Part 8
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 of that population,--this task is a most serious one, to which the best statesmanship of the nation may well address itself.
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.
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 out of the territory now roamed over by the native tribes.
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.
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 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.
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.
Third: the experiment of citizenship, except with the more advanced tribes, is at the serious 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[K] From The International Review, May, 1874.
[L] The doctrine of a _vanishing_ Indian nationality was strongly insisted on by Mr. Justice McLean in his opinion in Worcester vs. the State of Georgia:--
"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 aegis of its laws."--6 _Peters_, pp. 593-4.
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 _Wallace_, 737.
[M] 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 _vs._ Rogers is not referred to. This case is, as it was treated by the Supreme Court in the Cherokee Tobacco, of the highest importance.
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.
[N] "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."--_Taney, Chief-Justice._
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."
[O] 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] "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."--_Report_, p. 11. It would, perhaps, have been fortunate had the Committee found the questions difficult.
[Q] See Annual Report, Board of Indian Commissioners, 1872, p. 12.
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.
AN ACCOUNT
OF THE NUMBERS, LOCATION, AND SOCIAL, AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF EACH IMPORTANT TRIBE AND BAND OF INDIANS WITHIN THE UNITED STATES.
[From the report of Francis A. Walker, U. S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the year 1872.]
The Indians within the limits of the United States, exclusive of those in Alaska, number, approximately, 300,000.
(_a_) 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.
(_b_) 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.
(_c_) 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.
(_d_) They may be divided again, with respect 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.
(_e_) 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.
(_f_) 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.
MINNESOTA, AND EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.
NEW YORK.