Part 4

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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; 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, making a permanent endowment of nearly ten millions of dollars, the Indians sharing in the benefits thereof numbering in the aggregate nearly eighty thousand. Computing the average annual return from these funds at five and one-half per cent, we should have an assured income of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, or about seven dollars for each man, woman, and child. Moreover, most of these tribes have still large bodies of lands which they can dispose of sooner or later, from which funds of twice the amount already secured may by honest and judicious management be realized; so that, taking these eighty thousand Indians as a body, they may be regarded as having a reasonable assurance of funds yielding an annual income of twenty dollars a head. Their general character and condition being considered, this may be accepted as an amply sufficient endowment, placing their future in their own hands, giving them all the opportunities and appliances that could reasonably be asked for them, and securing them against the calamities and reverses which inevitably beset the first stages of industrial progress.

Unfortunately, the same wise provision for the future has not been made in the case of other Indians who have ceded or surrendered to the government the main body of their lands. There is a painfully long list of tribes that have to show for their inheritance only a guaranty on the part of the United States of certain expenditures, more or less beneficial, for a series of years longer or shorter, as the case may be. The Report on Indian Affairs for 1872 (pp. 418-430) states the aggregate of future appropriations that will be required during a limited number of years to pay limited annuities at $15,819,310.46. The annuities covered by this computation have from one to twenty-seven years to run (the average term being about seven years), and embrace almost every variety of goods and services which human ingenuity could suggest. Many of the things stipulated to be given to the Indians, or to be done for them, are admirable in themselves, but far in advance of the present requirements of the tribes; and the expenditures involved are therefore perfectly useless. Other things would be well enough if the Indians could have every thing they wanted, but are absurd and mischievous as taking the place of what is absolutely essential to their well-being. Of other things embraced in the schedule of annual appropriations, it can only be said that the Indians need them no more than a toad needs a pocket-book. For such waste of Indian moneys the responsibility rests in many cases upon the commissioners, who, on the part of the United States, negotiated the treaties under which these appropriations are annually made. Had they been half as solicitous for the future of the Indians as they were for the attainment of the immediate object of negotiation, the government would have been left free to apply the amounts, to be paid in consideration for cessions, in such manner as to make them of substantial benefit; or, better still, the amounts would have been capitalized, and a permanent income secured. As it is, many tribes now see approaching the termination of annuities which have for many years been paid them with the very minimum of advantage, and have no prospect beyond but that of being thrown, uninstructed and unprovided, upon their own barbarous resources.

Let us illustrate. A tribe makes a treaty with the United States, ceding the great body of their lands, and accepting a diminished reservation sufficient for their actual occupation. In consideration, it is provided that there shall be maintained upon the reservation, for the term of fifteen years, at the expense of the United States, a superintendent of teaching and two teachers, a superintendent of farming and two farmers, two millers, two blacksmiths, a tinsmith, a gunsmith, a carpenter, and a wagon and plough maker, with shops and material for all these mechanical services. This "little bill" is presumably made up without much reference to the peculiarities in character and condition of the tribe to be benefited by the expenditures involved. As soon as the treaty goes into effect, the United States in good faith fulfil their part of the bargain. The shops are built, the employees enlisted; and the government, through its agent, stands ready to civilize the Indians to almost any extent. But, unfortunately, the Indians are not ready to be civilized. The glow of industrial enthusiasm, which was created by the metaphorical eloquence of the commissioners in council dies away under the first experiment of hard work: an hour at the plough nearly breaks the back of the wild man wholly unused to labor: his pony, a little wilder still, jumps now on one side of the furrow and now on the other, and finally settles the question by kicking itself free of the galling harness, and disappears for the day. The Indian, a sadder and wiser man, betakes himself to the chase, and thereafter only visits the shops, maintained at so much expense by the government, to have his gun repaired, or to get a strap or buckle for his riding-gear. But still the treaty expenditures go on: the United States are every year loyally furnishing what has been stipulated; and the Indian is every year one instalment nearer the termination of all his claims upon the government. Meanwhile, population is closing around the reservation: the animals of the chase are disappearing before the presence of the white man, and the sound of the pioneer's axe: scantier and scantier grow the natural means of subsistence, fainter and fainter the attractions of the chase; and when at last hunger drives the Indian in to the agency, made ready by suffering to learn the white man's ways of life, the provisions of the treaty are well-nigh expired. One, three, or five years pass. All the instalments have been honorably paid: the appropriation committees of Congress, with sighs of relief, cross off the name of the tribe from the list of beneficiaries; and another body of Indians, uninstructed and unprovided, are left to shift for themselves.

The importance of the subject will justify us in dwelling so long upon it. Of the expenditures made within the last twenty years under treaty stipulations, probably not one-half has been directed to uses which the government would have chosen, had it been free to choose. It is most melancholy thus to see the scanty patrimony of this people squandered on worthless objects, or dissipated in efforts necessarily fruitless. The action of Congress at its last session, in authorizing the diversion of sums appropriated under treaty stipulations to other specific uses, at the discretion of the President and with the consent of the Indians, is a step in the right direction. But the time has come for a complete and comprehensive fiscal scheme, looking to the realization from Indian lands of the largest possible avails, and their capitalization and investment upon terms and conditions which will secure the future of the several tribes, so far as human wisdom may be able to feet this.

In addition to the lands held by the eighty thousand Indians who have already been spoken of as amply endowed, there are one hundred thousand square miles of territory yet secured by treaty to Indian tribes aggregating one hundred thousand persons. Besides these, forty thousand Indians enjoy, by executive order, the occupation of other sixty thousand square miles of territory, which, or the substantial equivalent of which, should be secured to them by law for their ultimate endowment. It is to these lands that such a fiscal scheme as has been indicated should be applied. The reservations assigned to tribes and bands are generally proportioned to the needs of the Indians in a roving state, with hunting and fishing as their chief means of subsistence. As the Indians change to agriculture, the effect is to contract the limits of actual occupation, rendering portions available for cession or sale, which with proper management may be so disposed of, without impairing the integrity of the reservation system, as to realize for nearly every tribe and band a fund equal, per capita, to that of many of the civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. But this cannot be done by helter-skelter or haphazard administration. The subject must be taken up as a whole, broadly considered, and intelligently treated, and the scheme which shall be adopted thereafter be regarded as not less sacred than the compromises of the Constitution, or than existing treaty obligations.

For the tribes and bands having no reservations secured to them, separate provision should be made. These number about fifty thousand persons, deduction being made of such as already have their lands in severalty, or as are hopelessly scattered among the settlements. Many of these tribes and bands might, with the assistance of the government, advantageously "buy themselves in" to the privileges of tribes already provided for, without involving any further donation of lands.

Where it is found impracticable thus to place the unprovided bands, the government should secure their location and endowment separately. Their right is no less clear than the right of other tribes which had the fortune to deal with the United States before Congress put an end to the treaty system. We have received the soil from them; and we have extinguished their only means of subsistence. Either consideration would be sufficient to require us, in simple justice, to find them a place and ways to live.

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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.