use of military force and by the pressure of
white settlements, it is not true that the considerations and privileges
accorded them in these treaties were a gift out of good-nature.
So much for the power of the Indians when they made these treaties.
Their right to their lands is quite as well established historically. In
the early history of the Western world, the principle was fully
recognized, that, while sovereignty rested, not with the Indians, but
with the civilized power claiming by virtue of discovery, the Indians
were the rightful occupants, with a just and perfect claim to retain
possession and enjoy the use until they should be disposed voluntarily
to part with it. Great Britain, Holland, France, and Spain, the four
powers claiming sovereignty by virtue of discovery within the present
territory of the United States, conceded no less than this to the
natives; while France, in the cession of the province of Louisiana,
expressly reserved the rights allowed the Indians by its own treaties
and articles, "until, by mutual consent of the United States and the
said tribes or nations, other suitable articles shall have been agreed
upon."
"Such being the right of the Indians to the soil, the United
States for more than eighty-five years pursued a uniform
course of extinguishing the Indian title only with the consent
of those Indian tribes which were recognized as having claim
by reason of occupancy: such consent being expressed in
treaties, to the formation of which both parties approached,
as having equal rights of initiative, and equal rights in
negotiation. These treaties were made from time to time (not
less than 372 being embraced in the general statutes of the
United States) as the pressure of white settlements, or the
fear or the experience of Indian hostilities, made the demand
for the removal of one tribe after another urgent or
imperative. _Except only in the case of the Indians in
Minnesota, after the outbreak of 1862, the United-States
Government has never extinguished an Indian title as by right
of conquest_; and in this latter case the government provided
the Indians another reservation, besides giving them the
proceeds of the sales of the lands vacated by them in
Minnesota; so scrupulously, up to that time, had the right of
the Indians to the soil been respected, at least in form. It
is not to be denied that wrong was often done in fact to
tribes in the negotiation of treaties of cession. The Indians
were not infrequently overborne or deceived by the agents of
the government in these transactions; sometimes
unquestionably, powerful tribes were permitted to cede lands
to which weaker tribes had a better claim: but, formally at
least, the United States accepted the cession successively of
all lands, to which Indian tribes could show color of title,
which are embraced in the limits of any of the present States
of the Union except California and Nevada."--_Report on Indian
Affairs_, 1872, pp. 83, 84.
In 1871, however, the insolence of conscious strength, and the growing
jealousy of the House of Representatives towards the prerogative--arrogated
by the Senate--of determining, in connection with the executive, all
questions of Indian right and title, and of committing the United States
incidentally to pecuniary obligations limited only by its own discretion,
for which the House should be bound to make provision without inquiry, led
to the adoption, after several severe parliamentary struggles, of the
declaration which stands at the head of this paper.
In abruptly terminating thus the long series of Indian treaties, and
forever closing the only course of procedure known for the adjustment of
difficulties, and even for the administration of ordinary business, with
Indian tribes, Congress provided no substitute, and up to the present
time has neglected to prescribe the methods by which, after the
abrogation of the national character of the Indians, either their
internal matters or their relations with the general government are to
be regulated. The Indian-Intercourse Act of 1834, though still nominally
in force, is so largely predicated upon the tribal constitution, and
assumes so uniformly the national sufficiency of the tribe, that all the
life and virtue are taken out of it by the Act of 1871 just cited; and
the country is, in effect, left without rule or prescription for the
government of Indian affairs. It is sufferance, not law, which enables
the Indian Office to-day to administer its charge. While the Act of 1871
strikes down at a blow the hereditary authority of the chiefs, no
legislation has invested Indian agents with magisterial powers, or
provided for the assembling of the Indian _demos_. There is at this time
no semblance of authority for the punishment of any crime which one
Indian may commit against another, nor any mode of procedure, recognized
by treaty or statute, for the regulation of matters between the
government and the several tribes. So far as the law is concerned,
complete anarchy exists in Indian affairs; and nothing but the singular
homogeneity of Indian communities, and the almost unaccountable
spontaneity and unanimity of public sentiment within them, has thus far
prevented the attention of Congress and the country being called most
painfully to the unpardonable negligence of the national legislature in
failing to provide a substitute for the time-honored policy which was
destroyed by the Act of 1871.
In treating the Indian question of the present day, the temptation is
strongly felt, to dwell upon the history of Indian tribes, and upon the
physical and moral characteristics of this singular race. Yet, if way be
once given to this inclination, not only will the time and space
necessary for a discussion of the present and the future of the Indian
tribes be sacrificed, but the attention of the reader will be so
overwhelmed with the multitude of names and incidents, that he will be
embarrassed rather than assisted in his understanding of the subject to
be treated. The value, for our purpose, of facts and incidents in Indian
history is not at all according to their value historically or
romantically. Indeed, such has been the fatality to the aborigines of
contact with the whites, that it may almost be said, the importance
to-day of tribes is inversely as their importance in the annals of the
country. Among the greatest figures of the past are those of bands and
confederacies that have utterly disappeared from the continent, happy
that their long, savage independence, and their brief, fierce resistance
to the encroachments of the pale-face, were not to be succeeded by a
dreary period of submission, humiliation, and dependence. Other tribes,
that but a few generations ago shook the infant colonies with terror, or
even dared to stand across the path of the Republic, and for a time
flung a shadow as of eclipse over its destiny, are now represented upon
the annuity or feeding-lists of the United States by a few score of
diseased wretches, who hang about the settlements, begging and stealing
where they can, and quarrelling like dogs over the entrails of the
beeves that are slaughtered for them. Still other tribes, once warlike
and powerful, have, by a fortunate turn of character and circumstance,
become so rich and respectable as not only to deprive them of all
romantic interest, but practically to take them out of the scope of the
Indian question. Other tribes, still having among them men whose
grandfathers besieged Detroit under Pontiac, are now resolved into
citizens of the United States, eligible for the chief-justiceship or the
presidency.
Such considerations as we have here briefly sketched suffice to show the
inexpediency of entering upon Indian history, _qua_ history, as an
introduction to the discussion of the Indian problems of to-day. Equally
obdurate must one be to the seductions of Indian ethnology, except so
far only as it may simplify the classification of the present Indian
population to refer tribes and bands to recognized groups or families,
for the better or briefer characterization of their qualities and
affinities.
Even stronger yet is the temptation to enter upon the analysis and
portraiture of the original and native character of the North-American
Indian. Voluptuary and stoic; swept by gusts of fury too terrible to be
witnessed, yet imperturbable beyond all men, under the ordinary
excitements and accidents of life; garrulous, yet impenetrable; curious,
yet himself reserved, proud and mean alike beyond compare; superior to
torture and the presence of certain death, yet, by the standards of all
other peoples, a coward in battle; capable of magnanimous actions which,
when uncovered of all romance, are worthy of the best days of Roman
virtue, yet more cunning, false, and cruel than the Bengalee,--this
copper-colored sphinx, this riddle unread of men, equally fascinates and
foils the inquirer.
This, however, is the Indian of history. The Indian for whom the
government is called to provide subsistence and instruction presents no
such psychological difficulties. Curious compound and strange
self-contradiction as the red man is in his native character, in his
traditional pursuits, and amid the surroundings of his own wild life;
yet when broken down by the military power of the whites, thrown out of
his familiar relations, his stupendous conceit with its glamour of
savage pomp and glory rudely dispelled, his occupation gone, himself a
beggar, the red man becomes the most commonplace person imaginable, of
very simple nature, limited aspirations, and enormous appetites.
The Indian question naturally divides itself into two: What shall be
done with the Indian as an obstacle to the national progress? What shall
be done with him when, and so far as, he ceases to oppose or obstruct
the extension of railways and settlements? It is because these two parts
of the question have not been separately regarded that so much confusion
has been introduced into the discussion of Indian affairs. Widely
diverse, for example, as are the criticisms popularly expressed on what
is known as the "Indian policy" of Pres. Grant's administration, the
writer can confidently affirm, as the result of hundreds of interviews,
formal and informal, stated and casual, friendly and the reverse, with
men from every section of the country, of both parties, and of all
professions, that he believes there is no political subject mooted
to-day on which there are so slight differences of real opinion, or,
indeed, such general consent when men will once come to terms with each
other, and begin to talk about the same thing. He has never known a man,
even from the Territories or the border States, make objection, on a
candid statement, to the intentions and purposes of that administration
towards the Indians, unless it were some man peculiarly vulgar and
brutal,--such a one, for instance, as, if a Southerner, would give his
time and breath to indiscriminate abuse of the negroes. Instead of there
being two parties on this subject, there is, therefore, if the
observations of the writer have been well made, no reason to suppose
that any considerable division of opinion or feeling exists respecting
the duty of the government, at the present moment, by the aborigines of
the country.
Take the public sentiment of Arizona, for example. It is the almost
universal belief throughout the country, that the people of this
Territory have a deadly hostility to the Indians, and meditate nothing
but mischief towards them; and it certainly must be admitted that press
and people alike indulge in expressions which fairly bear that
construction, and are quite enough to create an impression that the
citizens of the Territory hate an Indian as an Indian, and have no
humane sentiments whatever towards the race. And yet the writer would as
soon leave the question, whether the government should render some
kindly service to the Papagoes or to the Pimas and Maricopas, in the way
of assisting them to self-maintenance, or of providing instruction in
letters or in the mechanic arts, to the general voice of the people of
Arizona, as to any missionary association in New York or Boston the
coming May. When the press of Arizona cry out against the Indian policy
of the government, and denounce Eastern philanthropy, they have in mind
the warlike and depredating bands; and they are exasperated by what they
deem, perhaps unreasonably but not unnaturally, the weakness and
indecision of the executive in failing to properly protect the frontier.
