Part 5
Unfortunately, the same wise provision for the future has not been made in the case of other Indians who have ceded or surrendered to the government the main body of their lands. There is a painfully long list of tribes that have to show for their inheritance only a guaranty on the part of the United States of certain expenditures, more or less beneficial, for a series of years longer or shorter, as the case may be. The Report on Indian Affairs for 1872 (pp. 418-430) states the aggregate of future appropriations that will be required during a limited number of years to pay limited annuities at $15,819,310.46. The annuities covered by this computation have from one to twenty-seven years to run (the average term being about seven years), and embrace almost every variety of goods and services which human ingenuity could suggest. Many of the things stipulated to be given to the Indians, or to be done for them, are admirable in themselves, but far in advance of the present requirements of the tribes; and the expenditures involved are therefore perfectly useless. Other things would be well enough if the Indians could have every thing they wanted, but are absurd and mischievous as taking the place of what is absolutely essential to their well-being. Of other things embraced in the schedule of annual appropriations, it can only be said that the Indians need them no more than a toad needs a pocket-book. For such waste of Indian moneys the responsibility rests in many cases upon the commissioners, who, on the part of the United States, negotiated the treaties under which these appropriations are annually made. Had they been half as solicitous for the future of the Indians as they were for the attainment of the immediate object of negotiation, the government would have been left free to apply the amounts, to be paid in consideration for cessions, in such manner as to make them of substantial benefit; or, better still, the amounts would have been capitalized, and a permanent income secured. As it is, many tribes now see approaching the termination of annuities which have for many years been paid them with the very minimum of advantage, and have no prospect beyond but that of being thrown, uninstructed and unprovided, upon their own barbarous resources.
Let us illustrate. A tribe makes a treaty with the United States, ceding the great body of their lands, and accepting a diminished reservation sufficient for their actual occupation. In consideration, it is provided that there shall be maintained upon the reservation, for the term of fifteen years, at the expense of the United States, a superintendent of teaching and two teachers, a superintendent of farming and two farmers, two millers, two blacksmiths, a tinsmith, a gunsmith, a carpenter, and a wagon and plough maker, with shops and material for all these mechanical services. This "little bill" is presumably made up without much reference to the peculiarities in character and condition of the tribe to be benefited by the expenditures involved. As soon as the treaty goes into effect, the United States in good faith fulfil their part of the bargain. The shops are built, the employees enlisted; and the government, through its agent, stands ready to civilize the Indians to almost any extent. But, unfortunately, the Indians are not ready to be civilized. The glow of industrial enthusiasm, which was created by the metaphorical eloquence of the commissioners in council dies away under the first experiment of hard work: an hour at the plough nearly breaks the back of the wild man wholly unused to labor: his pony, a little wilder still, jumps now on one side of the furrow and now on the other, and finally settles the question by kicking itself free of the galling harness, and disappears for the day. The Indian, a sadder and wiser man, betakes himself to the chase, and thereafter only visits the shops, maintained at so much expense by the government, to have his gun repaired, or to get a strap or buckle for his riding-gear. But still the treaty expenditures go on: the United States are every year loyally furnishing what has been stipulated; and the Indian is every year one instalment nearer the termination of all his claims upon the government. Meanwhile, population is closing around the reservation: the animals of the chase are disappearing before the presence of the white man, and the sound of the pioneer's axe: scantier and scantier grow the natural means of subsistence, fainter and fainter the attractions of the chase; and when at last hunger drives the Indian in to the agency, made ready by suffering to learn the white man's ways of life, the provisions of the treaty are well-nigh expired. One, three, or five years pass. All the instalments have been honorably paid: the appropriation committees of Congress, with sighs of relief, cross off the name of the tribe from the list of beneficiaries; and another body of Indians, uninstructed and unprovided, are left to shift for themselves.
The importance of the subject will justify us in dwelling so long upon it. Of the expenditures made within the last twenty years under treaty stipulations, probably not one-half has been directed to uses which the government would have chosen, had it been free to choose. It is most melancholy thus to see the scanty patrimony of this people squandered on worthless objects, or dissipated in efforts necessarily fruitless. The
## action of Congress at its last session, in authorizing the diversion of
sums appropriated under treaty stipulations to other specific uses, at the discretion of the President and with the consent of the Indians, is a step in the right direction. But the time has come for a complete and comprehensive fiscal scheme, looking to the realization from Indian lands of the largest possible avails, and their capitalization and investment upon terms and conditions which will secure the future of the several tribes, so far as human wisdom may be able to feet this.
