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diff --git a/27058-h/27058-h.htm b/27058-h/27058-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f1107b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/27058-h/27058-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5974 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Indian Question, by Francis A. Walker. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; + text-indent: 1em; + } + h1 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + h5,h6 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + h2 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* centered and coloured */ + } + h3 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* centered and coloured */ + } + h4 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + a {text-decoration: none} /* no lines under links */ + div.centered {text-align: center;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 1 */ + div.centered table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 2 */ + + .cen {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;} /* centering paragraphs */ + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 95%;} /* small caps, smaller font size */ + .noin {text-indent: 0em;} /* no indenting */ + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} /* block indent */ + .img {text-align: center; padding: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} /* centering images */ + .tdr {text-align: right;} /* right align cell */ + .tdl {text-align: left;} /* left align cell */ + .tdlbtb {text-align: left; vertical-align: bottom; border-top: .5pt black solid; border-bottom: .5pt black solid;} /* left align, vertical align bottom, top and bottom border */ + .tdrb {text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;} /* right align cell */ + .tdrl {text-align: right; border-left: .5pt black solid;} /* align right, border left */ + .tdrtbl {text-align: right; border-top: .5pt black solid; border-bottom: .5pt black solid; border-left: .5pt black solid;} /*align right, top, bottom, left border */ + .tr {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 1em; background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: dotted black 1px;} /* transcriber's notes */ + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; right: 2%; + font-size: 75%; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0em; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal;} /* page numbers */ + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 90%;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right; font-size: 90%;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: text-top; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Indian Question (1874), by Francis A. Walker + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Indian Question (1874) + +Author: Francis A. Walker + +Release Date: October 26, 2008 [EBook #27058] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INDIAN QUESTION (1874) *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness, Barbara Kosker and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h1> THE INDIAN QUESTION.</h1> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h3>BY</h3> +<br /> + +<h2>FRANCIS A. WALKER,</h2> +<br /> +<h3>LATE U. S. COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.</h3> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="img"> +<img border="0" src="images/deco.jpg" width="10%" alt="Publisher's Mark" /> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h3>BOSTON:<br /> +JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,<br /> +(<span class="smcap">Late Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.</span>)<br /> +1874.</h3> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874 by<br /> +F. A. WALKER,<br /> +In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.</h4> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4>BOSTON<br /> +<span class="smcap">Rand, Avery, & Co., Stereotypers and Printers</span>.</h4> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" width="70%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents"> + <tr> + <td class="tdl" width="90%"> </td> + <td class="tdr" width="10%"><span style="font-size: 80%;">PAGE</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Indian Question</span></td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#PAGE_5">5</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Indian Citizenship</span></td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#PAGE_101">101</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">An Account of the Tribes</span></td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#PAGE_148">148</a></td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><a name="PAGE_5" id="PAGE_5"></a> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> +<br /> +<h2>THE INDIAN QUESTION.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></h2> +<br /> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>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."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>the demand +for the removal of one tribe after another urgent or +imperative. <i>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</i>; 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."—<i>Report on Indian +Affairs</i>, 1872, pp. 83, 84.</p></div> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>with magisterial powers, or +provided for the assembling of the Indian <i>demos</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>Such considerations as we have here briefly sketched suffice to show the +inexpediency of entering upon Indian history, <i>qua</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>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, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>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.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p> + +<p>On the other hand, in our prosperous and well-ordered communities at the +East, a gentleman of leisure and of native benevolence, whose ears <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>in a few years +become true as of the tribes embraced under the first class.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>scantier, are becoming every year more miserable.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>California. They have neither the +individual courage nor the instinct of confederation entitling them to +be reckoned among the potentially hostile tribes.</p> + +<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> Mandans, and Gros Ventres <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>effective and economical sort to the troops operating +against predatory bands.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>habitués</i> 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>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:—</p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" width="40%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Expenditures"> + <tr> + <td class="tdlbtb" width="20%">Year.</td> + <td class="tdrtbl" width="80%">Expenditures on<br />Indian Account.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1861</td> + <td class="tdrl">$2,865,481.17</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1862</td> + <td class="tdrl">2,327,948.37</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1863</td> + <td class="tdrl">3,152,032.70</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1864</td> + <td class="tdrl">2,629,975.97</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1865</td> + <td class="tdrl">5,059,360.71</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1866</td> + <td class="tdrl">3,295,729.32</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1867</td> + <td class="tdrl">4,642,531.77</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1868</td> + <td class="tdrl">4,100,682.32</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1869</td> + <td class="tdrl">7,042,923.06</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1870</td> + <td class="tdrl">3,407,938.15</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">1871</td> + <td class="tdrl">7,426,997.44</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl" style="border-bottom: .5pt black solid;">1872</td> + <td class="tdrl" style="border-bottom: .5pt black solid;">7,061,728.82</td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> +<br /> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>In the first place, it should be remarked that there can be no question +of national dignity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>And in this we shall only do what other nations <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>If, then, there is nothing inconsistent with national dignity or honor +in thus temporizing with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>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, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>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 <i>scintilla</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>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:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"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."</p></div> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>We have thus far treated the policy of the government towards the +dangerous tribes as one not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Nor even is it necessary that the Indian's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>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.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>It must not be understood that nothing is being done for the industrial +and moral instruction of the peaceful and more advanced tribes<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> +pending the reduction of their turbulent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>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 +<i>protégés</i>. It can scarcely need to be remarked, that these are not the +ways to constitute a system.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>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 <i>has</i> 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>And yet it is undeniably true that many of the experiments have failed +in a greater or less degree; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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: <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<p>First, while the Pawnees, from their situation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 Brulé 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 Brulés hunting almost <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><i>First.</i> 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>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,<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>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.<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a></p> + +<p>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 +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>Second.</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Shall there be one general reservation east of the Rocky Mountains, or +two? This is likely to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>the very flower of the conquering Iroquois,<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> occupy a small +reservation in the north-eastern part of the Territory; while the +remnants of the Quapaws, Ottawas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weas, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>recommendation of two reservations for tribes +east of the Rocky Mountains.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>serve in time to remove the prejudices existing among +the Northern Indians generally.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>Third.</i> 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 <i>posse comitatus</i> of +a distant Territory. It is in the latter form that the invasion of +Indian country now generally takes place;<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a> and for the purpose of +resisting such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>State on which the Indians have no +rights whatsoever.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>Fourth.</i> 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>Fifth.</i> 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.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>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."—<i>Report on Indian +Affairs</i>, 1872, p. 11.</p></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>Sixth.</i> 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"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."—<i>Report on Indian +Affairs</i>, 1872, p. 10.</p></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> + +<p><i>Seventh.</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +$4,810,716.83⅔ 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>account of the sales of lands, or other +consideration received by the government,<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a> 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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>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. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>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, <i>per capita</i>, 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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>preserving his own identity, and making +his separate contribution to the life and manners of the nation?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>savages in better +courses, powerful in a high degree for mischief.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>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.</p> + +<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> From "The North American Review," April, 1873.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> The writer does not intend to say that the citizens of the +border States are always just or reasonable in their disposition towards +the Indians. It cannot be denied, that, in the exasperation of conflict, +they often commit atrocities rivalling those of the savages; that, +moreover, under the smart of wrong, they are very often indiscriminating +in their revenge, and do cruel injustice to peaceful bands; and that, +with the recklessness characteristic of border talk, they indulge to a +vast extent in denunciations of horrible sound. To this is added, that +in such communities are found more than the usual number of persons of a +natural malignity of disposition, often refugees from criminal justice, +who delight in committing outrages upon the exposed and helpless members +of an inferior race. The opinion which the writer has given above is +entirely consistent with the present admissions. The animosities felt +and expressed are not towards the Indians as Indians, but arise out of +the sense of injuries suffered, and the apprehension of further +suffering. Were the Indians once rendered, by the extension and +strengthening of our settlements, powerless for harm, the easy +tolerance, the rough good-nature, and the quick condonement of wrong, +which characterize pioneer communities, would speedily reconcile the +whites to their presence, and establish relations not wholly unworthy of +both parties.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> The relations of the Arickarees—or, as they are commonly +called, even in official reports, the 'Rees—to the government, form one +of the most instructive chapters of Indian history. In 1838 the agent +for the Upper Missouri Indian agency, in his annual report to the +Department of Indian Affairs, used the following language in respect to +this tribe:—</p> + +<p class="noin">The Riccaras have long been notorious for their treachery and +barbarity, and, within my own recollection, have murdered and pillaged +more of our citizens than all the other tribes between the western +borders of Missouri and the heads of the Columbia River."—<i>Report on +Indian Affairs</i>, 1838-9, p. 65.</p> + +<p class="noin">This is language which one might expect from the agent of some +exceptionally troublesome band of Sioux. But, to the contrary, in +another portion of his report (<i>Ib.</i> p. 64) the same agent says, "No +Indians ever manifested a greater degree of friendship for the whites in +general, or more respect for our government, than the Sioux." This +report was made thirty-four years ago, the limit of one human +generation. To-day the Sioux are among the most dangerous and +troublesome Indians on the hands of the government, while the Arickarees +are our fast friends and allies. Lieut.-Gen. Sheridan, in 1871, writing +of these Indians, now located at Fort Berthold, says, "They have always +been civil and well disposed, and have been repaid by the government +with neglect and starvation. Of all Indians in the country, they were +the best entitled to be looked after, and made happy and contented." +Something, clearly, has made this difference; and an inquirer would +doubtless find here an explanation of no small part of the difficulties +which the United-States Government has experienced in dealing with the +Indian tribes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> To take one of the most recent examples: Col. Baker's +attack upon a Piegan camp in 1869, even though it should be held to be +justified on the ground of necessity, must be admitted to be utterly +revolting in its conception and execution. Yet no merited chastisement +ever wrought more instant and durable effects for good. The Piegans, who +had been even more wild and intractable than the Sioux, have since that +affair been orderly and peaceable. No complaints whatever are made of +their conduct; and they are apparently as good Indians as can be found +among the wholly uncivilized tribes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> The Report on Indian Affairs for 1872 shows that, in +addition to physicians, clerks, cooks, herders, teamsters, laborers, and +interpreters, there are employed at all the agencies eighty-two teachers, +eighty farmers, seventy-three blacksmiths, seventy-two carpenters, +twenty-two millwrights and millers, seventeen engineers, eleven matrons of +manual-labor schools, and three seamstresses.—<i>Report</i>, pp. 68-71.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> We are speaking of the tribe socially, not politically. +Factions and faction wars are known to the Indian as well as to his +betters.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> Report on Indian Affairs, 1872, p. 84.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> The popular and doubtless the correct use of the word +"Iroquois" confines it to the Five Nations (subsequently the Six +Nations) of New York, which during the third quarter of the seventeenth +century destroyed or dispersed successively the Hurons or Wyandots, the +nation called (for the want of a more characteristic name) the Neutral +Nation, the Andastes of the Susquehanna, and the Eries. These four large +and important peoples were closely kindred to the Five Nations; and the +term "Iroquois" was long applied to this entire family of tribes. Later +in the history of the continent, it embraced only the Five (or Six) +Nations for the best of good reasons, as this formidable confederacy had +practically annihilated all the other branches of the family. The career +of the Iroquois was simply terrific. Between 1649 and 1672 they had, as +stated, accomplished the ruin of the four tribes of their own blood, +containing in the aggregate a population far more numerous than their +own. A feeble remnant, a few score in number, of the Wyandots, now +survive, and are represented at Washington by an exceptionally shabby +white man, who has received the doubtful honor of adoption into the +tribe. These are all the recognizable remains of a nation once estimated +to contain thirty thousand. The names of the Eries, the Andastes, and +the Neutral Nation do not appear in any treaty with the United States. +Many, doubtless, from all these tribes fled to Canada. Considerable +numbers were also, according to the custom of the Five Nations, adopted +by the conquerors to make good the waste of war.</p> + +<p class="noin">Nor did the Iroquois wait to complete the subjugation of their own +kindred, before turning their arms against their Algonquin neighbors. +The Delawares (Lenni Lenape, or Original Men) were subjugated almost +coincidently with the Hurons; and the same year which brought the +downfall of the Andastes witnessed the expulsion of the Shawnees from +the valley of the Ohio. Re-enforced in 1712 by the Tuscaroras, a warlike +tribe from the South, the Five Nations (now become the Six Nations) +carried their conquests east and west, north and south. The tribes +confronting the invaders in New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and +Virginia were continually disturbed and distracted by their incursions. +Taking the part of the English in the wars against the French, they +shook all Canada with the fear of their arms, while to the west they +extended their sway to the Straits of Michilimackinac and the entrance +to Lake Superior. The height of their fame was at the close of the Old +French War in 1763. Their decline and downfall, as a power upon the +continent, followed with the briefest interval. Reduced by incessant +fighting to seventeen hundred warriors, they took the part of England +against the Colonies in 1775. The glorious and the terrible incidents of +the Indian campaigns of the Revolution are familiar as household words. +The peace of 1783 found the Iroquois broken, humbled, homeless, +helpless, before the power of the United States, whose pensioners they +then became and have since remained. The bulk of these tribes still +reside in New York, while fragments of them are found in the extreme +West, having removed under the treaty of 1838.</p> + +<p class="noin">Such, in brief, is the history of the Iroquois. They were the scourge of +God upon the aborigines of the continent, and were themselves used up, +stock, lash, and snapper, in the tremendous flagellation which was +administered through them to almost every branch, in turn, of the great +Algonquin family. It will not do to say, that, but for the Iroquois, the +settlement of the country by the whites would not have taken place; yet +assuredly that settlement would have been longer delayed, and have been +finally accomplished with far greater expense of blood and treasure, had +not the Six Nations, not knowing what they did, gone before in savage +blindness and fury, destroying or driving out tribe after tribe which +with them might, for more than one generation at least, have stayed the +western course of European invasion.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> The impudent character of these invasions will be best +shown by a recital of the facts in two cases occurring within the year. +In 1870-71 the Osages living in Kansas sold their lands under authority +of the government, and accepted a reservation, in lieu thereof, in the +Indian Territory. Scarcely had they turned their faces towards their new +home when a sort of race began between them and some hundreds of whites, +which may be described, in the language of boys, as having for its +object "to see which should get there first." In October, 1871, the +agent reported that five hundred whites were on the Osage lands, and +actually in possession of the Osage village, while the rightful owners +were encamped outside. Orders having been issued from the War Department +for the removal of these intruders, political pressure was brought to +bear upon the executive to prevent the orders from being carried into +effect. This effort failing, delay was asked, in view of the hardships +to be anticipated from a removal so near winter. This indulgence having +been granted, the number of the trespassers continued to increase +through the winter, in spite of the notice publicly given of the +intentions of the government: so that in the spring of 1872 the military +authorities found fifteen hundred persons on the Osage lands in defiance +of law. On this occasion, however, the land-robbers had failed in their +calculations. The government was in earnest; and the squatters were +extruded by the troops of the Department of the Missouri.</p> + +<p class="noin">The other instance referred to is that of an expedition projected and +partially organized in Dakota, in 1872, for the purpose of penetrating +the Black Hills, for mining and lumbering. Public meetings at which +Federal officials attended were held, to create the necessary amount of +public enthusiasm; and an invasion of Indian territory was imminent, +which would, beyond peradventure, have resulted in a general Sioux war. +In this case the emergency was such that the executive acted with great +promptness. A proclamation was issued warning evil-disposed persons of +the determination of the government to prevent the outrage; and troops +were put in position to deal effectively with the marauders. This proved +sufficient; and the Black Hills expedition was abandoned.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> Report on Indian Affairs, 1872, p. 440.</p> +</div> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><a name="PAGE_101" id="PAGE_101"></a> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> +<br /> +<h2>INDIAN CITIZENSHIP.<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a></h2> +<br /> + + +<p>The proper treatment of the Indian question requires that we deal with +the issues arising out of the peculiar relations of the aboriginal +tribes of the continent to the now dominant race, in much the same +spirit—profoundly philanthropic at bottom, but practical, sceptical, +and severe in the discussion of methods and in the maintenance of +administrative discipline—with which all Christian nations, and +especially the English-speaking, nations, have learned to meet the +kindred difficulties of pauperism. It is in no small degree the lack of +such a spirit in the conduct of Indian affairs, which has rendered the +efforts and expenditures of our government for the advancement of the +race so ineffectual in the past; and for this the blame attaches mainly +to the want of correct information and of settled convictions respecting +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>this subject, among our people at large. So long as the country +fluctuates in an alternation of sentimental and brutal impulses, +according as the wrongs done to the Indian or the wrongs done by him are +at the moment more distinctly in mind, it cannot be wondered at that +Congress should be reluctant to undertake the re-organization of the +Indian service on any large and lasting plan, or that the Indian Office +should hesitate to cut out for itself more work than it can look to make +up in the interval between sessions.</p> + +<p>What, to take a recent and memorable instance, would have been the fate +of any scheme of Indian legislation which was at its parliamentary +crisis when the murder of Gen. Canby occurred? The work of years might +well have been undone under the popular excitement attendant upon that +atrocious deed. Yet it would be quite as rational to denounce the +established systems for the care and control of the insane, and to turn +all the inmates of our asylums loose upon the community because one +maniac had in an access of frenzy murdered his keeper, as it would have +been to abandon the established Indian policy of the government, the +only fault of which is that it is incomplete, on account of any thing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>that Capt. Jack and his companions might do in their furious despair. +The more atrocious their deed, the more conspicuous the justification of +the system of care and control from which this one small band of +desperadoes had for the moment broken free to work such horrid mischief. +Yet there is much reason to believe, that, had the Indian service at +that time depended, as every service must once a year come to depend, on +the votes of Congressmen, it would have failed, temporarily at least, +for the want of them. Nor is it only acts of exceptional ferocity on the +part of marauding bands, which have sufficed to check all the gracious +impulses of the national compassion. The reasons which have existed in +the public mind in favor of the Indian policy of the government have not +always been found of a sufficiently robust and practical nature to +withstand the weariness of sustained effort, and the inevitable +disappointments of sanguine expectation; and thus the service has at +times suffered from the general indifference scarcely less than from the +sharpest revulsions of public feeling.</p> + +<p>Much has been said within the past three years, of the Indian policy of +the administration; and, if by this is meant that the policy of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>government in dealing with the Indians has become more and more one of +administration, and less and less one of law, the phrase, with the +exception of an article too many, is well enough. As matter of fact, the +sole Indian policy of the United States deserving the name was adopted +early in the century; and it is only of late years that it has been +seriously undermined by the current of events; while it is within the +duration of the present administration that the blow has been struck by +legislation, at the already tottering structure, which has brought it +nearly to its fall.</p> + +<p>To throw upon a dozen religious and benevolent societies the +responsibility of advising the executive in the appointment of the +agents of the Indian service is not a policy. To buy off a few bands, +more insolent than the rest, by a wholesale issue of subsistence and the +lavish bestowal of presents, without reference to the disposition of the +savages to labor for their own support, and even without reference to +the good or ill desert of individuals,—this, though doubtless expedient +in the critical situation of our frontier population, is the merest +expediency, not in any sense a policy. Yet the two features specified +have been the only ones that have been added to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>the scheme of Indian +control during the continuance of the present administration; while, on +the other side, an irreparable breach has been effected in that scheme +by the action of powerful social forces, as well as by the direct +legislative contravention of its most vital principle.