I stand by Giotto’s gleaming tower,In gloom of the cathedral’s wing,And hear, in the soft sunset hour,The bells to benediction ring.That Duomo boasts: “Stone upon stone,Eternally I rise and rise;So, pace by pace, zone over zone,I am uprounded to the skies.”But simpler effort, as directAs that of palm or pine, impelsThis wonder of the architectTo strike heaven’s blue with clash of bells.Etrurian Athens! long agoThy sister of the Violet Crown,In colonnades like carven snow—All crumbled now, and bare, and brownWith ashes of dead sunshine—sateAmong her gods, and had no voicePotential as their high estateTo summon to the sacrifice.Worth even the Phidian Jove sublime,Chryselephantine, and all elseOf the lost forms of olden time,Fair Florence! are thy living bells.O bells! O bells! when angels sang,Surely—though no EvangelistHas told—a silvery peal first rang,And Christian chimes came in with Christ.For bells! O bells! not brazen horn,Nor sistrum, sackbut, cymbals, gong,Harsh dissonance of creeds forlorn,But your sweet tongues to Him belong.Crowning with music as ye swingThis lily in stone, this lamp of grace,Wherever Christ the Lord is King,Ye have commission and a place.This tower stands square to winds that smite,Nor fears the thunders to impale.Prince of the Powers of Air! by riteOf baptism shall the bells prevail.Shine,Stella Maris! and O songOfAve Mary, and Vesper bells,Be drowned not in the city’s throng!For—sad and sweet as Dante tells—Comes, strangely here, the sense to meOf parting for some unknown clime,A sense of silence and the sea,Charmed by the tryst of star and chime.O bells! O bells! the worlds are buoyed,Like beacon-bells, on waves profound,In all no silence as no void—The very flowers are cups of sound.We dream—and dreaming we rejoice—That we, when great Death draws us nigh,Hearing, may understand the VoiceWhich rocks a bluebell or the sky;And, with new senses finely strungIn grander Eden’s blossoming,May see a golden planet swung,Yet hear the silver lilies ring!
I stand by Giotto’s gleaming tower,In gloom of the cathedral’s wing,And hear, in the soft sunset hour,The bells to benediction ring.That Duomo boasts: “Stone upon stone,Eternally I rise and rise;So, pace by pace, zone over zone,I am uprounded to the skies.”But simpler effort, as directAs that of palm or pine, impelsThis wonder of the architectTo strike heaven’s blue with clash of bells.Etrurian Athens! long agoThy sister of the Violet Crown,In colonnades like carven snow—All crumbled now, and bare, and brownWith ashes of dead sunshine—sateAmong her gods, and had no voicePotential as their high estateTo summon to the sacrifice.Worth even the Phidian Jove sublime,Chryselephantine, and all elseOf the lost forms of olden time,Fair Florence! are thy living bells.O bells! O bells! when angels sang,Surely—though no EvangelistHas told—a silvery peal first rang,And Christian chimes came in with Christ.For bells! O bells! not brazen horn,Nor sistrum, sackbut, cymbals, gong,Harsh dissonance of creeds forlorn,But your sweet tongues to Him belong.Crowning with music as ye swingThis lily in stone, this lamp of grace,Wherever Christ the Lord is King,Ye have commission and a place.This tower stands square to winds that smite,Nor fears the thunders to impale.Prince of the Powers of Air! by riteOf baptism shall the bells prevail.Shine,Stella Maris! and O songOfAve Mary, and Vesper bells,Be drowned not in the city’s throng!For—sad and sweet as Dante tells—Comes, strangely here, the sense to meOf parting for some unknown clime,A sense of silence and the sea,Charmed by the tryst of star and chime.O bells! O bells! the worlds are buoyed,Like beacon-bells, on waves profound,In all no silence as no void—The very flowers are cups of sound.We dream—and dreaming we rejoice—That we, when great Death draws us nigh,Hearing, may understand the VoiceWhich rocks a bluebell or the sky;And, with new senses finely strungIn grander Eden’s blossoming,May see a golden planet swung,Yet hear the silver lilies ring!
I stand by Giotto’s gleaming tower,In gloom of the cathedral’s wing,And hear, in the soft sunset hour,The bells to benediction ring.That Duomo boasts: “Stone upon stone,Eternally I rise and rise;So, pace by pace, zone over zone,I am uprounded to the skies.”But simpler effort, as directAs that of palm or pine, impelsThis wonder of the architectTo strike heaven’s blue with clash of bells.
I stand by Giotto’s gleaming tower,
In gloom of the cathedral’s wing,
And hear, in the soft sunset hour,
The bells to benediction ring.
That Duomo boasts: “Stone upon stone,
Eternally I rise and rise;
So, pace by pace, zone over zone,
I am uprounded to the skies.”
But simpler effort, as direct
As that of palm or pine, impels
This wonder of the architect
To strike heaven’s blue with clash of bells.