In addition to the lands held by the eighty thousand Indians who have already been spoken of as amply endowed, there are one hundred thousand square miles of territory yet secured by treaty to Indian tribes aggregating one hundred thousand persons. Besides these, forty thousand Indians enjoy, by executive order, the occupation of other sixty thousand square miles of territory, which, or the substantial equivalent of which, should be secured to them by law for their ultimate endowment. It is to these lands that such a fiscal scheme as has been indicated should be applied. The reservations assigned to tribes and bands are generally proportioned to the needs of the Indians in a roving state, with hunting and fishing as their chief means of subsistence. As the Indians change to agriculture, the effect is to contract the limits of actual occupation, rendering portions available for cession or sale, which with proper management may be so disposed of, without impairing the integrity of the reservation system, as to realize for nearly every tribe and band a fund equal, _per capita_, to that of many of the civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. But this cannot be done by helter-skelter or haphazard administration. The subject must be taken up as a whole, broadly considered, and intelligently treated, and the scheme which shall be adopted thereafter be regarded as not less sacred than the compromises of the Constitution, or than existing treaty obligations.
For the tribes and bands having no reservations secured to them, separate provision should be made. These number about fifty thousand persons, deduction being made of such as already have their lands in severalty, or as are hopelessly scattered among the settlements. Many of these tribes and bands might, with the assistance of the government, advantageously "buy themselves in" to the privileges of tribes already provided for, without involving any further donation of lands.
Where it is found impracticable thus to place the unprovided bands, the government should secure their location and endowment separately. Their right is no less clear than the right of other tribes which had the fortune to deal with the United States before Congress put an end to the treaty system. We have received the soil from them; and we have extinguished their only means of subsistence. Either consideration would be sufficient to require us, in simple justice, to find them a place and ways to live.
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The foregoing constitute what we regard as the essential features of an Indian policy which shall seek positively and actively the reformation of life and manners among the Indians under the control of the government, as opposed to the policy of hastening the time when all these tribes shall be resolved into the body of our citizenship, without seclusion and without restraint, letting such as will, go to the dogs, letting such as can, find a place for themselves in the social and industrial order, the responsibility of the government or our people for the choice of either or the fate of either being boldly denied; suffering, meanwhile, without precaution and without fear, such debasement in blood and manners to be wrought upon the general population of the country as shall be incident to the absorption of this race, relying upon the inherent vigor of our stock to assimilate much and rid itself of more, until, in the course of a few human generations, the native Indians, as a pure race or a distinct people, shall have disappeared from the continent.
The reasons for maintaining that nothing less than a system of moral and industrial education and correction can discharge the government of its obligations to the Indians, or save the white population from an intolerable burden of pauperism, profligacy, and petty crime, have been presented sufficiently at length in this paper. The details of management and instruction need not be here discussed: most of them are within the administrative discretion of the department charged with Indian affairs; and, where power is wanting to the department, the good feeling of Congress may be safely trusted to give the necessary authority. But the points which have been presented are of vital consequence, and must, if the evils we apprehend are to be prevented, at an early date be embodied in legislation which shall provide means and penalties ample for its own enforcement.
Are the Indians destined to die out? Are we to make such provision as has been indicated, or such other as the wisdom or unwisdom of the country shall determine, for a vanishing race? Or are the original inhabitants of the continent to be represented in the variously and curiously composed population which a century hence will constitute the political body of the United States? If this is to be in any appreciable degree one of the elements of our future population, will it be by mixture and incorporation? Or will the Indian remain a distinct type in our museum of humanity, submitting himself to the necessities of a new condition, adapting himself, as he may be able to do, to the laws and customs of his conquerors, but preserving his own identity, and making his separate contribution to the life and manners of the nation?
The answers to these questions will depend very much on the course to be followed in the immediate future with respect to the tribes not yet embraced within the limits of States of the Union. If, for the want of a definite and positive policy of instruction and restraint, they are left to scatter under the pressure of hunger, the intrusion of squatters and prospectors, or the seductions of the settlements, there is little doubt that the number of Indians of full blood will rapidly diminish, and the race, as a pure race, soon become extinct. But nothing could be more disastrous than this method of ridding the country of an undesirable element. Not only would it be more cruel to the natives than a war of extermination; but it would entail in the course of its accomplishment a burden of vice, disease, pauperism, and crime upon a score of new States, more intolerable than perpetual alarms or unintermitted war.
But if, on the other hand, the policy of seclusion shall be definitely established by law and rigidly maintained, the Indians will meet their fate, whatever it may be, substantially as a whole and as a pure race. White men will still be found, so low in natural instincts, or so alienated by misfortunes and wrongs, as to be willing to abandon civilization, and hide themselves in a condition of life where no artificial wants are known, and in communities where public sentiment makes no demand upon any member for aught in the way of achievement or self-advancement. Here such men, even now to be found among the more remote and hostile tribes, will, unless the savage customs of adoption are severely discountenanced by law, find their revenge upon humanity, or escape the tyranny of social observance and requirement. Half-breeds, bearing the names of French, English, and American employees of fur and trading companies, or of refugees from criminal justice "in the settlements," are to be found in almost every tribe and band, however distant. Many of them, grown to man's estate, are among the most daring, adventurous, and influential members of the warlike tribes, seldom wholly free from suspicion on account of their relation on one side to the whites, yet, by the versatility of their talents and the recklessness of their courage, commanding the respect and the fear of the purebloods, and, however incapable of leading the savages in better courses, powerful in a high degree for mischief.