</p> + +<p>From the earliest settlement of the country by the whites, down to 1817, +the Colonies, and afterwards the thirteen States, met the emergencies of +Indian contact as they arose. The parties to negotiation were often +ill-defined, and the forms of procedure much as happened. Not only did +each Colony, prior to 1774, conduct its own Indian relations, generally +with little or no reference to the engagements or the interests of its +white neighbors; but isolated settlements and even enterprising +individuals made their own peace with the savages, or received the soil +by deed from its native proprietors. Nor on the part of the Indians was +there much more regard for strict legitimacy. Local chieftains were not +infrequently ready to convey away lands that did not belong to them; and +when a Colony grown powerful wished a pretext for usurpation, almost any +Indian would do to make a treaty with or get a title from. It is +scarcely necessary to say of negotiations thus <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>conducted, that they +embraced no general scheme of Indian relations; that they aimed +invariably at the accomplishment of immediate and more or less local +objects, and often attained these at the cost of much embarrassment in +the future, and even at the expense of neighboring settlements and +colonies.</p> + +<p>Throughout the history of Colonial transactions, we find few traces of +any thing like impatience of the claims of the Indians to equality in +negotiation and in intercourse. Neither the power nor the character of +the aborigines was then despised as now. Strong in his native illusions, +his warlike prestige unbroken, the Indian still retained all that +natural dignity of bearing which has been found so impressive even in +his decline. The early literature of the country testifies to the +disposition of the people to hold the more romantic view of the Indian +character, even where the animosities of race were deadliest; nor does +it seem that the general sentiment of the Colonies regarded the +necessity of treating on equal terms with the great confederacies of +that day as in any degree more derogatory than the civilized powers of +Europe in the same period esteemed the necessity of maintaining +diplomatic relations with the great Cossack power of the North. Indeed, +the treaty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>with the Delawares in 1778 actually contemplated the +formation of a league of friendly tribes under the hegemony of the +Delawares, to constitute the fourteenth State of the confederation then +in arms against Great Britain, with a proportional representation in +Congress. And this was proposed, not by men accustomed to see negroes +voting at the polls, and even sitting in the Senate of the United +States, but by our conservative and somewhat aristocratic ancestors.</p> + +<p>But after the establishment of our national independence, incidental to +which had been the destruction of the warlike power of the "Six +Nations," the nearest and most formidable of all the confederacies known +to Colonial history, we note a louder tone taken—as was natural +enough—with the aboriginal tribes, a greater readiness to act +aggressively, and an increasing confidence in the competency of the +white race to populate the whole of this continent. Earlier Indian wars +had been in a high sense a struggle for life on the part of the infant +settlements: they had been engaged in reluctantly, after being postponed +by every expedient and every artifice; but the conquest of the territory +north-west of the Ohio appears to have been entered upon more from a +statesmanlike <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>comprehension of the wants of the united and expanding +republic, than from the pressure of immediate danger. It was but natural +that the concentration of the fighting power of the States, the +consciousness of a common destiny, and the cession of the western +territory to the general government, should create an impatience of +Indian occupation which neither the separate Colonies nor the States, +struggling for independence, had felt. Yet even so we do not find that, +from 1783 to 1817, the United States did much more than meet the +exigency most nearly and clearly at hand.</p> + +<p>In the latter year, however, the negotiations for a removal of the +Cherokees west of the Mississippi, although commenced under strong +pressure from the much-afflicted State of Georgia, and at the time +without contemplation of an extension of the system to tribes less +immediately in the path of settlement, mark the beginnings of a distinct +Indian policy. In 1825 the scheme for the general deportation of the +Indians east of the Mississippi was fairly inaugurated in the presidency +of Mr. Monroe; Mr. Calhoun, his secretary of war, proposing the details +of the measure. In 1834 the policy thus inaugurated was completed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>by +the passage of the Indian Intercourse Act, though large numbers still +remained to be transported West.</p> + +<p>The features of this policy were first, the removal of the tribes beyond +the limits of settlement; second, the assignment to them in perpetuity, +under solemn treaty sanctions, of land sufficient to enable them to +subsist by fishing and hunting, by stock-raising, or by agriculture, +according to their habits and proclivities; third, their seclusion from +the whites by stringent laws forbidding intercourse; fourth, the +government of the Indians through their own tribal organizations, and +according to their own customs and laws.</p> + +<p>This policy, the character and relations of the two races being taken +into account, we must pronounce one of sound and far-reaching +statesmanship, notwithstanding that an advance of population altogether +unprecedented in history has already made much of it obsolete, and +rendered necessary a general re-adjustment of its details.</p> + +<p>The first event which impaired the integrity of the scheme of President +Monroe was the flight of the Mormons, under the pressure of social +persecution, across the Plains in 1847. The success of this people in +treating with the Indians has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>often been noted, and has been made the +occasion of many unjust reflections upon the United States, as if a +popular government, giving, both of necessity and of choice, the largest +liberty to pioneer enterprise, could be reasonably expected to preserve +peaceful relations with remote bands of savages as effectively as a +political and religious despotism, keeping its membership compact and +close in hand. But, while the Mormons have certainly been successful in +maintaining good terms with the natives of the plains, it is not so +certain that their influence upon the Indians has been advantageous to +the government, or to the white settlers not of the church. It clearly +has been for their interest to attach the natives to themselves rather +than to the government; it clearly has been in their power to direct a +great many agencies to that end; and it will probably require more faith +in Mormon virtue than the majority of us possess to keep alive much of a +doubt that they have actually done so. We certainly have the opinion of +many persons well informed that it has been the constant policy of the +Latter-Day Saints to teach the Indians to look to them rather than to +the government as their benefactors and their protectors; to represent, +as far as possible <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>through agents and interpreters in their interest, +the goods and supplies received from the United States as derived from +the bounty of the church; to stir up, for special purposes or for +general ends, troubles between the natives and the encroaching whites, +east, west, and south; and, finally, so to alienate from the government +and attach to themselves the Utes, Shoshones and Bannocks, as to assure +themselves of their aid in the not improbable event of a last desperate +struggle for life with the power of the United States.</p> + +<p>The next event historically which tended to the disruption of the policy +of seclusion was the discovery of gold upon the Pacific slope, which in +three years replaced the few insinuating priests and indolent +<i>rancheros</i>, who had previously formed the white population of the +coast, with a hundred thousand eager gold-hunters. That the access of +such a population—bold, adventurous, prompt to violence, reckless, and +too often wantonly unjust and cruel—should stir up trouble and strife +with the sixty thousand natives, upon whom they pressed at every point +in their eager search for the precious metals, was a thing of course. +The Oregon War followed, and occasional affairs like that at Ben +Wright's Cave, leaving a heritage of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>hate from which such fruits as the +recent Modoc War are not inaptly gathered.</p> + +<p>In 1855-6 occurred the great movement, mainly under a political impulse, +which carried population beyond the Missouri. In two or three years the +tribes and bands which were native to Kansas and Nebraska, as well as +those which had been removed from States east of the Mississippi, were +suffering the worst effects of white intrusion. Of the Free-State party, +not a few zealous members seemed disposed to compensate themselves for +their benevolent efforts on behalf of the negro by crowding the Indian +to the wall; while the slavery propagandists steadily maintained their +consistency by impartially persecuting the members of both the inferior +races.</p> + +<p>Thus far we have shown how, instead of the natural boundary between the +races which was contemplated in the establishment of the Indian policy +of the government under Pres. Monroe, two lines of settlement had, prior +to 1860, been pushed against the Indians,—one eastward from the +Pacific, one westward from the Missouri, driving the natives in many +cases from the soil guaranteed to them by treaty, and otherwise leaving +them at a hundred points in dangerous contact <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>with a border population +not apt to be nice in its sense of justice, or slow to retaliate real or +fancied injuries; while, during the same period, a colony of religious +fanatics, foreign to the faith, and very largely also to the blood, of +our people, was planted in the very heart of the Indian country, with +passions strongly aroused against the government, and with interests +opposed to the peace and security of the frontier.</p> + +<p>But it was not until after the Civil War that the progress of events +dealt its heaviest blow at the policy of Indian seclusion. In 1867-8 the +great plough of industrial civilization drew its deep furrow across the +continent, from the Missouri to the Pacific, as a sign of dissolution to +the immemorial possessors of the soil. Already the Pacific Railroad has +brought changes which, without it, might have been delayed for half a +century. Not only has the line of settlement been made continuous from +Omaha to Sacramento, so far as the character of the soil will permit; +but from a score of points upon the railroad population has gone north +and gone south, following up the courses of the streams, and searching +out every trace of gold upon the mountains, till recesses have been +penetrated which five years ago were scarcely known <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>to trappers and +guides, and lodgement has been effected upon many even of the more +remote reservations. The natural effects of this introduction by the +railroad of white population into the Indian country have not yet been +wholly wrought. There are still reservations where the seclusion of the +Indians is practically maintained by the ill-repressed hostility of +tribes; some, where the same result is secured by the barrenness or +inaccessibility of the regions in which they are situated; but it is +evident that the lapse of another such five years will find every +reservation between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains +surrounded, and to a degree penetrated, by prospectors and pioneers, +miners, ranchmen, or traders. Against the intrusion of these classes, in +the numbers in which they are now appearing in the Indian country, the +Intercourse Act of 1834 is wholly ineffective. It was an admirable +weapon against the single intruder: it avails nothing against the +lawless combinations of squatter territories.</p> + +<p>While the movements of population have thus in great part destroyed, and +threaten soon utterly to destroy, at once the seclusion in which it was +hoped the native tribes might find opportunity for the development of +their better qualities, and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>natural resources to which, in the long +interval that must precede the achievement of true industrial +independence by a people taught through centuries of barbarous +traditions to despise labor, the Indian might look for subsistence, +Congress in 1871 struck the severest blow that remained to be given to +the Indian policy, in its fourth great feature,—that of the +self-government of tribes according to their own laws and customs,—by +declaring 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."</p> + +<p>In the face of three hundred and eighty-two treaties with Indian tribes, +ratified by the Senate as are treaties with foreign powers, this may +perhaps be accepted as quite the most conspicuous illustration in +history of the adage, "Circumstances alter cases."<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a> Since Anthony +Wayne received <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>the cession of pretty much the whole State of Ohio from +the Wyandots, Delawares, and Shawnees, times have indeed changed; and it +is fitting that we should change with them. The declaration of Congress +is well enough on grounds of justice and national honor; but it none the +less aims a deadly blow at the tribal autonomy which was made a vital +part of the original scheme of Indian control. The declaration cited +does not in terms deny the self-sufficiency of the tribe for the +purposes of internal self-government; but the immediate necessary effect +of it is further to weaken the already waning power of the chiefs, while +Congress yet fails to furnish any substitute for their authority, either +by providing for the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>organization of the tribes on more democratic +principles, with direct responsibility to the government, or by arming +the Indian agents with magisterial powers adequate to the exigency.</p> + +<p>Under the traditional policy of the United States, the Indian agent was +a minister resident to a "domestic dependent nation." The Act of March +3, 1871, destroys the nationality, and leaves the agent in the anomalous +position of finding no authority within the tribe to which he can +address himself, yet having in himself no legal authority over the tribe +or the members of it. It is true, that, as matter of fact, agents, some +in greater and some in less degree, continue to exercise control after a +fashion over the movements of tribes and bands. This is partly due to +the force of habit, partly to superior intelligence, partly to the +discretion which the agent exercises in the distribution of the +government's bounty; but every year the control becomes less effectual, +and agents and chiefs complain more and more that they cannot hold the +young braves in check.</p> + +<p>The above recital, however tedious, has been necessary in order to set +fairly forth the actual condition of the scheme of seclusion, which is +still, in profession and seeming, the policy of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>government. It must +be evident from the recital, that the purposes of this policy are not +being answered, and that the increasing difficulties of the situation in +the wider and closer contact of the two races will soon compel Congress +to review the whole field of Indian affairs, and establish relations, +which, if they cannot in the nature of things be permanent, will at +least have reference to the facts of the present, and the probabilities +of the immediate future. Whenever Congress shall take up in earnest this +question of the disposition to be made of the Indian tribes, its choice +will clearly be between two antagonistic schemes,—seclusion and +citizenship. Either the government must place the Indians upon narrower +reservations, proportioned to their requirements for subsistence by +agriculture, and no longer by the chase,—reservations which shall be +located with the view of avoiding as much as possible the contact of the +races, and working as little hindrance as may be to the otherwise free +development of population; and around these put up the barriers of forty +years ago, re-enforced as the changed circumstances seem to require: or +the government must prepare to receive the Indians into the body of the +people, freely accepting, for them and for the general <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>community, all +the dangers and inconveniences of personal contact and legal equality. +No middle ground is tenable. If substantial seclusion is not to be +maintained, at any cost, by the sequestration of tribes and by the rigid +prohibition of intercourse, it is worse than useless to keep up the +forms of reservations and non-intercourse. Many tribes are already as +fully subject to all the debasing influences of contact with the whites +as they could be if dispersed among the body of citizens; while yet they +are without any of the advantages popularly attributed to citizenship.</p> + +<p>It requires no deep knowledge of human nature, and no very extensive +review of Congressional legislation, to assure us that many and powerful +interests will oppose themselves to a re-adjustment of the Indian tribes +between the Missouri and the Pacific, under the policy of seclusion and +non-intercourse. Railroad enterprises, mining enterprises, and land +enterprises of every name, will find any scheme that shall be seriously +proposed to be quite the most objectionable of all that could be +offered: every State, and every Territory that aspires to become a +State, will strive to keep the Indians as far as possible from its own +borders; while powerful combinations of speculators will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>make their +fight for the last acre of Indian lands with just as much rapacity as if +they had not already, in Western phrase, "gobbled" a hundred thousand +square miles of it.</p> + +<p>In addition to the political, industrial, and speculative interests +which will thus oppose the restoration of the policy of Indian seclusion +from the shattered condition to which the events just recited have +reduced it, three classes of persons may be counted on to lend their +support to the plan of introducing the Indians, who have thus far been +treated as "the wards of the nation," directly into the body of our +citizenship. We have, first, those who have become impatient of the +demands made upon the time of Congress and the attention of the people +in the name of the Indians, and who wish, once for all, to have done +with them. Such impatience is neither unnatural nor wholly unreasonable. +It must be confessed that no good work ever made heavier drafts upon the +faith and patience of the philanthropic. What with the triviality of the +Indian character, the absurd punctilio with which, in his lowest estate, +he insists on embarrassing the most ordinary business, and his devotion +to sentiments utterly repugnant to our social and industrial genius; +what, again, with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>endless variety of tribal relations and tribal +claims, and the complexity of tribal interests, aggravated by jealousy +and suspicion where no previous intercourse has existed, and by feuds +and traditions of hatred where intercourse has existed,—the conduct of +Indian affairs, whether in legislation or in administration, is in no +small degree perplexing and irritating. The Indian treaties prior to +1842 make up one entire volume of the General Statutes, while the +treaties and Indian laws since that date would fill two volumes of equal +size. It cannot be denied that this is taking a good deal of trouble for +a very small and not very useful portion of the population of the +country: and it is not to be wondered at that many citizens, and not a +few Congressmen, are much disposed to cut the knot instead of untying +it, and summarily dismiss the Indian as the subject of peculiar +consideration, by enfranchising him, not for any good it may do to him, +but for the relief of our legislation.</p> + +<p>Next, we have that large and increasing class of Americans, who, either +from natural bias, or from the severe political shocks of the last +twelve years, have accepted what we may call the politics of despair, by +which is meant, not so much a belief in any definite ill fortune for the +Republic, as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>conviction that the United States are being borne on to +an end not seen, by a current which it is impossible to resist; that it +is futile longer to seek to interpose restraints upon the rate of this +progress, or to change its direction; that the nation has already gone +far outside the traditional limits of safe political navigation, and is +taking its course, for weal or woe, across an unknown sea, not unlike +that little squadron which sailed out from the Straits of Saltez on the +3d of August, 1492. Many of the persons now holding these views were +formerly among the most conservative of our people; but emancipation, +negro suffrage, and the consolidation of power consequent upon the war, +have wholly unsettled their convictions, leaving them either hopeless of +the Republic, or, as temperament serves, eager to crowd on sail, and +prove at once the worst and the best of fortune. In this despair of +conservative methods, some of these men have acquired an oddly objective +way of looking at their country, which to every man ought to be a part +of himself, and have apparently as much of a curious as of a patriotic +interest in watching the development of the new forms and forces of +national life. Men of this class (and they are not few) are not likely +to hesitate in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>extending to the Indians citizenship and the ballot. A +little more or less, they think, can make no difference. After negro +suffrage, any thing.</p> + +<p>Finally, we have a class of persons, who, from no impatience of the +subject, and from no indifference to the welfare of the aborigines, will +oppose the policy of seclusion, as an anomaly not to be tolerated in our +form of government. These are men who cannot bear, that, from any +assumed necessity or for any supposed advantage, exception should be +made of any class of inhabitants, or in respect to any portion of +territory, to the rule of uniform rights and responsibilities, and of +absolute freedom of movement, contract, and intercourse, the whole +nation and the whole land over. Were the Indians ten times as numerous, +were their claims to consideration stronger by no matter how much, and +were the importance to them of seclusion far more clear than it appears, +these political philosophers would steadily oppose the scheme. They +might regret the mischiefs which would result to the Indian from +exposure to corrupting influences; they might be disposed to favor the +most liberal allowances from the public treasury, in compensation to him +for his lands, and for his industrial endowment: but they would none the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>less relentlessly insist that the red man should take his equal chance +with white and black, with all the privileges and all the +responsibilities of political manhood.</p> + +<p>In view of the likelihood that the expediency of Indian citizenship will +thus become at an early date a practical legislative question, it seems +desirable in the connection to state the constitutional relations of the +subject. The judicial decisions are somewhat confused, although, from +the date (1831) of the decision of Chief-Justice Marshall in the +Cherokee Nation vs. the State of Georgia (5 Peters, 1), to that (1870) +of the decision in the Cherokee Tobacco (11 Wallace, 616), there has +been a marked progress (note especially the decision of Chief-Justice +Taney in the United States vs. Rogers, 4 Howard, 567) towards the +stronger affirmation of the complete and sufficient sovereignty of the +United States. Yet in December, 1870, the Judiciary Committee of the +Senate, Carpenter presenting the Report, after an incomplete, and in +some respects an inaccurate and inconsequential<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a> recital of judicial +opinions, made the following startling announcement:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>"Inasmuch as the Constitution treats Indian tribes as belonging to the +rank of nations capable of making treaties, it is evident that an act of +Congress which should assume to treat the members of a tribe as subject +to the municipal jurisdiction of the United States would be +unconstitutional and void."</p> + +<p>That this is not good law need not be argued, inasmuch as the decisions +previously cited in the United States <i>vs.</i> Rogers and in the Cherokee +Tobacco, assert the complete sovereignty of the United States in strong +terms<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a>; in the latter, the doctrine being explicitly affirmed, that +not only <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>does the capability of making a treaty with the United States, +which has been held to reside in an Indian tribe, not exempt that tribe +from the legislative power of Congress, but that not even a treaty made +and ratified, among the stipulations of which is such an exemption, even +were that exemption the consideration for cessions the benefit of which +the United States has enjoyed and continues to enjoy, can hinder +Congress from at any time extending its complete legislative control +over the tribe. Considerations of good faith may influence individual +Congressmen in such a case; but the constitutional competence of +Congress in the premises is declared to be beyond question.</p> + +<p>Nor is the extraordinary proposition of the Committee's report better in +reason than in law. The argument is in effect this: The United States +makes treaties with foreign nations; the United States cannot legislate +for foreign nations; the United States may make treaties with Indian +tribes: ergo, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>the United States cannot legislate for Indian tribes. +This course of reasoning implies that the sole objection to the United +States legislating for foreign nations is, that they makes treaties with +them: whereas there are several other good and sufficient objections +thereto. It also implies that the sole consideration for the United +States treating with Indian tribes, called by Chief-Justice Marshall +"domestic dependent nations," is, that they cannot legislate for them: +whereas the real consideration has been one of practical convenience, +not of legislative competence.</p> + +<p>We shall best set forth the constitutional relations of this subject by +presenting the premises, whether of fact or of law, upon which all the +judicial decisions relative thereto have been founded.</p> + +<p>1. As matter of fact, the European powers engaged in the discovery and +conquest of the New World left with the Indian tribes the regulation of +their own domestic concerns, while claiming the sovereignty of the soil +occupied by them. The Indian tribes thus continued to act as separate +political communities.<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnanchor">[O]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>2. The Constitution of the United States excludes from the basis of +Congressional representation "Indians not taxed," without further +defining the same.</p> + +<p>3. The Congress of the United States has, with a few recent exceptions, +treated Indians in tribal relations as without the municipal +jurisdiction of the United States.</p> + +<p>4. The Senate of the United States has confirmed nearly four hundred +treaties, negotiated by the executive, under the general treaty-making +powers conferred by the Constitution, with tribes which embrace about +three-fifths of the present Indian population of the United States. The +House of Representatives has, from the foundation of the government, as +occasion required, originated bills for the appropriation of moneys to +carry out the provisions of such treaties.</p> + +<p>This comprises all that is essential in this connection. The <i>indicia</i> +gathered from particular acts of the government, or from the phraseology +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>of individual treaties, really add nothing to the above.</p> + +<p>We believe the following propositions to be consistent with the facts of +history and with the latest judicial decisions.</p> + +<p>1. The exclusion by the Constitution of "Indians not taxed" from the +basis of representation was in no sense a guaranty to the Indian tribes +of their political autonomy, but was a provision in the interest of an +equitable apportionment of political power among the States, some States +having many Indians within their limits, others few or none.</p> + +<p>2. The self-government enjoyed by the Indian tribes under the +Constitution of the United States, as under the European powers, has +always been a government by sufferance, by toleration, by permission. +The United States, for their own convenience, have allowed this +self-government, because to reduce the savages to the condition of +submitting to civilized laws would have involved a great expense of +blood and treasure; while through the tribal organization a much better +government, for the purposes of the civilized power if not for the +welfare of the Indians themselves, could be obtained, than through an +administration which should disregard that organization. But this +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>toleration of savage self-government worked no prejudice to the +sovereignty of the United States.