Etrurian Athens! long agoThy sister of the Violet Crown,In colonnades like carven snow—All crumbled now, and bare, and brownWith ashes of dead sunshine—sateAmong her gods, and had no voicePotential as their high estateTo summon to the sacrifice.Worth even the Phidian Jove sublime,Chryselephantine, and all elseOf the lost forms of olden time,Fair Florence! are thy living bells.
Etrurian Athens! long ago
Thy sister of the Violet Crown,
In colonnades like carven snow—
All crumbled now, and bare, and brown
With ashes of dead sunshine—sate
Among her gods, and had no voice
Potential as their high estate
To summon to the sacrifice.
Worth even the Phidian Jove sublime,
Chryselephantine, and all else
Of the lost forms of olden time,
Fair Florence! are thy living bells.
O bells! O bells! when angels sang,Surely—though no EvangelistHas told—a silvery peal first rang,And Christian chimes came in with Christ.For bells! O bells! not brazen horn,Nor sistrum, sackbut, cymbals, gong,Harsh dissonance of creeds forlorn,But your sweet tongues to Him belong.Crowning with music as ye swingThis lily in stone, this lamp of grace,Wherever Christ the Lord is King,Ye have commission and a place.
O bells! O bells! when angels sang,
Surely—though no Evangelist
Has told—a silvery peal first rang,
And Christian chimes came in with Christ.
For bells! O bells! not brazen horn,
Nor sistrum, sackbut, cymbals, gong,
Harsh dissonance of creeds forlorn,
But your sweet tongues to Him belong.
Crowning with music as ye swing
This lily in stone, this lamp of grace,
Wherever Christ the Lord is King,
Ye have commission and a place.
This tower stands square to winds that smite,Nor fears the thunders to impale.Prince of the Powers of Air! by riteOf baptism shall the bells prevail.Shine,Stella Maris! and O songOfAve Mary, and Vesper bells,Be drowned not in the city’s throng!For—sad and sweet as Dante tells—Comes, strangely here, the sense to meOf parting for some unknown clime,A sense of silence and the sea,Charmed by the tryst of star and chime.
This tower stands square to winds that smite,
Nor fears the thunders to impale.
Prince of the Powers of Air! by rite
Of baptism shall the bells prevail.
Shine,Stella Maris! and O song
OfAve Mary, and Vesper bells,
Be drowned not in the city’s throng!
For—sad and sweet as Dante tells—
Comes, strangely here, the sense to me
Of parting for some unknown clime,
A sense of silence and the sea,
Charmed by the tryst of star and chime.
O bells! O bells! the worlds are buoyed,Like beacon-bells, on waves profound,In all no silence as no void—The very flowers are cups of sound.We dream—and dreaming we rejoice—That we, when great Death draws us nigh,Hearing, may understand the VoiceWhich rocks a bluebell or the sky;And, with new senses finely strungIn grander Eden’s blossoming,May see a golden planet swung,Yet hear the silver lilies ring!
O bells! O bells! the worlds are buoyed,
Like beacon-bells, on waves profound,
In all no silence as no void—
The very flowers are cups of sound.
We dream—and dreaming we rejoice—
That we, when great Death draws us nigh,
Hearing, may understand the Voice
Which rocks a bluebell or the sky;
And, with new senses finely strung
In grander Eden’s blossoming,
May see a golden planet swung,
Yet hear the silver lilies ring!
OUR NEW INDIAN POLICY AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
“While it cannot be denied that the government of the United States, in the general terms and temper of its legislation, has evinced a desire to deal generously with the Indians, it must be admitted that the actual treatment they have received has beenunjust and iniquitous beyond the power of words to express. Taught by the government that they had rights entitled to respect, when these rights have been assailed by the rapacity of the white man the arm which should have been raised to protect them has been ever ready to sustain the aggressor. The history of the government connections with the Indians isa shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises.”
We take the above sentences from the first report of the Board of Indian Commissioners appointed by President Grant under the act of Congress of April 10, 1869. The commissioners, nine in number, were gentlemen selected for their presumed piety, philanthropy, and practical business qualities. None of them was a Catholic; in taking their testimony not only with respect to the general treatment of the Indians, but in regard to the religious interests of some of the tribes, we shall not be suspected of summoning witnesses who are prejudiced in favor of the Catholic Church. One of the commissioners, indeed, Mr. Felix R. Brunot, of Pittsburgh, the chairman of the board, appears to have been inspired at times with a lively fear and hatred of the church; his colleagues—Messrs. Robert Campbell, of St. Louis; Nathan Bishop, of New York; William E. Dodge, of New York; John V. Farwell, of Chicago; George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia; Edward S. Tobey, of Boston;John D. Lang, of Maine; and Vincent Colyer, of New York—are gentlemen quite free from any predilection in favor of Catholicity. The passage we have taken from their first report relates only to the worldly affairs of the Indians. But a perusal of the various annual reports of this board, of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, and of the Indian agents, from 1869 until 1876, has convinced us that the injuries inflicted upon the Indians have been by no means confined to those caused by the avarice and rapacity of the whites. Sectarian fanaticism, Protestant bigotry, and anti-Christian hatred have been called into play, and the arm of the government has been made the instrument for the restriction, and even the abolition, of religious freedom among many of the Indian tribes.