The white men, who, under the reservation system, are likely to become affiliated with Indian tribes as "squaw men," are, however, probably fewer than the Indian women who will be enticed away from their tribes to become the cooks and concubines of ranchmen. One is surprised even now, while travelling in the Territories, to note the number of cabins around which, in no small families, half-breed children are playing. However moralists or sentimentalists may look upon connections thus formed by men who are in effect beyond the pale of society and of law, they constitute already a distinct feature of border life; nor is any statute likely to prevent Indian women occasionally thus straying from their own people, or to compel their return so long as they are under the protection of white men.
But, while the seclusion of the two races upon the frontier is certain to be thus broken in instances which will form no inconsiderable exception to the rule, the substantial purity of blood may be maintained by an early adjustment of reservations, the concentration of tribes, and the exercise of disciplinary control by their agents over the movements of wandering parties. Whether, in such an event, the Indians, thus left to meet their fate by themselves, with reasonable provision by the government for their instruction in the arts of life and industry, will waste away in strength and numbers, is a question quite too large to be entered upon here. Popular beliefs and scientific opinion undoubtedly contemplate the gradual if not the speedy decline of Indian tribes when deprived of their traditional freedom of movement, pent up within limits comparatively narrow, and compelled to uncongenial occupations. But there is grave reason to doubt whether these causes are certain to operate in any such degree as to involve the practical extinction of the race within that immediate future on which we are accustomed to speculate, and for which we feel bound to make provision. On the contrary, there are many considerations and not a few facts which fairly intimate a possibility that the Indian may bear restriction as well as the negro has borne emancipation; and, like the negro, after a certain inevitable loss consequent upon a change so great and violent, adapt himself with increased vitality to new conditions. It is true that the transition, compulsory as to a great degree it must be, from a wholly barbarous condition of life, which remains to be effected for the eighty to one hundred thousand Indians still outside the practical scope of the Indian service, is likely to further reduce, for some years to come, the aggregate number of this race; but it is not improbable that this will be coincident with a steady increase among the tribes known as civilized.
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In the foregoing discussion of the policy to be pursued in dealing with the Indians of the United States, there has been no disposition to mince matters, or to pick expressions. The facts and considerations deemed essential have been presented bluntly. Some who cannot bear to hear Indians spoken of as savages, or to contemplate the chastisement of marauding bands, may blame our frankness. But we hold fine sentiments to be out of place in respect to a matter like this, which in the present is one of life and death to thousands of our own flesh and blood, and in the future one of incalculable importance to a score of States yet to be formed out of the territory over which the wild tribes of to-day are roaming in fancied independence. The country has a right to the whole naked truth,--to learn what security our fellow-citizens have for their lives, and also to learn what becomes of the seven millions of dollars annually collected in taxes and disbursed on Indian account.
If the case has been fairly presented, it will doubtless appear to our readers, that, so far as the hostile and semi-hostile Indians are concerned, the government is merely temporizing with a gigantic evil, pocketing its dignity from considerations of humanity and economy, and awaiting the operation of causes both sure and swift, which must within a few years reduce the evil to dimensions in which it can be dealt with on principles more agreeable to the ideas and ways of our people.
For the rest, it will be seen that the United States have, without much order or comprehension, but with a vast amount of good-will, undertaken enterprises involving considerable annual expenditures for the advancement of individual tribes and bands, but that the true permanent scheme for the management and instruction of the whole body of Indians within the control of the government is yet to be created. Let it not for a moment be pretended that the prospect is an agreeable one. Congress and the country might well wish to be well rid of the matter. No subject of legislation could be more perplexing and irritating; nor can the outlay involved fail for many years to be a serious burden upon our industry. But the nation cannot escape its responsibility for the future of this race, soon to be thrown in entire helplessness upon our protection. Honor and interest urge the same imperative claim. An unfaithful treatment will only make the evil worse, the burden heavier. In good faith and good feeling we must take up this work of Indian civilization, and, at whatever cost, do our whole duty by this most unhappy people. Better that we should entail a debt upon our posterity on Indian account, were that necessary, than that we should leave them an inheritance of shame. We may have no fear that the dying curse of the red man, outcast and homeless by our fault, will bring barrenness upon the soil that once was his, or dry the streams of the beautiful land that, through so much of evil and of good, has become our patrimony; but surely we shall be clearer in our lives, and freer to meet the glances of our sons and grandsons, if in our generation we do justice and show mercy to a race which has been impoverished that we might be made rich.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] From "The North American Review," April, 1873.
[B] 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.
[C] 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:--
"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."--_Report on Indian Affairs_, 1838-9, p. 65.
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 (_Ib._ 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.
[D] 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.
[E] 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.--_Report_, pp. 68-71.