</p> + +<p>3. The decay of a tribe in numbers and in cohesion, no matter to what +extent carried, does not bring the members of such tribe within the +municipal jurisdiction of the State wherein they are found, so long as +the tribal organization continues to be recognized by the National +Government. See the Kansas Indians, 5 Wallace, 737.</p> + +<p>4. Congress is constitutionally competent to extend the laws of the +United States at once over every Indian tribe within the Territories, if +not within the States of the Union, even though treaties may guarantee +to individual tribes complete and perpetual political independence; the +breach of faith involved in the latter case being matter for possible +conscientious scruples on the part of legislators, not for judicial +cognizance. See 11 Wallace, 616; 2 Curtis, 454; 1 Woolworth, 155.</p> + +<p>We have thought it important thus to review the doctrine of the Report +of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because, from the high standing of +the Committee, from the assumption which the Report<a name="FNanchor_P_16" id="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16" class="fnanchor">[P]</a> makes of +completeness in the citation of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>"treaties, laws, and judicial +decisions" pertinent to the subject, on the express ground of a desire +to enlighten, not only Congress, but the country, in respect to our +Indian relations, and from the wide circulation given to the Report, as +compared with that obtained by an ordinary decision of the Circuit or +Supreme Court of the United States, the Report has apparently come to be +accepted by Congress and the country as an authoritative exposition of +the history and law of the subject although, in the very month in which +it was submitted to Congress, the Supreme Court, in the Cherokee +Tobacco, pronounced a doctrine which cuts up that of the Report, root +and branch.</p> + +<p>Such being the constitutional competence of Congress to deal with the +Indians, without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>restraint either from the self-government hitherto +permitted them, or from treaties to which the United States are a party, +it is for Congress to decide, firstly, what the good faith of the nation +requires, and, secondly, what course will best accomplish the social and +industrial elevation of the native tribes, with due consideration had +for the interests of the present body of citizens.</p> + +<p>How, then, stands the matter with the faith of the nation? By the Report +on Indian Affairs for 1872, there appear (p. 16) to be in the +neighborhood of 120,000 Indians with whom the United States have no +treaty relations. These certainly can have no claims to exemption from +direct control, whenever the United States shall see fit to extend its +laws over them, either to incorporate them in the body of its +citizenship, or to seclude them for their own good. There are, again, as +nearly as we can determine by a comparison of treaties with the Reports +of the Indian Office, about 125,000 Indians with whom the United States +have treaties unexpired, but to whom no distinct guaranty or promise of +autonomy has been made. Examination of these treaties reveals nothing +which should prevent the United States from establishing a magistracy +and a code of laws <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>for the government of these tribes, according to +principles suited to their present condition, yet tending to raise them +to a higher social and industrial condition. On the other hand, the +perpetual interdiction of all white persons upon the reservations of +these tribes, except "such officers, agents, and employees of the +government as may be authorized to enter upon Indian reservations in +discharge of duties enjoined by law," would seem to preclude the +possibility of these regions ever being opened to settlement, and the +Indians thereon resolved into the body of citizens on equal terms. But, +as matter of fact, not even such treaty provisions need, with +intelligent and firm but kindly management, greatly or long embarrass +the government in the adjustment of the Indian question according to +either principle which may be adopted, seclusion or citizenship. Few of +these tribes but are obliged, even now, to seek from the United States +more aid than they are entitled to by treaty; while it is certain that +in the near future most, if not all, will be thrown in comparative +helplessness upon our bounty. The United States being the sole party to +which they can cede their lands (8 Wheaton, 543), and the sale of the +great body of these lands being <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>their only resource, the government +will have the opportunity, not only without fraud or wrong to this +people, but for their highest good, and indeed for their salvation from +the doom otherwise awaiting them, to cancel the whole of these +ill-considered treaties, leaving the natives where they ought to +be,—subject to direct control by Congress. We repeat, there need never +be any difficulty in securing, at the right time and in the right way, +the relinquishment of lands or privileges from the Indians. They are, +unfortunately, only too ready to sacrifice the future to present +indulgence; while the government on its part can always afford to pay +them far more for their lands than their lands are worth to them. Under +this relation of the parties in interest, and with the pressure of +actual want, due to the inability of the natives properly to cultivate +what they possess, the United States may at an early date, with good +faith and judicious management, easily secure the relinquishment of +every franchise that stands in the way of a satisfactory adjustment of +the difficulty.</p> + +<p>There is still a third body of Indians, about 55,000 in number, +occupying chiefly the regions known as the Indian Territory, and +representing the tribes which were the subjects of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>colonization +policy of Pres. Monroe, to whom the United States have plighted their +faith that no foreign authority shall ever be extended over them without +their consent. These are not beggarly and vagabond Indians, to whom the +offer of subsistence would be sufficient to obtain the relinquishment of +their franchises, or the cession of their lands. They are +self-supporting, independent, and even wealthy. Their cereal crops +exceed those of all the Territories of the United States combined. In +the number and value of horses and cattle, they are surpassed by the +people of but one Territory; in expenditures for education, by the +people of no Territory.<a name="FNanchor_Q_17" id="FNanchor_Q_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q_17" class="fnanchor">[Q]</a> If these <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>people ever relinquish their +autonomy, it will be because they desire the privileges of American +citizens. This may well be in the immediate future, and surely will be, +sooner or later, unless they are made to fear the violence and greed of +their white neighbors. Meanwhile, they should be honorably protected in +the enjoyment of their treaty rights. They have already advanced so far +in civilization as to secure their own future, as against any thing but +squatter and railroad rapacity; and their fate does not properly form a +part of the Indian problem of the present day.</p> + +<p>Excepting thus the present inhabitants of the so-called Indian +Territory, who ought to be excepted from any scheme that embraces the +half-civilized and the wholly savage tribes, we have practically a clear +field for any policy which Congress shall determine to be best suited to +the serious exigency of the situation; for, however easy to dismiss the +subject for a time with ridicule, the task of so disposing a nomad +population of 200,000 to 240,000, as to reduce to a minimum the +obstruction it shall offer to the progress of settlement and of +industry, without leaving the germs of lasting evil to a score of future +States, and at the same time to secure the highest welfare <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>of that +population,—this task is a most serious one, to which the best +statesmanship of the nation may well address itself.</p> + +<p>In characterizing the classes of persons who will naturally be found +among the advocates of the policy of an immediate bestowal of +citizenship upon the Indian tribes, whether they be willing or +unwilling, whether for good or evil, we have in effect stated all the +arguments in favor of that policy; for it is not probable, that, aside +from those who would properly be placed under one or another of the +classes indicated, there are a score of persons reasonably well informed +in Indian affairs, who would so much as affect to believe that such a +course would have other than disastrous consequences to the natives.</p> + +<p>The considerations which favor the policy of seclusion with more or less +of industrial constraint are so direct and familiar, and are sustained +by so general a concurrence of testimony and authority, that they will +not require us greatly to protract this paper in their exposition and +enforcement. These considerations are four in number; three of them +having especial reference to the interests of the Indians, the fourth +bearing on the welfare of the States to be formed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>out of the territory +now roamed over by the native tribes.</p> + +<p>First: so long as an Indian tribe is left to its own proper forces and +dispositions, free from all foreign attraction, it is not only easily +governed, but the whole body obeys the recognized law of the community +with almost absolute unanimity. No expressions would be too strong to +characterize the social homogeneity of an Indian tribe, and the complete +domination of the accepted ideas of right and wrong, of honor and +baseness. Public opinion is there conclusive upon every individual; and +the spectacle, seen in every town and village with us, of large numbers +openly practising that which public opinion reprobates, or refusing to +do that which public opinion prescribes, is wholly unknown. We do not +say that this is the most desirable as the ultimate form of society; but +this tyranny of sentiment may and should be made a most powerful +auxiliary for good in the early stages of industrial and social progress +for this people.</p> + +<p>Second: it is unfortunately true, that, when the Indian is, by the +powerful attraction of a race which his savage breast never fails to +recognize as superior, released from the control of the public +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>sentiment which he has been accustomed to obey, he submits himself by +an almost irresistible tendency to the worst and not to the best +influences of civilized society. While there are undeniably exceptions +to this statement, it is supported by such a mass of melancholy evidence +in the history of scores of tribes once renowned for all the native +virtues, that no one has the right to advocate the introduction to such +influences of uninstructed and unprovided tribes, unless he is prepared +to contemplate the ruin of nine-tenths of the subjects of his policy.</p> + +<p>Nor is it the worst elements of the Indian which thus submit themselves +to the worst elements of the white community. The very men who bear +themselves most loftily, according to the native standards of virtue, +are quite as likely to fall, under exposure to white contact, as are the +weakest of the tribe. Their familiar attractions all broken, their +immemorial traditions rudely dispelled, their natural leadership +destroyed, the members of a wild tribe, strong and weak together, become +the easy prey of the rascally influences of civilized society.</p> + +<p>Third: the experiment of citizenship, except with the more advanced +tribes, is at the serious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>risk, amounting almost to a certainty, of the +immediate loss to the Indians of the whole of their scanty patrimony, +through the improvident and wasteful alienation of the lands patented to +them, the Indians being left thus without resource for the future, +except in the bounty of the general government or in local charity. On +this point a few facts will be more eloquent than many words.</p> + +<p>The United States have by recent treaties or legislative enactments +admitted to citizenship the following Indians,—In Kansas, Kickapoos, +12; Delawares, 20; Wyandots, 473; Pottawatomies, 1,604: in Dakota, +Sioux, 250: in Minnesota, Winnebagoes, 159: in Wisconsin, Stockbridges, +to a number not yet officially ascertained: in Michigan, Ottawas and +Chippewas, 6,039: in the Indian Territory, Ottawas of Blanchard's Fork, +150. Time has not yet been given for the full development of the +consequences of thus devolving responsibility upon these Indians; but we +already have information, official or semi-official, to the effect that +the majority of the Pottawatomie citizens, after selling their lands in +Kansas, have gone to the Indian Territory, and re-associated themselves +as a tribe; that of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>Wyandots, considerable numbers have attached +themselves to the re-organized tribe in the Indian Territory; that of +the citizen Ottawas of Blanchard's Fork, nearly all have disposed of +their allotted lands, and are still cared for to some extent by the +government as Indians; that of the Ottawas and Chippewas of Michigan, a +majority certainly, and probably a large majority, have sold the lands +patented to them in severalty,—in many cases the negotiation preceding +the issue of patents, two parties of white sharpers contesting for the +favor of the agent, in the way of early information as to the precise +lands assigned, and the disappointed faction, in at least one instance, +resorting to burglary and larceny for the needed documents.</p> + +<p>It will be thus seen, that, of these Indians upon whom the experiment of +citizenship has been tried, more than half, probably at least +two-thirds, are now homeless, and must be re-endowed by the government, +or they will sink to a condition of hopeless poverty and misery.</p> + +<p>Fourth: the dissolution of the tribal bonds, and the dispersing of two +hundred thousand Indians among the settlements, will devolve upon the +present and future States beyond the Missouri an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>almost intolerable +burden of vagabondage, pauperism, and crime. It is not even essential to +the result of a dispersion of these tribes that the law should pronounce +their dissolution as political communities. Unless the system of +reservations shall soon be recast, and the laws of non-intercourse +thoroughly enforced, the next fifteen or twenty years will see the great +majority of the Indians on the plains mixed up with white settlements, +wandering in small camps from place to place, shifting sores upon the +public body, the men resorting for a living to basket-making, beggary, +and hog-stealing, the women to fortune-telling, beggary, and harlotry; +while a remnant will seek to maintain a little longer, in the mountains, +their savage independence, fleeing before the advance of settlement when +they can, fighting in sullen despair when they must. It is doubtless +true that some tribes could still remain together as social, even after +being dissolved as legal, communities; but the fate we have indicated +would certainly befall by far the greater part of the Indians of the +plains, were the reservation system broken up in their present social +and industrial condition. To believe that a pioneer population of two, +three, or four millions, such as is likely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>to occupy this region within +the next twenty years, can, in addition to its own proper elements of +disorder, safely absorb such a mass of corruption, requires no small +faith in the robust virtue of our people, and in the saving efficacy of +republican institutions.</p> + +<p>This last consideration we have urged, not on behalf of the Indians, but +in the interest of the present white communities beyond the Missouri, to +whom such a dispersion of the tribes would be a far greater burden than +the maintenance of the reservation system in its integrity could +possibly be, and in the interest of a score of States of the Union yet +to be formed out of that territory. Surely it is not in such cement that +we wish to have the foundations of our future society laid.</p> + +<p>We conclude, then, that Indian citizenship is to be regarded as an end, +and not as a means; that it is the goal to which each tribe should in +turn be conducted, through a course of industrial instruction and +constraint, maintained by the government with kindness but also with +firmness, under the shield of the reservation system. It is true that +this system can no longer be kept up without sacrifice on our part. In +the days of Pres. Monroe, the sequestration of the Indians <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>involved +only the expense of transporting eighty or ninety thousand persons to a +region not settled, nor then desired for settlement. To-day there is no +portion of our territory where citizens of the United States are not +preparing to make their homes. To cut off a reservation sufficient for +the wants of this unfortunate people in their rude ways of life; to +hedge it in with strict laws of non-intercourse, turning aside, for the +purpose, railway and highway alike; and, upon the soil thus secluded, to +work patiently out the problem of Indian civilization,—is not to be +deemed a light sacrifice to national honor and duty. Yet that the +government and people of the United States cannot discharge their +obligations to the aborigines without pains and care and expense, +affords no reason for declining the task.</p> + +<p>The claim of the Indian upon us is of no common character. The advance +of railways and settlements is fast pushing him from his home, and, in +the steady extinction of game, is cutting him off from the only means of +subsistence of which he knows how to avail himself. He will soon be left +homeless and helpless in the midst of civilization, upon the soil that +once was his alone. The freedom of territorial and industrial expansion +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>which is bringing imperial greatness to the nation, to the Indian +brings wretchedness, destitution, beggary. Surely there is obligation +found, in such considerations as these, to make good in some way to him +the loss by which we so largely gain. Nor is this obligation one that +can be discharged by lavish endowments, which it is of moral certainty +he will squander, or by merely placing him in situations where he might +prosper, had he the industrial aptitudes of the white man, acquired +through centuries of laborious training. Savage as he is by no fault of +his own, and stripped at once of savage independence and savage +competence by our act, for our advantage, we have made ourselves +responsible before God and the world for his rescue from destruction, +and his elevation to social and industrial manhood, at whatever expense +and at whatever inconvenience. The corner-stone of our Indian policy +should be the recognition by government and by the people, that we owe +the Indian, not endowments and lands only, but also forbearance, +patience, care, and instruction.</p> + +<p>It is not unusual to sneer at the sentimentality of "the Quakers" and +other active friends of this race. But we may as well remember that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>posterity will grow much more sentimental over the fate of the Indian +than any Quaker or philanthropist of to-day. The United States will be +judged at the bar of history according to what they shall have done in +two respects,—by their disposition of negro slavery, and by their +treatment of the Indians. In the one matter, the result is fortunately +secure; nor will it be remembered against us, in diminution of our +honor, that we procrastinated and sought to evade the issue, and for a +time made terms and compromised with wrong. In that, when at last we +were brought face to face with the question, we did the one thing that +was right, and in tears and blood expiated our own and our fathers' +errors, the ages to come will give us no grudging and stinted praise. +Would that we were equally sure that no stain will rest upon our fame +for what shall yet be done or left undone towards the original +possessors of our soil! What is past cannot be recalled; nor has any +thing yet gone into history that need deeply dishonor us as a nation. +Posterity will judge very leniently of all that has been done in heat of +blood, in the struggle for life and for the possession of the soil by +the early Colonists; it will not greatly attribute blame that, in our +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>industrial and territorial expansion, and a conquest of savage nature +more rapid than is recorded of any other people, savage man has suffered +somewhat at our hands; it will not attempt nicely to apportion the +mutual injuries of the frontier, to decide which was first and which was +worst in wrong, red man or white; it will have ample consideration for +the difficulties which the government has encountered in preserving the +peace between the natives and the bold, rude pioneers of civilization. +But if, when the Indians shall have been thrown helpless upon our mercy, +surrounded and disarmed by the extension of settlement, and impoverished +by the very causes which promote our wealth and greatness, we fail to +make ample provision out of our abundance, and to apply it in all +patience and with all pains, to save alive these remnants of a once +powerful people, and reconcile them to civilization, there is much +reason to fear, that, however successfully we may excuse ourselves to +ourselves by pleading the manifest destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race, +impartial history will pronounce us recreant to a sacred duty.</p> + +<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> From The International Review, May, 1874.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> The doctrine of a <i>vanishing</i> Indian nationality was +strongly insisted on by Mr. Justice McLean in his opinion in Worcester +vs. the State of Georgia:—</p> + +<p class="noin">"If a tribe of Indians shall become so degraded or reduced in numbers as +to lose the power of self-government, the protection of the local law, +of necessity, must be extended over them. The point at which this +exercise of power by a State would be proper need not now be considered, +if, indeed, it be a judicial question.... But, if a contingency shall +occur which shall render the Indians who reside in a State incapable of +self-government, either by moral degradation or a reduction of their +numbers, it would undoubtedly be in the power of a State government to +extend over them the ægis of its laws."—6 <i>Peters</i>, pp. 593-4.</p> + +<p class="noin">If, as would appear, Mr. Justice McLean by this intends that a State may +exercise such discretion so long as the United States continue to +recognize the tribal organization, however feeble or corrupt it may in +fact be, the doctrine is flatly contradicted by that of the Supreme +Court in the Kansas Indians.—5 <i>Wallace</i>, 737.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> We are aware that this is a heavy charge; but it is +justified by the facts. The recital is incomplete. The decision in the +United States <i>vs.</i> Rogers is not referred to. This case is, as it was +treated by the Supreme Court in the Cherokee Tobacco, of the highest +importance.</p> + +<p class="noin">The recital is inaccurate. An opinion is given at length as that of Kent +in Jackson vs. Goodell, 20 Johnson, 193. This is a case in the Supreme +Court of New York, Chief-Justice Spencer delivering the opinion, Kent +having been previously appointed chancellor. The expressions quoted by +the Committee are to be found in Goodell vs. Jackson, in error to the +Court of Appeals, 20 Johnson, 693. The recital is inconsequential, as +will appear by what is said further in the text.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> "We think it too firmly and clearly established to admit of +dispute, that the Indian tribes residing within the territorial limits +of the United States are subject to their authority; and where the +country occupied by them is not within the limit of one of the States, +Congress may by law punish any offence committed there, whether the +offender be a white man or an Indian."—<i>Taney, Chief-Justice.</i></p> + +<p class="noin">In the Cherokee Tobacco, the court, quoting from Chief-Justice Taney the +sentence just preceding, and a similar utterance of Chief-Justice +Marshall, remarks, "Both these propositions are so well settled in our +jurisprudence, that it would be a waste of time to discuss them, or to +refer to further authorities in their support."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15"><span class="label">[O]</span></a> Throughout the whole course of this discussion on the +constitutional relations of the Indians, we should indicate as subject +to possible exception the tribes found upon soil ceded by Mexico. It is +claimed, that, as Mexico never treated the Indians within its +jurisdiction other than as a peculiar class of citizens, all the members +of those tribes became citizens of the United States by virtue of the +provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_P_16" id="Footnote_P_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_P_16"><span class="label">[P]</span></a> "Although the Committee have not regarded the questions +proposed for their consideration by this resolution as at all difficult +to answer, yet respect for the Senate, which ordered the investigation, +and the existence of some loose popular notions of modern date in regard +to the power of the President and Senate to exercise the treaty-making +power in dealing with the Indian tribes, have induced your Committee to +examine the questions thus at length, and present extracts from +treaties, laws, and judicial decisions; and your Committee indulge the +hope that a reference to these sources of information may tend to fix +more clearly in the minds of Congress and the people the true theory of +our relations to these unfortunate tribes."—<i>Report</i>, p. 11. It would, +perhaps, have been fortunate had the Committee found the questions +difficult.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_Q_17" id="Footnote_Q_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Q_17"><span class="label">[Q]</span></a> See Annual Report, Board of Indian Commissioners, 1872, p. +12.</p> + +<p class="noin">Constant efforts are made to break the force of such comparisons as +these, by asserting that the progress of the Indian Territory in +industry and the arts of life is due to white men incorporated with the +Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws. If this be true, it would seem that +white men, when brought under Indian laws, and adopted into Indian +families, exhibit qualities superior to those which they develop when +controlling themselves, and organizing their own forms of industry and +of government. This suggests the inquiry, whether it might not be well +to turn over two or three Territories that might be named, to the +Indians, with liberty to pick out white men for adoption and for +instruction, in the hope that these communities might in time be brought +up to the condition of that of which the Indians have had sole control +for forty years.</p> +</div> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><a name="PAGE_148" id="PAGE_148"></a> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> +<br /> +<h2>AN ACCOUNT</h2> + +<h3>OF THE NUMBERS, LOCATION, AND SOCIAL, AND +INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF EACH IMPORTANT +TRIBE AND BAND OF INDIANS +WITHIN THE UNITED STATES.</h3> +<br /> + +<p>[From the report of Francis A. Walker, U. S. Commissioner of Indian +Affairs, for the year 1872.]</p> + +<p>The Indians within the limits of the United States, exclusive of those +in Alaska, number, approximately, 300,000.</p> + +<p>(<i>a</i>) They may be divided, according to their geographical location or +range, into five grand divisions, as follows: in Minnesota, and States +east of the Mississippi River, about 32,500; in Nebraska, Kansas, and +the Indian Territory, 70,650; in the Territories of Dakota, Montana, +Wyoming, and Idaho, 65,000; in Nevada, and the Territories of Colorado, +New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona, 84,000; and on the Pacific slope, +48,000.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>(<i>b</i>) In respect to the three lines of railroads—built or +projected—between the States and the Pacific Ocean, viz., the northern, +central, and southern routes, they may be divided, excluding those +residing east of Minnesota and of the Missouri River south of Dakota, as +follows: between the proposed northern route and the British +Possessions, about 36,000; between the northern and central routes, +92,000; between the central and the proposed southern routes, 61,000; +and between the southern route and Mexico, 85,000: making a total of +274,000.</p> + +<p>(<i>c</i>) As regards their means of support and methods of subsistence, they +may be divided as follows: those who support themselves upon their own +reservations, receiving nothing from the government except interest on +their own moneys, or annuities granted them in consideration of the +cession of their lands to the United States, number about 130,000; those +who are entirely subsisted by the government, about 31,000; those in +part subsisted, 84,000,—together about 115,000; those who subsist by +hunting and fishing, upon roots, nuts, berries, &c., or by begging and +stealing, about 55,000.</p> + +<p>(<i>d</i>) They may be divided again, with respect <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>to their connection with +the government, as follows: there are about 150,000 who may be said to +remain constantly upon their reservations, and are under the complete +control of agents appointed by the government; 95,000 who at times visit +their agencies either for food or for gossip, or for both, but are +generally roaming either on or off their reservations, engaged in +hunting or fishing; and 55,000 who never visit an agency, and over whom +the government as yet exercises practically no control, but most of whom +are inoffensive, and commit no acts of hostility against the government.