We are confident that such treatment is not in consonance with the wishes of the American people. Have we not been taught, from our youth up, that the two chief glories of our country were the equality of all its citizens before the law and their absolute freedom in all religious matters? True, the Indians are not citizens, but we have undertaken the task of acting as their guardians, with the hope of ultimately fitting them, or as many of them as may be tough enough to endure the process, for the duties of citizenship. To begin this task by teaching our pupils that religion is not a matter of conscience—that the government has a right to force upon a people a form of Christianity against which their consciences revolt—and to punish them for attemptingto adhere to the church whose priests first taught them to know and to fear God, is not merely a moral wrong; it is a crime.
The whole number of Indians in the United States and Territories, according to the very careful and systematic census contained in the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1875, was 279,333, exclusive of those in Alaska. It is not a very large number; the population of the city of New York exceeds it nearly fourfold. The Indian Bureau classifies these people under four heads:
I. 98,108 Indians who “are wild and scarcely tractable to any extent beyond that of coming near enough to the government agent to receive rations and blankets.”
II. 52,113 Indians “who are thoroughly convinced of the necessity of labor, and are actually undertaking it, and with more or less readiness accept the direction and assistance of government agents to this end.”
III. 115,385 Indians “who have come into possession of allotted lands and other property in stock and implements belonging to a landed estate.”
IV. 13,727 Indians who are described as “roamers and vagrants,” and of whom the commissioner, the Hon. Edward P. Smith, speaks in the following Christian and statesman-like language:
“They are generally as harmless as vagrants and vagabonds can be in a civilized country. They are found in all stages of degradation produced by licentiousness, intemperance, idleness, and poverty. Without land, unwilling to leave their haunts for a homestead upon a reservation, and scarcely in any way related to, or recognized by, the government, they drag out a miserable life. Themselves corrupted and the source of corruption, they seem to serve by theircontinued existence but a single useful purpose—that of affording a living illustration of the tendency and effect of barbarism allowed to expand itself uncured,”
—or, perhaps, of “affording a living illustration” of the wisdom and mercy of a policy which, neglecting these poor wretches “without land,” comes down upon other tribes, living peaceably and thrivingly upon reservations “solemnly secured to them for ever,” takes from them their homes and farms, and drives them forth to a new and desolate land; or, if they resist, exasperates them into a war that ends by adding them to the number of “roamers and vagabonds.” The sanguinary conflict which, as we write, is still being waged between a portion of the Nez-Percés Indians and the troops under command of that eminent “Christian soldier,” General Howard, is a flagrant instance of the manner in which Indians of the first and second classes enumerated by the commissioner are driven into the category of “roamers and vagabonds.” We cannot pause to trace the history of this our last and most needless Indian war; we pass it by with the remark that one of the indirect causes of it, according to the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1874, appears to have been the action of the “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,” a Presbyterian organization, in selling to a speculator certain lands within the reservation which did not belong to the board, but to the Indians themselves.
The report of the commissioner for 1876—the Hon. J. Q. Smith—contains a number of statistical tables, an analysis of which will aid us in forming a correct conceptionof the present condition of the Indians embraced in the commissioner’s third class, as well as a portion of those in his second class. According to these tables—which contain the latestofficialreturns from all the agencies—the whole number of Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska, and of the “roamers and vagrants,” is put down at 266,151, of whom 40,639 are of mixed blood. The latter are for the most part the children of Indian mothers and of French, Spanish, and American fathers. No less than 153,000 of the whole number “come directly under the civilizing influences of the government agencies,” and of these 104,818 “wear citizen’s dress.” The abandonment of the picturesque blanket for the civilizing coat, the embroidered buckskin leggings for the plain pantaloons, and the gay plume of gorgeous feathers for the hideous hat, is certainly a mark of progress. But when the wigwam is torn down, and the log, frame, or stone house is erected in its stead, a still more decided step towards civilization has been taken; and it may be with surprise that some of our readers will learn that our “savages” have built for themselves, or have had built for them, 55,717 houses, of which 1,702 were erected during last year.
The progress of education is a still further test of the condition of these people. There are 367 school buildings upon the reservations; and in these are conducted 63 boarding-schools and 281 day-schools, 23 of the school buildings, apparently, being unoccupied. The number of teachers is 437, and of pupils 11,328, of which number 6,028 are males. The amount of money expended for education during the year was $362,496, an averageof $32 per pupil. The number of Indians who can read is 25,622, of whom 980 acquired that useful accomplishment during the year. The number of births (exclusive of those in the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory) was 2,401, and of deaths 2,215. The religious statistics in this table are evidently incorrect in at least one particular. The number of church buildings on the Indian reservations is 177; the number of missionaries “not included under teachers” is 122; and “the amount contributed by religious societies during the year for education and other purposes” was $62,076.
