"No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the government thirty million dollars, and carried conflagration and death to the border settlements. During the spring and summer of 1865, no less than eight thousand troops were withdrawn from the effective force engaged in suppressing the Rebellion, to meet this Indian war. The result of the year's campaign satisfied all reasonable men that war with Indians was useless and expensive. Fifteen or twenty Indians had been killed at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece, while hundreds of our soldiers had lost their lives, many of our border settlers had been butchered, and their property destroyed."
"No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the government thirty million dollars, and carried conflagration and death to the border settlements. During the spring and summer of 1865, no less than eight thousand troops were withdrawn from the effective force engaged in suppressing the Rebellion, to meet this Indian war. The result of the year's campaign satisfied all reasonable men that war with Indians was useless and expensive. Fifteen or twenty Indians had been killed at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece, while hundreds of our soldiers had lost their lives, many of our border settlers had been butchered, and their property destroyed."
This was the experience of the United States in a contest with an Indian tribe numbering perhaps four thousand men, women, and children, and able to bring into the field not one-fifth as manywarriors as the Sioux bands of to-day. Not to go back to wars waged with tribes now subjugated or extinct, were we to cast up the expenditures involved in the Sioux war of 1852-1854, the Cheyenne war of 1864 just referred to, the Navajo war, the second Sioux war in 1866, the second Cheyenne war in 1867, we should undoubtedly reach a total greatly exceeding one hundred millions of dollars. Yet these wars sought only the submission of individual tribes to single demands of the government, and effected, generally, something less than that. It has been shown that the actual expense of the so-called "peace policy" is measured by the increase of the average expenditures of the period 1869 to 1872 over the average expenditures of the period preceding, that increase being about three millions of dollars. This is the sum which is to be compared with the cost of a war which should seek to reduce all the Indian tribes of the continent to complete submission by force of arms, instead of awaiting their gradual, and in the main peaceful reduction through the advance of population and the extension of railways.
We have thus far treated the policy of the government towards the dangerous tribes as one notrequiring the use of the military arm in any emergency short of an actual outbreak. We have done so, first, that we might encounter the full effect of the objections to the plan of concession and conciliation; and, secondly, because we hold it true, that, when the alternative is between allowing a considerable degree of insolence and outrage to go unpunished, and entailing upon the Territories a general Indian war, duty and interest require the government to go to the last point of endurance and forbearance with the savages. But this alternative is not always presented: it is often practicable to repress and punish violence, without exposing the settlements to the horrors of massacre. Whenever this can be done, it is scarcely necessary to say it should be done, and done effectually. The feature of the present Indian policy of the government which allows this to be done without incurring general Indian war is known as the reservation system,—a system shrewdly devised to meet the known weaknesses of the Indian character. By it extensive tracts have been set apart for the warlike tribes, within which they may pursue all their customs and habits of life, and indulge themselves in savagery, being also subsisted thereon to the extentof their actual necessities, but outside of which bands or parties are liable to be struck by the military at any time, without warning, and without any implied hostility to those members of the tribe who remain on their reservation, and deport themselves according to the conditions of the compact. The brilliant campaign of Gen. Crook in Arizona during the past season has been prosecuted with the most scrupulous observance of the reservation system, as marked out by the government, and accepted by the Indians themselves. Such a use of the military arm constitutes no abandonment of the "peace policy," and involves no disparagement of it. Military operations thus conducted are not in the nature of war, but of discipline, and are so recognized by the tribes whose marauding bands and parties are scourged back to the reservations by the troops. The effect of all this is something more than negative. It does not merely serve to chastise offending individuals and parties without a breach of peace with the tribe; but it is made the means of impressing the less enterprising Indians with an increasing sense of the power of the government. It was not to be expected that the entire body of a warlike tribe would consent to berestrained in their Ishmaelitish proclivities without a struggle on the part of the more audacious to maintain their traditional freedom. The reservation system allows this issue to be fought out between our troops and the more daring of the savages, without involving in the contest tribes with which our army in its present numbers is wholly inadequate to cope.