Indians to them mean Apaches; and their violence on the Indian question
arises from the belief that the administration of Indian affairs has
been committed to sentimentalists, who have no appreciation of the
terrible stress which these Indian outrages bring upon the remote
settlements. But were the question one of helping, in a practical
fashion suited to the habits and views of life of a border community, a
tribe of Indians who are peaceful, and in a poor way helpful, there is
no reason to suppose that the inhabitants of Tucson or Prescott would be
behind an Eastern congregation in readiness for the work. And this
impression the writer derives, not alone from the amiable and cultivated
gentleman who represents that Territory in Congress, but from contact
and correspondence with many influential and representative citizens of
Arizona, and from a study of the very journals that so teem with
denunciations of the Indian policy of the government.[B]
On the other hand, in our prosperous and well-ordered communities at the
East, a gentleman of leisure and of native benevolence, whose ears have
never rung with the war-whoop, whose eyes have never witnessed the
horrid atrocities of Indian warfare, and who is only disturbed in his
pleasing reveries by the occasional tramp of the policeman about his
house, is apt to dwell exclusively upon the other side of the Indian
question. To such a man, as he recalls the undoubted wrongs done the
Indian in the past, as he contemplates the fate of a race whose heroic
and romantic qualities have been greatly exaggerated, or as he listens
to the flattering tale of a missionary returned from some peaceful and
half-civilized tribe, it is very pleasant to think that the original
owners of the soil are to be protected by the government, saved to
humanity, educated in the useful arts, and elevated to a Christian
civilization. On such a man accounts of Indian outrages make little
impression. He regards them as the invention of pioneer malice, or
easily disposes of them by a mental reference to the crimes perpetrated
in his own town or city. He is, perhaps, so ignorant of Indian matters
as to think that all the Indians of the country form one homogeneous
community, and cannot understand how it should be, that, while Cherokees
are supporting churches and colleges and orphan asylums at home, and
sending their sons to receive classical and professional education in
the best schools of the East, Kiowas should roast their prisoners alive,
and brain the babe before the eyes of its mother. Is it a matter of
wonder, that men who are contemplating things so different as are the
Eastern philanthropist and the Western settler, when Indians are spoken
of, should imagine that they disagree as to the policy of the
government, and come to entertain contempt or repugnance for each other,
while, in fact, on an honest statement of a given case, neither would
dissent in the slightest degree from the views of the other? If there
is, then, such a liability to confusion and misapprehension in the
discussion of the Indian question, we may be allowed to insist strongly
upon the necessity of the distinction indicated.
* * * * *
The actually or potentially hostile tribes of the United States number,
on a rough computation suited to the rudeness of the definition,
sixty-four thousand. It is these only which we have to treat under the
first division of our question,--What shall be done with the Indian as
an obstacle to the national progress? This number of sixty-four thousand
is made up as follows: The actually depredating bands, North-west and
South-west, probably have not exceeded, during the past year, seven
thousand, mainly Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches. The tribes with which
these bands are directly and intimately connected contain about twenty
thousand, including the marauders. There are further included in this
calculation tribes and bands, numbering in the aggregate about
forty-four thousand, which are now generally at peace.
It will be seen that the number which we have taken for the potentially
hostile Indians is many times greater than the number of the actually
hostile. Yet, on the other hand, we have not intended to embrace all
those tribes which might be exasperated to the point of resistance by a
reckless disregard of treaties on the part of the government, or by a
series of wanton acts of abuse on the part of white settlers. There is a
line beyond which no man or people may safely be pressed; and there are
few bands of Indians, East or West, however contemptible in numbers or
character, which, if wronged and trampled on, might not in their
indignant despair teach their oppressors a lesson at which the world
would shudder. We are contemplating no such possibilities. We are
assuming that the government will, as it has generally done in the
past, respect treaty obligations, and that the intercourse of the
Indians with their white neighbors will be marked by only such sporadic
acts of individual wrong as are in the nature of the case.
The tribes to which we refer as potentially hostile are, first, those
now in immediate contact with the whites, whose claims to territory are
so far disregarded, either by the action of the government or by the
unauthorized intrusion of pioneers and prospectors; or whose means of
subsistence are so far impaired or threatened by the extension of
railways and settlements,--that hostilities are only prevented by the
bounty of the government in feeding the members of such tribes in whole
or in part, by liberal presents of trinkets and useful goods, by the
exercise of especial watchfulness in avoiding occasions of dispute and
points of collision, and finally by a willingness on the part of the
government to overlook offences and even to tolerate a degree of
insolence, rather than allow a breach of the peace: second, those tribes
not now to any great extent in contact with the whites, and exhibiting
no desire to go out of their way to make trouble, but of which the same
must, in the inevitable course of the national progress, in a few years
become true as of the tribes embraced under the first class.
But these classes, as we have thus described them, are yet far too
numerous for the facts of the case. We must still further reduce them by
excluding all such tribes as, from location, from traditional friendship
for the whites, or from weakness of character, are unlikely, in any
event reasonably to be contemplated, to become involved in hostilities.
Among the Indians, who, by the force of their location and surroundings,
are rendered powerless for armed resistance, are not a few of the
Indians of Minnesota, and even some in Wisconsin, who have no love for
the whites, and would make exceedingly bad neighbors to frontier
settlements, but who, encircled as they are by powerful communities,
submit sullenly to their condition. The same may be said of many bands
in Kansas, Nebraska, and on the Pacific coast. These are Indians who
have been overtaken, surrounded, and disarmed by the progress of
population, but, either through the neglect of the government or by the
failure of the usual agencies of instruction and industrial assistance,
have remained barbarous, and, as their natural means of subsistence grow
scantier, are becoming every year more miserable.
There is another and much larger class of Indians from whom no organized
violence is to be expected in the course of the complete settlement of
the country, not because they are rendered helpless by the force of
their location, nor because they have any traditional friendship for the
whites, nor because they do not experience suffering enough to impel a
warlike people to a struggle for life, but because they are not fighting
Indians. Actual outrage might drive some of these tribes to resistance;
but, under the slow wasting-away of their means of subsistence, and the
gradual pressure of the settlements, they are, and are likely to remain,
wholly passive, accepting their fate, and sinking to the lowest point of
human misery without a single heroic effort. Some of these tribes have
been "put upon" by their more warlike neighbors through many
generations, driven from their original hunting-grounds, and harassed
even in the mountains where they have taken refuge, until their spirit
has been utterly crushed, and they have become as submissive as the
Southern negroes. This is true of large numbers of the Indians of
Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Southern California. They have neither the
individual courage nor the instinct of confederation entitling them to
be reckoned among the potentially hostile tribes.
Still, again, we count out several powerful tribes, able to bring five
hundred or a thousand warriors each into the field, which, by reason of
traditional friendship and their frequent alliance with our troops in
campaigns against hostile Indians, are sure to remain the friends of the
government under any tolerable treatment. Indeed, neglect and abuse seem
insufficient to alienate these allies. Their faith once pledged, and
friendship cemented by sacrifices and sufferings, they cling to the
fortunes of the whites with romantic fidelity. Such are the
Arickarees,[C] Mandans, and Gros Ventres of the Upper Missouri; such
the Pawnees of Kansas; such the Flatheads, Kootenays, and Pend
d'Oreilles, whose boast is that their tribes never killed a white man;
such, in a degree, the Crows of Montana. These tribes, and others of
less consequence, are not only sure, in the event of kindly treatment by
the government, to remain its fast friends, but they may be relied upon
in the future, as in the past, to do much to check the audacity of their
hostile neighbors, and, in the last resort, to furnish re-enforcements
of the most effective and economical sort to the troops operating
against predatory bands.
Having excluded all tribes and bands of the character, or in the
position, indicated under the three heads above, we make up the list of
the potentially hostile Indians somewhat as follows: of the Sioux of
Dakota,--tribes, bands, and parties, to the number of fifteen thousand;
of the Indians of Montana,--Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, Assiniboines
and roving Sioux, to the number of twenty thousand; of the Indians in
the extreme south-western part of the Indian Territory and on the
borders of Texas,--Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, to the
number of seven thousand; of the Indians of Arizona,--Apaches of several
tribes, to the number of nine thousand; of the mountain Indians of
Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, to the number of five thousand; of the
Indians of New Mexico, to the number of two thousand; and of the Indians
in Oregon and Washington Territory, to the number of six thousand. The
sixty-four thousand Indians thus enumerated comprise substantially all
the tribes and bands with which the government is obliged to contemplate
the possibility of war. It is in the highest degree improbable, however,
that the United States would, even in the event of what might properly
be called a general Indian war, be called on to fight more than one-half
of these Indians at any one time; while, with a reasonable policy of
concession, the number of actually hostile and depredating bands may be
steadily reduced, and the whole body of dangerous Indians held in check
until the advance of population shall render them incapable of mischief.
The measures by which this is to be effected must be considered
candidly, in the light of the alternative presented, and not as if they
were proposed as measures wholly agreeable to the tastes or the temper
of those who are called to administer Indian affairs.
That we may obtain a true impression of one of the conditions on which
peace is maintained with certain Indian tribes, let us take a leaf out
of the official record of the dealings of the government with the Sioux
during the past year. Early in 1872 an unusually large number of Indians
were assembled at the Red Cloud agency, near Fort Laramie in Wyoming. By
far the greater part were _habitues_ of this or some other Sioux agency;
but among them were many Northern Indians, who were for the first time
the guests of the government, and who, not having become accustomed to
eat the bread of dependence, were much more intractable and insolent
than the others. The presence of these Indians produced great turmoil at
the agency, and considerable apprehension on the part of the agent.
Nothing in the nature of an outbreak occurred, however: the strangers
gradually went away to their summer hunt on the Powder River; and the
agency was brought back to its usual condition. But, while this was
being effected, a ranchman named Powell, who had a large drove of cattle
near Fort Laramie, was robbed and murdered. The bloody details were soon
known; for Indians are such inveterate gossips that they can keep no
secret, however dangerous disclosure may be to them. The murderers were
Northern Indians, who had instantly left for their own country. At two
successive councils, both the civil and the military authorities
demanded the surrender of the guilty parties and the return of the
stolen stock. The chiefs present and the great body of their followers
most unmistakably disapproved and regretted the act, if for no better
reason than because they apprehended the consequences; but they
disclaimed any responsibility therefor,--the murderers not being of
their own proper number,--pleaded their inability to arrest the
fugitives with their bloody spoils, and, for the rest, did nothing. The
government, for that matter, after much expostulation, did the same:
troops were not marched northward to seize the murderers; the rations of
the Sioux were not ordered to be stopped until satisfaction had been
given; and the murder of Powell remains to-day unpunished by the
government of the United States.
