Part 4

The principle of secluding Indians from whites for the good of both races is established by an overwhelming preponderance of authority. There are no mysterious reasons why this policy should be adopted: the considerations which favor it are plain and incontestable. The first is the familiar one, that the Indian is unfortunately disposed to submit himself to the lower and baser elements of civilized society, and to acquire the vices and not the virtues of the whites. This need not be dwelt upon; but there is still another consideration even more important, yet not generally apprehended. It is that an Indian tribe is a singularly homogeneous body,[F] and, if not disturbed by the intrusion of alien and discordant elements, is susceptible of being governed and controlled with the greatest ease and effect. It is not necessary to point out the ways in which this peculiarity of the Indian character assists the agent of the government in his administration of a tribe, or to show how much more complete it makes his success, as, little by little, he is able, through the authority of the government, and the means of moral education at his disposal, to effect a change for the better in the public sentiment of the people under his charge.

The number of Indians now having reservations secured to them by law or treaty is approximately 180,000. The number of such reservations is 92, ranging in extent from 288 acres to 40,750 square miles, and aggregating 167,619 square miles. Of these reservations, 31, aggregating 2,693 square miles, are east of the Mississippi River; 42, aggregating 144,838 square miles, are between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains; and 19, aggregating 20,068 square miles, are upon the Pacific slope. In addition to the above, 40,000 Indians, having no lands secured to them by treaty, have had reservations set apart for them by executive order, out of the public lands of the United States. The number of reservations thus set apart is 15, aggregating 59,544 square miles. The Indians thus located have, however, in the nature of the case, no assurance of their occupation of these lands beyond the pleasure of the executive.[G]

It must be evident to every one, on the simple statement of such facts as these, that the reservations, as at present constituted, do not consist with the permanent interests of either the Indian or the government. There are too many reservations: they occupy too much territory in the aggregate; and, what is worse, some of them unnecessarily obstruct the natural access of population to portions of territory not reserved, while others, by their neighborhood, render large tracts of otherwise available land undesirable for white occupation. Indeed, it may be said that the present arrangement of reservations would constitute an almost intolerable affliction, were it to be maintained without change. Nor are the interests of the Indians any better served by the existing order. Many tribes, even were they disposed to agriculture, would not find suitable land within the limits assigned to them. Others are in a position to be incessantly disturbed and harassed by the whites. Others still, while they stand across the path of settlement, are themselves, by ill-considered treaty provisions, cut off from access to hunting-grounds, to fishing privileges, or to mountains abounding in natural roots and berries, which would be of the greatest value to them. When it is considered that the present body of reservations is the result of hundreds of treaties, made, too often, on the part of the government with ignorance and heedlessness, and on the part of the Indians with the childishness characteristic of the race, both parties being not infrequently deceived and betrayed by the interpreters employed; when it is considered, moreover, that many of these treaties have been negotiated in emergencies requiring immediate

## action,--it would be wonderful indeed if the scheme as it stood were not

cumbersome and ineffective.

It is manifest, therefore, that the next five or ten years must witness a general recasting of the scheme of Indian reservations. This is not to be accomplished by confiscating the Indian title, but by exchange, by cession, and by consolidation. Let Congress provide the necessary authority, under the proper limitations, for the executive departments, and the adjustment desired can be reached easily and amicably.

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_Second._ It is further evident, that, in recasting the scheme of reservations, the principal object should be, while preserving distinct the boundaries of every tribe, so to locate them that the territory assigned to the Indians west of the Mississippi shall constitute one or two grand reservations, with, perhaps, here and there a channel cut through, so to speak, by a railroad, so that the industries of the surrounding communities may not be unduly impeded. Such a consolidation of the Indian tribes into one or two great bodies would leave all the remaining territory of the United States open to settlement, without obstruction or molestation.