Nor will the full effect of this consideration be appreciated if it be not borne in mind that the Indian is intensely susceptible to severe punishment. His own wars are so bloodless, his skirmishing tactics so cowardly and resultless, that the savage fighting of the whites, their eagerness for close quarters, and their deadly earnestness when engaged hand to hand, impress him with a strange terror. With him, as with all persons and peoples in whom the imagination is predominant, the effect of disaster is not measured by the actual loss and suffering entailed, but by the source, the shape, the suddenness, of it. Indeed, it is astonishing how completely the spirit of an Indian tribe may be broken by a catastrophe which does not necessarily impair its fighting power.
Nor even is it necessary that the Indian'ssense of justice should be met by the chastisement received. Undiscriminating in his own revenge, he does not look for nicely measured retribution on the part of his enemy. Hence it is that certain of the so-called—and sometimes properly so called—massacres perpetrated by the army, or by frontier militia, have had very different results from what would have been predicted by persons familiar only with habits of thought and feeling among our own people.[D]Injustice and cruelty exasperate men of our race; but the Indian is never other than cruel and unjust under resentment. Let him feel that he has been injured by a white man, and he will tomahawk the first white man he meets, without a thought whether his victim be guilty or innocent. Let him suffer at the hand of a member of a neighboring tribe, and he will lie all day in wait for another memberof that tribe with just as much anticipation of gratified hate as if he awaited the footsteps of the wrong-doer. Nay, let him have a feud with one of his own blood, and he will devote the speechless babes of his enemy to his infernal malice. Here, undoubtedly, we find the explanation of the fact that massacres, damnable in plot and circumstance, have struck such deadly and lasting terror into tribes of savages; while, occurring between nations of whites, they would have kindled the flames of war to inextinguishable fury.
We have thus far treated the question, What shall be done with the Indian as an obstacle to the progress of railways and of settlements?—to the exclusion of the inquiry, What shall be done to promote his advancement in industry and the arts of life?—not merely because, for all those tribes and bands to which the first question applies (i. e. those which are potentially hostile, and towards which the government is, as we have attempted to show, bound in interest and humanity to exercise great forbearance till they shall cease to be formidable to the settlements and to the pioneers of settlement), that question is, in logical order, precedent to any discussion of methods to betaken to educate and civilize them; but also because it is in effect likewise precedent to any deliberate, comprehensive, and permanent adjustment of the difficulties experienced in treating the Indian tribes which are neither hostile in disposition nor formidable by reason of their situation or their numbers. So long as the attention of the executive department is occupied by efforts to preserve the peace; so long as Congress is asked yearly to appropriate three millions of dollars to feed and clothe insolent savages; so long as the public mind is exasperated by reports of Indian outrages occurring in any section of the country,—so long will it be vain to expect an adequate treatment of the question of Indian civilization.
It must not be understood that nothing is being done for the industrial and moral instruction of the peaceful and more advanced tribes[E]pending the reduction of their turbulentbrethren to terms; but the efforts, and expenditures of the present time fall far short of the completeness and consistency necessary to constitute a system. Much that is doing is in compliance with treaty stipulations, and hence is well done, whether it have any practical result or not. Much, again, of what is doing, although so inadequate to the necessities of the situation as to yield no positive results, is preventing waste by keeping up established services and agencies, and, in a measure, preserving the character and habits of the Indians from further deterioration. Much, still, is in the way of experiment, from which may be derived many valuable principles and suggestions for the treatment of the Indian question on the larger scale which will be necessary in the future. Much, however, it must be confessed, is done out of an uneasy desire to do something for this unfortunate people, or in generous response to appeals from persons in official or private station who have chanced to become particularly interested in the welfare of individual tribes and bands, and thereafter fail not (small blame to them) to beset Congress and the departments for special consideration and provision for theirprotégés. It can scarcely need to be remarked, that these are not the ways to constitute a system.