A second condition on which peace is maintained is the subsistence of
certain tribes at the expense of the government, without reference to
their ability or disposition to work. Every five or seven days, twenty
thousand Sioux, big and little, assemble around the agencies for the
distribution of food. Soldiers' rations are dealt out: flour by the
hundred sacks is delivered to them; beeves by the score are turned loose
to be shot down and eaten up in savage fashion. The expense of this
service is a million five hundred thousand dollars a year,--one-seventh
the total cost of poor-support in the United States. About one million
more is expended for the total or partial subsistence of other tribes,
especially in the South-west. Coincidently with this, occasions for
increased expenditure have arisen in connection with tribes not upon
the feeding-list; so that the average cost of the Indian service has
gone up from four millions in 1866, 1867, and 1868, to seven millions at
the present time. It should be remarked, however, that it is only the
increase which measures the cost of the "peace policy," so called, more
than one-half of the four millions of expenditure in the former period
being the lawful due of the Indians under treaty stipulations, in
consideration for the cession of lands; and the remainder covering the
general expenses of the service. The following table exhibits the
expenditures of the government on account of the Indian service for the
twelve years 1861 to 1872:--
Year. Expenditures on Indian Account.
1861 $2,865,481.17
1862 2,327,948.37
1863 3,152,032.70
1864 2,629,975.97
1865 5,059,360.71
1866 3,295,729.32
1867 4,642,531.77
1868 4,100,682.32
1869 7,042,923.06
1870 3,407,938.15
1871 7,426,997.44
1872 7,061,728.82
Now, it must honestly be confessed, that the United-States Government,
in such dealings with Indian tribes as have been recited, does not act a
very handsome part. To pay blackmail to insolent savages (for that is
simply what it amounts to); to feed forty or fifty thousand people who
make no pretence of doing any thing for themselves, and who appear to
think that they are conferring a distinguishing honor upon the
government by accepting its bounty; to allow the murder of an American
citizen, of whatever character or degree, to go unpunished,--these are
not things pleasant to contemplate. It may be a duty to administer
Indian affairs in this way; but it must be a duty far more disagreeable
to any man of spirit than would be a call to take part in the punishment
of the savages, at no more than the personal risk usually incident to a
campaign. And yet, in the face of all this, we do not hesitate to say
that the general course of the government in such dealings as have been
described above is expedient and humane, just and honorable. This is a
proposition, which, in the view of such admissions as have been made,
may seem to impose a formidable burden of proof; yet is it not only
consistent with the highest reason of the case, but susceptible of very
simple and direct demonstration.
In the first place, it should be remarked that there can be no question
of national dignity involved in the treatment of savages by a civilized
power. The proudest Anglo-Saxon will climb a tree with a bear behind
him, and deem not his honor, but his safety, compromised by the
situation. With wild men, as with wild beasts, the question whether to
fight, coax, or run, is a question merely of what is easiest or safest
in the situation given. Points of dignity only arise between those who
are, or assume to be, equals. Indeed, nothing is at times so
contemptuous as compliance. It indicates not merely a consciousness of
strength, but of strength so superior as to decline comparison or
contest.
Grant that some petty Sioux chief believes that the government of the
United States feeds him and his lazy followers out of fear, or out of
respect for his greatness: what then? It will not be long before the
agent of the government will be pointing out the particular row of
potatoes which his majesty must hoe before his majesty can dine. The
people of the United States surely are great enough, and sufficiently
conscious of their greatness, to indulge a little longer the
self-complacent fancies of those savage tribes, if by that means a
desolating war may be avoided.
And in this we shall only do what other nations have done, and esteemed
themselves wise in doing. The Greeks and Romans, except in periods of
ambitious frenzy, recognized the fruitlessness and folly of fighting
absolute savages, and did not scruple, in the height of their conquering
pride, to keep the peace with Scythians and Parthians as best they
could. The English, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, in their
American colonies, only fought the natives when for their purposes they
must, preserving the peace when they could by presents, and even by
tribute. Statesmen who would have embroiled Europe on a question of
dinner-etiquette have fully recognized the principle that there could be
no issue of dignity between a civilized power and a band of
irresponsible savages, and have submitted, without any feeling of
degradation, to demands the most unreasonable, urged in terms the most
insolent.
Nor is there any savor of treachery in the government thus biding its
time. In this the government simply, from a wise consideration of the
exposed situation of the settlements, refrains from the full exercise of
the authority which it claims. It in no wise deceives the Indians, but
only indulges their illusion till the time comes when the illusion must
be broken. It watches the troubled sleep of the maniac, ready to
restrain his violence if he wakes, yet mercifully willing that he should
remain unconscious. And this forbearance of the government is not less
kind to the aborigines than to those of our citizens who are building
their homes within reach of the red man's hand. If the savages--Sioux,
Kiowas, Cheyennes, Comanches, whom the United States are thus playing
with--realized in any adequate measure what the next few years have in
store for them, how completely they will be surrounded and disarmed, how
certainly they will be forced to labor like squaws for their bread, how
stringently the government will enforce its requirements when their
power of resistance shall have departed; it is inconceivable but that,
in their present temper, ignorant as they are of the real resources of
the whites, and conscious that they can still bring eight thousand
warriors into the field, they would precipitate a contest which, though
it would involve untold misery to our border population, must inevitably
end in their own destruction.
If, then, there is nothing inconsistent with national dignity or honor
in thus temporizing with hostile savages, it certainly can be shown to
be in a high degree compatible with the interests and the welfare of all
the white communities which are, by their advanced position, placed at
the mercy of the Indians. Thousands and even tens of thousands of our
citizens are now living within reach of the first murderous outbreak of
a general Indian war. Since 1868, when the trans-continental railroad
was completed, population has found its way into regions to which the
rate of progress previously maintained would not in fifty years have
carried it,--into nooks and corners which five years ago were scarcely
known to trappers and guides. Instead of exposing to Indian contact, as
heretofore, a clearly defined frontier line, upon two or three faces,
our settlements have penetrated the Western country in every direction
and from every direction, creeping along the course of every stream,
seeking out every habitable valley, following up every indication of
gold among the ravines and mountains, clinging around the reservations
of the most formidable tribes, and even making lodgement at a hundred
points on lands secured by treaty to the Indians. Even where the limit
of settlement in any direction has apparently, for the time, been
reached, we learn of some solitary ranchman or miner who has made his
home still farther down the valley or up the mountain, far beyond sight
or call.
It is upon men thus exposed, without hope of escape or chance of
resistance, that the first wrath of a general Indian war would break. No
note of recall would avert their doom. Long before friendly runners
could reach them, the war-whoop would be in their ears; and alone,
unfriended, undefended, unaided, they would perish, as hundreds and
thousands of our countrymen have perished, at the hands of the
infuriated savages. But it is not alone the solitary ranchmen who would
be swept away on the first onset of Indian attack. Scores of valleys up
which population has been steadily creeping would be instantly
abandoned; streams that now, from source to mouth, resound the stroke of
the pioneer's axe, would be left desolate on the first rumor of war; a
hundred outlying settlements would disappear in a night, as the tidings
of outbreak and massacre were borne along by hurrying fugitives. As the
blood retreats, on the signal of danger, from the extremities to the
heart, so would population retire, terror-struck and precipitate, from
the frontier on the first shock of war. Towns, even, would be
abandoned; and the frightened inhabitants, men, women, and children,
cumbered with household stuff and overdriven stock, would crowd within
the shelter of garrisons hardly adequate for their defence.
There could be but one plea on which such considerations as these might
be disregarded; and that would be the plea that such forbearance and
indulgence on the part of the United States towards the savages only
encouraged them to increased insolence and incited them to fresh
outrages, rendering the situation less and less tolerable, and in the
end involving greater sacrifice of life than would a prompt vindication
of the authority of the government, once for all, however disastrous in
the immediate result it might prove to existing settlements. If the
policy of temporizing which has been described does indeed only serve at
the last to aggravate the evil, and by a false appearance of peace to
draw within the reach of Indian massacre larger numbers of whites, then
it is plainly the duty of the government to recall, as far as may be,
its citizens from the exposed frontier, and, at whatever expense of
blood and treasure, make issue with the savages, and forever close the
question by the complete conquest and reduction of all the hostile or
dangerous tribes. But no assumption could be farther from the facts of
the case than that the effect of lenity has been to increase the sum of
Indian outrage. There is no _scintilla_ of evidence to show that any
savage tribe has been incited by the forbearance of the government to
increased depredations. On the contrary, the history of the past three
years has shown a steady decline in the number of robberies and murders
reported on the frontier.
If a humane consideration of the exposed condition of our frontier
settlements requires the continuance of the policy of buying off the
hostile and dangerous tribes, it is also true that the argument from
economy equally favors this action on the part of the government.
Expensive as is the Indian service as at present conducted in the
interest of peace, it costs far less than fighting. What would be the
expense of a general Indian war, which should seek the complete
subjugation of the tribes which we have described as potentially
hostile, it is impossible to compute within a hundred millions of
dollars; but it would undoubtedly reach an aggregate not much short of
that of the year of largest preparations and largest operations during
the rebellion. Does this seem extravagant, impossible? Words of truth
and soberness on such a subject surely might be expected from a
commission comprising such men as Gens. Sherman, Harney, Augur, and
Terry of the regular army of the United States. Yet these officers
united in a report rendered to the President on the 7th of January,
1868, in which they use the following language in reference to the
"Chivvington massacre" and the Cheyenne war of 1864:--
"No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the
government thirty million dollars, and carried conflagration
and death to the border settlements. During the spring and
summer of 1865, no less than eight thousand troops were
withdrawn from the effective force engaged in suppressing the
Rebellion, to meet this Indian war. The result of the year's
campaign satisfied all reasonable men that war with Indians
was useless and expensive. Fifteen or twenty Indians had been
killed at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece,
while hundreds of our soldiers had lost their lives, many of
our border settlers had been butchered, and their property
destroyed."