These figures we do not call in question, but the “number of Indians who are church members” is put down at only 27,215. It is to be desired that the compiler of the statistics had furnished us with a definition of what he understands by the words “church members.” He sets down for the Pueblo agency, in New Mexico, for example: “Number of Indians, 8,400; number of church buildings, 19; number of church members,none!” The truth is that all, or nearly all, of these Pueblo Indians are Roman Catholics, as their fathers were before them for more than three centuries; and that the 19 “church buildings” on their reservation are Catholic churches, in which the Indians are baptized, shriven, married, and receive the Holy Communion; but in the opinion of the honorable commissioner none of the Pueblos are “church members.” So with the Papago Indians in Arizona, who are 5,900 in number, who have a Catholic school, four Catholic teachers, and a Catholic church, but none of whom, in the eyes of the commissioner, are “church members.” In the sevenreservations of which the religious control has been assigned to the Catholic Church there is a population of 24,094 souls and 32 churches, but the commissioner’s tables admit only 7,010 “church members” among this population. The truth is, as we shall show, the number of Catholic Indians alone is more than thrice as large as the whole number of “church members” accounted for by the commissioner’s tables. When a human being has received the Catholic rite of baptism he becomes a member of the Catholic Church; and from that moment it is the duty and the privilege of the church to watch over and protect the soul thus regenerated. It is because the church has wished to discharge this duty to her Indian children that certain of the sects have cried out against her, and even the commissioner (Hon. E. P. Smith), in his report for 1875, has not been ashamed to reproach her.
“At the seven agencies assigned to the care of the Catholics,” he remarks, “no restriction has been placed upon their system and methods of education, and no other religious body, so far as I am aware, has in any way attempted to interfere. I regret to say that this is not true, so far as the Catholics are concerned, of some of the agencies assigned to other religious bodies, and in some instances the interference has been a material hindrance to the efforts of this office to bring Indians under control and to enforce rules looking toward civilization.”
Weregret to say that while, on the one hand, the Catholic Church has sought only to continue her ministrations to those of her children who were dwelling upon reservations “assigned to other religious bodies”—a duty which she could not neglect nor permit to remain unfulfilled—on the other hand, the most cruel, persistent, andpetty persecution has been waged against Catholic Indians under the charge of Protestant agents, for the reason that they were Catholics, and the most unwarrantable interference, opposition, and maltreatment have been in many instances manifested in cases where Catholic priests were merely exercising the rights they possessed as American citizens, and discharging the duties imposed on them as Christian teachers.
But before we enter upon the proof of these unpleasant facts let us return to the statistics of the commissioner’s report, for the purpose of completing our review of the condition of the semi-civilized and civilized tribes. The whole number of acres of land comprised in the Indian reservations as they now exist is 159,287,778, of which, however, only a very small portion (9,107,244 acres, or 14,230 square miles) is “tillable”—that is, land fitted for agricultural pursuits, and on which crops can be raised. Now, from these figures, which are official, a very important truth may be deduced. The policy of the government, as explained by the commissioners in successive reports, is to gather all the Indians upon these reservations (or upon a few of them), to wean them from their life of hunting and fishing, and to teach them to support themselves and their families by purely agricultural pursuits. The idea may perhaps be a good one; but care should have been taken to provide ample means for its execution. There are, as we have seen, 266,151 Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska and of the “roamers and vagrants.” All these, if the present policy of the government be successful, will be finally planted upon this region of 14,230 square milesof tillable land, and bidden to live there, they and their children, for ever, earning their bread by the sweat of their brow in cultivating the soil. Now, 14,230 square miles of land is equal only to 28,460 farms of 320 acres each, or to 56,920 farms of 160 acres each. The tradition established by the government, by its original surveys of the public lands, by its Homestead Law, and by its Land Bounty Acts, is that 160 acres of land is the normal quantity for an ordinary farm; general experience has shown that this is none too much. But if the attempt were made to arrange the 266,151 Indians into families of 4 persons each, and to allot to each family a farm of 160 acres, there would not be tillable land enough “to go round”; 9,617 families would be left out of the distribution. We do not mean to say that a farm of something less than 160 acres may not be found sufficient for the maintenance of a family of four persons; but we do wish to call attention to the fact that the Indian reservations have been now reduced so far that only 56,920 farms, of 160 acres each, of “tillable land” remain in them. There is the more necessity for accentuating this fact since even in the last report of the commissioner is repeated the suggestion that the reservations are still too large, and that a few more treaties might be broken and a few more sanguinary wars provoked with advantage, in order to reduce further the area set apart for Indian occupation. This suggestion is made plausible by the device of calling attention to the whole area of the reservations—159,287,778 acres, or 248,886 square miles—while hiding away in very small type, and at the end of an intricate table of figures, the fact that 150,180,534acres, or 234,656 square miles, of these lands are wholly unfitted for tillage, and can never be made available for agricultural purposes.