It is a question not a little perplexing, What shall be done with the Indian when he shall be thrown helpless on our government and people? Whathasbeen done with tribes and bands which have reached this condition has been, as we have said, of every description; and the results have been not less various. We have had guardianship of the strictest sort. We have tried industrial experiments on more than one plan, and have attempted the thorough industrial education of Indian communities as a security for their social advancement. We have, on other occasions, let the Indian severely alone just so soon as it was ascertained that his power for harm had ceased, and have left him to find his place in the social and industrial scale; to become fisherman, lumberman, herdsman, menial, beggar, or thief, according to aptitude or accident, or the wants of the community at large. True it is that the modes adopted, in fact, in dealing with particular tribes, have generally been due to chance or to the caprices of administration; true, also, that the experiments which have been made do not reflect much credit on the sagacity of the superior race to which have been intrusted the destinies of the red man: but there has been a vast amount of good-nature andbenevolent intention exhibited; the experiments have been in many directions, and have covered a large field; and while the results, in the manifest want of adaptation of means to ends, and of operations to material, cannot be deemed wholly conclusive of the philosophy of the situation, yet very much can be learned from them that bears upon the questions of the present day. As has been stated, the issues of the experiments tried have been of every kind. To assertions that the Indian cannot be civilized, can be opposed instances of Indian communities which have attained a very considerable degree of advancement in all the arts of life. To the more cautious assertion, that, while the tribes which subsist chiefly on a vegetable diet are susceptible of being tamed and improved, the meat-eating Indians, the buffalo and antelope hunters, are hopelessly intractable and savage, can be opposed instances of such tribes which, in an astonishingly short time, have been influenced to abandon the chase, to undertake agricultural pursuits, to labor with zeal and patience, to wear white man's clothes, send their children to school, attend church on Sunday, and choose their officers by ballot. To the assertion that the Indian, however seemingly reclaimed, and for a timeregenerated, still retains his savage propensities and animal appetites, and will sooner or later relapse into barbarism, can be opposed instances of slow and steady growth in self-respect and self-control, extending over two generations, without an indication of the tendencies alleged. To assertions that the Indian cannot resist either physical or moral corruption by contact with the whites, that he inevitably becomes subject to the baser elements of civilized communities, that every form of infectious or contagious disease becomes doubly fatal to him, and that he learns all the vices but none of the virtues of society, can be opposed instances of tribes which have freely mingled with the whites without debasement, and have acquired the arts of civilized life with no undue proportion of its evils. To the assertion that the Indian must gradually decline in numbers and decay in strength, his life fading out before the intenser life which he encounters, can be offered instances of the steady increase in population of no small number of tribes and bands in immediate contact with settlements, and subject to the full force of white influence.
And yet it is undeniably true that many of the experiments have failed in a greater or less degree;that in some cases the Indians most neglected have done better for themselves than those who have received the care and bounty of the government; that many tribes and bands which had apparently emerged from their barbarous condition have miserably fallen back into sloth and vicious habits; that the meat-eaters, who constitute the bulk of the tribes with which the latest advances of our settlements and railways have brought us in contact, are exceptionally wild and fierce; that the experiment of Indian civilization has far more chances of success when it is tried under conditions that allow of freedom from excitement, and thorough seclusion from foreign influences; and, finally, that Indian blood, thus far in the history of the country, has tended decidedly towards extinction.
The Board of Indian Commissioners, in their Report for 1872, make the statement that "nearly five-sixths of all the Indians of the United States and Territories are now either civilized or partially civilized." (Report, p. 3.) The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his report of the same date, places the number of reclaimed savages somewhat lower, dividing the three hundred thousand Indians within the limits of the United States as follows:civilized, ninety-seven thousand; semi-civilized, one hundred and twenty-five thousand; wholly barbarous, seventy-eight thousand. He is, however, careful to explain that the division is made "according to a standard taken with reasonable reference to what might fairly be expected of a race with such antecedents and traditions." Perhaps, on a strict construction of the word "semi-civilized," the Indian Office might assent to take off twenty or thirty thousand from the number stated.