This was the experience of the United States in a contest with an Indian
tribe numbering perhaps four thousand men, women, and children, and able
to bring into the field not one-fifth as many warriors as the Sioux
bands of to-day. Not to go back to wars waged with tribes now subjugated
or extinct, were we to cast up the expenditures involved in the Sioux
war of 1852-1854, the Cheyenne war of 1864 just referred to, the Navajo
war, the second Sioux war in 1866, the second Cheyenne war in 1867, we
should undoubtedly reach a total greatly exceeding one hundred millions
of dollars. Yet these wars sought only the submission of individual
tribes to single demands of the government, and effected, generally,
something less than that. It has been shown that the actual expense of
the so-called "peace policy" is measured by the increase of the average
expenditures of the period 1869 to 1872 over the average expenditures of
the period preceding, that increase being about three millions of
dollars. This is the sum which is to be compared with the cost of a war
which should seek to reduce all the Indian tribes of the continent to
complete submission by force of arms, instead of awaiting their gradual,
and in the main peaceful reduction through the advance of population and
the extension of railways.
We have thus far treated the policy of the government towards the
dangerous tribes as one not requiring the use of the military arm in
any emergency short of an actual outbreak. We have done so, first, that
we might encounter the full effect of the objections to the plan of
concession and conciliation; and, secondly, because we hold it true,
that, when the alternative is between allowing a considerable degree of
insolence and outrage to go unpunished, and entailing upon the
Territories a general Indian war, duty and interest require the
government to go to the last point of endurance and forbearance with the
savages. But this alternative is not always presented: it is often
practicable to repress and punish violence, without exposing the
settlements to the horrors of massacre. Whenever this can be done, it is
scarcely necessary to say it should be done, and done effectually. The
feature of the present Indian policy of the government which allows this
to be done without incurring general Indian war is known as the
reservation system,--a system shrewdly devised to meet the known
weaknesses of the Indian character. By it extensive tracts have been set
apart for the warlike tribes, within which they may pursue all their
customs and habits of life, and indulge themselves in savagery, being
also subsisted thereon to the extent of their actual necessities, but
outside of which bands or parties are liable to be struck by the
military at any time, without warning, and without any implied hostility
to those members of the tribe who remain on their reservation, and
deport themselves according to the conditions of the compact. The
brilliant campaign of Gen. Crook in Arizona during the past season has
been prosecuted with the most scrupulous observance of the reservation
system, as marked out by the government, and accepted by the Indians
themselves. Such a use of the military arm constitutes no abandonment of
the "peace policy," and involves no disparagement of it. Military
operations thus conducted are not in the nature of war, but of
discipline, and are so recognized by the tribes whose marauding bands
and parties are scourged back to the reservations by the troops. The
effect of all this is something more than negative. It does not merely
serve to chastise offending individuals and parties without a breach of
peace with the tribe; but it is made the means of impressing the less
enterprising Indians with an increasing sense of the power of the
government. It was not to be expected that the entire body of a warlike
tribe would consent to be restrained in their Ishmaelitish proclivities
without a struggle on the part of the more audacious to maintain their
traditional freedom. The reservation system allows this issue to be
fought out between our troops and the more daring of the savages,
without involving in the contest tribes with which our army in its
present numbers is wholly inadequate to cope.
Nor will the full effect of this consideration be appreciated if it be
not borne in mind that the Indian is intensely susceptible to severe
punishment. His own wars are so bloodless, his skirmishing tactics so
cowardly and resultless, that the savage fighting of the whites, their
eagerness for close quarters, and their deadly earnestness when engaged
hand to hand, impress him with a strange terror. With him, as with all
persons and peoples in whom the imagination is predominant, the effect
of disaster is not measured by the actual loss and suffering entailed,
but by the source, the shape, the suddenness, of it. Indeed, it is
astonishing how completely the spirit of an Indian tribe may be broken
by a catastrophe which does not necessarily impair its fighting power.
Nor even is it necessary that the Indian's sense of justice should be
met by the chastisement received. Undiscriminating in his own revenge,
he does not look for nicely measured retribution on the part of his
enemy. Hence it is that certain of the so-called--and sometimes properly
so called--massacres perpetrated by the army, or by frontier militia,
have had very different results from what would have been predicted by
persons familiar only with habits of thought and feeling among our own
people.[D] Injustice and cruelty exasperate men of our race; but the
Indian is never other than cruel and unjust under resentment. Let him
feel that he has been injured by a white man, and he will tomahawk the
first white man he meets, without a thought whether his victim be guilty
or innocent. Let him suffer at the hand of a member of a neighboring
tribe, and he will lie all day in wait for another member of that tribe
with just as much anticipation of gratified hate as if he awaited the
footsteps of the wrong-doer. Nay, let him have a feud with one of his
own blood, and he will devote the speechless babes of his enemy to his
infernal malice. Here, undoubtedly, we find the explanation of the fact
that massacres, damnable in plot and circumstance, have struck such
deadly and lasting terror into tribes of savages; while, occurring
between nations of whites, they would have kindled the flames of war to
inextinguishable fury.
* * * * *
We have thus far treated the question, What shall be done with the
Indian as an obstacle to the progress of railways and of
settlements?--to the exclusion of the inquiry, What shall be done to
promote his advancement in industry and the arts of life?--not merely
because, for all those tribes and bands to which the first question
applies (i. e. those which are potentially hostile, and towards which
the government is, as we have attempted to show, bound in interest and
humanity to exercise great forbearance till they shall cease to be
formidable to the settlements and to the pioneers of settlement), that
question is, in logical order, precedent to any discussion of methods to
be taken to educate and civilize them; but also because it is in effect
likewise precedent to any deliberate, comprehensive, and permanent
adjustment of the difficulties experienced in treating the Indian tribes
which are neither hostile in disposition nor formidable by reason of
their situation or their numbers. So long as the attention of the
executive department is occupied by efforts to preserve the peace; so
long as Congress is asked yearly to appropriate three millions of
dollars to feed and clothe insolent savages; so long as the public mind
is exasperated by reports of Indian outrages occurring in any section of
the country,--so long will it be vain to expect an adequate treatment of
the question of Indian civilization.
It must not be understood that nothing is being done for the industrial
and moral instruction of the peaceful and more advanced tribes[E]
pending the reduction of their turbulent brethren to terms; but the
efforts, and expenditures of the present time fall far short of the
completeness and consistency necessary to constitute a system. Much that
is doing is in compliance with treaty stipulations, and hence is well
done, whether it have any practical result or not. Much, again, of what
is doing, although so inadequate to the necessities of the situation as
to yield no positive results, is preventing waste by keeping up
established services and agencies, and, in a measure, preserving the
character and habits of the Indians from further deterioration. Much,
still, is in the way of experiment, from which may be derived many
valuable principles and suggestions for the treatment of the Indian
question on the larger scale which will be necessary in the future.
Much, however, it must be confessed, is done out of an uneasy desire to
do something for this unfortunate people, or in generous response to
appeals from persons in official or private station who have chanced to
become particularly interested in the welfare of individual tribes and
bands, and thereafter fail not (small blame to them) to beset Congress
and the departments for special consideration and provision for their
_proteges_. It can scarcely need to be remarked, that these are not the
ways to constitute a system.
It is a question not a little perplexing, What shall be done with the
Indian when he shall be thrown helpless on our government and people?
What _has_ been done with tribes and bands which have reached this
condition has been, as we have said, of every description; and the
results have been not less various. We have had guardianship of the
strictest sort. We have tried industrial experiments on more than one
plan, and have attempted the thorough industrial education of Indian
communities as a security for their social advancement. We have, on
other occasions, let the Indian severely alone just so soon as it was
ascertained that his power for harm had ceased, and have left him to
find his place in the social and industrial scale; to become fisherman,
lumberman, herdsman, menial, beggar, or thief, according to aptitude or
accident, or the wants of the community at large. True it is that the
modes adopted, in fact, in dealing with particular tribes, have
generally been due to chance or to the caprices of administration; true,
also, that the experiments which have been made do not reflect much
credit on the sagacity of the superior race to which have been intrusted
the destinies of the red man: but there has been a vast amount of
good-nature and benevolent intention exhibited; the experiments have
been in many directions, and have covered a large field; and while the
results, in the manifest want of adaptation of means to ends, and of
operations to material, cannot be deemed wholly conclusive of the
philosophy of the situation, yet very much can be learned from them that
bears upon the questions of the present day. As has been stated, the
issues of the experiments tried have been of every kind. To assertions
that the Indian cannot be civilized, can be opposed instances of Indian
communities which have attained a very considerable degree of
advancement in all the arts of life. To the more cautious assertion,
that, while the tribes which subsist chiefly on a vegetable diet are
susceptible of being tamed and improved, the meat-eating Indians, the
buffalo and antelope hunters, are hopelessly intractable and savage, can
be opposed instances of such tribes which, in an astonishingly short
time, have been influenced to abandon the chase, to undertake
agricultural pursuits, to labor with zeal and patience, to wear white
man's clothes, send their children to school, attend church on Sunday,
and choose their officers by ballot. To the assertion that the Indian,
however seemingly reclaimed, and for a time regenerated, still retains
his savage propensities and animal appetites, and will sooner or later
relapse into barbarism, can be opposed instances of slow and steady
growth in self-respect and self-control, extending over two generations,
without an indication of the tendencies alleged. To assertions that the
Indian cannot resist either physical or moral corruption by contact with
the whites, that he inevitably becomes subject to the baser elements of
civilized communities, that every form of infectious or contagious
disease becomes doubly fatal to him, and that he learns all the vices
but none of the virtues of society, can be opposed instances of tribes
which have freely mingled with the whites without debasement, and have
acquired the arts of civilized life with no undue proportion of its
evils. To the assertion that the Indian must gradually decline in
numbers and decay in strength, his life fading out before the intenser
life which he encounters, can be offered instances of the steady
increase in population of no small number of tribes and bands in
immediate contact with settlements, and subject to the full force of
white influence.
And yet it is undeniably true that many of the experiments have failed
in a greater or less degree; that in some cases the Indians most
neglected have done better for themselves than those who have received
the care and bounty of the government; that many tribes and bands which
had apparently emerged from their barbarous condition have miserably
fallen back into sloth and vicious habits; that the meat-eaters, who
constitute the bulk of the tribes with which the latest advances of our
settlements and railways have brought us in contact, are exceptionally
wild and fierce; that the experiment of Indian civilization has far more
chances of success when it is tried under conditions that allow of
freedom from excitement, and thorough seclusion from foreign influences;
and, finally, that Indian blood, thus far in the history of the country,
has tended decidedly towards extinction.