</p> + +<p>(<i>e</i>) Again: it may be said, that, of the 300,000 Indians of the +country, about 180,000 have treaties with the government; 40,000 have no +treaties with the United States, but have reservations set apart by +executive order or otherwise for their occupancy, and are in charge of +agents appointed by the government; 25,000 have no reservations, but are +more or less under the control of agents appointed for them, and receive +more or less assistance from the government; the remainder consisting of +the same 55,000 already twice described, over whom the government +exercises, practically, no control, and for whom there are no treaty or +other provisions.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>(<i>f</i>) As to civilization, they may, though with no great degree of +assurance, be divided, according to a standard taken with reasonable +reference to what might fairly be expected of a race with such +antecedents and traditions, as follows: civilized, 97,000; +semi-civilized, 125,000; wholly barbarous, 78,000.</p> +<br /> + +<h3>MINNESOTA, AND EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.</h3> + +<h4>NEW YORK.</h4> + +<p>The Indians of New York, remnants of the once powerful "Six Nations," +number five thousand and seventy. They occupy six reservations in the +State, containing in the aggregate 68,668 acres. Two of these +reservations, viz., the Alleghany and Cattaraugus, belonged originally +to the Colony of Massachusetts, but by sale and assignment passed into +the hands of a company, the Indians holding a perpetual right of +occupancy, and the company referred to, or the individual members +thereof, owning the ultimate fee. The same state of facts formerly +existed in regard to the Tonawanda reserve; but the Indians who occupy +it have purchased the ultimate fee of a portion of the reserve, which is +now held in trust for them by the Secretary of the Interior. The State +of New York exercises sovereignty over <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>these reservations. The +reservations occupied by the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Tuscaroras, have +been provided for by treaty stipulations between the Indians and the +State of New York. All six reserves are held and occupied by the Indians +in common. While the Indian tribes of the continent, with few +exceptions, have been steadily decreasing in numbers, those of New York +have of late more than held their own, as is shown by an increase of one +hundred in the present reports over the reported number in 1871, and of +thirteen hundred over the number embraced in the United-States census of +1860. On the New-York reservations are twenty-eight schools; the +attendance during some portions of the past year exceeding eleven +hundred, the daily average attendance being six hundred and eight. Of +the teachers employed, fifteen are Indians, as fully competent for this +position as their white associates. An indication of what is to be +accomplished in the future, in an educational point of view, is found in +the successful effort made in August last to establish a teacher's +institute on the Cattaraugus reservation for the education of teachers +specially for Indian schools. Thirty-eight applicants attended; and +twenty-six are now under training. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>The statistics of individual wealth +and of the aggregate product of agricultural and other industry are, in +general, favorable; and a considerable increase in these regards is +observed from year to year. Twenty thousand acres are under cultivation: +the cereal crops are good; while noticeable success has been achieved in +the raising of fruit.</p> + + +<h4>MICHIGAN.</h4> + +<p>The bands or tribes residing in Michigan are the Chippewas of Saginaw, +Swan Creek, and Black River; the Ottawas and Chippewas; the +Pottawatomies of Huron; and the L'Anse band of Chippewas.</p> + +<p><i>The Chippewas</i> of Saginaw, Swan Creek, and Black River, numbering +sixteen hundred and thirty, and the Ottawas and Chippewas, six thousand +and thirty-nine, are indigenous to the country. They are well advanced +in civilization; have, with few exceptions, been allotted lands under +treaty provisions, for which they have received patents; and are now +entitled to all the privileges and benefits of citizens of the United +States. Those to whom no allotments have been made can secure homesteads +under the provisions of the act of June 10, 1872. All treaty +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>stipulations with these Indians have expired. They now have no money or +other annuities paid to them by the United States Government. The three +tribes first named have in all four schools, with one hundred and +fifteen scholars; and the last, two schools, with one hundred and +fifty-two scholars.</p> + +<p><i>The Pottawatomies</i> of Huron number about fifty.</p> + +<p><i>The L'Anse</i> band of Chippewas, numbering eleven hundred and +ninety-five, belong with the other bands of the Chippewas of Lake +Superior. They occupy a reservation of about forty-eight thousand three +hundred acres, situated on Lake Superior, in the extreme northern part +of the State. But few of them are engaged in agriculture, most of them +depending for their subsistence on hunting and fishing. They have two +schools, with an attendance of fifty-six scholars.</p> + +<p>The progress of the Indians of Michigan in civilization and industry has +been greatly hindered in the past by a feeling of uncertainty in regard +to their permanent possession and enjoyment of their homes. Since the +allotment of land, and the distribution of either patents or homestead +certificates to these Indians (the L'Anse or Lake <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>Superior Chippewas, a +people of hunting and fishing habits, excepted), a marked improvement +has been manifested on their part in regard to breaking land and +building houses. The aggregate quantity of land cultivated by the +several tribes is eleven thousand six hundred and twenty acres; corn, +oats, and wheat being the chief products. The dwellings occupied consist +of two hundred and forty-four frame and eight hundred and thirty-five +log houses. The aggregate population of the several tribes named +(including the confederated "Chippewas, Ottawas, and Pottawatomies," +about two hundred and fifty souls, with whom the government made a final +settlement in 1866 of its treaty obligations) is, by the report of their +agent for the current year, nine thousand one hundred and seventeen,—an +increase over the number reported for 1871 of four hundred and two, due, +however, perhaps as much to the return of absent Indians as to the +excess of births over deaths. In educational matters these Indians have, +of late, most unfortunately, fallen short of the results of former +years; for the reason mainly that, their treaties expiring, the +provisions previously existing for educational uses failed.</p> + + +<h4><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>WISCONSIN.</h4> + +<p>The bands or tribes in Wisconsin are the Chippewas of Lake Superior, the +Menomonees, the Stockbridges and Munsees, the Oneidas, and certain stray +bands (so called) of Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies, and Chippewas.</p> + +<p><i>The Chippewas</i> of Lake Superior (under which head are included the +following bands: Fond du Lac, Boise Forte, Grand Portage, Red Cliff, Bad +River, Lac de Flambeau, and Lac Court D'Oreille) number about five +thousand one hundred and fifty. They constitute a part of the Ojibways +(anglicized in the term Chippewas), formerly one of the most powerful +and warlike nations in the north-west, embracing many bands, and ranging +over an immense territory, extending along the shores of Lakes Huron, +Michigan, and Superior, to the steppes of the Upper Mississippi. Of this +great nation large numbers are still found in Minnesota, many in +Michigan, and a fragment in Kansas.</p> + +<p>The bands above mentioned by name are at present located on several +small reservations set apart for them by treaties of Sept. 30, 1854, and +April 7, 1866, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>comprising in all about six +hundred and ninety-five thousand two hundred and ninety acres. By act of +Congress of May 29, 1872, provision was made for the sale, with the +consent of the Indians, of three of these reservations, viz., the Lac de +Flambeau and Lac Court D'Oreille in Wisconsin, and the Fond du Lac in +Minnesota; and for the removal of the Indians located thereon to the Bad +River reservation, where there is plenty of good, arable land, and where +they can be properly cared for, and instructed in agriculture and +mechanics.</p> + +<p>The greater part of these Indians at present lead a somewhat roving +life, finding their subsistence chiefly in game hunted by them, in the +rice gathered in its wild state, and in the fish afforded by waters +conveniently near. Comparatively little is done in the way of +cultivating the soil. Certain bands have of late been greatly +demoralized by contact with persons employed in the construction of the +Northern Pacific Railroad, the line of which runs near one (the Fond du +Lac) of their reservations. Portions of this people, however, especially +those situated at the Bad River reservation, have begun to evince an +earnest desire for self-improvement. Many live in houses of rude +construction, and raise small <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>crops of grain and vegetables; others +labor among the whites; and a number find employment in cutting rails, +fence-posts, and saw-logs for the government. In regard to the efforts +made to instruct the children in letters, it may be said, that, without +being altogether fruitless, the results have been thus far meagre and +somewhat discouraging. The majority of the parents profess to wish to +have their children educated, and ask for schools; but, when the means +are provided and the work undertaken, the difficulties in the way of +success to any considerable extent appear in the undisciplined character +of the scholars, which has to be overcome by the teacher without +parental co-operation, and in the great irregularity of attendance at +school, especially on the part of those who are obliged to accompany +their parents to the rice-fields, the sugar-camps, or the +fishing-grounds.</p> + +<p><i>The Menomonees</i> number thirteen hundred and sixty-two, and are located +on a reservation of two hundred and thirty thousand four hundred acres +in the north-eastern part of Wisconsin. They formerly owned most of the +eastern portion of the State, and, by treaty entered into with the +government on the 18th October, 1848, ceded the same for a home in +Minnesota upon lands that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>had been obtained by the United States from +the Chippewas; but, becoming dissatisfied with the arrangement, as not +having accorded them what they claimed to be rightfully due, +subsequently protested, and manifested great unwillingness to remove. In +view of this condition of affairs, they were, by the President, +permitted to remain in Wisconsin, and temporarily located upon the lands +they now occupy, which were secured to them by a subsequent treaty made +with the tribe on the 12th May, 1854. This reservation is well watered +by lakes and streams, the latter affording excellent power and +facilities for moving logs and lumber to market; the most of their +country abounding with valuable pine timber. A considerable portion of +the Menomonees have made real and substantial advancement in +civilization; numbers of them are engaged in agriculture; others find +remunerative employment in the lumbering camp established upon their +reservation, under the management of the government agent, while a few +still return, at times, to their old pursuits of hunting and fishing.</p> + +<p>Under the plan adopted by the department in 1871, in regard to cutting +and selling the pine timber belonging to these Indians, 2,000,000 feet +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>have been cut and driven, realizing $23,731, of which individual +Indians received for their labor over $3,000, the treasury of the tribe +deriving a net profit of $5 per thousand feet. The agent estimates, +that, for labor done by the Indians upon the reservation, at lumbering, +and for work outside on railroads, during the past year, about twenty +thousand dollars has been earned and received, exclusive of the labor +rendered in building houses, raising crops, making sugar, gathering +rice, and hunting for peltries. The work of education upon the +reservations has been of late quite unsatisfactory, but one small school +being now in operation, with seventy scholars, the average attendance +being fifty.</p> + +<p><i>The Stockbridges and Munsees</i>, numbering two hundred and fifty, occupy +a reservation of sixty thousand eight hundred acres adjoining the +Menomonees. The Stockbridges came originally from Massachusetts and New +York. After several removals they, with the Munsees, finally located on +their present reservation. Under the provisions of the act of Feb. 6, +1871, steps are now being taken to dispose of all of their reservation, +with the exception of eighteen sections best adapted for agricultural +purposes, which are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>reserved for their future use. They have no treaty +stipulations with the United States at the present time; nor do they +receive any annuities of any kind from the government. These +tribes—indeed, it may be said this tribe (the Stockbridges); for of the +Munsees there probably remain not more than a half a dozen souls—were +formerly an intelligent, prosperous people, not a whit behind the most +advanced of the race, possessed of good farms, well instructed, and +industrious. Unfortunately for them, though much to the advantage of the +government, which acquired thereby a valuable tract of country for white +settlement, they removed, in 1857, to their present place of abode. The +change has proved highly detrimental to their interests and prospects. +Their new reservation, the greater part poor in soil and seriously +affected by wet seasons and frequent frosts, has never yielded them more +than a meagre subsistence. Many have for this reason left the tribe, and +have been for years endeavoring to obtain a livelihood among the whites, +maintaining but little intercourse with those remaining on the +reservation, yet still holding their rights in the tribal property. The +result has been bickerings and faction quarrels, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>prejudicial to the +peace and advancement of the community. More than one-half of the +present membership of the tribe, from both the "citizen" and the +"Indian" parties, into which it has been long divided, are reported by +the agent as having decided to avail themselves of the enrollment +provisions in the act of Congress of February, 1871, before referred to, +by which they will finally receive their share of the tribal property, +and become citizens of the United States. Those who desire to retain +their tribal relation under the protection of the United States may, +under the act adverted to, if they so elect by their council, procure a +new location for their future home. The school interests and religious +care of this people are under the superintendence of Mr. Jeremiah +Slingerland, a Stockbridge of much repute for his intelligence, and his +success in the cause of the moral and educational improvement of his +people.</p> + +<p><i>The Oneidas</i>, numbering twelve hundred and fifty-nine, have a +reservation of 60,800 acres near Green Bay. They constitute the greater +portion of the tribe of that name (derived from Lake Oneida, where the +tribe then resided), formerly one of the "Six Nations." Two hundred and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>fifty of the Oneidas yet remain in New York on the reservations already +described. Those who are found in Michigan are progressing in the arts +of civilized life, many of them being intelligent, industrious, and ripe +for citizenship. The progress of those best disposed and most advanced +is, however, retarded by the fact of the tribal lands being held in +common, by which the incentive to individual exertion is greatly +impaired, and habits of industry and frugality discouraged. There are +also some members who fail to keep pace with the progress of the tribe, +in part, probably, from the same cause which hinders the improvement of +those better disposed, but principally from that fatal curse of the +Indian, the passion for intoxicating liquor, which is especially +developed among those members of the tribe who are engaged in lumbering.</p> + +<p>It is now believed that a large majority of the tribe favor the division +of their lands, and the allotment of parcels to families and +individuals,—a measure deemed to be of the first importance to the +future welfare of this people, and which, it is suggested, should be the +subject of legislative action with a view to its consummation at the +earliest practicable date. There are two schools <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>for this tribe, having +on the rolls two hundred and seventeen scholars, the average attendance +being ninety.</p> + +<p>The stray bands of Winnebagoes, Chippewas, and Pottawatomies number +about sixteen hundred. They are scattered in small parties over the +central and northern portions of the State, and are those members of the +tribes named who did not remove when their respective tribes went west +of the Mississippi. They receive no assistance from the government, and +subsist by cultivating small patches of corn and vegetables, by hunting, +fishing, and gathering berries, and by working for the whites at certain +seasons of the year. A number own a few acres: others rent small patches +from the whites. They are accused of causing considerable annoyance to +the farmers in some localities; and, on account of complaints having +been made in this respect, Congress has appropriated funds to remove +them to the tribes to which they respectively belong, or to some place +in the Indian Territory south of Kansas. For various reasons their +removal has not yet been undertaken. Indeed, while this may be found +practicable, I doubt whether it can be thoroughly accomplished without +additional and severe legislation on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>part of Congress, as the +Indians are attached to the country, and express great repugnance to +their contemplated removal from it. On this account, and for the reason +that they cannot be supposed to feel much interest in those from whom +they have been so long separated, and by whom they might not be heartily +welcomed, it is probable that those who should be removed against their +will would return to their old haunts, and do the same as often as they +should be removed therefrom.</p> + +<h4>MINNESOTA.</h4> + +<p>The Indians residing within the limits of Minnesota, as in the case of +those of the same name living in Wisconsin, heretofore noticed, +constitute a portion of the Ojibway or Chippewa nation, and comprise the +following bands: Mississippi, Pillager, Winnebagoshish, Pembina, Red +Lake, Boise Forte, Fond du Lac, and Grand Portage. The last three bands, +being attached to the agency for the Chippewas of Lake Superior, have +been treated of in connection with the Indians of Wisconsin. The five +first-named bands number in the aggregate about six thousand four +hundred and fifty-five souls, and occupy, or rather it is intended <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>they +shall ultimately occupy, ample reservations in the central and northern +portion of the State, known as the White Earth, Leech Lake, and Red Lake +reservations, containing altogether about 4,672,000 acres, a portion of +which is very valuable for its pine timber.</p> + +<p>The condition of these Indians, except those upon the White Earth +reservation, has been but little changed during the past year from that +of several years preceding. Great difficulty is still experienced in +inducing the Indians to remain permanently upon their reservations. A +roving life is still preferred by many, their old haunts presenting more +attractions for them than new homes with the unavoidable necessity of +labor for subsistence. Yet no inconsiderable number are already +evidencing by their efforts, as well as by their professions, a new +spirit of industry and enterprise. The past year has been one of trouble +and unusual excitement on the part of both whites and Indians, on +account of the ill behavior of the Pillager band; and apprehensions of a +serious outbreak were for a time entertained. Nine murders of citizens +are reported to have been committed by individual Chippewas, mainly if +not wholly of this band; and threats were made on the part of some of +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>Pillagers, which, if carried out, would have involved nearly all of +the Indians of this section in hostilities. Happily, by the prompt +arrival of United States troops upon the White Earth reservation, and +more especially by the strong disapprobation of the conduct of the +Pillagers expressed in council by the general body of Leech Lake +Indians, and their evident purpose to unite with the government in +putting down any and all enemies of the peace, the crisis was passed; +and comparative quiet has again been restored. In view of the atrocities +committed by the Pillagers, and of the alarm occasioned thereby among +the citizens of Minnesota, Gov. Austin issued a proclamation requiring +all Indians to remain upon their reservations under penalty of arrest, +to be effected by the militia of the State, should it be found +necessary. In the present condition of things, however, a compliance by +all with this requirement is simply impossible; and there is danger, +that, without the exercise of great prudence and forbearance on the part +of the State authorities, further and greater difficulties may arise. +The "Otter Tail" Pillagers, to whom the difficulties referred to are +principally due, have the right to a home on the White Earth +reservation. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>They removed to it in 1871; but, as they were not provided +with the means of opening farms, nor with subsistence during the time +necessary to raise a crop, they returned to their former haunts. They +are now warned off from their grounds at Otter Tail by the State +authorities. The larger portion of the Pillagers, together with the +Winnebagoshish band, about fifteen hundred in number, live around Leech +Lake. Their general reputation for turbulence and worthlessness of +character is well known and of long standing: still there are those who +seem willing and ready to work if assisted by the government.</p> + +<p>Agent Smith, in charge, says that their country is barren, with only +here and there patches susceptible of tillage, accessible only by canoe +or steamboat. In this connection, and adverting to the murders committed +by the Pillagers, it is but just to notice that all lawlessness in +Minnesota, in the region of the Indian reservations, is not confined to +Indians. The murder of two Indians of the Otter Tail Pillagers, for the +offence of camping on a white man's ground, is reported; while two +others, who had been arrested at White Earth on suspicion of complicity +in a murder, and lodged in jail for trial, were taken therefrom by a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>mob, and hung. Such conduct can but have a pernicious effect upon the +Indian mind, and tend to arouse a spirit of revenge and retaliation.</p> + +<p><i>Mississippi bands.</i>—These Indians reside in different localities. Most +of them are on their reservation at White Earth: others are at Mille +Lac, Gull Lake, and some at White Oak Point reservations. Upon the +first-named reservation operations have been quite extensive in the +erection of school-buildings, dwelling-houses, shops, and mills, and in +breaking ground. At one time during the past summer there was a prospect +of an abundant yield from 300 acres sown in cereals; but, unfortunately, +the grasshoppers swept away the entire crop; and a second crop of +buckwheat and turnips proved a failure. The Indians on this reservation +are well-behaved, and inclined to be industrious. Many of them are +engaged in tilling the soil, while others are learning the mechanical +arts; and they may, as a body, be said to be making considerable +progress in the pursuits of civilized life. About one-half of the +Indians at Gull Lake have been removed to White Earth: the remainder are +opposed to removal, and will, in their present feeling, rather forfeit +their annuities than change their location. The Mille Lac <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>Chippewas, +who continue to occupy the lands ceded by them in 1863, with reservation +of the right to live thereon during good behavior, are indisposed to +leave their old home for the new one designed for them on the White +Earth reservation. Only about twenty-five have thus far been induced to +remove. Their present reservation is rich in pine lands, the envy of +lumber dealers; and there is a strong pressure on all sides for their +early removal. They should have help from the government, whether they +remain or remove; and this could be afforded to a sufficient extent by +the sale for their benefit of the timber upon the lands now occupied by +them. Probably the government could provide for them in no better way.</p> + +<p><i>The White Oak Point Chippewas</i> were formerly known as Sandy Lake +Indians. They were removed in 1867 from Sandy Lake and Rabbit Lake to +White Oak Point on the Mississippi, near the eastern part of the Leech +Lake reservation. This location is unfavorable to their moral +improvement and material progress, from its proximity to the +lumber-camps of the whites. Thus far the effort made to better their +condition, by placing them on farming land, has proved a failure. The +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>ground broken for them has gone back into grass; and their log-houses +are in ruin, the former occupants betaking themselves to their wonted +haunts. It would be well if these Indians could be induced to remove to +the White Earth reservation.</p> + +<p>At Red Lake the Indians have had a prosperous year: good crops of corn +and potatoes have been raised, and a number of houses built. This band +would be in much better circumstances were they possessed of a greater +quantity of arable lands. That to which they are at present limited +allows but five acres, suitable for that use, to each family. It is +proposed to sell their timber, and with the proceeds clear lands, +purchase stock, and establish a manual-labor school.</p> + +<p><i>The Pembina</i> bands reside in Dakota Territory, but are here noticed in +connection with the Minnesota Indians, because of their being attached +to the same agency. They have no reservation, having ceded their lands +by treaty made in 1863, but claim title to Turtle Mountain in Dakota, on +which some of them resided at the time of the treaty, and which lies +west of the line of the cession then made. They number, the full-bloods +about three hundred and fifty, and the half-breeds about one hundred. +They lead a somewhat <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>nomadic life, depending upon the chase for a +precarious subsistence, in connection with an annuity from the +government of the United States.</p> + +<p><i>The Chippewas</i> of Minnesota have had but few educational advantages; +but with the facilities now being afforded, and with the earnest +endeavors that are now being put forth by their agent and the teachers +employed, especially at White Earth, it is expected that their interests +in this regard will be greatly promoted. At White Earth school +operations have been quite successful; so much so, that it will require +additional accommodations to meet the demands of the Indians for the +education of their children. The only other school in operation is that +at Red Lake, under the auspices of the American Indian Mission +Association.</p> + + +<h4>INDIANA.</h4> + +<p>There are now in Indiana about three hundred and forty-five Miamies, who +did not go to Kansas when the tribe moved to that section under the +treaty of 1840. They are good citizens, many being thrifty farmers, +giving no trouble either to their white neighbors or to the government. +There is also a small band called the Eel River band of Miamies, +residing in this State and in Michigan.</p> + + +<h4><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>NORTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE, AND GEORGIA.</h4> + +<p><i>Cherokees.</i>—There are residing in these States probably about +seventeen hundred Cherokees, who elected to remain, under the provisions +respecting Cherokees averse to removal, contained in the twelfth article +of the treaty with the Cherokees of 1835. Under the act of July 29, +1848, a <i>per capita</i> transportation and subsistence fund of $53.33 was +created and set apart for their benefit in accordance with a census-roll +made under the provisions of said act, the interest on which fund until +such time as they shall individually remove to the Indian country is the +only money to which those named in said roll, who are living, or the +heirs of those who have deceased, are entitled. This interest is too +small to be of any benefit; and some action should be taken by Congress, +with a view of having all business matters between these Indians and the +government settled, by removing such of them west as now desire to go, +and paying those who decline to remove, the <i>per capita</i> fund referred +to. The government has no agent residing with these Indians. In +accordance with their earnestly expressed desire to be brought under the +immediate charge of the government, as its wards, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>Congress, by law +approved July 27, 1868, directed that the Secretary of the Interior +should cause the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to take the same +supervisory charge of them as of other tribes of Indians; but this +practically amounts to nothing, in the absence of means to carry out the +intention of the law with any beneficial result to the Indians. The +condition of this people is represented to be deplorable. Before the +late rebellion they were living in good circumstances, engaged, with all +the success which could be expected, in farming, and in various minor +industrial pursuits. Like all other inhabitants of this section, they +suffered much during the war, and are now from this and other causes +much impoverished.