Shall there be one general reservation east of the Rocky Mountains, or two? This is likely to be the most important Indian question of the immediate future. On the one hand, the recommendations of the executive, contained in both the Messages of the President and the Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Interior, for the past two or three years, have strongly favored the plan of a single reservation for all the tribes, North and South, East and West, who are not in a condition to become at an early day citizens of the United States and take their land in severalty. The reservation upon which it is proposed to thus collect the Indians of the United States is at present known as the "Indian Territory," although it actually contains but about one-quarter of the Indian population of the country. This tract covers all the territory lying between the States of Arkansas and Missouri on the east, and the one-hundredth meridian on the west, and between the State of Kansas on the north, and the Red River, the boundary of the State of Texas, on the south; comprising about seventy thousand square miles, and embracing a large body of the best agricultural lands west of the Mississippi. Upon this tract, it is claimed, can be gathered and subsisted all the Indians within the administrative control of the government, except such as are manifestly becoming ripe for citizenship in the States and Territories where they are now found. Computing the maximum number likely, on the successful realization of this scheme to be thus concentrated, at two hundred and fifty thousand, and taking the available lands within the district, exclusive of barren plains, of flint hills and sand hills, at an aggregate of thirty million acres, we should have one hundred and twenty acres for each man, woman, and child to be provided for.

On the other hand, the original plan of Indian colonization, as contained in the report of Secretary Calhoun, accompanying the message of President Monroe, Jan. 27, 1825, contemplated two general reservations,--one in the North-west for the Indians of Algonquin and Iroquois stock, and another (being the present Indian Territory) in the South-west for the Appalachian Indians. The ethnographical symmetry of that plan has been hopelessly violated by the introduction into the Indian Territory, and even the incorporation with the Southern tribes, of individuals, broken bands, and even entire tribes, originally from the North and North-east. The bulk of the Shawnees, an Algonquin tribe, are actually incorporated with the Cherokees; two hundred of the Senecas, the very flower of the conquering Iroquois,[H] occupy a small reservation in the north-eastern part of the Territory; while the remnants of the Quapaws, Ottawas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weas, Piankeshaws, Pottawatomies, and of the Sacs and Foxes,--all Algonquin tribes,--are found injected at various points along the northern and eastern frontier. At the same time, the south-western portion of the Territory is given up to tribes which are neither Algonquin, Iroquois, nor Appalachian in their original, but are of the races living immemorially beyond the Mississippi. It will thus appear that nothing like an ethnographical distribution of tribes has been attempted; and, indeed, these distinctions have long ceased, with the Indians themselves, to be of the slightest significance. But many of the physiological and practical reasons urged by Secretary Calhoun for a double Indian reservation still remain in full force. Nor does this scheme rest upon his authority alone. The Peace Commission of 1867 and 1868, consisting of Indian Commissioner Taylor, Senator Henderson, Gens. Sherman, Harney, Terry, and Augur, of the army, and Messrs. Sanborn and Tappan, concurred in the recommendation of two reservations for tribes east of the Rocky Mountains.

We are disposed to hold, not only that the reason of the case inclines to the plan of two general reservations, but that the matter will be settled practically in that way by the aversion and horror which the Northern Indians feel at the thought of moving to the South. Regarding the Indian Territory, as they do, though with no sufficient reason, as the graveyard of their race, there is ground for apprehension that, if the project be too suddenly sprung upon them, or pressed too far, the repugnance of some of these tribes may culminate in outbreaks like those with which the Black Hawk and Seminole wars commenced. There can, however, be no objection to the experiment being tried in such a way as not to endanger the peace. Certain of the Northern tribes, notably the confederated Cheyennes and Arapahoes, and the confederated Arickarees and Mandans, manifest much less antipathy to removal than others, by reason of their relationship to Indians South, or of exceptional inconveniences sustained in their present location. If such tribes could be amicably induced to go to the Indian Territory, their experiences, if fortunate, might serve in time to remove the prejudices existing among the Northern Indians generally.