The Board of Indian Commissioners, in their Report for 1872, make the
statement that "nearly five-sixths of all the Indians of the United
States and Territories are now either civilized or partially civilized."
(Report, p. 3.) The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his report of the
same date, places the number of reclaimed savages somewhat lower,
dividing the three hundred thousand Indians within the limits of the
United States as follows: civilized, ninety-seven thousand;
semi-civilized, one hundred and twenty-five thousand; wholly barbarous,
seventy-eight thousand. He is, however, careful to explain that the
division is made "according to a standard taken with reasonable
reference to what might fairly be expected of a race with such
antecedents and traditions." Perhaps, on a strict construction of the
word "semi-civilized," the Indian Office might assent to take off twenty
or thirty thousand from the number stated.
We all know what a savage Indian is. What is a civilized Indian?--what a
semi-civilized Indian? To what degree of industry, frugality, and
sobriety can the Indian be brought? How well does he repay efforts and
expenditures for his enlightenment and his advancement in the arts of
life? How far does he hold his own when once fairly started on his
course by the bounty of the government or by philanthropic enterprise,
instructed and equipped, with no obstacles in his way, and with no
interruptions from without? What, in short, may we reasonably expect
from this people? What have they done for themselves? or what has been
done with them in the past? It is doubtful whether zeal or ignorance is
more responsible for the confusion which exists in the public mind in
respect to this entire matter of Indian civilization. The truth will be
best shown by examples.
The Cherokees, who originally owned and occupied portions of the States
of Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, have now a reservation of nearly
four million acres in the tract known as the Indian Territory. They
number about fifteen thousand, and are increasing. They have their own
written language, their national constitution and laws, their churches,
schools, and academies, their judges and courts. Their dwellings consist
of five hundred frame and three thousand five hundred log houses. During
the year 1872 they raised three million bushels of corn, besides large
quantities of wheat, oats, and potatoes, their aggregate crops being
greater than those of New Mexico and Utah combined. Their stock consists
of sixteen thousand horses, seventy-five thousand neat-cattle, one
hundred and sixty thousand hogs, and nine thousand sheep. It is
needless, after such an enumeration of stock and crops, to say that they
not only support themselves, but sell largely to neighboring communities
less disposed to agriculture. The Cherokees have sixty schools in
operation, with an aggregate attendance of two thousand one hundred and
thirty-three scholars. Three of these schools are maintained for the
instruction of their former negro slaves. All orphans of the tribe are
supported at the public expense. The Cherokees are the creditors of the
United States in the sum of a million seven hundred and sixteen thousand
dollars, on account of lands and claims ceded and relinquished by them.
The interest on this sum is annually paid by the treasurer of the United
States to "the treasurer of the Cherokee nation," to be used under the
direction of the national council for objects prescribed by law or
treaty.
From the statements made above, all upon the authority of official
reports, it will doubtless appear to every candid reader that the
Cherokees are entitled to be ranked among civilized communities. Their
condition is far better than that of the agricultural classes of
England; and they are not inferior in intelligence or in the ability to
assert their rights.
There are in the Indian Territory several other important tribes, and a
number of small and broken bands, aggregating forty or forty-five
thousand persons, who are in the same general condition as the
Cherokees, and are equally--though not, perhaps, in every case, with
quite as much emphasis--entitled to be called civilized. Nor are the
Indians of this class confined to the Indian Territory so called. They
are found in Kansas and Nebraska, in New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota, and upon the Pacific coast. The ninety or one hundred
thousand Indians thus characterized will bear comparison, on the three
points of industry, frugality, and sobriety, with an equal population
taken bodily out of any agricultural district in the Southern or border
States. In general intelligence and political aptitude they are still
necessarily below the lowest level of American citizenship, if we
exclude the newly-enfranchised element and the poor white population of
a few districts of the South.
It is just and proper to call an Indian semi-civilized, no matter how
humble his attainments, when he has taken one distinct, unmistakable
step from barbarism; since "it is the first step that costs."
The Sioux of the Lake Traverse agency in Dakota number about fifteen
hundred,--to be exact, fourteen hundred and ninety-six. These were of
the Indians of Minnesota, and escaped to the West after the massacre of
1862, though claiming to have been innocent of participation in it.
They are genuine specimens of the Indian race in its pure form. They
have within three or four years made considerable progress in
agriculture. Nearly all the men have of choice adopted the dress of the
whites. Great interest is manifested in the education of the children of
the tribe: four schools are in operation, with an attendance of one
hundred and twenty-three scholars; and two more schoolhouses are in
course of erection. By the provisions of the treaty of 1867, only the
sick, the infirm, aged widows, and orphans of tender years, are to be
supported by the government. The number thus enrolled for subsistence
during the past year was six hundred and sixty, made up as follows:
ninety-two men, aged, infirm, blind, crippled, &c.; two hundred and
sixty-four women of various conditions; one hundred and eighteen
children under seven years; one hundred and eighty-six children between
seven and sixteen years. The remainder of the tribe supported themselves
fully by their own labor. The agent says, "It is highly gratifying to be
able to report commendable progress in agriculture by these Sisseton and
Wahpeton Sioux on this reservation, who, almost to a man, have become
fully satisfied that they cannot any longer rely upon the chase, but
must of necessity turn their attention to the cultivation of the soil
and stock-growing, for the future, as the only reliable source of
subsistence. Many of them have learned to work; and some of them have
learned to love to work as well; and they evidently enjoy the labor of
their hands."
Tribes which show a higher actual attainment might have been taken for
illustration out of the semi-civilized list; but these have been chosen,
first, because they are meat-eating Indians, and secondly, because the
plan of partial support adopted with them is the one most likely to be
applied to all the Sioux bands, as fast as the government shall find
itself in a position peremptorily to control their actions and
movements.
Again: we select the Pawnees, numbering twenty-four hundred and
forty-seven, for illustration, for the reason that they have been long
distinguished over all the plains for their warlike power and ferocity,
yet, under the care and instruction of the government, have within three
years made a great degree of progress in three most important respects,
as follows:--
First, while the Pawnees, from their situation, are still enabled and
disposed to go upon the summer hunt, they are already engaged to a small
extent, and with encouraging success, in the raising of vegetables and
garden products, and even of corn and wheat. Two hundred and ten acres
were planted by them last year in the several crops.
Second, while the chiefs and braves of the tribe still look to their
traditional resource of hunting, the children of the tribe generally are
being carefully instructed in letters and in labor. The day-schools and
the manual-labor schools of the Pawnees have elicited the most
enthusiastic praise from all persons, official or private, who have
visited the reservation.
Third,--and this is a point to which we ask special attention, as
indicating capabilities of higher things than are usually credited of
Indians,--the inveterate and ferocious animosities of the Pawnees toward
the Brule Sioux have been so far sacrificed to the requirements of the
government and the personal entreaties of their agent, that the past
summer witnessed the phenomenon, astonishing to all who were cognizant
of the deadly feuds existing for generations between these tribes, of
Pawnees and Brules hunting almost side by side, the camp-fires of both
being distinctly visible upon the same plain, without a murder being
committed, or so much as a horse stolen, by either party.
* * * * *
If, then, we may assume that Indian civilization is not altogether
impossible, let us inquire what should be the policy of the government
towards the Indian tribes when they cease to be dangerous to our
frontier population, and to oppose the progress of settlement, either by
violence or by menace. In such a discussion, we are bound to have a
reasonable consideration for the interests of the white man as well as
for the rights of the red man, but above all to defer to whatever
experience declares in respect to the conditions most favorable to the
growth of self-respect and self-restraint in minds so strangely and
unfortunately constituted as is the mind of the North American Indian.
_First._ The reservation system should be made the general and permanent
policy of the government. By this is meant something more than that the
Indians should not be robbed of their lands in defiance of treaty
stipulations, or that the Indian title should be respected, and the
Indians maintained in possession until they can be made ready to cede
their lands to the government, or to sell them, with the consent of the
government, to the whites. The proposition is that the United States, as
the only power competent to receive such lands by cession, or to
authorize their sale, should formally establish the principle of
separation and seclusion, without reference to the wishes either of the
Indians or of encroaching whites; should designate by law an ample and
suitable reservation for each tribe and band not entitled by treaty; and
should, in any reductions thereafter requiring to be made, provide that
such reductions shall be by cutting off distinct portions from the
outside, and not in such a way as to allow veins of white settlement to
be injected, no matter whether along a stream or along a railway.
The principle of secluding Indians from whites for the good of both
races is established by an overwhelming preponderance of authority.
There are no mysterious reasons why this policy should be adopted: the
considerations which favor it are plain and incontestable. The first is
the familiar one, that the Indian is unfortunately disposed to submit
himself to the lower and baser elements of civilized society, and to
acquire the vices and not the virtues of the whites. This need not be
dwelt upon; but there is still another consideration even more
important, yet not generally apprehended. It is that an Indian tribe is
a singularly homogeneous body,[F] and, if not disturbed by the intrusion
of alien and discordant elements, is susceptible of being governed and
controlled with the greatest ease and effect. It is not necessary to
point out the ways in which this peculiarity of the Indian character
assists the agent of the government in his administration of a tribe, or
to show how much more complete it makes his success, as, little by
little, he is able, through the authority of the government, and the
means of moral education at his disposal, to effect a change for the
better in the public sentiment of the people under his charge.