We all know what a savage Indian is. What is a civilized Indian?—what a semi-civilized Indian? To what degree of industry, frugality, and sobriety can the Indian be brought? How well does he repay efforts and expenditures for his enlightenment and his advancement in the arts of life? How far does he hold his own when once fairly started on his course by the bounty of the government or by philanthropic enterprise, instructed and equipped, with no obstacles in his way, and with no interruptions from without? What, in short, may we reasonably expect from this people? What have they done for themselves? or what has been done with them in the past? It is doubtful whether zeal or ignorance is more responsible forthe confusion which exists in the public mind in respect to this entire matter of Indian civilization. The truth will be best shown by examples.
The Cherokees, who originally owned and occupied portions of the States of Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, have now a reservation of nearly four million acres in the tract known as the Indian Territory. They number about fifteen thousand, and are increasing. They have their own written language, their national constitution and laws, their churches, schools, and academies, their judges and courts. Their dwellings consist of five hundred frame and three thousand five hundred log houses. During the year 1872 they raised three million bushels of corn, besides large quantities of wheat, oats, and potatoes, their aggregate crops being greater than those of New Mexico and Utah combined. Their stock consists of sixteen thousand horses, seventy-five thousand neat-cattle, one hundred and sixty thousand hogs, and nine thousand sheep. It is needless, after such an enumeration of stock and crops, to say that they not only support themselves, but sell largely to neighboring communities less disposed to agriculture. The Cherokees have sixty schools in operation, with an aggregate attendance oftwo thousand one hundred and thirty-three scholars. Three of these schools are maintained for the instruction of their former negro slaves. All orphans of the tribe are supported at the public expense. The Cherokees are the creditors of the United States in the sum of a million seven hundred and sixteen thousand dollars, on account of lands and claims ceded and relinquished by them. The interest on this sum is annually paid by the treasurer of the United States to "the treasurer of the Cherokee nation," to be used under the direction of the national council for objects prescribed by law or treaty.
From the statements made above, all upon the authority of official reports, it will doubtless appear to every candid reader that the Cherokees are entitled to be ranked among civilized communities. Their condition is far better than that of the agricultural classes of England; and they are not inferior in intelligence or in the ability to assert their rights.
There are in the Indian Territory several other important tribes, and a number of small and broken bands, aggregating forty or forty-five thousand persons, who are in the same general condition as the Cherokees, and areequally—though not, perhaps, in every case, with quite as much emphasis—entitled to be called civilized. Nor are the Indians of this class confined to the Indian Territory so called. They are found in Kansas and Nebraska, in New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and upon the Pacific coast. The ninety or one hundred thousand Indians thus characterized will bear comparison, on the three points of industry, frugality, and sobriety, with an equal population taken bodily out of any agricultural district in the Southern or border States. In general intelligence and political aptitude they are still necessarily below the lowest level of American citizenship, if we exclude the newly-enfranchised element and the poor white population of a few districts of the South.
It is just and proper to call an Indian semi-civilized, no matter how humble his attainments, when he has taken one distinct, unmistakable step from barbarism; since "it is the first step that costs."