The number of acres of land cultivated by the Indians during the year covered by the last report of the commissioner was 318,194, and 28,253 other acres were broken by them during the year. No less than 26,873 full-blood male Indians were laboring in civilized pursuits, exclusive of those belonging to the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory. These people are not savages; they worship God—many of them enjoying the light of Catholic truth; they educate themselves and their children; they live in houses and wear decent clothes; they toil and are producers of valuable articles. Let us see, now, what is said about these and the other Indians less advanced in civilization, by their rulers, the successive Commissioners of Indian Affairs and their subordinates, the agents. When we remark that we select our quotations from nine volumes of official reports, the reader will understand that we lay before him only a very few out of the numberless proofs of two facts:
1. That the commissioners, while repeatedly confessing that the Indians have been most cruelly and unwisely wronged in the past, are of the opinion that it would be a kind and wise thing to wrong them a little more in the future.
2. That the Indians are perfectly well aware of their wrongs; are quite able to formulate them; are often hopeless, from long and painful experience, of any effectual redress for them; and very frequently display a remarkable degree of Christian forbearance and forgivenessin resisting the wanton provocations to revolt offered to them.
“The traditionary belief which largely prevails,” writes the Hon. J. Q. Smith, in his report for 1876, “that the Indian service throughout its whole history has been tainted with fraud, arises not only from the fact that frauds have been committed, but also because, from the nature of the service itself, peculiar opportunities for fraud may be found.”
After an exposition of the duties of an Indian agent he thus proceeds:
“The great want of the Indian service has always been thoroughly competent agents. The President has sought to secure proper persons for these important offices by inviting the several religious organizations, through their constituted authorities, to nominate to him men for whose ability, character, and conduct they are willing to vouch. I believe the churches have endeavored to perform this duty faithfully, and to a fair degree have succeeded; but they experience great difficulty in inducing persons possessed of the requisite qualifications to accept these positions. When it is considered that these men must take their families far into the wilderness, cut themselves off from civilization with its comforts and attractions, deprive their children of the advantages of education, live lives of anxiety and toil, give bonds for great sums of money, be held responsible in some instances for the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and subject themselves to ever-ready suspicion, detraction, and calumny, for a compensation less than that paid to a third-class clerk in Washington or to a village postmaster, it is not strange that able, upright, thoroughly competent men hesitate, and decline to accept the position of an Indian agent, or, if they accept, resign the position after a short trial. In my judgment the welfare of the public service imperatively requires that the compensation offered an Indian agent should be somewhat in proportion to the capacity required in the office, and to the responsibility and labor of the duties to be performed.”
It is impossible to avoid making the remark, in this place, that thereis a class of men who have no “families”; who are ever ready to renounce the “comforts and attractions of civilization”; who are accustomed to “live lives of anxiety and toil”; and who are impervious to “suspicion, detraction, and calumny,” while at the same time they are “able, upright, and thoroughly competent.” If the government, when it inaugurated its plan of filling the Indian agencies with men nominated by “the churches,” had allowed our bishops to nominate agents in proportion to the number of Catholic Indians, the chances are that the right men would have been forthcoming, and the commissioner would not now be complaining that, in order to keep an Indian agent from stealing, he must be paid $3,000 a year.
“Relief had been so long delayed,” says the same officer in the same report, “that supplies failed to reach the agencies until the Indians were in almost a starving condition, and until the apparent intention of the government to abandon them to starvation had induced large numbers to join the hostile bands under Sitting Bull.”
Two other instances of the same kind are mentioned; and a third is recorded, in which, owing to the failure of Congress to provide money promised by a treaty, “hundreds of Pawnees had been compelled to abandon their agency, to live by begging and stealing in southern Kansas.” “In numerous other instances,” adds the commissioner pathetically, “the funds at the disposal of this office have been so limited as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to keep the Indians from starving”—and this, too, when the same Indians had large sums of money standing to their credit held “in trust” for them in the treasury of the United States.A long discussion advocating the removal of all the Indians to a few reservations—although this could not be done without violations of the most solemn treaties—is clinched with the cynical remark that “there is a very general and growing opinion that observance of the strict letter of treaties with Indians is in many cases at variance both with their own best interests and with sound public policy.”
And these words are from the official report of the chief of a great bureau in the most important department of our government! Did we know what we were about when we made these treaties? If “no,” we were fools; if “yes,” then we are knaves now to violate them without the consent of the other, the helpless party. “The Indians claim,” says the commissioner, “that they hold their lands by sanctions so solemn that it would be a gross breach of faith on the part of the government to take away any portion of it without their consent, and that consent they propose to withhold.” Still, let us do it, cries the commissioner; “public necessity must ultimately become supreme law.” “Public necessity”—which in this case means private rapacity—“public necessity,” and not truth, good faith, and justice, must rule. Many tribes are living peaceably and doing well, on lands solemnly promised to them for ever, in various parts of the West; the civilized and semi-civilized tribes in the Indian Territory are living peaceably and doing well on lands solemnly promised to them for their own exclusive use for ever, and in some cases bought with their own money. But it would be more convenient for us to have them all together; so let us tear upthe treaties, and drive all the Indians into the one territory.