The number of Indians now having reservations secured to them by law or
treaty is approximately 180,000. The number of such reservations is 92,
ranging in extent from 288 acres to 40,750 square miles, and aggregating
167,619 square miles. Of these reservations, 31, aggregating 2,693
square miles, are east of the Mississippi River; 42, aggregating
144,838 square miles, are between the Mississippi and the Rocky
Mountains; and 19, aggregating 20,068 square miles, are upon the Pacific
slope. In addition to the above, 40,000 Indians, having no lands secured
to them by treaty, have had reservations set apart for them by executive
order, out of the public lands of the United States. The number of
reservations thus set apart is 15, aggregating 59,544 square miles. The
Indians thus located have, however, in the nature of the case, no
assurance of their occupation of these lands beyond the pleasure of the
executive.[G]
It must be evident to every one, on the simple statement of such facts
as these, that the reservations, as at present constituted, do not
consist with the permanent interests of either the Indian or the
government. There are too many reservations: they occupy too much
territory in the aggregate; and, what is worse, some of them
unnecessarily obstruct the natural access of population to portions of
territory not reserved, while others, by their neighborhood, render
large tracts of otherwise available land undesirable for white
occupation. Indeed, it may be said that the present arrangement of
reservations would constitute an almost intolerable affliction, were it
to be maintained without change. Nor are the interests of the Indians
any better served by the existing order. Many tribes, even were they
disposed to agriculture, would not find suitable land within the limits
assigned to them. Others are in a position to be incessantly disturbed
and harassed by the whites. Others still, while they stand across the
path of settlement, are themselves, by ill-considered treaty provisions,
cut off from access to hunting-grounds, to fishing privileges, or to
mountains abounding in natural roots and berries, which would be of the
greatest value to them. When it is considered that the present body of
reservations is the result of hundreds of treaties, made, too often, on
the part of the government with ignorance and heedlessness, and on the
part of the Indians with the childishness characteristic of the race,
both parties being not infrequently deceived and betrayed by the
interpreters employed; when it is considered, moreover, that many of
these treaties have been negotiated in emergencies requiring immediate
action,--it would be wonderful indeed if the scheme as it stood were not
cumbersome and ineffective.
It is manifest, therefore, that the next five or ten years must witness
a general recasting of the scheme of Indian reservations. This is not to
be accomplished by confiscating the Indian title, but by exchange, by
cession, and by consolidation. Let Congress provide the necessary
authority, under the proper limitations, for the executive departments,
and the adjustment desired can be reached easily and amicably.
* * * * *
_Second._ It is further evident, that, in recasting the scheme of
reservations, the principal object should be, while preserving distinct
the boundaries of every tribe, so to locate them that the territory
assigned to the Indians west of the Mississippi shall constitute one or
two grand reservations, with, perhaps, here and there a channel cut
through, so to speak, by a railroad, so that the industries of the
surrounding communities may not be unduly impeded. Such a consolidation
of the Indian tribes into one or two great bodies would leave all the
remaining territory of the United States open to settlement, without
obstruction or molestation.
Shall there be one general reservation east of the Rocky Mountains, or
two? This is likely to be the most important Indian question of the
immediate future. On the one hand, the recommendations of the executive,
contained in both the Messages of the President and the Annual Reports
of the Secretary of the Interior, for the past two or three years, have
strongly favored the plan of a single reservation for all the tribes,
North and South, East and West, who are not in a condition to become at
an early day citizens of the United States and take their land in
severalty. The reservation upon which it is proposed to thus collect the
Indians of the United States is at present known as the "Indian
Territory," although it actually contains but about one-quarter of the
Indian population of the country. This tract covers all the territory
lying between the States of Arkansas and Missouri on the east, and the
one-hundredth meridian on the west, and between the State of Kansas on
the north, and the Red River, the boundary of the State of Texas, on the
south; comprising about seventy thousand square miles, and embracing a
large body of the best agricultural lands west of the Mississippi. Upon
this tract, it is claimed, can be gathered and subsisted all the Indians
within the administrative control of the government, except such as are
manifestly becoming ripe for citizenship in the States and Territories
where they are now found. Computing the maximum number likely, on the
successful realization of this scheme to be thus concentrated, at two
hundred and fifty thousand, and taking the available lands within the
district, exclusive of barren plains, of flint hills and sand hills, at
an aggregate of thirty million acres, we should have one hundred and
twenty acres for each man, woman, and child to be provided for.
On the other hand, the original plan of Indian colonization, as
contained in the report of Secretary Calhoun, accompanying the message
of President Monroe, Jan. 27, 1825, contemplated two general
reservations,--one in the North-west for the Indians of Algonquin and
Iroquois stock, and another (being the present Indian Territory) in the
South-west for the Appalachian Indians. The ethnographical symmetry of
that plan has been hopelessly violated by the introduction into the
Indian Territory, and even the incorporation with the Southern tribes,
of individuals, broken bands, and even entire tribes, originally from
the North and North-east. The bulk of the Shawnees, an Algonquin tribe,
are actually incorporated with the Cherokees; two hundred of the
Senecas, the very flower of the conquering Iroquois,[H] occupy a small
reservation in the north-eastern part of the Territory; while the
remnants of the Quapaws, Ottawas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weas,
Piankeshaws, Pottawatomies, and of the Sacs and Foxes,--all Algonquin
tribes,--are found injected at various points along the northern and
eastern frontier. At the same time, the south-western portion of the
Territory is given up to tribes which are neither Algonquin, Iroquois,
nor Appalachian in their original, but are of the races living
immemorially beyond the Mississippi. It will thus appear that nothing
like an ethnographical distribution of tribes has been attempted; and,
indeed, these distinctions have long ceased, with the Indians
themselves, to be of the slightest significance. But many of the
physiological and practical reasons urged by Secretary Calhoun for a
double Indian reservation still remain in full force. Nor does this
scheme rest upon his authority alone. The Peace Commission of 1867 and
1868, consisting of Indian Commissioner Taylor, Senator Henderson, Gens.
Sherman, Harney, Terry, and Augur, of the army, and Messrs. Sanborn and
Tappan, concurred in the recommendation of two reservations for tribes
east of the Rocky Mountains.
We are disposed to hold, not only that the reason of the case inclines
to the plan of two general reservations, but that the matter will be
settled practically in that way by the aversion and horror which the
Northern Indians feel at the thought of moving to the South. Regarding
the Indian Territory, as they do, though with no sufficient reason, as
the graveyard of their race, there is ground for apprehension that, if
the project be too suddenly sprung upon them, or pressed too far, the
repugnance of some of these tribes may culminate in outbreaks like those
with which the Black Hawk and Seminole wars commenced. There can,
however, be no objection to the experiment being tried in such a way as
not to endanger the peace. Certain of the Northern tribes, notably the
confederated Cheyennes and Arapahoes, and the confederated Arickarees
and Mandans, manifest much less antipathy to removal than others, by
reason of their relationship to Indians South, or of exceptional
inconveniences sustained in their present location. If such tribes could
be amicably induced to go to the Indian Territory, their experiences, if
fortunate, might serve in time to remove the prejudices existing among
the Northern Indians generally.
* * * * *
_Third._ The intrusion of whites upon lands reserved to Indians should
be provided against by legislation suited to the necessities of the
case. By the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 it was made a criminal
offence to enter without authority the limits of any Indian reservation;
and the prohibition was enforced by penalties adequate to the situation
at that time. This provision, however, was aimed at individual
intruders, rather than at organized expeditions completely equipped for
offence or defence, and strong enough to maintain themselves against
considerable bands of the savages, or the ordinary _posse comitatus_ of
a distant Territory. It is in the latter form that the invasion of
Indian country now generally takes place;[I] and for the purpose of
resisting such organized lawlessness, the Act of 1834 is far from
sufficient. The executive may, it is true, in an extreme case, and by
the exercise of one of the highest acts of authority, make proclamation
forbidding such combinations, and enforce the same by movements of
troops, as would be done in the case of a threatened invasion of the
soil of a neighboring friendly state. But this remedy is of such a
violent nature, the odium and inconvenience occasioned thereby are so
great, and the lawful limits of official action in such a resort are so
ill-defined, that the executive is most unlikely to make use of it,
except in rare and extreme cases. The eagerness of the average American
citizen of the Territories for getting upon Indian lands amounts to a
passion. The ruggedest flint hill of the Cherokees or Sioux is sweeter
to him than the greenest pasture which lies open to him under the
homestead laws of the United States. There is scarcely one of the
ninety-two reservations at present established on which white men have
not effected a lodgement: many swarm with squatters, who hold their
place by intimidating the rightful owners; while in more than one case
the Indians have been wholly dispossessed, and are wanderers upon the
face of the earth. So far have these forms of usurpation been carried at
times in Kansas, that an Indian reservation there might be defined as
that portion of the soil of the State on which the Indians have no
rights whatsoever.
Now, while it cannot be denied that there is something in all this
suggestive of the reckless daring and restless enterprise to which the
country owes so much of its present greatness, it is yet certain that
such intrusion upon Indian lands is in violation of the faith of the
United States, endangers the peace (as it has more than once enkindled
war), and renders the civilization of tribes and bands thus encroached
upon almost hopeless. The government is bound, therefore, in honor and
in interest, to provide ample security for the integrity of Indian
reservations; and this can only be done by additional and most stringent
legislation.
* * * * *
_Fourth._ The converse of the proposition contained under the preceding
head is equally true and equally important. Indians should not be
permitted to abandon their tribal relations, and leave their
reservations to mingle with the whites, except upon express authority of
law. We mean by this something more than that a "pass system" should be
created for every tribe under the control of the government, to prevent
individual Indians from straying away for an occasional debauch at the
settlements. It is essential that the right of the authorities to keep
members of any tribe upon the reservation assigned to them, and to
arrest and return such as may from time to time wander away and seek to
ally themselves with the whites, should be definitely established, and
the proper forms and methods of procedure in such cases be fixed and
prescribed by law. Without this, whenever these people become restive
under compulsion to labor, they will break away in their old roving
spirit, and stray off in small bands to neighboring communities. No
policy of industrial education and restraint can be devised to meet the
strong hereditary disinclination of the Indian to labor and to frugality
which will not, in its first courses, tend to make him dissatisfied and
rebellious. Nothing but the knowledge that he must stay on his
reservation, and do all that is there prescribed for him; that he will
not be permitted to throw off his connection with his people, and stray
away to meet his own fate, unprovided, uninstructed, and
unrestrained,--will, under any adequate system of moral and industrial
correction and education, prevent a general breaking-up of Indian
communities, and the formation of Indian gypsy-camps all over the
frontier States and Territories, to be sores upon the public body, and
an intolerable affliction to the future society of those communities.