</p> + + +<h4>FLORIDA.</h4> + +<p><i>Seminoles.</i>—There are a few Seminoles—supposed to number about three +hundred—still residing in Florida, being those, or the descendants of +those, who refused to accompany the tribe when it removed to the west +many years ago. But little is known of their condition and temper.</p> +<br /> + +<h3><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>NEBRASKA, KANSAS, AND THE INDIAN TERRITORY.</h3> + +<p>The tribes residing in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Indian Territory are +divided as follows: in Nebraska about 6,485; in Kansas, 1,500; in the +Indian Territory, 62,465.</p> + +<h4>NEBRASKA.</h4> + +<p>The Indians in Nebraska are the Santee Sioux, Winnebagoes, Omahas, +Pawnees, Sacs and Foxes of the Missouri, Iowas, and the Otoes and +Missourias.</p> + +<p><i>The Santee Sioux</i>, now numbering nine hundred and sixty-five, a +decrease from last year of twenty-two, are a portion of the Sisseton, +Wahpeton, Medawakanton, and Wahpakoota bands of Sioux of the +Mississippi, belonging thus to the great Sioux or Dakota nation. They +formerly, with other members of the same bands,—now located on +reservations in Dakota, one at Devil's Lake in the north-east corner of +the Territory, and another at Lake Traverse near their old home,—had an +extensive and valuable reservation in Minnesota, stretching, with a +width of ten miles, a long distance on the south side of the Minnesota +River; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>and were comparatively wealthy and prosperous until the Sioux +outbreak in 1862, in which, it will be remembered, nearly one thousand +white citizens lost their lives. After the suppression of hostilities +consequent on this outbreak, most of the Santee Sioux were removed, in +1863, to the Crow Creek reservation, and finally, in 1866, to their +present location near the mouth of the Niobrara River, at which point +their numbers were increased, to the extent of about two hundred, by the +accession of other Sioux, who had been held at Davenport, Io., as +prisoners, charged with complicity in the outbreak, but were pardoned by +the President.</p> + +<p>The reservation of the Santee Sioux contains 83,200 acres; of which a +small portion only is suitable for agricultural purposes, the country +generally being broken with high bluffs and deep ravines. Lands have +been allotted in severalty to over two hundred. These Indians are +peaceable, industrious, and well advanced in the arts of life, and will +soon render themselves independent of the assistance now afforded by the +government. They have about five hundred acres in cultivation; upon +which good crops of wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, &c., are raised, when +not destroyed by that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>scourge of the country, the grasshopper. The +houses of the Santee Sioux are generally of rude structure; those first +built being without windows, and having only dirt floors and roofs. The +Indians are, however, improving of late in this regard, and building +much more durable and comfortable dwellings. They are parties to the +treaty made in 1868 with the nine bands of the Sioux nation, ranging in +the region of the Upper Missouri River. In addition to the benefits +derived by the Santee Sioux under this treaty, they have moneys +resulting from the sale of their lands in Minnesota, which are being +used for their benefit in improving their farms, and otherwise aiding +them in their efforts to become self-supporting. Three schools are in +successful operation on their reservation, having in attendance three +hundred and twenty-three scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Winnebagoes.</i>—These Indians, numbering one thousand four hundred and +forty, a gain of forty over last year, are located in the eastern part +of Nebraska, on a reservation containing 128,000 acres, adjoining that +of the Omahas, and lying about eighty miles north of the city of Omaha. +They are the remnant of a once powerful tribe which formerly inhabited +Wisconsin, from which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>State they removed to Minnesota under the treaty +of 1837. At the outbreak of the Sioux in 1862, they were peaceably +engaged in agriculture, in a beautiful and fertile country on the waters +of the Blue Earth River, a majority being thriving and industrious +farmers, many of them possessing considerable intelligence. Although the +Winnebagoes were wholly disconnected with that outbreak, yet the +citizens in their immediate vicinity, as well as in other portions of +Minnesota, were so determined that all Indians should be removed beyond +the limits of the State, that Congress, in 1863, passed an act providing +for their removal. They were first removed in May, 1863, to Crow Creek, +in Dakota; and after great suffering, and loss of many lives from +exposure and starvation, they were finally established upon their +present reservation, which had been secured for them by the government +under treaty stipulations with the Omahas, and at which they arrived in +small and straggling parties during the year 1864. They are now +gradually regaining their former comfortable and prosperous condition. +Allotments of lands have been made to them. Their agent reports that the +past year has been marked by a steady improvement of the condition +generally of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>tribe. The men have nearly all adopted the dress of +the whites; and the agent anticipates that the women will do the same so +soon as they shall come to live in houses, a number of which (50), of a +better class than is usually provided for Indian occupancy, are now +being erected, to be given to those most industrious and making the +greatest progress toward civilization. Considerable interest is +manifested in education, there being three day-schools, efficiently +managed, with an attendance of two hundred and fifty scholars; and there +is probably in operation by this date also an industrial and boarding +school, capable of accommodating eighty scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Omahas.</i>—The Omahas, a peaceable and inoffensive people, numbering +nine hundred and sixty-nine, a decrease since 1871 of fifteen, are +native to the country now occupied by them, and occupy a reservation of +345,600 acres adjoining the Winnebagoes. They have lands allotted to +them in severalty, and have made considerable advancement in agriculture +and civilization, though they still follow the chase to some extent. +Under the provisions of the act of June 10, 1872, steps are being taken +to sell 50,000 acres of the western part of their reservation. The +proceeds of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>sale of these lands will enable them to improve and +stock their farms, build houses, &c., and, with proper care and +industry, to become in a few years entirely self-sustaining. A few +cottages are to be found upon this reservation.</p> + +<p>There are at present three schools in operation on this reservation, +with an attendance of one hundred and twenty scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Pawnees.</i>—The Pawnees, a warlike people, number two thousand four +hundred and forty-seven, an increase for the past year of eighty-three. +They are located on a reservation of 288,000 acres, in the central part +of the State. They are native to the country now occupied by them, and +have for years been loyal to the government, having frequently furnished +scouts for the army in operations against hostile tribes or marauding +bands. Their location, so near the frontier, and almost in constant +contact with the Indians of the plains, with whom they have been always +more or less at war, has tended to retard their advancement in the arts +of civilization. They are, however, gradually becoming more habituated +to the customs of the whites, are giving some attention to agriculture, +and, with the disappearance of the buffalo from their section of the +country, will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>doubtless settle down to farming and to the practice of +mechanical arts in earnest. The act of June 10, 1872, heretofore +referred to, provides also for the sale of 50,000 acres belonging to the +Pawnees, the same to be taken from that part of their reservation lying +south of Loup Fork. These lands are now being surveyed; and it is +believed, that, with the proceeds of this sale, such improvements, in +the way of building houses and opening and stocking farms, can be made +for the Pawnees as will at an early day induce them to give their entire +time and attention to industrial pursuits. There are two schools in +operation on the reservation,—one a manual-labor boarding-school, the +other a day-school, with an attendance at both of one hundred and +eighteen scholars. Provision was also made by Congress, at its last +session, for the erection of two additional schoolhouses for the use of +this tribe.</p> + +<p><i>Sacs and Foxes of the Missouri.</i>—These Indians, formerly a portion of +the same tribe with the Indians now known as the Sacs and Foxes of the +Mississippi, emigrated many years ago from Iowa, and settled near the +tribe of Iowas, hereafter to be mentioned. They number at the present +time but eighty-eight, having been steadily <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>diminishing for years. They +have a reservation of about 16,000 acres, lying in the south-eastern +part of Nebraska and the north-eastern part of Kansas, purchased for +them from the Iowas. Most of it is excellent land; but they have never, +to any considerable extent, made use of it for tillage, being almost +hopelessly disinclined to engage in labor of any kind, and depending +principally for their subsistence, a very poor one, upon their annuity, +which is secured to them by the treaty of Oct. 31, 1837, and amounts to +$7,870. By act of June 10, 1872, provision was made for the sale of a +portion or all of their reservation, the proceeds of such sale to be +expended for their immediate use, or for their removal to the Indian +Territory or elsewhere. They have consented to the sale of their entire +reservation; and, so soon as funds shall have been received from that +source, steps will be taken to have them removed to the Indian Territory +south of Kansas.</p> + +<p><i>Iowas.</i>—These Indians, numbering at present two hundred and +twenty-five, emigrated years ago from Iowa and North-western Missouri, +and now have a reservation adjoining the Sacs and Foxes of the Missouri, +containing about 16,000 acres. They belong to a much better class of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>Indians than their neighbors the Sacs and Foxes, being temperate, +frugal, industrious, and interested in the education of their children. +They were thoroughly loyal during the late rebellion, and furnished a +number of soldiers to the Union army. Many of them are good farmers; and +as a tribe they are generally extending their agricultural operations, +improving their dwellings, and adding to their comforts. A large +majority of the tribe are anxious to have their reservation allotted in +severalty; and, inasmuch as they are not inclined to remove to another +locality, it would seem desirable that their wishes in this respect +should be complied with. One school is in operation on the reservation, +with an attendance of sixty-eight scholars, besides an industrial home +for orphans, supported by the Indians themselves.</p> + +<p><i>Otoes and Missourias.</i>—These Indians, numbering four hundred and +sixty-four, an increase of fourteen over last year, were removed from +Iowa and Missouri to their present beautiful and fertile reservation, +comprising 160,000 acres, and situated in the southern part of Nebraska. +Until quite recently they have evinced but little disposition to labor +for a support or in any way to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>better their miserable condition; yet +cut off from their wonted source of subsistence, the buffalo, by their +fear of the wild tribes which have taken possession of their old +hunting-grounds, they have gradually been more and more forced to work +for a living. Within the last three years many of them have opened farms +and built themselves houses. A school has also been established, having +an attendance of ninety-five scholars.</p> + +<h4>KANSAS.</h4> + +<p>The Indians still remaining in Kansas are the Kickapoos, Pottawatomies +(Prairie band), Chippewas and Munsees, Miamies, and the Kansas or Kaws.</p> + +<p><i>Kickapoos.</i>—The Kickapoos emigrated from Illinois, and are now +located, to the number of two hundred and ninety, on a reservation of +19,200 acres, in the north-eastern part of the State. During the late +war a party of about one hundred, dissatisfied with the treaty made with +the tribe in 1863, went to Mexico, upon representations made to them by +certain of their kinsmen living in that republic, that they would be +welcomed and protected by the Mexican government; but, finding +themselves deceived, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>attempted to return to the United States. Only a +few, however, succeeded in reaching the Kickapoo agency. The Kickapoos +now remaining in Mexico separated from the tribe more than twenty years +ago, and settled among the southern Indians in the Indian Territory, on +or near the Washita River, whence they went to Mexico, where they still +live, notwithstanding the efforts of the government, of late, to arrange +with Mexico for their removal to the Indian Territory and location upon +some suitable reservation. Their raids across the border have been a +sore affliction to the people of Texas; and it is important that the +first promising occasion should be taken to secure their return to the +United States, and their establishment where they may be carefully +watched, and restrained from their depredatory habits, or summarily +punished if they persist in them. The Kickapoos remaining in Kansas are +peaceable and industrious, continuing to make commendable progress in +the cultivation of their farms, and showing much interest in the +education of their children. Under the provisions of the treaty of June +28, 1862, a few of these Indians have received lands in severalty, for +which patents have been issued, and are now citizens of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>the United +States. Two schools are in operation among these Indians, with a daily +average attendance of thirty-nine scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Pottawatomies.</i>—The Prairie band is all of this tribe remaining in +Kansas, the rest having become citizens and removed, or most of them, to +the Indian Territory. The tribe, excepting those in Wisconsin heretofore +noticed, formerly resided in Michigan and Indiana, and removed to Kansas +under the provisions of the treaty of 1846. The Prairie band numbers, as +nearly as ascertained, about four hundred, and is located on a reserve +of 77,357 acres, fourteen miles north of Topeka. Notwithstanding many +efforts to educate and civilize these Indians, most of them still cling +tenaciously to the habits and customs of their fathers. Some, however, +have recently turned their attention to agricultural pursuits, and are +now raising stock and most of the varieties of grain produced by their +white neighbors. They are also showing more interest in education than +formerly; one school being in operation on the reservation, with an +attendance of eighty-four scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Chippewas and Munsees.</i>—Certain of the Chippewas of Saginaw, Swan +Creek, and Black River, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>removed from Michigan under the treaty of 1836; +and certain Munsees, or Christian Indians, from Wisconsin under the +treaty of 1839. These were united by the terms of the treaty concluded +with them July 16, 1859. The united bands now number only fifty-six. +They own 4,760 acres of land in Franklin County, about forty miles south +of the town of Lawrence, holding the same in severalty, are considerably +advanced in the arts of life, and earn a decent living, principally by +agriculture. They have one school in operation, with an attendance of +sixteen scholars. These Indians, at present, have no treaty with the +United States; nor do they receive any assistance from the government.</p> + +<p><i>Miamies.</i>—The Miamies of Kansas formerly resided in Indiana, forming +one tribe with the Miamies still remaining in that State, but removed in +1846 to their present location, under the provisions of the treaty of +1840.</p> + +<p>Owing to the secession of a considerable number who have allied +themselves with the Peorias, in the Indian Territory, and also to the +ravages of disease consequent on vicious indulgences, especially in the +use of intoxicating drinks, this band, which, on its removal from +Indiana, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>embraced about five hundred, at present numbers but +ninety-five. These have a reservation of 10,240 acres in Linn and Miami +Counties, in the south-east part of Kansas, the larger part of which is +held in severalty by them.</p> + +<p>The Superintendent of Indian Affairs, in immediate charge, in his report +for this year says the Miamies remaining in Kansas are greatly +demoralized, their school has been abandoned, and their youth left +destitute of educational advantages.</p> + +<p>Considerable trouble has been for years caused by white settlers +locating aggressively on lands belonging to these Indians, no effort for +their extrusion having been thus far successful.</p> + +<p><i>Kansas or Kaws.</i>—These Indians are native to the country they occupy. +They number at present five hundred and ninety-three: in 1860 they +numbered eight hundred and three. Although they have a reservation of +80,640 acres of good land in the eastern part of the State, they are +poor and improvident, and have in late years suffered much for want of +the actual necessaries of life. They never were much disposed to labor, +depending upon the chase for a living, in connection with the annuities +due from government. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>They have been growing steadily poorer; and even +now, in their straitened circumstances, and under the pressure of want, +they show but little inclination to engage in agricultural pursuits, all +attempts to induce them to work having measurably proved failures. Until +quite recently they could not even be prevailed upon to have their +children educated. One school is now in operation, with an attendance of +about forty-five scholars. By the act of May 8, 1872, provision was made +for the sale of all the lands owned by these Indians in Kansas, and for +their removal to the Indian Territory. Provision was also made, by the +act of June 5, 1872, for their settlement within the limits of a tract +of land therein provided to be set apart for the Osages. Their lands in +Kansas are now being appraised by commissioners appointed for the +purpose, preparatory to their sale.</p> + +<h4>INDIAN TERRITORY.</h4> + +<p>The Indians at present located in the Indian Territory—an extensive +district, bounded north by Kansas, east by Missouri and Arkansas, south +by Texas, and west by the one hundredth meridian, designated by the +commissioners appointed under act of Congress July 20, 1867, to +establish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>peace with certain hostile tribes, as one of two great +Territories (the other being, in the main, the present Territory of +Dakota, west of the Missouri) upon which might be concentrated the great +body of all the Indians east of the Rocky Mountains—are the Cherokees, +Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, Senecas, Shawnees, Quapaws, +Ottawas of Blanchard's Fork and Roche de Bœuf, Peorias, and +confederated Kaskaskias, Weas and Piankeshaws, Wyandots, Pottawatomies, +Sacs and Foxes of the Mississippi, Osages, Kiowas, Comanches, the +Arapahoes and Cheyennes of the south, the Wichitas and other affiliated +bands, and a small band of Apaches long confederated with the Kiowas and +Comanches.</p> + +<p><i>Cherokees.</i>—The Cherokees number, according to the census for 1872, +furnished by their agent, 18,000. In the report for 1871 the agent +estimated the number at 14,682, and stated that if the Cherokees +remaining in North Carolina and other States were gathered into the +nation, the population would then be 16,500. He does not now account for +the large increase over the enumeration for 1871, which must be due to a +gross error in one report or the other. The Cherokees occupy a +reservation of 3,844,712 acres in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>north-eastern part of the +Territory, lying east of the 96° west longitude. They also own a strip +about fifty miles wide adjoining Kansas on the south, and extending from +the Arkansas River west to the 100° west longitude. By the treaty of +1866, however, the United States may settle friendly Indians within the +limits of the latter tract; and when such settlements are made the +rights of the Cherokees to the lands so occupied terminate, the lands +thus disposed of to be paid for to the Cherokee nation at such price as +may be agreed upon by the parties in interest, or as may be fixed by the +President. That portion of country lying between the 96° west longitude +on the east, the Arkansas River on the west and south, and the State of +Kansas on the north, formerly owned by the Cherokees, has been sold to +the Osages.</p> + +<p>The Cherokees originally inhabited sections of country now embraced +within the State of Georgia and portions of the States of Tennessee and +North Carolina, and moved to their present location under the provisions +of the treaties concluded with them in 1817 and 1835. They have their +own written language, their national constitution and laws, their +churches, schools, and academies, their judges and courts. They are +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>emphatically an agricultural and stock-raising people, and perhaps of +all the Indian tribes, great and small, are first in general +intelligence, in the acquisition of wealth, in the knowledge of the +useful arts, and in social and moral progress. The evidences of a real +and substantial advancement in these respects are too clear to be +questioned; and it is the more remarkable from the fact, that, but a few +years since, they were, as a people, almost ruined by the ravages of +civil war. Their dwellings consist of 500 frame-houses, and 3,500 +log-houses. Of the principal crops, they have raised during the year +2,925,000 bushels of corn, 97,500 bushels of wheat, about the same +quantity of oats, and 80,000 bushels of potatoes. Their stock consists +of 16,000 horses, 75,000 cattle, 160,000 hogs, and 9,000 sheep. The +individual wealth is estimated at $4,995,000.</p> + +<p>By the latest reports, they had sixty schools in successful operation, +all, with the exception of one managed by the Moravians, maintained out +of the national school-fund, and having in attendance 2,133 scholars. +Three of these schools are for the education of the freedmen living in +the country. The orphans of the Cherokees have been heretofore provided +for in private families, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>by means of the interest derived from certain +funds invested for that purpose; but during the past year an orphan +asylum has been established under an act of the National Council, where +are now gathered fifty-four of this class. This school is designed +ultimately to embrace in its operations all the orphans of the nation.</p> + +<p>The Cherokees have no treaty-funds paid to them or expended for their +benefit. They have, however, United-States and State bonds held in trust +for them by the Secretary of the Interior, to the amount of +$1,633,627.39; also a recognized claim on account of abstracted State +bonds to the amount of $83,000, on which the interest is appropriated +annually by Congress, making in all $1,716,627.39. This sum is divided +under the following heads, viz., national fund, $1,008,285.07; school +fund, $532,407.01; orphan fund, $175,935.31. The interest on these +several sums is paid to the treasurer of the Cherokee nation, to be used +under the direction of the National Council for the objects indicated by +said heads.</p> + +<p><i>Choctaws and Chickasaws.</i>—These tribes are for certain national +purposes confederated. The Choctaws, numbering 16,000, an increase of +1,000 on the enumeration for 1871, have a reservation of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>6,688,000 +acres in the south-eastern part of the Territory; and the Chickasaws, +numbering 6,000, own a tract containing 4,377,600 acres adjoining the +Choctaws on the west. These tribes originally inhabited the section of +country now embraced within the State of Mississippi, and were removed +to their present location in accordance with the terms of the treaties +concluded with them, respectively, in 1820 and 1832. The remarks made +respecting the language, laws, educational advantages, industrial +pursuits, and advancement in the arts and customs of civilized life, of +the Cherokees, will apply in the main to the Choctaws and Chickasaws. +The Choctaws have 36 schools in operation, with an attendance of 819 +scholars; the Chickasaws 11, with 379 scholars. The Choctaws, under the +treaties of Nov. 16, 1805, Oct. 18, 1820, Jan. 20, 1825, and June 22, +1855, receive permanent annuities as follows: in money, $3,000; for +support of government, education, and other beneficial purposes, +$25,512.89; for support of light-horsemen, $600; and for iron and steel, +$320. They also have United-States and State stocks, held in trust for +them by the Secretary of the Interior, to the amount of $506,427.20, +divided as follows: on account of "Choctaw general fund," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>$454,000; of +"Choctaw school-fund," $52,427.20. The interest on these funds, and the +annuities, &c., are turned over to the treasurer of the nation, and +expended under the direction of the National Council in the manner and +for the objects indicated in each case. The Chickasaws, under act of +Feb. 25, 1799, and treaty of April 28, 1866, have a permanent annuity of +$3,000. They also have United-States and State stocks, held in trust for +them by the Secretary of the Interior, to the amount of +$1,185,947.03⅔; $183,947.03⅔ thereof being a "national fund," and +$2,000 a fund for "incompetents." The interest on these sums, and the +item of $3,000 first referred to, are paid over to the treasurer of the +nation, and disbursed by him, under the direction of the National +Council, and for such objects as that body may determine.</p> + +<p><i>Creeks.</i>—The Creeks came originally from Alabama and Georgia. They +numbered at the latest date of enumeration 12,295, and have a +reservation of 3,215,495 acres in the eastern and central part of the +Territory. They are not generally so far advanced as the Cherokees, +Choctaws, and Chickasaws, but are making rapid progress, and will +doubtless, in a few years, rank in all respects with their neighbors, +the three tribes just named. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>The Creeks, by the latest reports, have 33 +schools in operation; one of which is under the management of the +Methodist Mission Society, and another supported by the Presbyterians. +The number of scholars in all the schools is 760. These Indians have, +under treaties of Aug. 7, 1790, June 16, 1802, Jan. 24, 1826, Aug. 7, +1856, and June 14, 1866, permanent annuities and interest on moneys +uninvested as follows: in money, $68,258.40; for pay of blacksmiths and +assistants, wagon-maker, wheelwright, iron and steel, $3,250; for +assistance in agricultural operations, $2,000; and for education, +$1,000. The Secretary of the Interior holds in trust for certain members +of the tribe, known as "orphans," United-States and State bonds to the +amount of $76,999.66, the interest on which sum is paid to those of said +orphans who are alive, and to the representatives of those who have +deceased.</p> + +<p><i>Seminoles.</i>—The Seminoles, numbering 2,398, an increase of 190 over +the census of 1871, have a reservation of 200,000 acres adjoining the +Creeks on the west. This tribe formerly inhabited the section of country +now embraced in the State of Florida. Some of them removed to their +present location under the provisions of the treaties of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>1832 and 1833. +The remainder of the tribe, instigated by the former chief, Osceola, +repudiated the treaties, refused to remove, and soon after commenced +depredating upon the whites. In 1835 these depredations resulted in war, +which continued seven years, with immense cost of blood and treasure. +The Indians were at last rendered powerless to do further injury, and, +after efforts repeated through several years, were finally, with the +exception of a few who fled to the everglades, removed to a reservation +in the now Indian Territory. In 1866 they ceded to the United States, by +treaty, the reservation then owned by them, and purchased the tract they +at present occupy. They are not so far advanced in the arts of civilized +life as the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks, but are making +rapid progress in that direction, and will, it is confidently believed, +soon rank with the tribes named. They cultivate 7,600 acres; upon which +they raised during the past year 300,000 bushels of corn, and 6,000 +bushels of potatoes. They live in log-houses, and own large stocks of +cattle, horses, and hogs. The schools of the Seminoles number 4, with an +attendance of 169 scholars.</p> + +<p>They receive, under treaties made with them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>Aug. 7, 1856, and March 21, +1866, annuities, &c., as follows: interest on $500,000, amounting to +$25,000 annually, which is paid to them as annuity; interest on $50,000, +amounting to $2,500 annually, for support of schools; and $1,000, the +interest on $20,000, for the support of their government.