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_Third._ The intrusion of whites upon lands reserved to Indians should be provided against by legislation suited to the necessities of the case. By the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 it was made a criminal offence to enter without authority the limits of any Indian reservation; and the prohibition was enforced by penalties adequate to the situation at that time. This provision, however, was aimed at individual intruders, rather than at organized expeditions completely equipped for offence or defence, and strong enough to maintain themselves against considerable bands of the savages, or the ordinary _posse comitatus_ of a distant Territory. It is in the latter form that the invasion of Indian country now generally takes place;[I] and for the purpose of resisting such organized lawlessness, the Act of 1834 is far from sufficient. The executive may, it is true, in an extreme case, and by the exercise of one of the highest acts of authority, make proclamation forbidding such combinations, and enforce the same by movements of troops, as would be done in the case of a threatened invasion of the soil of a neighboring friendly state. But this remedy is of such a violent nature, the odium and inconvenience occasioned thereby are so great, and the lawful limits of official action in such a resort are so ill-defined, that the executive is most unlikely to make use of it, except in rare and extreme cases. The eagerness of the average American citizen of the Territories for getting upon Indian lands amounts to a passion. The ruggedest flint hill of the Cherokees or Sioux is sweeter to him than the greenest pasture which lies open to him under the homestead laws of the United States. There is scarcely one of the ninety-two reservations at present established on which white men have not effected a lodgement: many swarm with squatters, who hold their place by intimidating the rightful owners; while in more than one case the Indians have been wholly dispossessed, and are wanderers upon the face of the earth. So far have these forms of usurpation been carried at times in Kansas, that an Indian reservation there might be defined as that portion of the soil of the State on which the Indians have no rights whatsoever.

Now, while it cannot be denied that there is something in all this suggestive of the reckless daring and restless enterprise to which the country owes so much of its present greatness, it is yet certain that such intrusion upon Indian lands is in violation of the faith of the United States, endangers the peace (as it has more than once enkindled war), and renders the civilization of tribes and bands thus encroached upon almost hopeless. The government is bound, therefore, in honor and in interest, to provide ample security for the integrity of Indian reservations; and this can only be done by additional and most stringent legislation.

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_Fourth._ The converse of the proposition contained under the preceding head is equally true and equally important. Indians should not be permitted to abandon their tribal relations, and leave their reservations to mingle with the whites, except upon express authority of law. We mean by this something more than that a "pass system" should be created for every tribe under the control of the government, to prevent individual Indians from straying away for an occasional debauch at the settlements. It is essential that the right of the authorities to keep members of any tribe upon the reservation assigned to them, and to arrest and return such as may from time to time wander away and seek to ally themselves with the whites, should be definitely established, and the proper forms and methods of procedure in such cases be fixed and prescribed by law. Without this, whenever these people become restive under compulsion to labor, they will break away in their old roving spirit, and stray off in small bands to neighboring communities. No policy of industrial education and restraint can be devised to meet the strong hereditary disinclination of the Indian to labor and to frugality which will not, in its first courses, tend to make him dissatisfied and rebellious. Nothing but the knowledge that he must stay on his reservation, and do all that is there prescribed for him; that he will not be permitted to throw off his connection with his people, and stray away to meet his own fate, unprovided, uninstructed, and unrestrained,--will, under any adequate system of moral and industrial correction and education, prevent a general breaking-up of Indian communities, and the formation of Indian gypsy-camps all over the frontier States and Territories, to be sores upon the public body, and an intolerable affliction to the future society of those communities.

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_Fifth._ A rigid reformatory control should be exercised by the government over the lives and manners of the Indians of the several tribes, particularly in the direction of requiring them to learn and practise the arts of industry, at least until one generation shall have been fairly started on a course of self-improvement. Merely to disarm the savages, and to surround them by forces which it is impossible for them to resist, leaving it to their own choice how miserably they will live, and how much they shall be allowed to escape work, is to render it highly probable that the great majority of the now roving Indians will fall hopelessly into a condition of pauperism and petty crime.

"Unused to manual labor, and physically disqualified for it by the habits of the chase, unprovided with tools and implements, without forethought and without self-control, singularly susceptible to evil influences, with strong animal appetites, and no intellectual tastes or aspirations to hold those appetites in check, it would be to assume more than would be taken for granted of any white race under the same conditions, to expect that the wild Indians will become industrious and frugal except through a severe course of industrial instruction and exercise under restraint."--_Report on Indian Affairs_, 1872, p. 11.