The Sioux of the Lake Traverse agency in Dakota number about fifteen hundred,—to be exact, fourteen hundred and ninety-six. These were of the Indians of Minnesota, and escaped to the West after the massacre of 1862,though claiming to have been innocent of participation in it. They are genuine specimens of the Indian race in its pure form. They have within three or four years made considerable progress in agriculture. Nearly all the men have of choice adopted the dress of the whites. Great interest is manifested in the education of the children of the tribe: four schools are in operation, with an attendance of one hundred and twenty-three scholars; and two more schoolhouses are in course of erection. By the provisions of the treaty of 1867, only the sick, the infirm, aged widows, and orphans of tender years, are to be supported by the government. The number thus enrolled for subsistence during the past year was six hundred and sixty, made up as follows: ninety-two men, aged, infirm, blind, crippled, &c.; two hundred and sixty-four women of various conditions; one hundred and eighteen children under seven years; one hundred and eighty-six children between seven and sixteen years. The remainder of the tribe supported themselves fully by their own labor. The agent says, "It is highly gratifying to be able to report commendable progress in agriculture by these Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux on this reservation, who, almost to a man, havebecome fully satisfied that they cannot any longer rely upon the chase, but must of necessity turn their attention to the cultivation of the soil and stock-growing, for the future, as the only reliable source of subsistence. Many of them have learned to work; and some of them have learned to love to work as well; and they evidently enjoy the labor of their hands."
Tribes which show a higher actual attainment might have been taken for illustration out of the semi-civilized list; but these have been chosen, first, because they are meat-eating Indians, and secondly, because the plan of partial support adopted with them is the one most likely to be applied to all the Sioux bands, as fast as the government shall find itself in a position peremptorily to control their actions and movements.
Again: we select the Pawnees, numbering twenty-four hundred and forty-seven, for illustration, for the reason that they have been long distinguished over all the plains for their warlike power and ferocity, yet, under the care and instruction of the government, have within three years made a great degree of progress in three most important respects, as follows:—
First, while the Pawnees, from their situation,are still enabled and disposed to go upon the summer hunt, they are already engaged to a small extent, and with encouraging success, in the raising of vegetables and garden products, and even of corn and wheat. Two hundred and ten acres were planted by them last year in the several crops.
Second, while the chiefs and braves of the tribe still look to their traditional resource of hunting, the children of the tribe generally are being carefully instructed in letters and in labor. The day-schools and the manual-labor schools of the Pawnees have elicited the most enthusiastic praise from all persons, official or private, who have visited the reservation.
Third,—and this is a point to which we ask special attention, as indicating capabilities of higher things than are usually credited of Indians,—the inveterate and ferocious animosities of the Pawnees toward the Brulé Sioux have been so far sacrificed to the requirements of the government and the personal entreaties of their agent, that the past summer witnessed the phenomenon, astonishing to all who were cognizant of the deadly feuds existing for generations between these tribes, of Pawnees and Brulés hunting almostside by side, the camp-fires of both being distinctly visible upon the same plain, without a murder being committed, or so much as a horse stolen, by either party.
If, then, we may assume that Indian civilization is not altogether impossible, let us inquire what should be the policy of the government towards the Indian tribes when they cease to be dangerous to our frontier population, and to oppose the progress of settlement, either by violence or by menace. In such a discussion, we are bound to have a reasonable consideration for the interests of the white man as well as for the rights of the red man, but above all to defer to whatever experience declares in respect to the conditions most favorable to the growth of self-respect and self-restraint in minds so strangely and unfortunately constituted as is the mind of the North American Indian.
First.The reservation system should be made the general and permanent policy of the government. By this is meant something more than that the Indians should not be robbed of their lands in defiance of treaty stipulations, or that the Indian title should be respected, and the Indiansmaintained in possession until they can be made ready to cede their lands to the government, or to sell them, with the consent of the government, to the whites. The proposition is that the United States, as the only power competent to receive such lands by cession, or to authorize their sale, should formally establish the principle of separation and seclusion, without reference to the wishes either of the Indians or of encroaching whites; should designate by law an ample and suitable reservation for each tribe and band not entitled by treaty; and should, in any reductions thereafter requiring to be made, provide that such reductions shall be by cutting off distinct portions from the outside, and not in such a way as to allow veins of white settlement to be injected, no matter whether along a stream or along a railway.