</p> + +<p><i>Senecas and Shawnees.</i>—The Senecas, numbering 214, and the Shawnees, +numbering 90, at the present time, removed, some thirty-five or forty +years ago, from Ohio to their present location in the north-eastern +corner of the Territory. They suffered severely during the rebellion, +being obliged to leave their homes and fly to the North, their country +being devastated by troops of both armies. Under the provisions of the +treaty of 1867, made with these and other tribes, the Senecas, who were +then confederated with the Shawnees, dissolved their connection with +that tribe, sold to the United States their half of the reservation +owned by them in common with the Shawnees, and connected themselves with +those Senecas who then owned a separate reservation. The Shawnees now +have a reservation of 24,960 acres, and the united Senecas one of 44,000 +acres. These tribes are engaged in agriculture to a considerable +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>extent. They are peaceable and industrious. Many are thrifty farmers, +and in comfortable circumstances. They have one school in operation, +with an attendance of 36 scholars, which includes some children of the +Wyandots, which tribe has no schools.</p> + +<p><i>Quapaws.</i>—These Indians number at the present time about 240. They are +native to the country, and occupy a reservation of 104,000 acres in the +extreme north-east corner of the Territory. They do not appear to have +advanced much within the past few years. In common with other tribes in +that section, they suffered greatly by the late war, and were rendered +very destitute. Their proximity to the border towns of Kansas, and the +facilities thereby afforded for obtaining whiskey, have tended to retard +their progress; but there has recently been manifested a strong desire +for improvement; and with the funds derived from the sale of a part of +their lands, and with the proposed opening of a school among them, +better things are hoped for in the future.</p> + +<p><i>Ottawas.</i>—The Ottawas of Blanchard's Fork and Roche de Bœuf number, +at the present time, 150. They were originally located in Western Ohio +and Southern Michigan, and were removed, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>in accordance with the terms +of the treaty concluded with them in 1831, to a reservation within the +present limits of Kansas. Under the treaty of 1867 they obtained a +reservation of 24,960 acres, lying immediately north of the western +portion of the Shawnee reservation. They have paid considerable +attention to education, are well advanced in civilization, and many of +them are industrious and prosperous farmers. They have one school, +attended by 52 scholars. The relation of this small band to the +government is somewhat anomalous, inasmuch as, agreeably to provisions +contained in the treaties of 1862 and 1867, they have become citizens of +the United States, and yet reside in the Indian Country, possess a +reservation there, and maintain a purely tribal organization. They +removed from Franklin Co., Kan., in 1870.</p> + +<p><i>Peorias, &c.</i>—The Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weas, and Piankeshaws, who were +confederated in 1854, and at that time had a total population of 259, +now number 160. They occupy a reservation of 72,000 acres, adjoining the +Quapaw reservation on the south and west. Under treaties made with these +tribes in 1832, they removed to a tract within the present limits of +Kansas, where they remained until after the treaty of 1867 was +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>concluded with them, in which treaty provision was made whereby they +obtained their present reservation. These Indians are generally +intelligent, well advanced in civilization, and, to judge from the +statistical reports of their agent, are very successful in their +agricultural operations, raising crops ample for their own support. With +the Peorias are about 40 Miamies from Kansas. They have one school in +operation, with an attendance of 29 scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Wyandots.</i>—The Wyandots number at the present time 222 souls. Ten +years ago there were 435. They occupy a reservation of 20,000 acres, +lying between the Seneca and Shawnee reservations. This tribe was +located for many years in North-western Ohio, whence they removed, +pursuant to the terms of the treaty made with them in 1842, to a +reservation within the present limits of Kansas. By the treaty made with +them in 1867, their present reservation was set apart for those members +of the tribe who desired to maintain their tribal organization, instead +of becoming citizens, as provided in the treaty of 1855. They are poor, +and, having no annuities and but little force of character, are making +slight progress in industry or civilization. They have been lately +joined by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>members of the tribe, who, under the treaty, accepted +citizenship. These, desiring to resume their relations with their +people, have been again adopted into the tribe.</p> + +<p><i>Pottawatomies.</i>—These Indians, who formerly resided in Michigan and +Indiana, whence they removed to Kansas, before going down into the +Indian Territory numbered about 1,600. They have, under the provisions +of the treaty of 1861 made with the tribe, then residing in Kansas, +become citizens of the United States. By the terms of said treaty they +received allotments of land, and their proportion of the tribal funds, +with the exception of their share of certain non-paying State stocks, +amounting to sixty-seven thousand dollars, held in trust by the +Secretary of the Interior for the Pottawatomies. Having disposed of +their lands, they removed to the Indian Territory, where a reservation +thirty miles square, adjoining the Seminole reservation on the west, had +been, by the treaty of 1867, provided for such as should elect to +maintain their tribal organization. It having been decided, however, by +the department, that, as they had all become citizens, there was +consequently no part of the tribe remaining which could lay claim, under +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>treaty stipulations, to the reservation in the Indian Territory, +legislation was had by Congress at its last session—act approved May +23, 1872—by which these citizen Pottawatomies were allowed allotments +of land within the tract originally assigned for their use as a tribe, +to the extent of one hundred and sixty acres to each head of family and +to each other person twenty-one years of age, and of eighty acres to +each minor. Most if not all of them are capable of taking care of +themselves; and many of them are well-educated, intelligent, and thrifty +farmers.</p> + +<p><i>Absentee Shawnees.</i>—These Indians, numbering six hundred and +sixty-three, separated about thirty years ago from the main tribe, then +located in Kansas, and settled in the Indian Territory, principally +within the limits of the thirty miles square tract heretofore referred +to in the remarks relative to the Pottawatomies, where they engaged in +farming, and have since supported themselves without assistance from the +government.</p> + +<p><i>Sacs and Foxes.</i>—The Sacs and Foxes of the Mississippi number at the +present time 463. In 1846 they numbered 2,478. They have a reservation +of 483,840 acres, adjoining the Creeks on the west, and between the +North Fork of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>Canadian and the Red Fork of the Arkansas Rivers. +They formerly occupied large tracts of country in Wisconsin, Iowa, and +Missouri, whence they removed, by virtue of treaty stipulations, to a +reservation within the present limits of Kansas. By the terms of the +treaties of 1859 and 1868, all their lands in Kansas were ceded to the +United States, and they were given in lieu thereof their present +reservation. These Indians, once famous for their prowess in war, have +not, for some years, made any marked improvement upon their former +condition. Still they have accomplished a little, under highly adverse +circumstances and influences, in the way of opening small farms and in +building houses, and are beginning to show some regard for their women +by relieving them of the burdens and labors heretofore required of them. +There is hope of their further improvement, although they are still but +one degree removed from the Blanket or Breech-Clout Indians. They have +one school in operation, with an attendance of only about twelve +scholars. 317 members of these tribes, after their removal to Kansas, +returned to Iowa, where they were permitted to remain, and are now, +under the act of March 2, 1867, receiving their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>share of the tribal +funds. They have purchased 419 acres of land in Tama County, part of +which they are cultivating. They are not much disposed to work, however, +on lands of their own, preferring to labor for the white farmers in +their vicinity, and are still much given to roving and hunting.</p> + +<p><i>Osages.</i>—The Osages, numbering 3,956, are native to the general +sections of country where they now live. Their reservation is bounded on +the north by the south line of Kansas, east by the ninety-sixth degree +of west longitude, and south and west by the Arkansas River, and +contains approximately 1,760,000 acres. They still follow the chase, the +buffalo being their main dependence for food. Their wealth consists in +horses (of which they own not less than 12,000) and in cattle.</p> + +<p><i>Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches.</i>—These tribes, confederated under +present treaty stipulations, formerly ranged over an extensive country +lying between the Rio Grande and the Red River. As nearly as can be +ascertained, they number as follows: Kiowas, 1,930; Comanches, 3,180; +and Apaches, 380. They are now located upon a reservation secured to +them by treaty made in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>1867, comprising 3,549,440 acres in the +south-western part of the Indian Territory, west of and adjoining the +Chickasaw country. Wild and intractable, these Indians, even the best of +them, have given small signs of improvement in the arts of life; and, +substantially, the whole dealing of the government with them, thus far, +has been in the way of supplying their necessities for food and +clothing, with a view to keeping them upon their reservation, and +preventing their raiding into Texas, with the citizens of which State +they were for many years before their present establishment on terms of +mutual hatred and injury. Some individuals and bands have remained quiet +and peaceable upon their reservation, evincing a disposition to learn +the arts of life, to engage in agriculture, and to have their children +instructed in letters. To these every inducement is being held out to +take up land, and actively commence tilling it. Thus far they have under +cultivation but 100 acres, which have produced the past year a good crop +of corn and potatoes. The wealth of these tribes consists in horses and +mules, of which they own to the number, as reported by their agent, of +16,500, a great proportion of the animals notoriously having been stolen +in Texas.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>However, it may be said, in a word, of these Indians, that their +civilization must follow their submission to the government, and that +the first necessity in respect to them is a wholesome example, which +shall inspire fear and command obedience. So long as four-fifths of +these tribes take turns at raiding into Texas, openly and boastfully +bringing back scalps and spoils to their reservation, efforts to inspire +very high ideas of social and industrial life among the communities of +which the raiders form so large a part will presumably result in +failure.</p> + +<p><i>Arapahoes and Cheyennes of the South.</i>—These tribes are native to the +section of country now inhabited by them. The Arapahoes number at the +present time 1,500, and the Cheyennes 2,000. By the treaty of 1867, made +with these Indians, a large reservation was provided for them, bounded +on the north by Kansas, on the east by the Arkansas River, and on the +south and west by the Red Fork of the Arkansas. They have, however, +persisted in a refusal to locate on this reservation; and another tract, +containing 4,011,500 acres, north of and adjoining the Kiowa and +Comanche reservation, was set apart for them by Executive order of Aug. +10, 1869. By act of May 29, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>1872, the Secretary of the Interior was +authorized to negotiate with these Indians for the relinquishment of +their claim to the lands ceded to them by the said treaty, and to give +them in lieu thereof a "sufficient and permanent location" upon lands +ceded to the United States by the Creeks and Seminoles in treaties made +with them in 1866. Negotiations to the end proposed were duly entered +into with these tribes unitedly; but, in the course of such +negotiations, it has become the view of this Office that the tribes +should no longer be associated in the occupation of a reservation. The +Arapahoes are manifesting an increasing disinclination to follow further +the fortunes of the Cheyennes, and crave a location of their own. +Inasmuch as the conduct of the Arapahoes is uniformly good, and their +disposition to make industrial improvement very decided, it is thought +that they should now be separated from the more turbulent Cheyennes, and +given a place where they may carry out their better intentions without +interruption and without the access of influences tending to draw their +young men away to folly and mischief. With this view a contract, made +subject to the action of Congress, was entered into between the +Commissioner of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>Indian Affairs and the delegation of the Arapaho tribe +which visited Washington during the present season (the delegation being +fully empowered thereto by the tribe), by which the Arapahoes relinquish +all their interest in the reservation granted them by the treaty of +1867, in consideration of the grant of a reservation between the North +Fork of the Canadian River and the Red Fork of the Arkansas River, and +extending from a point ten miles east of the ninety-eighth to near the +ninety-ninth meridian of west longitude. Should this adjustment of the +question, so far as the Arapahoes are concerned, meet the approval of +Congress, separate negotiations will be entered into with the Cheyennes, +with a view to obtaining their relinquishment of the reservation of +1867, and their location on some vacant tract within the same general +section of the Indian Territory.</p> + +<p>A considerable number of the Arapahoes are already engaged in +agriculture, though at a disadvantage; and, when the question of their +reservation shall have been settled, it is confidently believed that +substantially the whole body of this tribe will turn their attention to +the cultivation of the soil. Two schools are conducted for their +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>benefit at the agency, having an attendance of thirty-five scholars. Of +the Cheyennes confederated with the Arapahoes, the reports are less +favorable as to progress made in industry, or disposition to improve +their condition. Until 1867 both these tribes, in common with the Kiowas +and Comanches, were engaged in hostilities against the white settlers in +Western Kansas; but since the treaty made with them in that year they +have, with the exception of one small band of the Cheyennes, remained +friendly, and have committed no depredations.</p> + +<p><i>Wichitas, &c.</i>—The Wichitas and other affiliated bands of Keechies, +Wacoes, Towoccaroes, Caddoes, Ionies, and Delawares, number 1,250, +divided approximately as follows: Wichitas, 299; Keechies, 126; Wacoes, +140; Towoccaroes, 127; Caddoes, 392; Ionies, 85; Delawares, 81. These +Indians, fragments of once important tribes originally belonging in +Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, and the Indian Territory, were all, excepting +the Wichitas and Delawares, removed by the government from Texas, in +1859, to the "leased district," then belonging to the Choctaws and +Chickasaws, where they have since resided, at a point on the Washita +River near old Fort Cobb. They <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>have no treaty relations with the +government; nor have they any defined reservation. They have always, or +at least for many years, been friendly to the whites, although in close +and constant contact with the Kiowas and Comanches. A few of them, +chiefly Caddoes and Delawares, are engaged in agriculture, and are +disposed to be industrious. Of the other Indians at this agency, some +cultivate small patches in corn and vegetables, the work being done +mainly by women; but the most are content to live upon the government. +The Caddoes rank among the best Indians of the continent, and set an +example to the other bands affiliated with them worthy of being more +generally followed than it is. In physique, and in the virtues of +chastity, temperance, and industry, they are the equals of many white +communities.</p> + +<p>A permanent reservation should be set aside for the Indians of this +agency; and, with proper assistance, they would doubtless in a few years +become entirely self-sustaining. But one school is in operation, with an +attendance of eighteen scholars. These Indians have no annuities; but an +annual appropriation of $50,000 has for several years been made for +their benefit. This money is expended <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>for goods and agricultural +implements, and for assistance and instruction in farming, &c.</p> +<br /> + +<h3>DAKOTA, MONTANA, WYOMING, AND IDAHO.</h3> + +<p>The tribes residing in Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho are divided +as follows: in Dakota, about 28,000; Montana, 30,000; Wyoming, 2,000; +and Idaho, 5,000. The present temporary location of the Red Cloud agency +has, however, drawn just within the limits of Wyoming a body of Indians +varying from 8,000 to 9,000, who are here, and usually, reckoned as +belonging in Dakota.</p> + +<h4>DAKOTA.</h4> + +<p>The Indians within the limits of Dakota Territory are the Sioux, the +Poncas, and the Arickarees, Gros Ventres, and Mandans.</p> + +<p><i>Sioux.</i>—There are probably, including those at the Red Cloud agency, +at present temporarily located in Wyoming, about 25,000 Sioux under the +care of government at eight different agencies.</p> + +<p>The Yankton Sioux, numbering about 2,000, are located in the extreme +southern part of the Territory, on the east side of the Missouri, about +fifty miles from the town of Yankton, upon a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>reservation of 400,000 +acres, nearly all rolling prairie, set apart for them by treaty of 1858, +out of the tract then ceded by them to the United States. They have not +been much inclined to work; and, although there is good land within +their reservation, they are poor, having still to be subsisted in a +great measure by the government. It is but due to say of the Yanktons, +that, while other bands of Sioux have been hostile to the government and +citizens, they have uniformly been friendly, even to the extent of +assisting the government against their own kindred. They are now giving +considerable attention to the education of their children, having six +schools in operation, with an average attendance of three hundred and +sixty-six scholars.</p> + +<p>The Sisseton and Wahpeton bands have two reservations,—one in the +eastern part of the Territory, at Lake Traverse, containing 1,241,600 +acres, where are 1,496 Indians; and one in the north-eastern part of the +Territory, at Devil's Lake, containing 345,600 acres, where are 720 +Indians, including a few from the "Cut-Head" band of Sioux. These two +reservations are provided for in a treaty made with the bands in 1867. +These Indians were a portion of the Sioux living <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>in Minnesota at the +time of the outbreak in 1862. Many of them claim to have been, and +doubtless were, friendly to the whites during the troubles referred to; +and when the removal of the Sioux took place in 1863, as noticed +heretofore under the title of "Santee Sioux," they went to the western +part of Minnesota and to the eastern and northern parts of Dakota, near +their present reservations. They are quite generally engaged in +agricultural operations, under the system adopted while they were on +their reservation in Minnesota, by which the individual Indians receive +pay in goods or supplies for all work performed, only the aged, infirm, +or sick being supplied with clothing and subsistence gratuitously. So +far as these Indians are concerned, the scheme has been decidedly +successful; and it should be extended to all the tribes and bands now on +the "feeding-list," so soon as practicable. There are four schools in +operation for the bands at Lake Traverse, attended by one hundred and +twenty-three scholars. An unusual degree of interest is manifested of +late in having their children educated. By treaty made with them in +1867, the amount of funds to be appropriated annually for their benefit +is at the discretion of Congress. For the present <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>year, the sum of +$75,000 has been appropriated for the benefit of these Indians. They +also participate in the proceeds derived from the sales of the Sioux +lands in Minnesota, which furnish a considerable revenue yearly.</p> + +<p>The Oncpapa, Blackfeet, Lower Yanktonai, Upper Yanktonai, Sans Arc, +Upper and Lower Brulé, Two Kettle, Minneconjou, and Ogallala bands are +located at five different agencies, viz.: the Upper Missouri, or Crow +Creek agency, on the east side of the Missouri; the Grand River agency, +at the mouth of the Grand River; the Cheyenne River agency, at the mouth +of the Cheyenne River; the Whetstone agency (so called from its former +location at the junction of the Whetstone with the Missouri Rivers), on +the White River, about two hundred and twenty-five miles west of the +Missouri; and the Red Cloud agency, at present on the North Platte, +about thirty miles south-east from Fort Laramie. The Indians at these +agencies number in the aggregate about 22,000. They have a reservation +set apart for them by the treaty of 1868, containing about 25,000,000 +acres, lying west of the Missouri River and north of Nebraska. Prior to +this treaty, these Indians had for years been engaged in acts of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>hostility against the government and in depredations upon the white +settlers. Claiming to own most, if not all, of the Territory of Dakota, +and portions of the Territories of Montana and Wyoming, as well as the +western part of Nebraska, they used every effort to prevent the +settlement of the country so claimed, their hostility being especially +directed against the Union Pacific Railroad. The military operations of +1867-68, however, convinced the Sioux of the hopelessness of opposing +the progress of the railroad, and the settlement of the immediate belt +through which it was to pass, and disposed them to accept the provision +made for them by the treaty of 1868. With the exception of the main +portion of the Ogallala band, at the Red Cloud agency, and a +considerable body of disaffected Indians from all the bands, known as +the "hostile Sioux," of whom "Sitting Bull" and "Black Moon" are the +principal chiefs, these bands are all within the limits of the +reservation set apart by said treaty of 1868. A few at each of the +agencies on the Missouri River have shown a disposition to engage in +agriculture; but by far the greater part of them remain "breech-clout" +Indians, disinclined to labor for a living, and accepting subsistence +from the government as the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>natural and proper consideration for the +favor done the government by their consenting to remain at the agencies +assigned them. If they have any suspicion that this thing cannot last +forever, and that the time will soon come for them to work or starve, +the great majority do not allow themselves to be influenced by it, but +seem determined to put the evil day as far off as possible.</p> + +<p><i>Poncas.</i>—The Poncas, numbering 735, have a reservation of 576,000 +acres, near the confluence of the Niobrara and Missouri Rivers, in the +south-eastern part of the Territory, provided for them in their treaty +with the United States, made in 1858. They are quiet and peaceable, are +inclined to be industrious, and engage to some extent in farming; but +from various causes, principally the destruction of their crops by +grasshoppers, have not succeeded in supporting themselves without +assistance from the government. They are well advanced in civilized +habits of life, and have shown considerable interest in the education of +their children, having three schools in operation, with an average +attendance of seventy-seven scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Arickarees, Gros Ventres, and Mandans.</i>—These tribes number 2,200, and +have a reservation set <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>apart for their occupancy by executive order of +April 12, 1870, comprising 8,640,000 acres, situated in the +north-western part of Dakota and the eastern part of Montana, extending +to the Yellowstone and Powder Rivers. They have no treaty with the +government, are now and have always been friendly to the whites, are +exceptionally known to the officers of the army and to frontiersmen as +"good Indians," and are engaged to some extent in agriculture. Owing to +the shortness of the agricultural season, the rigor of the climate, and +the periodical ravages of grasshoppers, their efforts in this direction, +though made with a degree of patience and perseverance not usual in the +Indian character, have met with frequent and distressing reverses; and +it has from time to time been found necessary to furnish them with more +or less subsistence to prevent starvation. They are traditional enemies +of the Sioux; and the petty warfare maintained between them and the +Sioux of the Grand River and Cheyenne River agencies—while, like most +warfare confined to Indians alone, it causes wonderfully little loss of +life—serves to disturb the condition of these agencies, and to retard +the progress of all the parties concerned. These Indians should be moved +to the Indian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>Territory, south of Kansas, where the mildness of the +climate and the fertility of the soil would repay their labors, and +where, it is thought, from their willingness to labor and their docility +under the control of the government, they would in a few years become +wholly self-supporting. The question of their removal has been submitted +to them; and they seem inclined to favor the project, but have expressed +a desire to send a delegation of their chiefs to the Indian Territory, +with a view of satisfying themselves as to the desirableness of the +location. Their wishes in this respect should be granted early next +season, that their removal and settlement may be effected during the +coming year. Notwithstanding their willingness to labor, they have shown +but little interest in education. Congress makes an appropriation of +$75,000 annually for goods and provisions, for their instruction in +agricultural and mechanical pursuits, for salaries of employés, and for +the education of their children, &c.</p> + +<h4>MONTANA.</h4> + +<p>The Indian tribes residing within the limits of Montana are the +Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, the Gros Ventres of the Prairie, the +Assinaboines, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>the Yanktonais, Santee and Teton (so called) Sioux, a +portion of the northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes, the River Crows, the +Mountain Crows, the Flatheads, Pend d'Oreilles, and Kootenays, and a few +Shoshones, Bannocks, and Sheep-Eaters, numbering in the aggregate about +32,412. They are all, or nearly all, native to the regions now occupied +by them respectively.</p> + +<p>The following table will exhibit the population of each of these tribes, +as nearly as the same can be ascertained:—</p> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" width="60%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Population"> + <tr> + <td class="tdl" width="80%">Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans</td> + <td class="tdr" width="20%">7,500</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Assinaboines</td> + <td class="tdr">4,790</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Gros Ventres</td> + <td class="tdr">1,100</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Santee, Yanktonais, Uncpapa, and Cut-Head Sioux, at Milk River agency</td> + <td class="tdrb">2,625</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">River Crows</td> + <td class="tdr">1,240</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Mountain Crows</td> + <td class="tdr">2,700</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Flatheads</td> + <td class="tdr">460</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Pend d'Oreilles</td> + <td class="tdr">1,000</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Kootenays</td> + <td class="tdr">320</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Shoshones, Bannocks, and Sheep-Eaters</td> + <td class="tdr">677</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl">Roving Sioux, commonly called Teton Sioux, including those gathered during 1872, at and near Fort Peck, (largely estimated)</td> + <td class="tdrb" style="text-decoration: underline;"> 8,000</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdl"> Estimated total</td> + <td class="tdr">30,412</td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> +<br /> + +<p>The number of northern Cheyennes and Arapahoes roaming in Montana, who, +it is believed, have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>co-operated with the Sioux under "Sitting Bull," +in their depredations, is not known: it is probably less than 1,000.