* * * * *
_Fifth._ A rigid reformatory control should be exercised by the
government over the lives and manners of the Indians of the several
tribes, particularly in the direction of requiring them to learn and
practise the arts of industry, at least until one generation shall have
been fairly started on a course of self-improvement. Merely to disarm
the savages, and to surround them by forces which it is impossible for
them to resist, leaving it to their own choice how miserably they will
live, and how much they shall be allowed to escape work, is to render it
highly probable that the great majority of the now roving Indians will
fall hopelessly into a condition of pauperism and petty crime.
"Unused to manual labor, and physically disqualified for it by
the habits of the chase, unprovided with tools and implements,
without forethought and without self-control, singularly
susceptible to evil influences, with strong animal appetites,
and no intellectual tastes or aspirations to hold those
appetites in check, it would be to assume more than would be
taken for granted of any white race under the same conditions,
to expect that the wild Indians will become industrious and
frugal except through a severe course of industrial
instruction and exercise under restraint."--_Report on Indian
Affairs_, 1872, p. 11.
* * * * *
The right of the government to exact, in this particular, all that the
good of the Indian and the good of the general community may require is
not to be questioned. The same supreme law of the public safety which
to-day governs the condition of eighty thousand paupers and forty
thousand criminals, within the States of the Union, affords ample
authority and justification for the most extreme and decided measures
which may be adjudged necessary to save this race from itself, and the
country from the intolerable burden of pauperism and crime which the
race, if left to itself, will certainly inflict upon a score of future
States.
* * * * *
_Sixth._ The provision made by the government for the partial
subsistence of Indian tribes through the long and painful transition
from the hunter life to the agricultural state, for their instruction
and equipment in industrial pursuits, and for starting them finally on a
course of full self-support and economical independence, should be
liberal and generous, even to an extreme. The experiment should not be
allowed to encounter any chances of failure which may be avoided by
expenditure of money. The claim of the Indian in this respect is of the
strongest. He has no right to prevent the settling of this continent by
a race which has not only the power to conquer, but the disposition to
improve and adorn the land which he has suffered to remain a wilderness.
Yet to some royalty upon the product of the soil the Indian is
incontestably entitled as the original occupant and possessor. The
necessities of civilization may justify a somewhat summary treatment of
his rights, but cannot justify a confiscation of them. The people of the
United States can never without dishonor refuse to respect two
considerations,--first, that the Indians were the original occupants and
owners of substantially all the territory embraced within our limits;
that their title of occupancy has been recognized by all civilized
powers having intercourse with them, and has been approved in nearly
four hundred treaties concluded by the United States with individual
tribes and bands; and, therefore, every tribe and band that is deprived
of its roaming privilege and confined to a "diminished reservation" is
clearly entitled to compensation, either directly or in the form of
expenditures for its benefit: second, that, inasmuch as the progress of
our industrial enterprise is fast cutting this people off from modes of
livelihood entirely sufficient for them, and suited to them, and is
leaving them without resource, they have a claim, on this account again,
to temporary support and to such assistance as may be necessary to place
them in a position to obtain a livelihood by means which shall be
compatible with civilization.
* * * * *
"Had the settlements of the United States not been extended
beyond the frontier of 1867, all the Indians of the continent
would to the end of time have found upon the plains an
inexhaustible supply of food and clothing. Were the westward
course of population to be stayed at the barriers of to-day,
notwithstanding the tremendous inroads made upon their
hunting-grounds since 1867, the Indians would still have hope
of life. But another such five years will see the Indians of
Dakota and Montana as poor as the Indians of Nevada and
Southern California; that is, reduced to an habitual condition
of suffering from want of food. The freedom of expansion which
is working these results is to us of incalculable value: to
the Indian it is of incalculable cost."--_Report on Indian
Affairs_, 1872, p. 10.
* * * * *
_Seventh._ It is, further, highly desirable, in order to avoid the
possibility of an occasional failure in such provision for the immediate
wants of the Indians, and for their advancement in the arts of life and
industry, and also to secure comprehensiveness and consistency in the
general scheme, that the endowments for the several tribes and bands
should be capitalized and placed in trust for their benefit, out of the
reach of accident or caprice. Annual appropriations for such purposes,
according to the humor of Congress, will of necessity be far less
effective for good than would an annual income of a much smaller amount,
arising from permanent investments.
To a considerable extent this has already been effected. For not a few
tribes and bands provision has been made by law and treaty which places
them beyond the reach of serious suffering in the future, and which, if
their income be judiciously administered, will afford them substantial
assistance towards final self-support. Stocks to the value of
$4,810,716.83-2/3 are held by the Secretary of the Interior in trust for
certain tribes; while credits to the aggregate amount of $5,905,474.59
are inscribed on the books of the United States Treasury in favor of the
same or other tribes, on account of the sales of lands, or other
consideration received by the government,[J] making a permanent
endowment of nearly ten millions of dollars, the Indians sharing in the
benefits thereof numbering in the aggregate nearly eighty thousand.
Computing the average annual return from these funds at five and
one-half per cent, we should have an assured income of five hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year, or about seven dollars for each man,
woman, and child. Moreover, most of these tribes have still large bodies
of lands which they can dispose of sooner or later, from which funds of
twice the amount already secured may by honest and judicious management
be realized; so that, taking these eighty thousand Indians as a body,
they may be regarded as having a reasonable assurance of funds yielding
an annual income of twenty dollars a head. Their general character and
condition being considered, this may be accepted as an amply sufficient
endowment, placing their future in their own hands, giving them all the
opportunities and appliances that could reasonably be asked for them,
and securing them against the calamities and reverses which inevitably
beset the first stages of industrial progress.
Unfortunately, the same wise provision for the future has not been made
in the case of other Indians who have ceded or surrendered to the
government the main body of their lands. There is a painfully long list
of tribes that have to show for their inheritance only a guaranty on the
part of the United States of certain expenditures, more or less
beneficial, for a series of years longer or shorter, as the case may be.
The Report on Indian Affairs for 1872 (pp. 418-430) states the aggregate
of future appropriations that will be required during a limited number
of years to pay limited annuities at $15,819,310.46. The annuities
covered by this computation have from one to twenty-seven years to run
(the average term being about seven years), and embrace almost every
variety of goods and services which human ingenuity could suggest. Many
of the things stipulated to be given to the Indians, or to be done for
them, are admirable in themselves, but far in advance of the present
requirements of the tribes; and the expenditures involved are therefore
perfectly useless. Other things would be well enough if the Indians
could have every thing they wanted, but are absurd and mischievous as
taking the place of what is absolutely essential to their well-being.
Of other things embraced in the schedule of annual appropriations, it
can only be said that the Indians need them no more than a toad needs a
pocket-book. For such waste of Indian moneys the responsibility rests in
many cases upon the commissioners, who, on the part of the United
States, negotiated the treaties under which these appropriations are
annually made. Had they been half as solicitous for the future of the
Indians as they were for the attainment of the immediate object of
negotiation, the government would have been left free to apply the
amounts, to be paid in consideration for cessions, in such manner as to
make them of substantial benefit; or, better still, the amounts would
have been capitalized, and a permanent income secured. As it is, many
tribes now see approaching the termination of annuities which have for
many years been paid them with the very minimum of advantage, and have
no prospect beyond but that of being thrown, uninstructed and
unprovided, upon their own barbarous resources.
Let us illustrate. A tribe makes a treaty with the United States, ceding
the great body of their lands, and accepting a diminished reservation
sufficient for their actual occupation. In consideration, it is
provided that there shall be maintained upon the reservation, for the
term of fifteen years, at the expense of the United States, a
superintendent of teaching and two teachers, a superintendent of farming
and two farmers, two millers, two blacksmiths, a tinsmith, a gunsmith, a
carpenter, and a wagon and plough maker, with shops and material for all
these mechanical services. This "little bill" is presumably made up
without much reference to the peculiarities in character and condition
of the tribe to be benefited by the expenditures involved. As soon as
the treaty goes into effect, the United States in good faith fulfil
their part of the bargain. The shops are built, the employees enlisted;
and the government, through its agent, stands ready to civilize the
Indians to almost any extent. But, unfortunately, the Indians are not
ready to be civilized. The glow of industrial enthusiasm, which was
created by the metaphorical eloquence of the commissioners in council
dies away under the first experiment of hard work: an hour at the plough
nearly breaks the back of the wild man wholly unused to labor: his pony,
a little wilder still, jumps now on one side of the furrow and now on
the other, and finally settles the question by kicking itself free of
the galling harness, and disappears for the day. The Indian, a sadder
and wiser man, betakes himself to the chase, and thereafter only visits
the shops, maintained at so much expense by the government, to have his
gun repaired, or to get a strap or buckle for his riding-gear. But still
the treaty expenditures go on: the United States are every year loyally
furnishing what has been stipulated; and the Indian is every year one
instalment nearer the termination of all his claims upon the government.
Meanwhile, population is closing around the reservation: the animals of
the chase are disappearing before the presence of the white man, and the
sound of the pioneer's axe: scantier and scantier grow the natural means
of subsistence, fainter and fainter the attractions of the chase; and
when at last hunger drives the Indian in to the agency, made ready by
suffering to learn the white man's ways of life, the provisions of the
treaty are well-nigh expired. One, three, or five years pass. All the
instalments have been honorably paid: the appropriation committees of
Congress, with sighs of relief, cross off the name of the tribe from the
list of beneficiaries; and another body of Indians, uninstructed and
unprovided, are left to shift for themselves.
The importance of the subject will justify us in dwelling so long upon
it. Of the expenditures made within the last twenty years under treaty
stipulations, probably not one-half has been directed to uses which the
government would have chosen, had it been free to choose. It is most
melancholy thus to see the scanty patrimony of this people squandered on
worthless objects, or dissipated in efforts necessarily fruitless. The
action of Congress at its last session, in authorizing the diversion of
sums appropriated under treaty stipulations to other specific uses, at
the discretion of the President and with the consent of the Indians, is
a step in the right direction. But the time has come for a complete and
comprehensive fiscal scheme, looking to the realization from Indian
lands of the largest possible avails, and their capitalization and
investment upon terms and conditions which will secure the future of the
several tribes, so far as human wisdom may be able to feet this.