The principle of secluding Indians from whites for the good of both races is established by an overwhelming preponderance of authority. There are no mysterious reasons why this policy should be adopted: the considerations which favor it are plain and incontestable. The first is the familiar one, that the Indian is unfortunately disposed to submit himself to the lower and baser elements of civilized society, and to acquire the vices andnot the virtues of the whites. This need not be dwelt upon; but there is still another consideration even more important, yet not generally apprehended. It is that an Indian tribe is a singularly homogeneous body,[F]and, if not disturbed by the intrusion of alien and discordant elements, is susceptible of being governed and controlled with the greatest ease and effect. It is not necessary to point out the ways in which this peculiarity of the Indian character assists the agent of the government in his administration of a tribe, or to show how much more complete it makes his success, as, little by little, he is able, through the authority of the government, and the means of moral education at his disposal, to effect a change for the better in the public sentiment of the people under his charge.
The number of Indians now having reservations secured to them by law or treaty is approximately 180,000. The number of such reservations is 92, ranging in extent from 288 acres to 40,750 square miles, and aggregating 167,619 square miles. Of these reservations, 31, aggregating 2,693 squaremiles, are east of the Mississippi River; 42, aggregating 144,838 square miles, are between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains; and 19, aggregating 20,068 square miles, are upon the Pacific slope. In addition to the above, 40,000 Indians, having no lands secured to them by treaty, have had reservations set apart for them by executive order, out of the public lands of the United States. The number of reservations thus set apart is 15, aggregating 59,544 square miles. The Indians thus located have, however, in the nature of the case, no assurance of their occupation of these lands beyond the pleasure of the executive.[G]
It must be evident to every one, on the simple statement of such facts as these, that the reservations, as at present constituted, do not consist with the permanent interests of either the Indian or the government. There are too many reservations: they occupy too much territory in the aggregate; and, what is worse, some of them unnecessarily obstruct the natural access of population to portions of territory not reserved, while others, by their neighborhood, render large tracts of otherwise available land undesirable for whiteoccupation. Indeed, it may be said that the present arrangement of reservations would constitute an almost intolerable affliction, were it to be maintained without change. Nor are the interests of the Indians any better served by the existing order. Many tribes, even were they disposed to agriculture, would not find suitable land within the limits assigned to them. Others are in a position to be incessantly disturbed and harassed by the whites. Others still, while they stand across the path of settlement, are themselves, by ill-considered treaty provisions, cut off from access to hunting-grounds, to fishing privileges, or to mountains abounding in natural roots and berries, which would be of the greatest value to them. When it is considered that the present body of reservations is the result of hundreds of treaties, made, too often, on the part of the government with ignorance and heedlessness, and on the part of the Indians with the childishness characteristic of the race, both parties being not infrequently deceived and betrayed by the interpreters employed; when it is considered, moreover, that many of these treaties have been negotiated in emergencies requiring immediate action,—it would be wonderful indeed if the scheme as it stood were not cumbersome and ineffective.
It is manifest, therefore, that the next five or ten years must witness a general recasting of the scheme of Indian reservations. This is not to be accomplished by confiscating the Indian title, but by exchange, by cession, and by consolidation. Let Congress provide the necessary authority, under the proper limitations, for the executive departments, and the adjustment desired can be reached easily and amicably.
Second.It is further evident, that, in recasting the scheme of reservations, the principal object should be, while preserving distinct the boundaries of every tribe, so to locate them that the territory assigned to the Indians west of the Mississippi shall constitute one or two grand reservations, with, perhaps, here and there a channel cut through, so to speak, by a railroad, so that the industries of the surrounding communities may not be unduly impeded. Such a consolidation of the Indian tribes into one or two great bodies would leave all the remaining territory of the United States open to settlement, without obstruction or molestation.