</p> + +<p>The Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans (located at the Blackfeet agency on +the Teton River, about seventy-five miles from Fort Benton), the Gros +Ventres, Assinaboines, the River Crows, about 1,000 of the Northern +Arapahoes and Cheyennes, and the Santee and Yankton Sioux (located at +the Milk River agency, on the Milk River, about one hundred miles from +its mouth), occupy jointly a reservation in the extreme northern part of +the Territory, set apart by treaties (not ratified) made in 1868 with +most of the tribes named, and containing about 17,408,000 acres. The +Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, particularly the last-named band, have +been, until within about two years, engaged in depredating upon the +white settlers. The Indians at the Milk River agency, with the exception +of the Sioux, are now, and have been for several years, quiet and +peaceable. The Sioux at this agency, or most of them, were engaged in +the outbreak in Minnesota in 1862. On the suppression of hostilities +they fled to the northern part of Dakota, where they continued roaming +until, in the fall of 1871, they went to their present <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>location, with +the avowed intention of remaining there. Although they had been at war +for years with the Indians properly belonging to the Milk River agency, +yet, by judicious management on the part of the agent of the government +stationed there, and the influence of some of the most powerful chiefs, +the former feuds and difficulties were amicably arranged; and all +parties have remained friendly to each other during the year past. The +Indians at neither the Blackfeet nor the Milk River agency show any +disposition to engage in farming; nor have they thus far manifested any +desire for the education of their children. They rely entirely upon the +chase and upon the bounty of the government for their support. They, +however, quite scrupulously respect their obligation to preserve the +peace; and no considerable difficulty has of late been experienced, or +is anticipated, in keeping them in order. The Blackfeet, Bloods, and +Piegans have an annual appropriation of $50,000 made for their benefit; +the Assinaboines, $30,000; the Gros Ventres of the Prairie, $35,000; the +River Crows, $30,000. These funds are used in furnishing the respective +tribes with goods and subsistence, and generally for such other objects +as may be deemed necessary to keep the Indians quiet.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span><i>Mountain Crows.</i>—These Indians have a reservation of 6,272,000 acres, +lying in the southern part of the Territory, between the Yellowstone +River and the north line of Wyoming Territory. They have always been +friendly to the whites, but are inveterate enemies of the Sioux, with +whom they have for years been at war. By the treaty of 1868—by the +terms of which their present reservation was set apart for their +occupancy—they are liberally supplied with goods, clothing, and +subsistence. But few of them are engaged in farming, the main body +relying upon their success in hunting, and upon the supplies furnished +by the government, for their support. They have one school in operation, +with an attendance, however, of only nine scholars. By the treaty of May +7, 1868, provision is made by which they are to receive for a limited +number of years the following annuities, &c., viz.: in clothing and +goods, $22,723 (twenty-six instalments due); in beneficial objects, +$25,000 (six instalments due); in subsistence, $131,400 (one instalment +due). Blacksmiths, teachers, physician, carpenter, miller, engineer, and +farmer are also furnished for their benefit, at an expense to the +government of $11,600.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span><i>Flatheads</i>, &c.—The Flatheads, Pend d'Oreilles, and Kootenays have a +reservation of 1,433,600 acres in the Jocko Valley, situated in the +north-western part of the Territory, and secured to them by treaty of +1855. This treaty also provided for a reservation in the Bitter-Root +Valley, should the President of the United States deem it advisable to +set apart another for their use. The Flatheads have remained in the +last-named valley; but under the provisions of the act of June 5, 1872, +steps are being taken for their removal to the Jocko reservation. Many +of these Indians are engaged in agriculture; but, as they receive little +assistance from the government, their progress in this direction is +slow. They have one school in operation, with an attendance of 27 +scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Shoshones</i>, &c.—The Shoshones, Bannocks, and Sheep-Eaters are at +present located about twenty miles above the mouth of the Lemhi Fork of +the Salmon River, near the western boundary of the Territory. They have +shown considerable interest in agriculture; and many of them are quite +successful as farmers. They have no reservation set apart for them, +either by treaty or by executive order. They are so few in number that +it would probably be better to remove them, with their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>consent, to the +Fort Hall reservation in Idaho, where their brethren are located, than +to provide them with a separate reservation. They have no schools in +operation. An annual appropriation of $25,000 is made for these Indians, +which sum is expended for their benefit in the purchase of clothing, +subsistence, agricultural implements, &c.</p> + +<h4>WYOMING.</h4> + +<p>The Indians in this Territory, with the exception of the Sioux and +Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes, mentioned under the heads of Dakota +and Montana respectively, are the eastern band of Shoshones, numbering +about 1,000. The Shoshones are native to the country. Their reservation +in the Wind River Valley, containing 2,688,000 acres, was set apart for +them by treaty of 1868.</p> + +<p>But little advancement in civilization has been made by these Indians, +owing to their indisposition to labor for a living, and to the incessant +incursions into their country of the Sioux and the Northern Arapahoes +and Cheyennes, with which tribes they have for many years been at war. +The losses sustained from these incursions, and the dread which they +inspire, tend to make the Shoshones unsettled, and unwilling to remain +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>continuously on the reservation. They therefore spend most of the year +in roaming and hunting when they should be at work tilling the soil and +improving their lands. There is one school at the agency, having an +attendance of ten scholars, in charge of an Episcopal missionary as +teacher.</p> + +<h4>IDAHO.</h4> + +<p>The Indian tribes in Idaho are the Nez Percés, the Boise and Bruneau +Shoshones, and Bannocks, the Cœur d'Alênes, and Spokanes, with +several other small bands, numbering in the aggregate about 5,800 souls.</p> + +<p><i>Nez Percés.</i>—The Nez Percés number 2,807, and have a reservation of +1,344,000 acres in the northern part of the Territory. By treaties of +1855 and 1863, they ceded to the United States a large body of land +lying within the limits of the then Territories of Oregon and +Washington, and accepted their present diminished reservation, with +certain annuities in consideration of the cession of the remainder. The +tribe has long been divided into factions known as the "treaty" party +and the "non-treaty" party, from disagreements arising out of the treaty +made with them in 1863. Though the ill feeling engendered has in a +measure <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>subsided, the "non-treaty" Indians, to the number of a few +hundred, still stand apart and accept no favors from the government. +These, with few exceptions, reside outside the reservation, on Snake +River and its tributaries, and cause more or less trouble in a petty way +to the white settlers. The Nez Percés generally have for many years been +friendly to the whites, are quite extensively engaged in agriculture, +and may be considered well advanced in civilization. They show +considerable interest in the education of their children, and have two +schools in operation, with an attendance of 124 scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Shoshones and Bannocks.</i>—These Indians, numbering 1,037, the former +516 and the latter 521, occupy a reservation in the south-eastern part +of the Territory, near Fort Hall, formerly a military post. This +reservation was set apart by treaty of 1868, and executive order of July +30, 1869, and contains 1,568,000 acres. The Shoshones on this +reservation have no treaty with the government. Both bands are generally +quiet and peaceable, and cause but little trouble; are not disposed to +engage in agriculture, and, with some assistance from the government, +depend upon hunting and fishing for subsistence. There is no school in +operation on the reservation.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span><i>Cœur d'Alênes</i>, &c.—The Cœur d'Alênes, Spokanes, Kootenays, and +Pend d'Oreilles, numbering about 2,000, have no treaty with the United +States, but have a reservation of 256,000 acres set apart for their +occupancy by executive order of June 14, 1867, lying 30 or 40 miles +north of the Nez Percés reservation. They are peaceable, have no +annuities, receive no assistance from the government, and are wholly +self-sustaining. These Indians have never been collected upon a +reservation, nor brought under the immediate supervision of an agent. So +long as their country shall remain unoccupied, and not in demand for +settlement by the whites, it will scarcely be desirable to make a change +in their location; but the construction of the Northern Pacific +Railroad, which will probably pass through or near their range, may make +it expedient to concentrate them. At present they are largely under the +influence of Catholic missionaries of the Cœur d'Alêne Mission.</p> +<br /> + +<h3>COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, UTAH, ARIZONA, AND NEVADA.</h3> + +<p>The tribes residing in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada +are divided as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>follows: in Colorado, about 3,800; New Mexico, 19,000; +Utah, 10,000; Arizona, 25,000; and Nevada, 13,000.</p> + +<h4>COLORADO.</h4> + +<p>The Indians residing in Colorado Territory are the Tabequache band of +Utes, at the Los Pinos agency, numbering 3,000, and the Yampa, Grand +River, and Uintah bands of the White River agency, numbering 800. They +are native to the section which they now inhabit, and have a reservation +of 14,784,000 acres in the western part of the Territory, set apart for +their occupancy by treaty made with them in 1868. The two agencies above +named are established on this reservation, the White River agency being +in the northern part, on the river of that name, and the other in the +south-eastern part. This reservation is much larger than is necessary +for the number of Indians located within its limits; and as valuable +gold and silver mines have been, or are alleged to have been, discovered +in the southern part of it, the discoveries being followed by the +inevitable prospecting parties and miners, Congress, by act of April 23, +1872, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to enter into +negotiations with the Utes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>for the extinguishment of their right to the +south part of it.</p> + +<p>A few of these Indians, who have declined to remove to and remain upon +the reservation, still roam in the eastern part of the Territory, +frequently visiting Denver and its vicinity, and causing some annoyance +to the settlers by their presence, but committing no acts of violence or +extensive depredations. The Indians of Colorado have thus far shown but +little interest in the pursuits of civilized life or in the education of +their children. A school is in operation at the Northern or White River +agency, with an attendance of forty scholars. Steps are also being taken +to open one at the Southern or Los Pinos agency.</p> + +<h4>NEW MEXICO.</h4> + +<p>The tribes residing and roaming within the limits of New Mexico are the +Navajoes; the Mescalero, Gila, and Jicarilla bands of Apaches; the +Muache, Capote, and Weeminuche bands of Utes; and the Pueblos.</p> + +<p><i>Navajoes.</i>—The Navajoes now number 9,114, an increase of 880 over last +year's enumeration. Superintendent Pope considers this increase to be +mainly due to the return, during the year, of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>number who had been +held in captivity by the Mexicans. They have a reservation of 3,328,000 +acres in the north-western part of New Mexico and north-eastern part of +Arizona, set apart for them by treaty of 1868. These Indians are natives +of the section of the country where they are now located. Prior to 1864 +no less than seven treaties had been made with these tribes, which were +successively broken on their part, and that, with but one exception, +before the Senate could take action on the question of their +ratification. In 1864 the Navajoes were made captives by the military, +and taken to the Bosque Redondo reservation, which had been set apart +for the Mescalero Apaches, where they were for a time held as prisoners +of war, and then turned over to this department. After the treaty of +1868 had been concluded, they were removed to their present location, +where they have, as a tribe, remained quiet and peaceable, many of them +being engaged in agriculture, and in raising sheep and goats. Of these +they have large flocks, numbering 130,000 head, which supply them not +only with subsistence, but also with material from which they +manufacture the celebrated, and for warmth and durability unequalled, +Navajo <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>blanket. They also have a stock of 10,000 horses. These Indians +are industrious, attend faithfully to their crops, and even put in a +second crop when the first, as frequently happens, is destroyed by +drought or frost.</p> + +<p>One school is in operation on the reservation, with an attendance of +forty scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Mescalero Apaches.</i>—These Indians, numbering about 830, are at present +located—not, however, upon a defined reservation secured to them—near +Fort Stanton, in the eastern part of the Territory, and range generally +south of that point. Prior to 1864, they were located on the Bosque +Redondo reservation, where they were quiet and peaceable until the +Navajoes were removed to that place. Being unable to live in harmony +with the new-comers, they fled from the reservation, and until quite +recently have been more or less hostile. They are now living at peace +with the whites, and conducting themselves measurably well. They have no +schools, care nothing apparently about the education of their children, +and are not to any noticeable extent engaged in farming or in any +pursuit of an industrial character. These Indians have no treaty with +the United States; nor do they receive any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>annuities. They are, +however, subsisted in part by the government, and are supplied with a +limited quantity of clothing when necessary. In addition to the +Mescaleros proper, Agent Curtis reports as being embraced in his agency +other Indians, called by him Aguas Nuevos, 440; Lipans, 350 (probably +from Texas); and Southern Apaches, 310, whose proper home is no doubt +upon the Tularosa reservation. These Indians, the agent remarks, came +from the Comanche country to his agency at various dates during the past +year.</p> + +<p><i>Gila (sometimes called Southern) Apaches.</i>—This tribe is composed of +two bands, the Mimbres and Mogollons, and number about 1,200. They are +warlike, and have for years been generally unfriendly to the government. +The citizens of Southern New Mexico, having long suffered from their +depredatory acts, loudly demanded that they be removed; and to comply +with the wish of the people, as well as to prevent serious difficulties +and possibly war, it was a year or two since decided to provide the +Indians with a reservation distant from their old home, and there +establish them. With a view to that end a considerable number of them +were collected early last year at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>Cañada Alamosa. Subsequently, by +executive order dated Nov. 9, 1871, a reservation was set apart for them +with other roving bands of Apaches in the Tularosa Valley, to which +place four hundred and fifty of them are reported to have been removed +during the present year by United States troops. These Indians, although +removed against their will, were at first pleased with the change, but, +after a short experience of their new home, became dissatisfied; and no +small portion left the reservation to roam outside, disregarding the +system of passes established. They bitterly object to the location as +unhealthy, the climate being severe and the water bad. There is +undoubtedly much truth in these complaints. They ask to be taken back to +Cañada Alamosa, their old home, promising there to be peaceable and +quiet. Of course nothing can be said of them favorable to the interests +of education and labor. Such of these Indians as remain on the +reservation are being fed by the government. They have no treaty with +the United States; nor do they receive annuities of any kind.</p> + +<p><i>Jicarilla Apaches.</i>—These Indians, numbering about 850, have for +several years been located with the Muache Utes, about 650 in number, at +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>the Cimarron agency, upon what is called "Maxwell's Grant," in +North-eastern New Mexico. They have no treaty relations with the +government; nor have they any reservation set apart for them. Efforts +were made some years ago to have them, with the Utes referred to, remove +to the large Ute reservation in Colorado, but without success. The +Cimarron agency, however, has lately been discontinued; and these +Apaches will, if it can be effected without actual conflict, be removed +to the Mescalero agency at Fort Stanton. Four hundred Jicarilla Apaches +are also reported as being at the Tierra Amarilla agency.</p> + +<p><i>Muache, Weeminuche, and Capote Utes.</i>—These bands—the Muache band, +numbering about 650, heretofore at the Cimarron agency, and the other +two bands, numbering 870, at the Abiquiu agency—are all parties to the +treaty made with the several bands of Utes in 1868. It has been desired +to have these Indians remove to their proper reservation in Colorado; +but all efforts to this end have thus far proved futile. The +discontinuance of the Cimarron agency may have the effect to cause the +Muaches to remove either to that reservation or to the Abiquiu agency, +now located at Tierra Amarilla, in the north-western part of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>Territory. These three bands have generally been peaceable, and +friendly to the whites. Recently, however, some of them have shown a +disposition to be troublesome; but no serious difficulty is apprehended. +None of them appear disposed to work for a subsistence, preferring to +live by the chase and on the bounty of the government; nor do they show +any inclination or desire to have their children educated, and taught +the habits and customs of civilized life. Declining to remove to and +locate permanently upon the reservation set apart for the Utes in +Colorado, they receive no annuities, and participate in none of the +benefits provided in the treaties of 1863 and 1868 with the several +bands of Ute Indians referred to under the head of "Colorado."</p> + +<p><i>Pueblos.</i>—The Pueblos, so named because they live in villages, number +7,683. They have 439,664 acres of land confirmed to them by act of +Congress of Dec. 22, 1858, the same consisting of approved claims under +old Spanish grants. They have no treaty with the United States, and +receive but little aid from the government. During the past two years +efforts have been made, and are still being continued, to secure the +establishment of schools in all the villages of the Pueblos, for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>the +instruction of their children in the English language. Five such schools +are now being conducted for their benefit.</p> + +<p>The history of the Pueblos is an interesting one. They are the remains +of a once powerful people, and in habits and modes of life are still +clearly distinguished from all other aborigines of the continent. The +Spanish invaders found them living generally in towns and cities. They +are so described by Spanish historians as far back as 1540. They early +revolted, though without success, against Spanish rule; and in the +struggle many of their towns were burned, and much loss of life and +property occasioned. It would seem, however, that, in addition to the +villagers, there were others at that time living dispersed, whose +reduction to Pueblos was determined upon and made the subject of a +decree by Charles V. of Spain, in 1546, in order chiefly, as declared, +to their being instructed in the Catholic faith. Under the Spanish +government, schools were established at the villages; the Christian +religion was introduced, and impressed upon the people, and the rights +of property thoroughly protected. By all these means a high degree of +civilization was secured, which was maintained until after the +establishment of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>Mexican independence; when, from want of government +care and support, decay followed; and the Pueblos measurably +deteriorated, down to the time when the authority of the United States +was extended over that country: still they are a remarkable people, +noted for their sobriety, industry, and docility. They have few wants, +and are simple in their habits, and moral in their lives. They are, +indeed, scarcely to be considered Indians in the sense traditionally +attached to that word, and, but for their residence upon reservations +patented to these bands in confirmation of ancient Spanish grants, and +their continued tribal organization, might be regarded as a part of the +ordinary population of the country. There are now nineteen villages of +these Indians in New Mexico. Each village has a distinct and organized +government, with its governor and other officers, all of whom are +elected annually by the people, except the <i>cacique</i>, a sort of high +priest, who holds his office during life. Though nominally Catholics in +religion, it is thought that their real beliefs are those of their +ancestors in the days of Montezuma.</p> + +<h4><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>UTAH.</h4> + +<p>The tribes residing wholly or in part within the limits of Utah are the +North-western, Western, and Goship bands of Shoshones; the Weber, Yampa, +Elk Mountain, and Uintah bands of Utes; the Timpanagos, the San Pitches, +the Pah-Vents, the Piedes, and She-be-rechers,—all, with the exception +of the Shoshones, speaking the Ute language, and being native to the +country inhabited by them.</p> + +<p><i>North-western, Western, and Goship Shoshones.</i>—These three bands of +Shoshones, numbering together about 3,000, have treaties made with the +government in 1863. No reservations were provided to be set apart for +them by the terms of said treaties, the only provision for their benefit +being the agreement on the part of the United States to furnish them +with articles, to a limited extent and for a limited term, suitable to +their wants as hunters or herdsmen. Having no reservations, but little +can be done for their advancement. They live in North-western Utah and +North-eastern Nevada, and are generally inclined to be industrious, many +of them gaining a livelihood by working for the white settlers, while +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>others cultivate small tracts of land on their own account.</p> + +<p>The Weber Utes, numbering about 300, live in the vicinity of Salt Lake +City, and subsist by hunting, fishing, and begging. The Timpanagos, +numbering about 500, live south of Salt Lake City, and live by hunting +and fishing. The San Pitches, numbering about 300, live, with the +exception of some who have gone to the Uintah Valley reservation, in the +country south and east of the Timpanagos, and subsist by hunting and +fishing. The Pah-Vents number about 1,200, and occupy the territory +south of the Goships, cultivate small patches of ground, but live +principally by hunting and fishing. The Yampa Utes, Piedes, Pi-Utes, Elk +Mountain Utes, and She-be-rechers live in the eastern and southern parts +of the Territory. They number, as nearly as can be estimated, 5,200; do +not cultivate the soil, but subsist by hunting and fishing, and at times +by depredating in a small way upon the white settlers. They are warlike +and migratory in their habits, carrying on a petty warfare pretty much +all the time with the southern Indians. These bands of Utes have no +treaties with the United States: they receive no annuities, and but very +little assistance from the government.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>The Uintah Utes, numbering 800, are now residing upon a reservation of +2,039,040 acres in Uintah Valley, in the north-eastern corner of the +Territory, set apart for the occupancy of the Indians in Utah by +executive order of Oct. 3, 1861, and by act of Congress of May 5, 1864. +This reservation comprises some of the best farming land in Utah, and is +of sufficient extent to maintain all the Indians in the Territory. Some +of the Indians located here show a disposition to engage in agriculture, +though most of them still prefer the chase to labor. No steps have yet +been taken to open a school on the reservation. The Uintah Utes have no +treaty with the United States; but an appropriation averaging about +$10,000 has been annually made for their civilization and improvement +since 1863.</p> + +<h4>ARIZONA.</h4> + +<p>The tribes residing in the Territory of Arizona are the Pimas and +Maricopas, Papagoes, Mohaves, Moquis, and Orivas Pueblos, Yumas, +Yavapais, Hualapais, and different bands of the Apaches. All are native +to the districts occupied by them, respectively.</p> + +<p><i>Pimas and Maricopas.</i>—These, said to have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>been in former years +"Village" or "Pueblo" Indians, number 4,342, and occupy a reservation of +64,000 acres, set apart for them under the act of Feb. 28, 1859, and +located in the central part of the Territory, on the Gila River. They +are, and always have been peaceful, and loyal to the government; are +considerably advanced, according to a rude form of civilization, and +being industrious, and engaged quite successfully, whenever the +conditions of soil and climate are favorable, in farming operations, are +nearly self-sustaining. The relations of these bands with the +neighboring whites are, however, very unfavorable to their interests; +and the condition of affairs is fast growing worse. The difficulty +arises out of the fact of the use, and probably the improvident use, by +the whites above them, of the water of the Gila River, by which they are +deprived of all means of irrigating their lands. Much dissatisfaction is +manifested on this account; and the result is, so far, that many of the +Indians have left the reservation, and gone to Salt River Valley, where +they are making a living by tilling the soil, not, however, without +getting into trouble at this point also with the settlers.</p> + +<p>The Pimas and Maricopas are greatly interested <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>in the education of +their children. Two schools are in operation on the reservation, with an +attendance of 105 scholars. These tribes have no treaty with the United +States, and receive but little assistance from the government.</p> + +<p><i>Papagoes.</i>—These Indians, numbering about 5,000, are of the same +class, in some respects, as the Pueblos in New Mexico, living in +villages, cultivating the soil, and raising stock for a support. They +have no reservation set apart for their occupancy, but inhabit the +south-eastern part of the Territory. Many of them have embraced +Christianity; and they are generally well behaved, quiet, and peaceable. +They manifest a strong desire to have their children educated; and steps +to this end have been taken by the department. These Indians have no +treaty relations with the United States, and receive no assistance from +the government. The expediency of assigning to the Papagoes a +reservation, and concentrating them where they can be brought within the +direct care and control of the government, is under consideration by the +department. There seems to be no reason to doubt that, if so +established, and once supplied with implements and stock, they would +become in a short time not only self-sustaining, but prosperous.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span><i>Mohaves.</i>—These Indians have a reservation of 75,000 acres, located on +the Colorado River, and set apart for them and other tribes in the +vicinity of said river, under the act of March 3, 1865. The Mohaves +number about 4,000, of whom only 828 are on the reservation, the rest +either roaming at large or being fed at other reservations in the +Territory. An irrigating canal has been built for them at great expense; +but farming operations have not as yet proved very successful. Over +1,100 acres, however, are being cultivated by the Indians. The crops +consist of corn, melons, and pumpkins. These Indians show but little +progress in civilization. The parents objecting to the education of +their children, no schools have been put in operation on the +reservation, as they could be conducted only on a compulsory system. The +Mohaves have no treaty stipulations with the United States; but they are +partly subsisted, and are largely assisted in their farming operations, +from the general incidental fund of the territory.</p> + +<p><i>Yumas.</i>—These Indians number probably 2,000. They inhabit the country +near the mouth of the Colorado River, but belong to the reservation +occupied by the Mohaves. They refuse, however, to remove to the +reservation, and gain a scanty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>subsistence by planting, and by cutting +wood for steamers plying on the river. Many of them remain about Arizona +City, performing menial services for the whites, and gratifying their +inveterate passion for gambling. They have no treaty with the United +States, and receive but little assistance from the government.</p> + +<p><i>Hualapais.