From the same report we take this paragraph, which is only one of very many like it:
“The Alsea agency, in Oregon, has been abolished, but inadequate appropriations have worked hardship and injustice to the Indians. They are required to leave their homes and cultivated fields” (for no other reason than that white men covet them) “and remove to Siletz, but no means are furnished to defray expense of such removal or to assist in their establishment in their new home.”
The Board of Indian Commissioners, in their third annual report (1871), in view of the continued violation of treaties by the government in compelling tribes to remove from the reservations assigned to them, found themselves constrained to say:
“The removal of partially civilized tribes already making fair progress and attached to their homes on existing reservations is earnestly deprecated. Where such reservations are thought to be unreasonably large, their owners will themselves see the propriety of selling off the surplus for educational purposes. The government meanwhile owes them the protection of their rights to which it is solemnly pledged by treaty, and which it cannot fail to give without dishonor.”
But ithasfailed to give this protection in numberless instances, and it seems to rest very easily under the stigma of dishonor thus incurred—as, for instance, in the case of the Osages, of whom their agent, in a report dated Oct. 1, 1870, thus speaks:
“This tribe of Indians are richly endowed by nature, physically and morally. A finer-looking body of men, with more grace and dignity, or better intellectual development, could hardly be found on this globe. They were once the most numerous and warlike nation on this continent, with a domain extendingfrom the Gulf to the Missouri River and from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains; but they have been shorn of their territory piece by piece, until at last they have not a settled and undisputed claim to a single foot of earth. It is strictly true that one great cause of their decline has been fidelity to their pledges. More than sixty years ago they pledged themselves by treaty to perpetuate peace with the white man. That promise has been nobly kept—kept in spite of great and continual provocation. White men have committed upon them almost every form of outrage and wrong, unchecked by the government and unpunished. Every aggressive movement of the whites tending to the absorption of their territory has ultimately been legalized.”
These Osages are nearly all Catholics, and the agent who thus writes of them is Mr. Isaac T. Gibson, a Quaker, or an “Orthodox Friend.” Would it be believed that three years afterwards the kind and sympathizing Friend Gibson was busily engaged in inflicting upon the people for whose wrongs he was so indignant an injury greater than any they had yet suffered? “Enterprising scoundrels” of whom he wrote in his report had robbed the Osages of everything save their faith; and good Friend Gibson tried to rob them of that. How he set about the task, and how he fared in it, will be told later.
If this be not enough, look at the picture of a model Indian reservation drawn by a lawyer of California, and addressed to J. V. Farwell, one of the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners. He is describing the Hoopa Valley reservation:
“I found the Indians thoughtful, docile, and apparently eager to enter into any project for their good, if they could only believe it would be carried out in good faith, but utterly wanting in confidence in the agent, the government, or the white man. Lethargy, starvation, and disease were leading them to thegrave. I found, in fact, that the reservation was a rehash of a negro plantation; the agent an absolute dictator, restrained by no law and no compact known to the Indians. During my stay the superintendent visited the valley. He stayed but a few days. We had drinking and feasting during this time, but no grave attention to Indian affairs; no extended investigation of what had been done or should be done. Thestatus quowas accepted as thene plus ultraof Indian policy. He, too, appears to think that annihilation is the consummation of Indian management. If the reservation was a plantation, the Indians were the most degraded of slaves. I found them poor, miserable, vicious, degraded, dirty, naked, diseased, and ill-fed. They had no motive to action. Man, woman, and child, without reference to age, sex, or condition, received the same five pounds of flour per week, and almost nothing more. They attended every Monday to get this, making a day’s work of it for most of them. The oldest men, or stout, middle-aged fathers of families, were spoken to just as children or slaves. They know no law but the will of the agent; no effort has been made to teach them any, and, where it does not conflict with this dictation, they follow the old forms of life—polygamy, buying and selling of women, and compounding crime with moneyad libitum. The tribal system, with all its absurd domination and duty, is still retained. The Indian woman has no charge of her own person or virtue, but her father, brother, chief, or nearest male relative may sell her for a moment or for life. I was impressed that really nothing had been done by any agent, or even attempted, to wean these people from savage life to civilization, but only to subject them to plantation slavery.”
The official volumes from which we are taking our information contain the successive annual reports of the various Indian agents and superintendents, who are 88 in number, and the reports of many councils held between the Indians and the Board of Indian Commissioners, agents, army officers, and special commissioners. The Hon. Felix R. Brunot, chairman of theBoard of Indian Commissioners, is the Mercurius in many of these councils. He does nearly all the talking on the side of the government, and before he talks he always prays. Thus: “Gen. Smith announced that Mr. Brunot would speak to the Great Spirit before the council began. Mr. Brunot offered a prayer.” In the interests of religion it is to be regretted that councils thus begun sometimes appeared to have been designed for the purpose of inflicting new wrongs upon the Indians. But we mention the councils here only for the purpose of taking from the reports of their proceedings, as well as from the annual reports of the agents, a very few of the remarks made by the Indian chiefs concerning themselves, the government, the agents, and the whites generally. The limits of our space compel us to string these together without further introduction:
Red Cloud: God raised us Indians. I am trying to live peaceably. All I ask for is my land—the little spot I have left. My people have done nothing wrong. I have consulted the Great Spirit, and he told me to keep my little spot of land. My friends, have pity on me, if you would have me live long. My people have been cheated so often they will not believe.