Shall there be one general reservation east of the Rocky Mountains, or two? This is likely tobe the most important Indian question of the immediate future. On the one hand, the recommendations of the executive, contained in both the Messages of the President and the Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Interior, for the past two or three years, have strongly favored the plan of a single reservation for all the tribes, North and South, East and West, who are not in a condition to become at an early day citizens of the United States and take their land in severalty. The reservation upon which it is proposed to thus collect the Indians of the United States is at present known as the "Indian Territory," although it actually contains but about one-quarter of the Indian population of the country. This tract covers all the territory lying between the States of Arkansas and Missouri on the east, and the one-hundredth meridian on the west, and between the State of Kansas on the north, and the Red River, the boundary of the State of Texas, on the south; comprising about seventy thousand square miles, and embracing a large body of the best agricultural lands west of the Mississippi. Upon this tract, it is claimed, can be gathered and subsisted all the Indians within the administrative control of the government, except such as are manifestlybecoming ripe for citizenship in the States and Territories where they are now found. Computing the maximum number likely, on the successful realization of this scheme to be thus concentrated, at two hundred and fifty thousand, and taking the available lands within the district, exclusive of barren plains, of flint hills and sand hills, at an aggregate of thirty million acres, we should have one hundred and twenty acres for each man, woman, and child to be provided for.
On the other hand, the original plan of Indian colonization, as contained in the report of Secretary Calhoun, accompanying the message of President Monroe, Jan. 27, 1825, contemplated two general reservations,—one in the North-west for the Indians of Algonquin and Iroquois stock, and another (being the present Indian Territory) in the South-west for the Appalachian Indians. The ethnographical symmetry of that plan has been hopelessly violated by the introduction into the Indian Territory, and even the incorporation with the Southern tribes, of individuals, broken bands, and even entire tribes, originally from the North and North-east. The bulk of the Shawnees, an Algonquin tribe, are actually incorporated with the Cherokees; two hundred of the Senecas,the very flower of the conquering Iroquois,[H]occupy a small reservation in the north-eastern part of the Territory; while the remnants of the Quapaws, Ottawas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weas,Piankeshaws, Pottawatomies, and of the Sacs and Foxes,—all Algonquin tribes,—are found injected at various points along the northern and eastern frontier. At the same time, thesouth-western portion of the Territory is given up to tribes which are neither Algonquin, Iroquois, nor Appalachian in their original, but are of the races living immemorially beyond the Mississippi. It will thus appear that nothing like an ethnographical distribution of tribes has been attempted; and, indeed, these distinctions have long ceased, with the Indians themselves, to be of the slightest significance. But many of the physiological and practical reasons urged by Secretary Calhoun for a double Indian reservation still remain in full force. Nor does this scheme rest upon his authority alone. The Peace Commission of 1867 and 1868, consisting of Indian Commissioner Taylor, Senator Henderson, Gens. Sherman, Harney, Terry, and Augur, of the army, and Messrs. Sanborn and Tappan, concurred in therecommendation of two reservations for tribes east of the Rocky Mountains.
We are disposed to hold, not only that the reason of the case inclines to the plan of two general reservations, but that the matter will be settled practically in that way by the aversion and horror which the Northern Indians feel at the thought of moving to the South. Regarding the Indian Territory, as they do, though with no sufficient reason, as the graveyard of their race, there is ground for apprehension that, if the project be too suddenly sprung upon them, or pressed too far, the repugnance of some of these tribes may culminate in outbreaks like those with which the Black Hawk and Seminole wars commenced. There can, however, be no objection to the experiment being tried in such a way as not to endanger the peace. Certain of the Northern tribes, notably the confederated Cheyennes and Arapahoes, and the confederated Arickarees and Mandans, manifest much less antipathy to removal than others, by reason of their relationship to Indians South, or of exceptional inconveniences sustained in their present location. If such tribes could be amicably induced to go to the Indian Territory, their experiences, if fortunate, mightserve in time to remove the prejudices existing among the Northern Indians generally.
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 ordinaryposse comitatusof a distant Territory. It is in the latter form that the invasion of Indian country now generally takes place;[I]and for the purpose of resisting suchorganized 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 thehighest 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 theState 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.
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 individualIndians 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 formationof 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.
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 thanwould 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.
"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 thanwould 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.
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.
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 fullself-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 andconfined 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.