</i>—These Indians, numbering about 1,500, inhabit the country +near the Colorado River, north of the Mohaves, ranging a considerable +distance into the interior. They have been, and still are, more or less +hostile. Those who are quiet and peaceable are, with members of other +bands of Indians, being fed by the government at Camps McDowell, Beal's +Spring, and Date Creek.</p> + +<p><i>Yavapais and Apaches.</i>—These Indians are estimated to number from +8,000 to 12,000, the lower estimate being the more reasonable. Their +ranging grounds are in the central, northern, and eastern parts of the +Territory. Most of them have long been hostile to the government, +committing numerous robberies and murders. Earnest efforts have been +made during the past year to settle them on reservations, three of +which, viz., Camp Apache, Camp Grant, and Camp Verde, were set apart for +their occupancy by executive order <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>dated Nov. 9, 1871. These efforts, +however, have not resulted very successfully; the Indians occasionally +coming upon the reservations in large numbers, but leaving without +permission, and, indeed, defiantly, whenever so disposed, oftentimes +renewing their depredations before their supplies of government rations +are exhausted. Many of the bands of this tribe (if it can be called a +tribe; habits, physical structure, and language all pointing to a great +diversity in origin among the several bands) are seemingly incorrigible, +and will hardly be brought to cease their depredations and massacres +except by the application of military force.</p> + +<h4>NEVADA.</h4> + +<p>The tribes residing in Nevada are Pah-Utes, Pi-Utes, Washoes, Shoshones, +and Bannocks, and are native to the districts inhabited by them +respectively.</p> + +<p><i>Pah-Utes.</i>—These Indians, numbering about 6,000, inhabit the western +part of the State. Two reservations have been set apart for them,—one +known as the Walker River, the other as the Pyramid Lake reservation, +containing each 320,000 acres. These Indians are quiet, and friendly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>to +the whites, are very poor, and live chiefly upon fish, game, seeds, and +nuts, with such assistance as the government from time to time renders +them. They show considerable disposition to labor; and those on the +reservations, especially the Walker River reservation, are cultivating +small patches of ground. The Pyramid Lake reservation affords, in +addition, excellent fishing, and the surrounding settlements a ready +market for the catch over and above what the Indians require for their +own consumption.</p> + +<p>No schools have been established for these Indians. They have no treaty +relations with the government, and receive no annuities.</p> + +<p><i>Pi-Utes.</i>—The Pi-Utes, numbering probably 2,500, inhabit the +south-eastern part of the State. They have no reservation set apart for +them; nor have they any treaty with the United States. They roam about +at will, are very destitute, and obtain a living principally by +pilfering from the whites, although a few of them are engaged in a small +way in farming. But very little can be done for these Indians by the +government in their present unsettled condition. They should be brought +upon one of the reservations set apart for the Indians in Nevada, or +upon the Uintah <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>reservation in Utah, where they could receive suitable +care, and proper instruction in the arts of civilized life.</p> + +<p><i>Washoes.</i>—These Indians, numbering about 500, are a poor, miserable, +and debauched people, and spend most of their time among the white +settlements, where they gain some supplies of food and clothing by +menial services. They have no reservation and no treaty, are not in +charge of any agent of the government; and vice and disease are rapidly +carrying them away.</p> + +<p><i>Shoshones.</i>—The Shoshones are a portion of the North-western, Western, +and Goship bands, referred to under the head of "Utah." Those roaming or +residing in the eastern part of Nevada number about 2,000. The remarks +made respecting their brethren in Utah will equally apply to them.</p> + +<p><i>Bannocks.</i>—The Bannocks, roaming in the north-eastern part of the +State, number, probably, 1,500, and are doubtless a portion of the +people of that name ranging in Eastern Oregon and Southern Idaho. They +have no treaty with the government, nor any reservation set apart for +them, and are not in charge of any United States agent. They should, if +possible, be located upon the Fort <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>Hall reservation in Idaho, where +some steps could be taken to advance them in civilization.</p> +<br /> + +<h3>THE PACIFIC SLOPE.</h3> + +<p>The Indians on the Pacific slope are divided as follows: in Washington +Territory, about 14,000; in Oregon, 12,000; in California, 22,000.</p> + +<h4>WASHINGTON TERRITORY.</h4> + +<p>The tribes residing in Washington Territory are the Nisqually, Puyallup, +and other confederate tribes; the D'Wamish and other allied bands; the +Makahs, the S'Klallams, the Qui-nai-elts and Qui-leh-utes, the Yakamas, +the Chehalis and other allied tribes, and the Colville, Spokanes, +Cœur d'Alênes, Okanagans, and others.</p> + +<p><i>Nisqually, Puyallup, and others.</i>—These Indians, numbering about +1,200, have three reservations, containing, as per treaty of 1854, +26,776 acres, situated on the Nisqually and Puyallup Rivers, and on an +island in Puget Sound. Some of these Indians are engaged in farming, and +raise considerable wheat, also potatoes and other vegetables. Many are +employed by the farmers in their vicinity; while others still are idle +and shiftless, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>spending their time wandering from place to place. One +school is in operation on the Puyallup reservation, with an attendance +of eleven scholars.</p> + +<p><i>D'Wamish and others.</i>—The D'Wamish and other allied tribes number +3,600, and have five reservations, containing in all 41,716 acres, set +apart by treaty made with them in 1855, and located at as many points on +Puget Sound. Many of these Indians, particularly those residing on the +Lummi reservation, are industrious farmers, raising all the produce +necessary for their support, and owning a large number of cattle, +horses, hogs, &c.; while others are either employed by the neighboring +white farmers, or engaged in lumbering on their own account. They are +generally Christianized, most of them members of the Catholic Church. +One school, with 57 scholars, is in operation on the Tulalip +reservation, where all the government buildings are located. This school +has had a remarkable degree of success, as reported by the agent and by +disinterested visitors.</p> + +<p><i>Makahs.</i>—These Indians number 604, and have a reservation of 12,800 +acres, set apart by treaty made with them in 1855, and located at the +extreme north-west corner of the Territory. They are a bold, hardy race, +not inclined to till the soil <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>for a support, but depending principally +upon fishing and the taking of fur-seal for their livelihood. One school +is in operation among them, with an attendance of 16 scholars.</p> + +<p><i>S'Klallams.</i>—These Indians, numbering 919, have a reservation of 4,000 +acres, set apart by treaty made with them in 1855, and located on what +is known as "Hood's Canal." Some of them are engaged, in a small way, in +farming; and others are employed in logging for the neighboring +saw-mills. Their condition generally is such that their advancement in +civilization must necessarily be slow. A school has been established on +the reservation, and is attended by 22 scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Qui-nai-elts, Qui-leh-utes, Hohs, and Quits.</i>—These Indians number +520, and have a reservation of 25,600 acres, in the extreme eastern part +of the Territory, and almost wholly isolated from white settlements, set +apart under a treaty made with them July 1, 1855. But one of the four +tribes mentioned, the Qui-nai-elts, live upon the reservation: the +others reside at different points along the coast, northward from the +reservation. These declare that they never agreed to sell their country, +and that they never knowingly signed any treaty disposing of their right +to it. The bottom <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>land on the reservation is heavily timbered, and a +great deal of labor is required to clear it; but when cleared, it +produces good crops. Many of the Indians, though in the main fish-eaters +(the Qui-nai-elt River furnishing them with salmon in great abundance), +are cultivating small patches, and raise sufficient vegetables for their +own use. One school is in operation on the reservation, with an +attendance of 15 scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Yakamas.</i>—The Yakamas number 3,000, and have a reservation in the +southern part of the Territory, containing 783,360 acres, set apart for +them by treaty of June 9, 1855. These Indians belong to numerous bands, +confederated under the title of Yakamas. Many of them, under the able +management of their present agent, have become noticeably advanced in +civilization, and are good farmers or skilled mechanics. The +manual-labor school at the Yakama agency has been a complete success, +and of incalculable benefit in imparting to the children a practical +knowledge of farming and of the different mechanical arts. Their +principal wealth is in horses, of which they own 12,000. The fact that +the reservation for these Indians is located east of the Cascade +Mountains, away from all contact with the whites, has doubtless tended, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>in a great measure, to make this what it is,—the model agency on the +Pacific slope: though to this result the energy and devotion of Agent +Wilbur have greatly contributed. Churches have been built on the +reservation, which are well attended, the services being conducted by +native preachers. There are at present two schools, with an attendance +of 44 scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Chehalis and others, remnants of tribes, and parties to no treaty with +the government.</i>—These Indians number about 600, and have a reservation +of 4,322 acres in the eastern part of the Territory, set apart for them +by executive order of July 8, 1864. A considerable portion of the land +in this reservation is excellent for agricultural purposes; and quite +extensive crops are being raised by the Indians of the Chehalis tribe. +None of the other tribes for whom the reservation was intended reside +upon it, declining to do so for the reason that they do not recognize it +as their own, and fear to prejudice their claims to other lands by so +doing.</p> + +<p>All these Indians have horses and cattle in abundance. They are +industrious; and, being good field-hands, those of them who do not farm +on their own account find ready employment from the surrounding farmers, +their services always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>commanding the highest wages. Having no treaty +relations with the government, no direct appropriations are made for +their benefit. They, however, receive some assistance from the general +incidental fund of the Territory. The Indians herein referred to as not +living upon the reservation are of the Cowlitz, Chinook, Shoalwater Bay, +and Humboldt tribes. They profess to desire a home at the mouth of the +Humboldt and Coinoose Rivers, where they originated.</p> + +<p><i>Colville and other Tribes.</i>—These Indians, numbering 3,349, occupy the +north-eastern portion of the Territory. They have no treaty relations +with the government, and, until the present year, have had no +reservation set apart for them. They are now, however, to be +established, under an order of the President of July 2, 1872, in the +general section of the Territory where they now are, upon a tract which +is bounded on the south and east by the Columbia River, on the west by +the Okinakane River, and on the north by British Columbia. The tribes +for whom this reservation is designed are known as Colvilles, +Okinakanes, San Poels, Lake Spokanes, Cœur d'Alênes, Calispells, and +Methows. Some of these Indians, however, have settled upon valuable +tracts of land, and have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>made extensive improvements, while others, to +a considerable number, have begun farming in a small way at various +points within the district from which is proposed to remove their +respective tribes. It is doubtful whether these individuals will +voluntarily remove to the reservation referred to, which is some +distance west of their present location. It is proposed, therefore, to +allow such as are engaged in farming to remain where they are, if they +so desire. Owing to the influx of whites into the country thus claimed +or occupied by these Indians, many of them have been crowded out; and +some of them have had their own unquestionable improvements forcibly +wrested from them. This for a time during the past summer caused +considerable trouble, and serious difficulties were apprehended; but +thus far peace has been preserved by a liberal distribution among them +of agricultural implements, seeds, blankets, &c. No funds are +appropriated specially for these Indians, such supplies and presents as +are given them being furnished from the general incidental fund of the +Territory.</p> + +<h4>OREGON.</h4> + +<p>The tribes residing in Oregon are the Umatillas, Cayuses, Walla-Wallas, +Wascoes, Molels, Chasta <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>Scotans, Coosas, Alseas, Klamath, Modocs, and +Wal-pah-pee Snakes, besides numerous other small bands. They are all +native to the country. On account of the great number of small tribes +and bands in this State,—the number of tribes and bands parties to the +same treaty being in some cases as high as ten or fifteen,—these +Indians will be treated of, and the remarks concerning them will be +made, under the heads of the agencies at which they are respectively +located.</p> + +<p><i>Umatilla Agency.</i>—The tribes located at this agency are the Umatillas, +Cayuses, and a portion of the Walla-Wallas, and number 837. They have a +reservation of 512,000 acres, situated in the north-eastern part of the +State, set apart for them by treaty of June 9, 1855. This reservation is +very fertile, and, as usual in such cases, has attracted the cupidity of +the whites. A proposition was made last year, under the authority of +Congress, to have the Indians take land in severalty, or sell and remove +to some other reservation. The Indians, however, in the exercise of +their treaty rights, refused to accede to this proposition. These +Indians are successfully engaged in agricultural operations, are nearly +self-supporting, and may be considered, comparatively <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>speaking, +wealthy. It is gratifying to state that the introduction of whiskey by +whites upon this reservation, and its sale to the Indians, has, during +the last year, received a decided check through the vigilance of Agent +Cornoyer in causing the arrest and trial of four citizens for a +violation of the law in this respect. All the parties charged were +convicted, and are now in prison. This is especially worthy of note, +from the fact that it is always exceedingly difficult to obtain +convictions for such dealing with Indians in any section of the country. +There is one school in operation on the reservation, with an attendance +of twenty-seven scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Warm-Spring Agency.</i>—The Indians at this agency, known as the +"Confederated Tribes and Bands of Indians in Middle Oregon," comprise +seven bands of the Walla-Walla and Wasco tribes, numbering six hundred +and twenty-six. They have a reservation of 1,024,000 acres, located in +the central part of the State, set apart for them by the treaty of June +25, 1855. Though there is but little really good land in this +reservation, many of the Indians, by reason of their industry, have +succeeded measurably in their farming operations, and may be considered +as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>self-sustaining. In morals they have greatly improved; so that +polygamy, the buying and selling of wives, gambling, and drunkenness +have ceased to be common among them, as in the past. There are some, +however, who are disposed to wander off the reservation, and lead a +vagabond life. But little advancement has been made in education among +these Indians. One school is in operation at the agency, with an +attendance of fifty-one scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Grand-Ronde Agency.</i>—The Indians at this agency comprise the Molalla, +Clackama, Calapooia, Molel, Umpqua, Rogue River, and other bands, +seventeen in all, with a total population of eight hundred and seventy. +The reservation upon which these bands are located is in the +north-western part of the State. It contains 69,120 acres, and was set +apart for their occupation by treaty of Jan. 22, 1855, with the +Molallas, Clackamas, &c., and by executive order of June 30, 1857. Some +portions of this reservation are well adapted to grain-raising, though +much of it is rough and heavily timbered. An allotment of land in +severalty has been directed to be made, much to the gratification and +encouragement of the tribes. These Indians are inclined to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>industry, +and show commendable zeal in cultivating their farms, growing crops +which compare favorably with those of their white neighbors. Their +customs and habits of life also exhibit a marked improvement. One school +is in operation, with an attendance of fifty scholars.</p> + +<p><i>Siletz Agency.</i>—The Indians at this agency are the Chasta Scotons, and +fragments of fourteen other bands, called, generally, Coast-tribes, +numbering altogether about 2,500. These Indians, including those at the +Alsea sub-agency, have a reservation of 1,100,800 acres set apart for +them by treaty of Aug. 11, 1855; which treaty, however, has never been +ratified, although the reservation is occupied by the Indians. They were +for a long time much averse to labor for a support; but recently they +have shown more disposition to follow agriculture, although +traditionally accustomed to rely chiefly upon fish for food. Many +already have their farms well fenced and stocked, with good, comfortable +dwellings and out-houses erected thereon. There is no reason why they +should not, in time, become a thoroughly prosperous people. The failure +to make allotments of land in severalty, for which surveys were +commenced in 1871, has been a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>source of much uneasiness to the Indians, +and has tended to weaken their confidence in the good intentions of the +government. One school is in operation on the reservation, with an +attendance of twenty scholars. None of the tribes or bands at this +agency have any treaty relations with the United States, unless it may +be a few members of the Rogue-River band, referred to under the head of +the Grand-Ronde agency.</p> + +<p><i>Alsea Sub-agency.</i>—The Indians at this sub-agency are the Alseas, +Coosas, Sinselans, and a band of Umpquas, numbering in all three +hundred, located within the limits of the reservation referred to under +the head of the Siletz agency. The remarks made about the Indians at the +Siletz agency will generally apply to the Indians of this sub-agency. +The Coosas, Sinselans, and Umpquas are making considerable advancement +in agriculture, and, had they advantages of instruction, would rapidly +acquire a proficiency in the simpler mechanical branches of industry. +The Alseas are not so tractable, and exhibit but little desire for +improvement. All the assistance they receive from the government is +supplied out of the limited amount appropriated for the general +incidental expenses of the service in Oregon.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span><i>Klamath Agency.</i>—The Indians belonging to this agency are the Klamaths +and Modocs, and the Yahooskin and Wal-pah-pee bands of Snakes, numbering +altogether about 4,000, of whom only 1,018 are reported at the agency. +They have a reservation containing 768,000 acres, set apart for them by +the treaty of Oct. 14, 1864, and by executive order of March 14, 1871, +situated in the extreme southern portion of the State. This reservation +is not well adapted to agriculture. The climate is cold and uncertain; +and the crops are consequently liable to be destroyed by frosts. It is, +however, a good grazing country. Although this reservation is, +comparatively speaking, a new one, the Indians located upon it are +making commendable progress, both in farming operations and in +lumbering. A part of the Modocs, who belong by treaty to this agency, +and who were at one time located upon the reservation, have, on account +of their troubles with the Klamaths,—due principally to the overbearing +disposition of the latter,—left the agency, and refuse to return to it. +They desire to locate upon a small reservation by themselves. Under the +circumstances, they should be permitted to do this, or else be allowed +to select a tract on the Malheur <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>reservation. There is no school at +present in operation for these Indians.</p> + +<p><i>Malheur Reservation.</i>—This reservation, set apart by executive order +of Sept. 12, 1872, is situated in the south-eastern part of the State. +Upon this it is the intention of the department eventually to locate all +the roving and straggling bands in Eastern and South-eastern Oregon, +which can be induced to settle there. As no funds are at the disposal of +the department with which to make the necessary improvements, and to +provide temporary subsistence for Indians removed, the work has not yet +been fairly commenced. The Indians who should be collected upon this +reservation are now a constant source of annoyance to the white +settlers. They hang about the settlements and military posts, begging +and stealing; and, unless some prompt measures be taken to bring them +under the care and control of an agent of the government, serious +trouble may result at any time. Congress should make the necessary +appropriation during the coming session to maintain an agent for these +Indians, to erect the agency buildings, and to provide subsistence for +such as may be collected and may remain upon the reservation.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span><i>Indians not upon Reservations.</i>—There are a number of Indians, +probably not less than 3,000, "renegades," and others of roving habits, +who have no treaty relations with the government, and are not in charge +of any agent. The tribal names of some of these are the Clatsops, +Nestucals, Tillamooks, Nehalims, Snakes, and Nez Percés. The +"renegades," such in fact and so called, roam on the Columbia River, and +are of considerable annoyance to the agents at Warm Springs and +Umatilla: others, the Snakes, two hundred in number, are upon the edge +of the Grand-Ronde reservation. These live by hunting and fishing, and +profess to desire to have lands allotted to them, and a school provided +for their children. The Nez Percés, belonging in Idaho, to the estimated +number of two hundred, are found in Wallowa Valley, in the eastern part +of the State. They claim that they were not parties to the treaty with +the Nez Percé tribe years ago; that the valley in which they live has +always belonged to them; and they strenuously oppose its settlement by +the whites.</p> + +<h4>CALIFORNIA.</h4> + +<p>The tribes in California are the Ukie, Pitt River, Wylackie, Concon, +Redwood, Humboldt, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>Hoonsolton, Miscott, Siah, Tule, Tejon, Coahuila, +King's River, and various other bands and tribes, including the "Mission +Indians," all being native to the country.</p> + +<p><i>Round-Valley Agency.</i>—The Indians belonging to this agency are the +Ukies, Concons, Pitt Rivers, Wylackies, and Redwoods, numbering in all +1,700. The number has been increased during the past year by bringing in +1,040 Indians collected in Little Lake and other valleys. A reservation +containing 31,683 acres has been set apart per act of April 8, 1864, and +executive order of March 30, 1870, in the western and northern part of +the State, for these Indians, and for such others as may be induced to +locate thereon. The lands in the reservation are very fertile; and the +climate admits of a widely varied growth of crops. More produce being +raised than is necessary for the subsistence of the Indians, the +proceeds derived from the sale of the surplus are used in purchasing +stock and work-animals, and for the further improvement of the +reservation. Several of the Indians are engaged in cultivating gardens, +while others work as many as twenty-five or thirty acres on their own +account.</p> + +<p>The Indians on this reservation are uniformly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>quiet and peaceable, +notwithstanding that they are much disturbed by the white trespassers. +Suits, by direction of the department, were commenced against such +trespassers, but without definite results as yet; the Attorney-General +having directed the United States District Attorney to suspend +proceedings. Of this reservation the Indian Department has in actual +possession and under fence only about 4,000 acres; the remainder being +in the possession of settlers, all clamorous for breaking up the +reservation and driving the Indians out.</p> + +<p>The Indians at this reservation have shown no especial disposition to +have their children educated; and no steps were taken to that end until +in the summer of 1871, when a school was commenced. There is now one +school in operation, with an attendance of 110 scholars. These Indians +have no treaties with the government; and such assistance as is rendered +them in the shape of clothing, &c., is from the money appropriated for +the general incidental expenses of the Indian service in the State.</p> + +<p><i>Hoopa-Valley Agency.</i>—The Indians belonging to this agency are the +Humboldts, Hoonsoltons, Miscotts, Siahs, and several other bands, +numbering seven hundred and twenty-five.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>A reservation was set apart per act of April 8, 1864, for these and such +other Indians in the northern part of the State as might be induced to +settle thereon. This reservation is situated in the north-western part +of the State, on both sides of the Trinity River, and contains 38,400 +acres. As a rule, sufficient is raised on the reservation to supply the +wants of the Indians. These Indians are quiet and peaceable, and are not +disposed to labor on the reservation in common, but will work +industriously when allowed to do so on their own individual account. One +school is in operation on the reservation, with an attendance of +seventy-four scholars. Having no treaty relations with the United +States, and, consequently, no regular annuities appropriated for their +benefit, the general incidental fund of the State is used so far as may +be necessary, and so far as the amount appropriated will admit, to +furnish assistance in the shape of clothing, agricultural implements, +seeds, &c. Besides these, their agent has a general supervisory control +of certain Klamath Indians, who live adjacent to the reservation and +along the banks of the Klamath River. These formerly belonged to a +reservation bearing their name, which was, years ago, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>abandoned in +consequence of the total destruction by flood of agency buildings and +improvements. They now support themselves chiefly by hunting and +fishing, and by cultivating small patches in grain and vegetables.</p> + +<p><i>Tide-River Farm, or Agency.</i>—The Indians located at this point are the +Tules and Manaches, numbering three hundred and seventy-four. These +Indians are gradually improving, are quite proficient in all kinds of +farm-work, and show a good disposition to cultivate the soil on their +own account. There is one school in operation at the Tule River farm, +with an attendance of thirty-seven scholars. About sixty miles from the +agency reside several hundred King's-River Indians, who are in a +wretched and destitute condition. They desire to be attached to the +agency, and have in the past received occasional supplies of food from +it.</p> + +<p><i>Indians not on Reservations.</i>—In addition to the Indians located at +the three agencies named, there are probably not less than 20,000, +including the Mission Indians (so called), the Coahuilas, Owen's River, +and others, in the southern part of the State; and those on the Klamath, +Trinity, Scott, and Salmon Rivers, in the northern part. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>The Mission +Indians, having been for the past century under the Catholic missions +established on the California coast, are tolerably well advanced in +agriculture, and compare favorably with the most highly civilized tribes +of the East. The Coahuilas and others inhabiting the south-eastern and +eastern portions of the State, and those in the north, support +themselves by working for white settlers, or by hunting, fishing, +begging, and stealing, except, it may be, a few of the northern Indians, +who go occasionally to the reservations and the military posts in that +section for assistance in the way of food.</p> + +<p>There are also about 4,000 Owen's-River and Manache Indians east of the +Sierras, whom the settlers would gladly see removed to a reservation, +and brought under the care of an agent. The department has under +consideration the propriety of establishing a new reservation, upon +which shall be concentrated these and numerous other Indians, in which +event the Tule-River agency could advantageously be discontinued.</p> + +<div class="tr"> +<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Transcriber's Note</p> +<br /> + +Some inconsistent spelling in the +original document has been retained.<br /> +<br /> +Typographical errors corrected in the text:<br /> +<br /> +Page 40 govermnet changed to government<br /> +Page 100 carcer changed to career<br /> +Page 186 hererofore changed to heretofore<br /> +Page 259 favororably changed to favorably<br /> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Indian Question (1874), by Francis A. 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