Buffalo Good.: If you are going to do anything for us, do it quick. I saw the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington, and he told me he was going to fix it up, but I have heard that so often I am afraid it is not true. I have been disappointed, and I think Washington is not so much of a chief after all. Because we do not fight, he takes away our lands and gives them to the tribes who are fighting the whites all the time.
Howlish-Wampo(“the Cayuse chief, a Catholic Indian, in dress, personal appearance, and bearing superior to the average American farmer”): When you told me you believed in God, I thought that was good. But you came to ask us for our land. We will not let you haveit. This reservation is marked out for us. We see it with our eyes and our hearts; we all hold it with our bodies and our souls. Here are my father and mother, and brothers and sisters and children, all buried; I am guarding their graves. This small piece of land we all look upon as our mother, as if she were raising us. On the outside of the reservation I see your houses; they have windows, they are good. Why do you wish my land? My friend, you must not talk too strong about getting my land; I will not let it go.
Homli(chief of the Walla-Wallas): My cattle and stock are running on this reservation, and they need it all. It is not the white man who has helped me: I have made all the improvements on my own land myself.
Wenap-Snoot(chief of the Umatillas): When my father and mother died, they gave me rules and gave me their land to live on. They left me to take care of them after they were buried. I was to watch over their graves. I will not part from them. I cultivate my land and I love it.
Pierre(a young chief): I do not wish money for my land; I am here, and I will stay here. I will not part with lands, and if you come again I will say the same thing.
Wal-che-te-ma-ne(another Catholic chief, as, indeed, were the three last named): You white chiefs listen to me: you, Father Vermeerch, are the one who rules my heart. I am old now, and I want to die where my father and mother and children have died. I see the church there; I am glad to see it; I will stay beside it and die by the teachings of the father. I love my church, my mills, my farm, the graves of my parents and children. I do not wish to leave them. (Happily, the firmness of these Catholic Indians, the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla-Walla tribes, carried the day, and they were permitted to remain on their little reservation).
Tenale Temane(another Catholic Indian): We cannot cheat our own bodies and our own souls. If we deceive ourselves we shall be miserable;only from the truth can we grow ourselves, and make our children grow. Of all that was promised to me by Gov. Stevens I have seen nothing;it must have been lost.
The Young Chief: What you promisedwas not done; it was as if you had taken the treaty as soon as it was made, and torn it up. The treaties made with the Indians on all the reservations have never been kept;they have all been broken. I do not want to teach you anything about God; you are wise and know all about him. (The irony of this is exquisite.)
Tasenick(a Wascoe chief): The people who are put over me teach me worse things than I knew before. You can see what we were promised by the treaty: we have never got anything; all we have we bought with our own money. Our Great Father may have sent the things promised, but they never got here.
Chinook: When we made the treaty they promised us schoolmasters and a great many other things, but they forget them. We never had any of them. They told us we were to have $8,000 a year; we never saw a cent of it.
Mack(a Deschutes chief): It is not right to starve us; it is better to kill us.
Jancust: I cannot look you in the face; I am ashamed: white men have carried away our women. What do you think? White men do these things and say it is right.
Napoleon(a Catholic chief of the Tulalip reservation, who “came forward with much dignity and laid before Mr. Brunot a bunch of split sticks”): These represent the number of my people killed by the whites during the year, and yet nothing has been done to punish them. The whites now scare all the Indians, and we look now wondering when all the Indians will be killed.
Johnny English: We like Father Chirouse very well, because he tries to do what is right; when he begins to work he does one thing at a time.
Henry(a Catholic on the Lumni reservation): I have been a Christian for many years. We have some children at school with Father Chirouse; we want our lands for them to live on when we are dead.
David Crockett(a Catholic chief): I ought to have a better house in which to receive my friends. But we want most an altar built in our church and a belfry on it; this work we cannot do ourselves.
Spar(a young chief): All the agents think of is to steal; that is all every agent has done. When they get the money, where does it go to? When Iask about it they say they will punish me. I thought the President did not send them for that.
Peter Connoyer(of the Grande Rondes): About religion—I am a Catholic; so are all of my family. All the children are Catholics. We want the sisters to come and teach the girls. The priest lives here; he does not get any pay. He teaches us to pray night and morning. We must teach the little girls. I am getting old. I may go to a race and bet a little, but I don’t want my children to learn it; it is bad.
Tom Curl: We want to get good blankets, not paper blankets. I don’t know what our boots are made of; if we hit anything they break in pieces.