In addition to the lands held by the eighty thousand Indians who have
already been spoken of as amply endowed, there are one hundred thousand
square miles of territory yet secured by treaty to Indian tribes
aggregating one hundred thousand persons. Besides these, forty thousand
Indians enjoy, by executive order, the occupation of other sixty
thousand square miles of territory, which, or the substantial equivalent
of which, should be secured to them by law for their ultimate endowment.
It is to these lands that such a fiscal scheme as has been indicated
should be applied. The reservations assigned to tribes and bands are
generally proportioned to the needs of the Indians in a roving state,
with hunting and fishing as their chief means of subsistence. As the
Indians change to agriculture, the effect is to contract the limits of
actual occupation, rendering portions available for cession or sale,
which with proper management may be so disposed of, without impairing
the integrity of the reservation system, as to realize for nearly every
tribe and band a fund equal, _per capita_, to that of many of the
civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. But this cannot be done by
helter-skelter or haphazard administration. The subject must be taken up
as a whole, broadly considered, and intelligently treated, and the
scheme which shall be adopted thereafter be regarded as not less sacred
than the compromises of the Constitution, or than existing treaty
obligations.
For the tribes and bands having no reservations secured to them,
separate provision should be made. These number about fifty thousand
persons, deduction being made of such as already have their lands in
severalty, or as are hopelessly scattered among the settlements. Many of
these tribes and bands might, with the assistance of the government,
advantageously "buy themselves in" to the privileges of tribes already
provided for, without involving any further donation of lands.
Where it is found impracticable thus to place the unprovided bands, the
government should secure their location and endowment separately. Their
right is no less clear than the right of other tribes which had the
fortune to deal with the United States before Congress put an end to the
treaty system. We have received the soil from them; and we have
extinguished their only means of subsistence. Either consideration would
be sufficient to require us, in simple justice, to find them a place and
ways to live.
* * * * *
The foregoing constitute what we regard as the essential features of an
Indian policy which shall seek positively and actively the reformation
of life and manners among the Indians under the control of the
government, as opposed to the policy of hastening the time when all
these tribes shall be resolved into the body of our citizenship, without
seclusion and without restraint, letting such as will, go to the dogs,
letting such as can, find a place for themselves in the social and
industrial order, the responsibility of the government or our people for
the choice of either or the fate of either being boldly denied;
suffering, meanwhile, without precaution and without fear, such
debasement in blood and manners to be wrought upon the general
population of the country as shall be incident to the absorption of this
race, relying upon the inherent vigor of our stock to assimilate much
and rid itself of more, until, in the course of a few human generations,
the native Indians, as a pure race or a distinct people, shall have
disappeared from the continent.
The reasons for maintaining that nothing less than a system of moral and
industrial education and correction can discharge the government of its
obligations to the Indians, or save the white population from an
intolerable burden of pauperism, profligacy, and petty crime, have been
presented sufficiently at length in this paper. The details of
management and instruction need not be here discussed: most of them are
within the administrative discretion of the department charged with
Indian affairs; and, where power is wanting to the department, the good
feeling of Congress may be safely trusted to give the necessary
authority. But the points which have been presented are of vital
consequence, and must, if the evils we apprehend are to be prevented, at
an early date be embodied in legislation which shall provide means and
penalties ample for its own enforcement.
Are the Indians destined to die out? Are we to make such provision as
has been indicated, or such other as the wisdom or unwisdom of the
country shall determine, for a vanishing race? Or are the original
inhabitants of the continent to be represented in the variously and
curiously composed population which a century hence will constitute the
political body of the United States? If this is to be in any appreciable
degree one of the elements of our future population, will it be by
mixture and incorporation? Or will the Indian remain a distinct type in
our museum of humanity, submitting himself to the necessities of a new
condition, adapting himself, as he may be able to do, to the laws and
customs of his conquerors, but preserving his own identity, and making
his separate contribution to the life and manners of the nation?
The answers to these questions will depend very much on the course to be
followed in the immediate future with respect to the tribes not yet
embraced within the limits of States of the Union. If, for the want of a
definite and positive policy of instruction and restraint, they are left
to scatter under the pressure of hunger, the intrusion of squatters and
prospectors, or the seductions of the settlements, there is little doubt
that the number of Indians of full blood will rapidly diminish, and the
race, as a pure race, soon become extinct. But nothing could be more
disastrous than this method of ridding the country of an undesirable
element. Not only would it be more cruel to the natives than a war of
extermination; but it would entail in the course of its accomplishment a
burden of vice, disease, pauperism, and crime upon a score of new
States, more intolerable than perpetual alarms or unintermitted war.
But if, on the other hand, the policy of seclusion shall be definitely
established by law and rigidly maintained, the Indians will meet their
fate, whatever it may be, substantially as a whole and as a pure race.
White men will still be found, so low in natural instincts, or so
alienated by misfortunes and wrongs, as to be willing to abandon
civilization, and hide themselves in a condition of life where no
artificial wants are known, and in communities where public sentiment
makes no demand upon any member for aught in the way of achievement or
self-advancement. Here such men, even now to be found among the more
remote and hostile tribes, will, unless the savage customs of adoption
are severely discountenanced by law, find their revenge upon humanity,
or escape the tyranny of social observance and requirement. Half-breeds,
bearing the names of French, English, and American employees of fur and
trading companies, or of refugees from criminal justice "in the
settlements," are to be found in almost every tribe and band, however
distant. Many of them, grown to man's estate, are among the most daring,
adventurous, and influential members of the warlike tribes, seldom
wholly free from suspicion on account of their relation on one side to
the whites, yet, by the versatility of their talents and the
recklessness of their courage, commanding the respect and the fear of
the purebloods, and, however incapable of leading the savages in better
courses, powerful in a high degree for mischief.
The white men, who, under the reservation system, are likely to become
affiliated with Indian tribes as "squaw men," are, however, probably
fewer than the Indian women who will be enticed away from their tribes
to become the cooks and concubines of ranchmen. One is surprised even
now, while travelling in the Territories, to note the number of cabins
around which, in no small families, half-breed children are playing.
However moralists or sentimentalists may look upon connections thus
formed by men who are in effect beyond the pale of society and of law,
they constitute already a distinct feature of border life; nor is any
statute likely to prevent Indian women occasionally thus straying from
their own people, or to compel their return so long as they are under
the protection of white men.
But, while the seclusion of the two races upon the frontier is certain
to be thus broken in instances which will form no inconsiderable
exception to the rule, the substantial purity of blood may be maintained
by an early adjustment of reservations, the concentration of tribes, and
the exercise of disciplinary control by their agents over the movements
of wandering parties. Whether, in such an event, the Indians, thus left
to meet their fate by themselves, with reasonable provision by the
government for their instruction in the arts of life and industry, will
waste away in strength and numbers, is a question quite too large to be
entered upon here. Popular beliefs and scientific opinion undoubtedly
contemplate the gradual if not the speedy decline of Indian tribes when
deprived of their traditional freedom of movement, pent up within limits
comparatively narrow, and compelled to uncongenial occupations. But
there is grave reason to doubt whether these causes are certain to
operate in any such degree as to involve the practical extinction of the
race within that immediate future on which we are accustomed to
speculate, and for which we feel bound to make provision. On the
contrary, there are many considerations and not a few facts which fairly
intimate a possibility that the Indian may bear restriction as well as
the negro has borne emancipation; and, like the negro, after a certain
inevitable loss consequent upon a change so great and violent, adapt
himself with increased vitality to new conditions. It is true that the
transition, compulsory as to a great degree it must be, from a wholly
barbarous condition of life, which remains to be effected for the eighty
to one hundred thousand Indians still outside the practical scope of the
Indian service, is likely to further reduce, for some years to come, the
aggregate number of this race; but it is not improbable that this will
be coincident with a steady increase among the tribes known as
civilized.
* * * * *
In the foregoing discussion of the policy to be pursued in dealing with
the Indians of the United States, there has been no disposition to mince
matters, or to pick expressions. The facts and considerations deemed
essential have been presented bluntly. Some who cannot bear to hear
Indians spoken of as savages, or to contemplate the chastisement of
marauding bands, may blame our frankness. But we hold fine sentiments to
be out of place in respect to a matter like this, which in the present
is one of life and death to thousands of our own flesh and blood, and in
the future one of incalculable importance to a score of States yet to be
formed out of the territory over which the wild tribes of to-day are
roaming in fancied independence. The country has a right to the whole
naked truth,--to learn what security our fellow-citizens have for their
lives, and also to learn what becomes of the seven millions of dollars
annually collected in taxes and disbursed on Indian account.
If the case has been fairly presented, it will doubtless appear to our
readers, that, so far as the hostile and semi-hostile Indians are
concerned, the government is merely temporizing with a gigantic evil,
pocketing its dignity from considerations of humanity and economy, and
awaiting the operation of causes both sure and swift, which must within
a few years reduce the evil to dimensions in which it can be dealt with
on principles more agreeable to the ideas and ways of our people.
For the rest, it will be seen that the United States have, without much
order or comprehension, but with a vast amount of good-will, undertaken
enterprises involving considerable annual expenditures for the
advancement of individual tribes and bands, but that the true permanent
scheme for the management and instruction of the whole body of Indians
within the control of the government is yet to be created. Let it not
for a moment be pretended that the prospect is an agreeable one.
Congress and the country might well wish to be well rid of the matter.
No subject of legislation could be more perplexing and irritating; nor
can the outlay involved fail for many years to be a serious burden upon
our industry. But the nation cannot escape its responsibility for the
future of this race, soon to be thrown in entire helplessness upon our
protection. Honor and interest urge the same imperative claim. An
unfaithful treatment will only make the evil worse, the burden heavier.
In good faith and good feeling we must take up this work of Indian
civilization, and, at whatever cost, do our whole duty by this most
unhappy people. Better that we should entail a debt upon our posterity
on Indian account, were that necessary, than that we should leave them
an inheritance of shame. We may have no fear that the dying curse of the
red man, outcast and homeless by our fault, will bring barrenness upon
the soil that once was his, or dry the streams of the beautiful land
that, through so much of evil and of good, has become our patrimony; but
surely we shall be clearer in our lives, and freer to meet the glances
of our sons and grandsons, if in our generation we do justice and show
mercy to a race which has been impoverished that we might be made rich.