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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.

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_Sixth._ The provision made by the government for the partial subsistence of Indian tribes through the long and painful transition from the hunter life to the agricultural state, for their instruction and equipment in industrial pursuits, and for starting them finally on a course of full self-support and economical independence, should be liberal and generous, even to an extreme. The experiment should not be allowed to encounter any chances of failure which may be avoided by expenditure of money. The claim of the Indian in this respect is of the strongest. He has no right to prevent the settling of this continent by a race which has not only the power to conquer, but the disposition to improve and adorn the land which he has suffered to remain a wilderness. Yet to some royalty upon the product of the soil the Indian is incontestably entitled as the original occupant and possessor. The necessities of civilization may justify a somewhat summary treatment of his rights, but cannot justify a confiscation of them. The people of the United States can never without dishonor refuse to respect two considerations,--first, that the Indians were the original occupants and owners of substantially all the territory embraced within our limits; that their title of occupancy has been recognized by all civilized powers having intercourse with them, and has been approved in nearly four hundred treaties concluded by the United States with individual tribes and bands; and, therefore, every tribe and band that is deprived of its roaming privilege and confined to a "diminished reservation" is clearly entitled to compensation, either directly or in the form of expenditures for its benefit: second, that, inasmuch as the progress of our industrial enterprise is fast cutting this people off from modes of livelihood entirely sufficient for them, and suited to them, and is leaving them without resource, they have a claim, on this account again, to temporary support and to such assistance as may be necessary to place them in a position to obtain a livelihood by means which shall be compatible with civilization.

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"Had the settlements of the United States not been extended beyond the frontier of 1867, all the Indians of the continent would to the end of time have found upon the plains an inexhaustible supply of food and clothing. Were the westward course of population to be stayed at the barriers of to-day, notwithstanding the tremendous inroads made upon their hunting-grounds since 1867, the Indians would still have hope of life. But another such five years will see the Indians of Dakota and Montana as poor as the Indians of Nevada and Southern California; that is, reduced to an habitual condition of suffering from want of food. The freedom of expansion which is working these results is to us of incalculable value: to the Indian it is of incalculable cost."--_Report on Indian Affairs_, 1872, p. 10.

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_Seventh._ It is, further, highly desirable, in order to avoid the possibility of an occasional failure in such provision for the immediate wants of the Indians, and for their advancement in the arts of life and industry, and also to secure comprehensiveness and consistency in the general scheme, that the endowments for the several tribes and bands should be capitalized and placed in trust for their benefit, out of the reach of accident or caprice. Annual appropriations for such purposes, according to the humor of Congress, will of necessity be far less effective for good than would an annual income of a much smaller amount, arising from permanent investments.

To a considerable extent this has already been effected. For not a few tribes and bands provision has been made by law and treaty which places them beyond the reach of serious suffering in the future, and which, if their income be judiciously administered, will afford them substantial assistance towards final self-support. Stocks to the value of $4,810,716.83-2/3 are held by the Secretary of the Interior in trust for certain tribes; while credits to the aggregate amount of $5,905,474.59 are inscribed on the books of the United States Treasury in favor of the same or other tribes, on account of the sales of lands, or other consideration received by the government,[J] making a permanent endowment of nearly ten millions of dollars, the Indians sharing in the benefits thereof numbering in the aggregate nearly eighty thousand. Computing the average annual return from these funds at five and one-half per cent, we should have an assured income of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, or about seven dollars for each man, woman, and child. Moreover, most of these tribes have still large bodies of lands which they can dispose of sooner or later, from which funds of twice the amount already secured may by honest and judicious management be realized; so that, taking these eighty thousand Indians as a body, they may be regarded as having a reasonable assurance of funds yielding an annual income of twenty dollars a head. Their general character and condition being considered, this may be accepted as an amply sufficient endowment, placing their future in their own hands, giving them all the opportunities and appliances that could reasonably be asked for them, and securing them against the calamities and reverses which inevitably beset the first stages of industrial progress.