When, in 1870, President Grant announced the inauguration of his new Indian policy, the sects saw in it an opportunity of carrying on their propaganda among the Indians with little or no cost to themselves, and of interfering with, and probably compelling the total cessation of, the work of the Catholic Church among many of the tribes. To begin with, here were 72 places in which they could install the same number of their ministers, or laymen devoted to their interests, with salaries paid by the general government. Once installed as Indian agents, these men would have autocratic power over the affairs of the tribes entrusted to them; and they could make life so uncomfortable for the Catholic missionaries already at work there that they would probably retire. If they disregarded petty persecutions, the agent could compel them to depart, since it is held by the Indian Bureau that an agent has power to exclude from a reservation any white man whose presence he chooses to consider as inconvenient, as well as to prevent the Indians from leaving the reservation for any purpose whatever. There were, it was known, many Indian agencies atwhich the Catholic Church had had missions for many years, and where all, or nearly all, the Indians were Catholics. If these agencies could be assigned to the care of the sects, how easily could the work of converting the Indian Catholics into Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, or Unitarians be accomplished! The priests could be driven away and forbidden to return; the sectarian preachers would have full play; and the Indian appetite for Protestant truth could be sharpened by judicious bribery and intimidation. On the borders of the reservation there might be—as there are—Catholic churches and Catholic priests; but the Catholic Indians on the reservation might be—as they have been—forbidden to cross the line in order to visit their priests and to receive the sacraments.
The new Indian policy which furnished this opportunity was probably not original with President Grant, and we are not disposed to call in question the purity and kindness of his motives in adopting it. At the time of its inauguration, however, he was surrounded by influences decidedly hostile to the Catholic Church; and it is probable that from the beginning the men “behind the throne” had a clear conception of the manner in which the new policy could be worked for the benefit of the sects. It was based upon an idea plausible to non-Catholics, but which no Catholic can ever accept—the idea that one religion is as good as another, and that, for example, it does not make much difference whether a man believes that Jesus Christ is God, or that he was simply a tolerably good but rather weak and vain man. This idea has been carried out in practice-foreven to the “Unitarians” have been given two Indian agencies: those of the Los Pinos and White River in Colorado, whose entire religious education for 1876, as reported by the agents, consisted in “a sort of Shaker service of singing and dancing held for two or three days.” The chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Mr. Brunot, appears to have been anxious to spread abroad the doctrine of indifferentism among the Catholic Indians. Whenever, in his numerous “councils,” he found himself in company with such Indians, he undertook to enlighten them after this fashion:
“A chief said yesterday: ‘I don’t know about religion, because they tell so many different things.’ Religion is like the roads; they all go one way; all to the one good place; so take any one good road and keep in it, and it will bring you out right at last.” ... “I heard an Indian say that the white man has two religions. In one way it looks so; but if you will understand you will see it is only one.” ... “It is not two kinds of religion, but it is as two roads that both go the same way.”
We scarcely think it is within the province of the federal government to pay a gentleman for preaching this kind of doctrine to Catholic Indians. But what was the new Indian policy? It was explained by President Grant, in his message of December 5, 1870, in these words:
“Indian agents being civil officers, I determined to give all the agencies to such religious denominations as had heretofore established missionaries among the Indians, and perhaps to some other denominations who would undertake the work on the same terms—that is, as missionary work.”
There is an undesirable lack of exactness in these words—for, as they stand, they might be understood as promising the agency ofa tribe to a sect which had established on its territory a missionary station years ago, and had subsequently abandoned it. This, however, was certainly not the intention of the President; if he intended to act in good faith in the matter, he proposed, doubtless, to assign the agencies to churches that had establishedsuccessfulmissions—missions actually existing, having churches, schools, and converts. It is impossible to believe that it was the intention of the executive to transfer tribes of Catholic Indians to Protestant sects, under the pretence that the sects, at some remote period, had made feeble and fruitless attempts to establish missions among them. This, however, has been the construction placed upon the President’s policy by the sects; and, strange to say, they have experienced no difficulty in persuading successive Commissioners of Indian Affairs to agree with them in this interpretation, and to carry it out in a manner productive of the most wanton cruelty and injustice.
There are seventy-two Indian agencies: three in Arizona, three in California, two in Colorado, fifteen in Dakota, eight in the Indian Territory, one in Iowa, two in Kansas, one in Michigan, three in Minnesota, four in Montana, five in Nebraska, five in New Mexico, one in New York, two in Nevada, six in Oregon, one in Utah, seven in Washington Territory, two in Wisconsin, and one in Wyoming. According to any fair construction of the new policy, no less than forty of these agencies should have been assigned to the Catholic Church. In all of them the church had had missions for many years; in many of them all of the Christian Indians, or the great majorityof them, were Catholics; in some of them the Indians had been Catholics for centuries, and their civilization was wholly due to the instruction they had received from Catholic priests. The following is a list of these agencies, with their location and the number of Indians embraced in each: