^, IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A ^ >\^^ 1.0 I.I 111 1^ u 1^ 12 2 '*" MIA lb 11° i2.0 K i.8 11.25 11.4 11.6 ^^ // .%.-!»>? ■% '/ >^ ^Jl^% lEi CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques 1980 Technical Notes / Notes techniques The Institute has attempted to obtain ths best original copy available for filming. Physical features of this copy which may alter any of the images in the reproduction are checked below. n Coloured covers/ Couvertures de couleur Coloured maps/ Cartes g6ographiques en couleur L'Institut a microfilm^ le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 6t4 possible de se procurer. Certains dAfauts susceptibles de nuire A la qualitA de la reproduction sont notis ci-dessous. 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The original copy was borrowed from, and filmed with, the Itind consent of the following institution: National Library of Canada L'exempiaire filmA fut reproduit grice A la gAnArositd de I'Atablissement prAteur suivant : BibliothAque nationale du Canada Maps or plates too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper Inft hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes ou les planches trop grandes pour Atre reproduites en un seul cliche sont film6es A partir de Tangle supArieure gauche, de gauche A droite et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nicessaire. Le diagramme suivant illustre la m^thode : 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 THE INDIAN'S SIDE or THE INDIAN QUESTION BY WILLIAM BARROWS DD Author of "Oregon; the Struggle for Possession " "The United States of Yesterday and of Tomorrow:" and others. Haec mea sunt : veteres migrate coioni — ViRG. ECL. IX. BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STS. /S^l Ev/I Copyright, 1887, By Lucy Adams Barrows. Electrotyped Bv C. J. Peters and Son, Boston. INTRODUCTION. Serious trifling with the Indian question seems to be coming to a close. The "nations'* of colonial times, and the ** high contracting parties " whom the Republic met as apparent equals during its first ninety years, have come down to draw rations under the drum-beat, or to be blanketed and continental tramps. In the last analysis of the Indian, in Congress and on the border, he is discovered to be simply a man, and more or less like all Americans ; and the recent and so far final proposition is to treat him as an American. In coming to this we have had a tedious, annoying, nugatory, and mortifying series of theories, experiments, and makeshifts. Meanwhile, there has been an apparent decline in their numbers, from the highest official maximum, of " about 300,000,'' in 1872, to 259,244 in 1885. *" We are now entering an era of hope for the Indian, under the Dawes Bill; and though he is at first to have a qualified citizenship in passing out of the state of a ward, his rights are not to be abridged on account of race or 8 4 INTRODUCTION. previous condition. Hut as all rights, privi- leges, and inini unities do not, j)rjictically, come directly to one out of the Constitution and Statutes of the United States, but are filtered to him with more or less freedom and purity through the surrounding community, and as the success of this bill lies with the border whites, it has been thought best to mark oflF, historically, the leading and constant obstacles heretofore to Indian civilization. Hence this unpretending treatise. Only official documents are used to give it force. No law is self-operating ; somebody must use it favorably, if the subject of it has its advan- tages ; and intermeddling opponents must be held iu check by hands friendly to the end of the law. Hitherto statute provisions for the Indians, and often wise and good, have been made powerless by a third party intervening between the government and the Indians — interested, scheming, self-seeking white men, on the border and in Washington. There was once a white border belt, poorly civilized, and with many in it decivilized, but now, interpen- etrating and commingling, these men have quite destroyed border-lines. Hitherto the work of the general government and of benevolent organizations, in the lines of education and of religion, has been thwarted INTRODUCTION. by white men quite reckless of both civil and moral restraints. This has been a constant force, both at Washington and among the Ind- ians, hinderinix their civilization. Greed for Indian lands, miserable white neighborhood life, and base passion have been the constant cMiemy of Indian elevation, and have often added to his barbarism and profligacy. More- over, the average sentiment west of the Mis- sissi[)pi concerning the Indian is that he is a worthless remnant of his race, and incapable of elevation to the average American grade j and it is no harsh judgment to express that the two-thirds of oui domain thus indicated would greatly prefer a civil and moral quaran- tine between them and an Indian conununity — the breadth of a State or Territory. This is the gentler way with some of saying that the best Indian is a dead Indian. I once saw an unpopular candidate carry, as with a whirl- wind, a doubtful campaign in Colorado, under the popular war-cry, '' The Ute must go ! " Now, however high-toned and humane a bill may be which gains the assent of Congress, the administration of it for the wards of the ni on must look for its force and temper and fidelity in the regions bordering on the Indian reservations and ranges. A law enacted on the Potomac is still subject to the veto of local INTRODUCTION. option on the Columbia or Missouri or Colo- rado. Climate does not more inevitably and irresistibly modify the human constitution, wlien one removes from the land of his na- tivity, than does the popular will the working efficiency of a United States law perfectly con- stitutional, which has started oHf from the halls of Congress. Our failures in the Indian policies for a century have not come so much from the lack of fair legislation. We have had good laws enough for ends sought. Nor have the failures come so much from the quality of this unfortu- nate race as if it were effete, worthless, and impossible of elevation. The ends sought by the law have not been desired in those sections of the country where the law must be adminis- tered, and by the people who must administer it. This has heretofore been the point of fatal weakness in our government policy for the aborigines. Our first chapter in this book is painfully abundant with evidence on this point. The Dawes Bill opens a new era in this branch of our national work, and it is beyond doubt the best thing possible in the line of the government, so far as it goes. It embodies a discovery, which has cost the expensive and sad experiments of two centuries, that the Indian must be made and treated as an Amer- INTRODUCTION. icnn citizen. It, however, does not contern- plate the removal or neutnilization of tlie force which has made the most of our pre- ceding laws and labors fruitless. In the di- agnosis of this great national iniirmity or malady, the main cause has been assigned to the red man, and the medicines have been given to him. Perhaps the bill goes as far as the government can go in its side of the work. What remains to make the new era a success- ful one, the people must do. In the regions more intimately affected by the Indian question, there is need of introduc- ing a civil, social, and moral constabulary — a picket-line of principles and of sentiments, which will constrain a superior neighbor to be a good one to an inferior neighbor. The decla- ration of now almost sevent}^ years, made by the venerable and Christian Cherokee in Geor- gia, is yet to be disproved : '* No Cherokee or white man with a Cherokee family can possi- bly live among such white people as will first settle this country." A grand opportunity is now offered by this bill to solve the Indian question by saving the Indian race; Congress gives the chance, and the people must do the work. Here appelirs one of the choicest features of our govern- ment, that under the protecting approbation 8 INTRODUCTTON. of law the people may crown our civilization with the associated phihiiithropies and charities and beatitudes. These do not come of legisla- tive enactment, nor are they established by majority vote. The bill opens the way, and waits r the arrival, on tlie interior plains and rivers and mountains of our country, of the sacriiice, and romance, and heroism, and humane and Christian devotion, which we have so nobly bestowed on the Ganges and Eupln-ates, and the wilds of Africa, and the islands of the sea. William Barrows. Reading, Mass., November, 1887. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE INDIAN AND HIS WHITE NEIGHBORS. Section I. II. m. IV. V. (iootl OKI Colony Tiines .... Another Side of the Indian (Question, How Much Can the (iovernment Do? The Army and the Indian .... ■ The Courts as Protectors of the Indian Riffhts VI. — Encourasrement lies in Broader Work, 13 22 33 44 48 51 CHAPTER n. THE CHEROKEE EXPERIMENT. THE RESERVATION SYSTEM A FAILURE. Section I. — Indian Farmers among White Far mers n. — Mixed Society; The Civilizing In- dian; The Wild Indian; The Hostile White Man 66 61 10 CONTENTS. Section m. IV. V. VI.— Indian Civilization Adjourned . . Indian Civilization Fatally Struck . Border White Men Superior to the United States The Sad Journey of Sixteen Thousand into Exile • • • VII. — Another ^Morning Overclouded . VIII. — Forebodings, and the Doom of the Reservation Theory . . • • GO 08 72 74 7(i 81 CHAPTER m. INDIAN FARMING. Section I. — Some Very Singular Assumptions . 86 II. — Early Indian Farming in New Eng- land, New York, Missouri, New Mexico, Georgia, Canada, Michi- gan, Iowa, Florida, Minnesota, Dakota 89 rn. — The Best Indian Farms the farthest from White Neighborhood . . 101 IV. — The Encroachments of Immigrants and the Violation of Treaties as related to Indian Farming . . . 104 V. — British Columbia and its Indians . Ill VI. — Uncertainty of Residence and Indian Farming Impossible 12^ Vn. — Still Experimenting on Indian Poli- cies and Livadins: Indian Farms . 132 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTER IV. DO THE AMERICAN INDiANS INCKEASh OR DECREASE? Sectkjn 1. — The X limber of liidiuiis in Early New EiiglaiKl vss li. — The Number of Indians East of the Mississippi in 1«20 141 ni. — Examples of Deerease beyond the Mississippi 148 IV. — Some Personal Investigations . . . 154 V. — Inerease or Decrease in California, 157 VI. — The (lovernment Census quite Im- perfect, yet Sho vs much Decrease, 163 Vn. — Some Unpleasant Conclusions . . . 166 Vni. — English Partnership in the Indian Decrease 170 IX. — Has American Christianity done its Best to Preserve the Indian? . 171 Conclusion 175 I-^i^EX 197 IJMBi I illl THE mikn m of the mm question, CHAPTER T. ,M THE INDIAN AND HIS WHITE NEIGHBORS. Section 1. — Good Old Colony Times. " Notwithstanding one of the ostensible objects of nearly all the royal charters and patents issued for British North America was the Christianizing of the Indian, few could be found equal to the task on arriving here. . . . Adventurer were those, generally, who emigrated with a view of bettering their own condition instead of that of others." * For which those early immigrants are not to be reproached, since the most of the human family emigrate or stay at home for the same reason. Still, we are interested to see how it fared in those early times with the pagan red men. As early as 1670 Richard Bourne was preach- ing to the Marshpee Indians on Cape Cod, and even then poor white human nature was 1 Drake's 'Indians," bk. ii. 112. 13 ( ■ !! t 14 THE INDIAN S SIDE It ■ t i i i f crowding the Indian from those acres of sand and scrub. He therefore felt constrained to procure fi'om the Court at Plymouth " a rati- fication of their deeds, and entailment of their lands, bounded by ponds, etc., that were im- movable, to these Indians and their children forever." The Court ordained " tiiat no part or parcel of their lands could be bought by or sold to any white person or persons without the consent of all the said Indians, not even with the consent of the General Court. " ^ More than two hundred years of painful failures, by government and benevolent organi- zations, in following up exiled Indians with ploughs and spelling-books and Bibles, have confirmed the " discernment " of the Indian teacher of Sandwich. Ir has been found, too, that even "pondj"' are not immovable as bounds to Indian lands. It was about this time that Edward Randolph, crown commis- sioner on Indian affairs, wrote to William Penn : '' The Indians were never civilly treated by the Government, who made it their busi- ness to encroach on the Indian lands, and by degrees drive them out." ^ John Randolph makes a similar remark a century later : " The 1 *' Plymouth Colony Records " — Mass. His. Soc. Coll., vol. iii. p. 188. 2 Freeman's "Aborigines" from 1620, p. 99. j OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 15 3 least ray of Indian depredation will be an excnse to raise troops for those who love to have troops, etc." ^ Nor does all the millennial advance attach to the Penn-Indian treaties which ordinary his- tory is wont to give. In tlie deed from the Indians to William Penn is this clause of metes and bounds : " all along by the west side of Delaware river, and so between the said creeks, backwards, as far as a man can ride in two days with a horse, for and in con- sideration of these following goods," etc. No doubt, the shekels, current money with the mer- chant, were all right, but the boixlers lack somewhat the Abrahamic deliniteness of the Machpelah lot. That Quaker horse sired a long-lived breed, and at times of wonderful speed. It seems, too, that the will of William Penn was executed in a bloody war. He bequeathed ten thousand acres to liis grandson William, "■ to be laid out in proper and bene- ficial places in this province by his trustees." William sold the unlocated grant to one Allen, a border-land speculator, who too' up the amount on territory never conveyea to Penn by the Indians. This he cut up into lots for settlers, and disposed of them by lottery, as Georgia did afterward in exiling the Cherokees, 1 Letter to Charles Carroll; April, 1791. '!lh if 16 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE in which no recognition was mude of Indian rights, nor did those who drew the prizes allow for them when the fact of the wrong was dis- covered. In tliis way much of the land in the Forks of the Delaware, the present Easton and vicinity, was first settled by white men, through robbery first, and then gambling. '* The Indians were thus crowded from it. They, for some time, complained, and at length began to threaten, but the event was war and bloodshed." ^ The moral grandeur arising from the equity and peace with which Penn administered his Indian affairs may well keep a place in history. Yet it is not evident why it should stand alone, as if Vmequalled. The same thing was done throughout New England and New York, only that the immense royal grant to Penn enabled him to furnish a more extended illustration. Twenty years before Penn's noble act, John Pynchon paid to the Indians an agreeable price for Northampton!, the Pladleys, and vicin- ity, in Massachusetts, " not molesting Indians nor depriving them of their just rights and property without allowance to their satisfac- tion." These words are in the first document on record in Northampton. It must not surprise if we here anticipate our 1 Drake, bk. v. 30. or THE INDIAN QUESTION. 17 time ill the nanative, to read these passages in the report oi' John Johnson, Indian agent for Ohio, 1819, on Penn's Indians — about one hun- dred and thirty years after t^ ^ will of William Penn was executed. '* The Delawares were once very nninerous and powerful, but many disastrous wars with the white people reduced them to a mere handful. . . . They are more opposed to the Gosjiel and the whites than any other Indians with whom I am acquainted. . . . The United States have engaged to re- move them west of the ^lississippi. . . . Their peculiar aversion to having white people for neighbors induced tliem to remove to the west- ward." The colonial beginnings with the Indians degenerated early, and pious wishes and labors were mostly august failures. In 1675 one Indian was made a Bachelor of Arts at Cam- bridge, yet the same year the General Court made this entry on its records : "- Hereafter no person shall harbor or entertain an Indian." No pains were spared to teach them to read and write, and in a short time a larger proportion of the ^Massachusetts Indians could do so than the inhabitants of Russia in our day. ^ Eliot taught the men to dig the ground, and the women to spin, and the scholarly ones to 1 Bancroft's " His. U. S.," ii. 94, W I I ' 18 THE INDIAN S SIDE raise tlie old and still vigorous theological questiotis : — '' VVlicji Clu'ist arose, whence came his soul?'* *' Shall I know you in lieaven?" "Our little children have n(jt sinned ; when they die, whither do they go?" ''When such die as never heard of Christ, where do they go ? " '■' Why did not God give all men good hearts?" *'• Since God is all-powerful, why did not God kill the devil that made men so bad?" ^ So there came to be the '* praying Indians " in Eastern and Southern Massachusetts in 1675. Prior to this, and in 1654, Roger Williams had thus written : " It cannot be hid how all Eng- land and other nations ring with the glorious conversion of the Indians of New England." ^ All this seemed most auspicious for the red men, yet the bright vision makes only a short chapter and covers a narrow territory. Ban- croft speaks of them as " crowded by hated neighbors, losing fields and hunting-grounds," and ''broken-spirited from the overwhelming force of the Emjlish." Near to these, on the borders of Rhode Island and in it, were the clans of King Philip. " Repeated sales of land had narrowed their domains, and the English had artfully crowded them into the tongues of 1 Bancroft's " His. U. S.," ii. 95-(i. 2 <* Plymoiitli Colony Keconls," x. 439. OF THE INDIAN QUKSTION. 19 land. . . . There they couhl he more easily watclied; for the frontiers of the narrow penin- suhis were inconsiderahle. . . . The Englisli villagers drew nearer and nearer to them ; their hunting-grounds were put under cul- ture, and as the ever urgent importunity of the English was quieted but for a season by partial concessions from the unwary Indians, their natural parks were turned into pastures; their best fields for planting corn were gradu- ally alienated ; their fisheries were impaired by more skilful methods ; and as wr.ve after wave succeeded, they found themselves de- prived of their broad acres, and, by their own legal conti'acts, driven, as it were, into the sea. " 1 Virginia, as well as New England and the new Stati-s on both sides of the Mississippi, showed their repugnance to Indian neighbors : " In all these treaties, whether ratified or re- jected, the Virginians a])pear to have been determined to coerce a relinquishment of the Indian lands, either by fair means or foul, and no effort of negotiation or intrigue was omitted to accomplish this purpose," etc. 2 Cotton Mather speaks of them for those times as "those doleful creatures, the veriest ruins of mankind 1 Bancroft's •' His. U. S.," ii. 98-99. 2 ^onette's ''His. Miss. Val.," vol. i. p. 349. I II xz 20 THE IXHTAN's side 'I III to be found on the face of the eartli," wliose "way of living was infinitely l)aibarous." ^ The first colonists of the Papal, Kiifrlish, and Pilgrim elinrches o})ened devoutly with their plans for the welfare of the Indians. The Bull of Alexander VI., under date of Rome, May 4, 1493, conveyed all lands dis- covered and to be discovered by the subjects of Ferdinand and Isabella to them and to their royal successors forever. But they were to manage to send to these newl}^ discovered countries, whether continent or island, good men, fearing (rod, learned and ex[)ert, to in- struct the inhabitants of these lands in the Catholic faith and in good morals. ^ When Philip III. of Spain issued his royal grant to Don Juan de Onate, in 1602, to colon- ize and possess New Mexico, beginning with " 200 soldiers, horses, cattle, merchandise, and agricultural implements," he ordered that there should go with the colony '"six priests, with a full complement of books, ornaments, and church accoutrements." ^ In 1626-7 Cardinal Richelieu organized his company of "The One Hundred Associates,'* 1 " Life of Eliot." - Deuin timontes. tloftos, poritos et expertos ad instruen- (lain incolas et habitatorc-s priefatos in Fide Catholica et 'm bonis inoribus imbuondain, etc. 8 Davis' " El Gringo," p. 73. 1 OF THE INDIAN gUKSTloN. 21 »' 1 to take possession, for Fnim^e and the Cluirch, (»f all the territory from Florida io the Arctic and from Newfonndland to the sonrces of the St. r.awrence. It was a gigantic scheme of colonization to control a wild continent. One j)r(»vision of the charter was this: ''For every new settlement, at least three ecclesiastics must be provided." ^ Pearly in tlie last century a Scotch society was organized to introduce religious and secu- lar teaching among the Indians in New Jerse}', Pennsylvania, and New York. The Rev. John Brainard was missionary in the lirst named State, and liad residence at Bethel. He was to instruct his Indian charge in ''s])inniug schools," and teach them how to j)rei)are and si)in flax. 2 As is well known, the English Church follows the Enjjlish army and colony the world oyer. As when we assume to do their Home Mission- ary work in India we lind them there j)ianting their creed where they planted their cannon. In good old times when Church and State were one in Massachusetts, the Great aiul Gen- eral Court enacted thus: "It is agreed that here- after noe dwell ing-howse shal be builte aboye halfe a myle from the meeting-howse in any ^ Parkman's "Pioneers of France," p. 397. 2 "Mag. Am. His.," January, 1885; pp. 05-7. ZT""". 22 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE li t new iilantacion without leauve from the court." » The iirgunuMit on the union of Church and State is not all on one side; hut when, as in the United States, we assume tlie negative, a mo- mentous responsihility comes on the church. If the Church had provided that meeting-houses be supplied comfortably near to the dwell- ing-houses *' in any new plantacion '* on the frontier, this ugly Indian question and some other border (questions could never hav? so troubled us. Somewhat the res[)()nsil)ility of those questions lies with the Indian Bureau at Washington, that looks after red men ; and somewhat, and more largely, it lies with Mis- sionary Headquarters, that should look after border white men, who have "builte above halfe a myle from the meeting-howse." Section 2. — Another Side of the Indian Ques- tion. Our government and private benevolence are trying, with most commendable spe- cialty, to do a very philanthropic and Chris- tian thing for the Indians. Our *' wards of government " more or lesR under restraining and elevating influences, and exclusive of wild Indians and the Alaskans, were reported 1 '' Colonial liecords of Mass.," i. 157, 181. 't or TlIK INDIAN in real estate. Results are not satisfactory to white or red man, and ther(» does not yet seem reason for varyiii;^- — exce[)t to give i)lace to an (dl'ered ex[)eriment — wiiat Indian Coni- niissi(Mier Walker published in 1874: *' The true permanent scheme for the management and instruction of the whole body of Indians within the control of the governmeut is yet to be created." ' Heretofore we have had the policy of the extem})ore, a system of shifting expedients, with annual Reports of failures. With temporary and local successes, failure as a whole, and decrease in the number of the " wards,** we have lately come to a very simple remedy for this evil condition of the wasting aborigines. It is citizenship, and personal ownership in the land. This seems to be the best possible plan for the present. It contemplates the absorption of Indian nationality in American, and a fusion of the two races to the full extent of all civil rela- tions — the social and domestic being left to their own choices and chances. How far is this theory, or scheme, practicable ? We cull this — the Dawes Bill — the best possi- 1 " The Indian Question," 1874; p. 99. 24 THE INDIAN S SIDE ) I ble plan for the present. If, theretore, we express any doubts of its^snccess, it will \n'. on its feasibility or practicability. Does not any scheme which contemplates the civilization and preservation of tlie Indian race require an en- ergized social and moral tone in the sections of the Union where they are, which jiational legis- lation and Congressional bills cannot generate and apply? In his "Sketches of Louisiana,''' Major Stoddard, our first Governor of the 7 ou- isiana Territor3% says " that any considerable intercourse with the whites has invariably tended to debase and corrupt them" — the Indians.^ We have yet discovered or acknowl- edged only one side or one half of the diffi- culty in the Indian question. If we go no farther in the study of the case, and in the ad- mission of the radical evil, but proceed to a remedy, we are in danger of entering on another experiment, which will perhaps ev'\ in failure as all the others have ended. The new scheme conteniplates the total fusion, civilly, of the white and red races, as much as the fusion of any other nationalitjs German, French, or Swede, with the American, and of course leaves the social and domestic to local and personal option, as is the case with the other races. Page 410. Si OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 25 •V Some are discussing tlie settlement of the vexed Indian question by intermarriages and so the extinction of race line. At the Mohawk Conference of the Board of Indian Commis- sioners in 1886, an able paper was read on Indian citizenshij The author says: — "That the cause of peace and quietness, the progress of Christian settlement across the coaitinent, and, ,in short, the welfare of the white races, are in- volved in the permanent absorption of all the tribes into tlie American nation, is perliaps a generally recognized fact. Some prejudice, it is true. ap})ears against the idea of admixture or min^iflinof, in the sense of intermarriac^e and entire loss of race identity. But it is impos- sible to prevent the mingling of blood on the same soil, even if desirable. A large part of the population enumerated as Indian is now half-breed. . , . We are descended from a com- mon father: (xod has made ns *of one blood' ; nor have we any right, except that derived from power, to withhold from them any })rivi- leges or immunities which we grant to the more civilized [)eople. In all this I do not recommend the interminorlincr of the races: but 1 do not fear it . . . the nightmare of a confu- sion of races.'" ^ ^ " Eiglitot'iith .\inuial lU'port of the Board of Indian Com- missioners," 18b0; ijp. 52-3. 26 THE INDFAX .S SFDE liM i i] 1 I The policy here suggested stirs some memories and compels some antici[)titi()ns. The irudsoii Bay Company are largely res[»onsible for the early and prevalent population of the Domin- ion, who, until lately, have stood vvitli face averted from a lively civilization toward the primitive and hybrid forest life. Their em- ployes were all from the old country and bach- elor men, and thence arose that tawny aristocracy of the wilderness, once so characteristic of the North Country. Kiel and his foUowers, who lately, and twice, with a few years intervening, gave the Dominion so much anxiety and labor too, were of the same mingled blood, in the second, and third, and fourth generations. As one goes west and north-west and south- west in our own land, he has the same facts forced on him. It is not alone the copper color and the peculiar eye and the dark hair and the unmistakable physiognomy in the half-breed race which arrest his attention ; but the indo- lent motions, the unbusiness-like habits, the uninviting home, and the general unthrift thrust themselves on him. All these facts, abundant on both sides of our national boun- dary, confirm and explain a statement given me in Wyoming by an American who had been a careful observer for forty years of trapper OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 27 lories (I.SOJl the lilUtJ fli- and trader and mining and ranching life in our wild and interior west: '• Ilalf-breed chil- dren are siiort-Iived andjjjjjj^^-goi-v'' The jj^rrrrtrTor'^the Crow Indians makes a simihir observation: "This agency furnishes ai! example of men of culture becoming worth- less by association with the Indians, whin- they have contributed nothing toward the ele- vation of the red man. As a rule, the full- blooded Indian stands a much better chance to become a man than the half-breed. The pres- ence of these men causes more trouble in the management of tiie Indians than all other causes combined." ^ To make the Dawes Bill effective for its end, there may be needed a larger corps of what Robert South calls *' God's police." The Report for 1886 of the L'Anse aAd Vieux Desert Reservation gives the number of the Indian population as 69-4. Of that 320 are full-bloods and 374 are mixed, more than one half. The location of these Indians will be noted as in the region of the early trapper and fur-trader towns of Detroit and Mackinaw. Not only the number of half-breeds here and elsewhere must be considered, but the demoral- ized condition of society which has produced them. 1 u Report of Commissioners on Indian Affairs," 1874; p. 262. 28 THP: INDIAN S SIDE As to intermarriafje as a reinedv for the evils in (juestio i, the plan is not new. It was formerly proposed by the Secretary of War, when that department had in charge the Ind- ian field. General William C. Crawford had been a member of Congress, ambassador to France, and Secretary of War, and as[)ired to the pres- idency, but lost the election as against Mr. Monroe. As Secretary of War in 1815, he made a sensational Report on the Indian af- fairs, with these recommendations : — '' If the system already devised has not pro- duced all the effects which were expected from it, new experiments ought to be made. Where every effort to introduce among them, the Indian savages, ideas of exclusive property in things real as well as personal shall fail, let intermarriage between them and the whites be encouraged by the government. This cannot fail to preserve the race, with the modifications necessary to the enjoyment of civil liberty and social happiness. It is believed that the prin- ciples of humanity, in this instance, i.re in har- monious concert with the true inter<»sts of the nation. It will redound more to the initional honor to incorporate by a humane and benevo- lent policy the natives of our forests into the great American family of freemen, than to OF THE INDIAN QUESTION". 29 receive with open arms the fugitives of the old world, whether their flight has heen the effect of theii' criiiies or of their virtues."^ The most marked effect of this Report way the polit- ical execution of its author. Hitherto and nationally the white side of the Indian question has been kept back. The remark of Secretary Stanton, in 1862, to Bishop \yhi])ple, of Minnesota, should head this national question, measure the under- lying evils, and shape the remedy. Admit to their fullest extent the pagan, heatlien, and savage qualities of many of the Indians, we must, nevertheless, give the place of prominence to the words of the secretary to the bishop: "If you come to Washington to tell us that our Indian system is a sink of ini(]uity and a disgrace to the nation, we all know it." Color the Indian to the darkest and hardest character allowable, bv the facts, as a human being for civilization and Christianity to take in hand, still it must be borne in mind that the whites have been the overwhelming party in all Indian transactions, and had every- thing their own way. We have dictated and broken the most of the treaties, we have neces- sitated, initiated, and executed the most of the removals, and so far as the Indians have come ' Senate Papers, 14th Congress, 1st Session, "trfT 30 THE INDIAN S SIDE I under American laws, we have enacted, inter- preted, and executed those laws. Generally, wherein they have suffered from breach of treaty, removal, or from failure of law to protect tlieir legal rights, it has l)een through our mal-administration, or negligence, or sin- ister design. Judge Belford, of Colorado, was credited, not long since, with tlie statement that since our independence the United States has made 929 treaties witli 807 Indian tribes and bands. Commissioner Walker, discriminating between tribes and bands, s[)eaks of "nearly 400 treaties confirmed by tlie Senate, as are treaties with foreign powers." ^ As all know, it was at the will of the government whether these treaties should be observed or broken. The bordering whites and designing men back of them had their own way. It will be observed that the most of this evil to the red man, and dishonor to the white man, takes place on the frontier, and grows out of an incompatibility of neighborhood between the two races, on their present level, or grade of civilization. The present white civilization of the border does not seem to I. j able to tolerate the inferior Indian neighborhood, and recognize its natural rights and the claims 1 "The Indian Question," by Francis A, Walker, 1874, ill OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 31 gUcaranteed by govenniient. The (luestion has often been put beyond tlie Missouri, whether the civilization of the East has, ur does, or would, in case of occasion, tolerate Indian neicrhborliood with an elevating svnii)athy. Fn his "Across tlie C(Uitinent," page 8, Mr. Samuel Bowles makes this record : " The almost uni- versal testimony of the border men is that there can be no terms made witli the Indians. The only wise policy, they aver, is extermina- tion. This is dreadful, if true, but I cannot believe it.** To s|)eak in round terms, we have a curving frontier white belt IGOO miles long, and 000 deep, and it is constantly moving on and over Indian lands and reservations and rights, inexorable and irresistable. To stop or turn it would be like meddling with the stealthy shadows of an eclipse. On this belt are concentrated the capital of the old East, and emigrants from all the old States. In- terest in that capital, and sympathy for those emigrants, are diffused through the Atlantic half of the country. Under the teachings and trailing influences of two hundred and fifty years the western half of the country has not civil and moral sympathy high enough, any more than the old East had, to endure the Indian as a neighbor, while they settle near enough to cultivate covetousness for 32 THE Indian's side his guaranteed lands. " So far have th'ese forms of usui-i)ati()M been carried at times in Kansas, that an Indian Reservation there might be defined as that portion of the soil of the State on which the Indians have no rights whatsoever." ^ " It requires no deep knowledge of human nature, and no very extensive knowledge of congressional legislation, to assume that many and powerful interests will oppose themselves to a readjustment of the Indian tribes between the Missouri and the Pacific, under the policy of seclusion and non-intercourse. Railroad enterprises and land enterprises of every name will find any scheme that shall be seriously proposed to be (juite the most ob- jectionable of all that could be offered. Every State, and every territory that aspires to be- come a State, will strive to keep the Indians as far as possible from its own borders : while powerful combinations of speculators will make their fight for the last acre of Indian lands." 2 This was strong language for a government official to use twelve years ago ; and yet the facts have more than fulfilled the prediction, 1 "The Indian Question," by Francis A. Walker; pp. 77-78; 1874. 2 Do., pp. 119-120. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 33 and results are far from honorable to the tone of our supposed civilization. And the intensity of language has hardly measured the greed, the insatiable hunger for Indian land. In explaining and defending his Indian Severalty Bill, Mr. Dawes lias thus expressed himself: "We are blind, we are deaf, we are insane, if we do not take cognizance of the fact that there are forces in this land driving on this people with a determination to possess every acre of their land; and they will lose it, unless we work on, and declare that the original owner of the land shall, before every acre disap- pears from under him forever, have 160 acres of it, when he shall be fitted to become a citizen of the United States, and prepared to bear the burdens as well as share the rights of our governnent." ^ Section 3. — How much can the Government do ? The Ordinance of the North-west Territory made it the duty of the legislature " to ob- serve the utmost good faith towards the In- dians ; to protect their property, rights, and liberty ; and to pass laws, founded in justice ^ Speech of Senator Dawes, Board of Indian Commis- sioners, Mohawk Lake Conference, Oct. 13, 1886; " Eigh- teenth Annual Report," p. 77. ■•^ 34 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE and humanity, for preventing wrongs being done to them." In accordance with this Ordi- nance, "The bill to prevent the introduction of ardent spirits into the Indian towns was passed, at the instance of the missionaries of the Church of the United Bretliren. wlm had made establishments, under authority ( f Con- gress, at Shcenbrun, GnadenhUtten, and Salem, on the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum River, then in the County of Washington. The Indians in those settlements liad been Christianized, and had made considerable progress in agriculture and the high arts. But when the white people settled in their neighborhood, and began to associate and trade with them, whiskey was introduced into their towns, as a profitable article of traffic. The effect it was producing on their industry and moral habits became alarming, and in- duced the missionaries to apply to the General Assembly for relief, who granted it promptly, to the extent of the means in their power. . . For a short time the law produced a good effect, but as the white population increased and approached nearer to the villages, it was found impossible any longer to carry it into execution. The result was tliat the Indiani^j became habitually intemperate, idle, and faith- less, the missionaries lost all their influence OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 85 over them, and eventually were constrained to abandon the st'ttlenients in despair. ' In his message to the Territorial Assembl}' of Ohio, in 1800, Governor St. Clair observed that *' irresi)ective of the principles of religion and justice, it was the interest and should be the j)olicy of the United States to be at peace with them ; but that could not continue to be the case if tlie treaties existing between them and the government were broken with impunity by the inhabitants of the Territory. He referred to the well known fact that while the white men loudly complained of every in- jury committed by the Indians, however tri- fling, and demanded immediate reparation, they were daily i)erpetrating against them injuries and wrongs of the most provoking and atro- cious nature, for which the perpetrators had not been brought to justice. It was univer- sally known that many of those unfortunate people had been plundered and abused with impunity. Among other things, the governor stated that it would be criminal in him to conceal the fact that the number of those unfortunate people who had been murdered since the peace of Greenville, was sul'licient to produce serious alarm for the consequences. ^ " Notes on the Early Settlement of the North-west Territory." By Jacob Burnet, pp. 211-12, 384. fr^ 36 THE INDIAN S SIDE 'M He added fiirtlicr tliat Ji late attempt to bring to j)Uiiisliiiien( a wliitc imjiii, \v1i(» had killed two adults of the Six Nations, and wounded two of their children, in Trumbull County, proved abortive. Thouj^h the perpe- tration of the honiifide was clearly i)roved, and it appeared manifestly to have been com- mitted with deliberate malice, the prisoner was acquitted." ^ So far, and in these circumstances, the government failed to protect the red man against the white man. Government in the United States is the voice of the j^eople, and the people have decided against the Indian when questions of e(|uity were involved. We probablv never liad an army large enough, in times of peace, to picket and protect them. "From 1821 to 1828 inclusive, the writer of these sketches [tassed through the latter settlement (the Wyandots at Upper San- dusky) almost every year, and occasionally twice a year, which gave him an op{)ortunity to know that the}^ were devoting themselves principally, and almost exclusively, to agri- culture and the arts, and were making rapid advances in civilization, when the policy of the government compelled them to abandon 1 Burnet's *' Notes on the North-west Territory," pp. 323-4. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 87 their farms, dispose of their stock jind other property iit ii j^'reiit sacrilice, and migrate to the Far West/'i Jiulgo Hiunet follows this fact with some emineiitlv sensible remarks, and thev are as pertinen^ to-day as they were in 18-') : *^lt is not just to consider the natives of this country as a distinct and inferior race because tiiey do not generally imitate us, when we not only remove every consideration that could induce them to do so, but, in fact, render it impossible. What motive of ambition was there to stimulate them to effort, when they were made to feel that they held their coun- try as tenants at will, liable to be driven off at the pleasure of their oppressors? As soon as they were brought to a situation in whicli necessity prom[)ted them to industry, and in- duced them to begin to adopt our manners and habits of life, the covetous eye of the white man was fixed on their incipient im- provements, and they received the chilling notice that they must look elsewhere for per- manent homes." ^ Unusual space has been given to these ex- tracts from the Notes of Judge Burnet, for two reasons. His olhcial duties called him to a very wide range of country and of ob- 1 Burnet's *' Notes," pp. 386-7. ^ Burnet, pp. 388-9, ?! ti 111 !i ■I :l| i I I s 1 1;; I i J i' II IJ i 1 i I! tl I li 88- THE INDIAN S SIDE servatioii. For the North-west Territor}', in wjiich he held court, embraced the present areas of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin , and when liis circuit took him from Marietta to Detroit, 'le had opportunity to see much of Indian life, and of border white life. Moreover, in this vast territory the government fairly illustrated its principles and policies regarding the natives. The qual- ity and rank of the writer would warrant us also in regarding his observations and opin- ions as given with a judicious fairness, ex- tending, as they did, over about a third of a century. In one of his messages to the 23d Congress, President Jackson has an idea of the remedy for the dec lease of the Indians, while the rem- edy which he offers is impossible of application. He properly apprehends the fact that contact with the whites is the destruction of the Indi- ans, and proposes complete isolation, which of course is impossible. '' The experience of every year adds to the conviction that emigration [of the Indians], and that alone, can preserve from destruction the remnant of the tribes yet living among us." Now, in the o[)ening of this new Indian era, and the most liopeful one we have ever had, we are confronted with the problem of saving the Indians, not only without emigration. I OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 39 I I but rather by a more total commingling with the whites, in real estate ownership side by side, and in mixed industries of a common and equal American citizenship. Under our present inquiry, How much the Government can do for the preservation of the Indian race, let refe'once be had to the fourth chapter in this discussion, and to the fourth section, under the title, Some Personal Inves- tigations. It is probably safe to say that the party ad- ministration, whicli should emplo}^ to the con- stitutional extent, the civil and military power to enforce our Indian treaties, would not survive to the succeeding presidential election. It is a delusion to think of a power in this nation separate from the people, and administering what is called a government, wiiich is not the will of the people. We have no such thing in the United States, and every law unpopular with the people is at the mercy of "local op- tion " in the court room, if not at the polls. The administration of Indian affairs has doubt- less been in general accord with the wishes of the people of the Great West, and they are more than one half the population, and eight ninths of the territory, dividing the whole country into East and West; and there is a delusion in making three parties — tlie people, the govern- ii ?f MM^NMMW " !l I I m \ I lii I It 9 i> : ' 1 I I Ii: 40 THE INDIAN S SIDE nient, and the Indians — and blaming the government as a third party, for being faithless to either or both the other parties. The ground difficulty, in the Indian question, has probably never been more comprehensively and truthfully stated than by the aged Cherokee, above quoted, the father of Catherine Brown, of missionary fame. It was in 1818, and in Georgia. The Cherokees were then starting off in farming, and government promised them ample supplies, and encouragement, and protection. But this bor- der civilization crowded them, and government offered them protection in Georgia, or a new home in the Indian Territory. With a rare foresight of the issues, and against advice of missionaries, this old and gray-haii-ed Cherokee concluded to go over the Mississippi to the New Indian Territory, and gave as the reason : " No Cherokee, or white man with a Chero- kee family, can possibly live among such white people as will first settle our country." ^ That agreed perfectly with Stanton's remark to Bishop ^yhi[)ple. And indeed it is but the repetition of what John Smith sjiid of the Vir- ginia colony : " Much they blamed me for not converting the savages, when those they sent us were little better, if not worse." In speak- ing of the destructive influence of frontier and 1 Tracy's " His. of the Am. Board," p. 76. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 41 trading men on the Indians, llie ** Edinbiugh Review " has this statement: — "It has been tried by the French ; it lias been tried by the Englisli ; and it has been tried by the Americans ; and in every case the natives have been swept away by war, disease, and famine, and the whites have exhibited a fright- ful mixture of all the vices of civilized and savage life." ^ The ancient East, where the frontier faded out long ago, can but poorly fancy the real bor- der of to-day, where this Indian question is so intensely and sometimes teriibly practical. Hence the birth, on the Athmtic slope, of so many visionary and sentimental and aesthetic theories concerning it. In his admirable His- tory of the Mississippi Valley, Monette outlines the mixed border society of the two races, with a painful fidelity. " The confines between the white man and the savage present human na- ture in its most revolting aspect. The white man insensibly, and by necessity, adopts the ferocity and the cruelty of his savage competi- tor for the forests, and each is alternately excited with a spirit of the most vinrlictive revenge." ^ A case comparatively recent is liere in point. » " Ed. Review," vol. Ixxxii. no. 165, 1845, p. 243. « Vdl. ii. pp. 38, 39. J i \ I 42 THE Indian's side In 1871-2, the Osages, living in Kansas, ex- changed their hinds with government for a reservation in the Indian Territory. When they started for their new home, uncivilized whites, some 500 of them, rushed ahead and took the reservation, and compelled the Osages to camp outside. The War Department ordered them off, and political pressure prevented the execution of the order till the year following, when the troops found 1500 whites in posses- sion of the Osage lands, and expelled them. The decivilizing influences of frontier life, and specially in mining and ranching districts, and among those who are emigrant families in the third generation from old colony days, are beyond the comprehension of the staid, theo- retic, and untravelled New Englander. Prai- ries, valleys, and mountain ranges, that have scant copies of the spelling-book, and that seldom or never have echoed the sound of church bells, are not apt to be intelligent and clear-toned on equity, and treaties, and the general rights of person and property and con- science, regardless of race or color. A depot is no perfect substitute for a school-room, or a locomotive bell for a church bell, in carrying civilization into a wild country and among men, unfortunate for two or three generations, in the means of literary, and civil and social eleva- tion. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 43 Of coursti ihe goverimieiit, as well as benev- olent societies, has been pressed to make the best possible show of their success in Indian work. When on a visit to the Indian Territory, in 1880, we attended their national fair at Muskogee. It was, as one at the North, for a show of the products of civilization in farming, stock-raising, mechanics, and domestic indus- tries. Excepting a very fine show by the ladies in the latter, the whole was a surprise and dis- appointment. Official reports of civil and be- nevolent agents had raised our expectations exceedingly beyond the reality. A similar delusion was dispelled, with refer- ence to the high educational tone among the Cherokees. Their schools were fair, but it had been impressed on us for years, by reports and speeches, that this Indian tribe excelled the most, if not all the States, in the rate of tax per scholar which it furnished for the common school. We found the case to be that, in the sale of their Georgia lands by the United States, our government wisely conditioned that 'VoO,000 of the income should be devoted annually to schools. They therefore were not voting a school tax for thi« amount, and its excess over that in many white States, was no evidence of an advanced civilization, or educational ambi- tion. ^a 44 THE Indian's side 1 g! I i i Full iiclmission is made of all we have gainecl, within a few years, in locating Indians on reservations, renewing among them their an- cient rudimental agriculture, introducing some of the elements of education, securing some Christian fruit, and imparting some of the notions and practices of a crude civilization into tlie Indian family and house. Of course our greatest success, as our longest and most exjjensive endeavor, has been among the Chero- kees. But here, as will be shown in pages following, we found them unwilling to add tilth, and buildings, and fences, and wells, and highways to land which they did not individu- ally own, and which they expected to leave under constraint and pressure. The}^ liad the traditions, and some of the older ones had the memories, of tlieir fatherland, east of the great river. Section. 4. — The Army and the Indian. " Some Mormons who were crossing the plains to Utah had a lame ox, which they turned loose to die, and a camp of Indians found and killed it, and made a feast. The Mormons saw this in the distance, and, think- ing they could secure payment, stopped at Fort Laramie, and told the officer in command the Indians had stolen their ox. The officer, OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 45 who was halt' dniiik, took some sohliers, went to the Indian villiage, and demanded the ox. The Indians said: ' We tiiought the wliite niiui liad tnrncd him loose to die. We have eaten the ox ; if the white uian want pay for him, von shall have it ont of our next annnitv.' ' No,' said the (h'linken officer, ' I want the ox, and, if you do not return him, I will fire upon you.' He did fire on them, and killed a chief. The Indians rallied, and exterminated the command. That war cost one million dollars. ' ^ For a generation the Sioux, who were thus outraged, had been the devotcMl friends of our government. How much better the kind and vdse counsel of Jefferson : " The most economical as well as most humane conduct towards them is to bribe them into peace, and retain them in peace by eternal bribes." ^ An army among the uncivilized is not a civilizing but a conquering, humiliating force ; and ordinarily it does not generate the soften- ing, genial, and elevating qualities, wliich we group under the term civilization. While it has its uses, as organized physical force, to hold savagery in check, and to throw pro- ^ " Guide to the Northern Pacific Railroad," by Henry I. Winser, 1888, p. 02. '^ Letter to Charles Carroll, April, 1791. I h : 46 •».. THE INDTAN'S SIDE tection over rights wliich have migrated be- yond the borders of (jivil jurisdiction, it is not aggressive in the introduction of the civil and social and industrial and moral qualities which constitivte the foundations of society. While our frontier army lias found the Indians simi)ly gregarious, it has succeeded mainly, in gatliering tliem in corrals to be fed. Nor are the United States alone in this policy of so using a national army among in- ferior and barbarous peoples. It is poor credit to the civilized nations that they do not elevate the people whom they subdue, and ])reserve their separateness and automony. Subjection is followed by denationalization, and absorption ends in extinction. Of the de- pendencies which Great Britain has had, — forty and more even yet, — development into separateness has been allowed only in the case of the thirteen American colonies, and then from inability to do otherwise. And neither France nor Spain, nor, indeed, any Europeaii government, has ever become the willing mother of a nation. Their complex prob- lem in Asia and Africa is, api)arently, how not to do it. Nor must this be taken as reproach to tlie military. The army is organized, educated. I OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. and a|)plied physical Unite, and is not to be reproached for not aL'C()in[)lisl)iiig what it is neither adapted nor designed to produce. Like produces like, (jeneral Custer's reflec- tions, therefore, are apt and sensible from the base line of an army, and from the tone and scope of the education of a gallant soldier, as he was : — " M}^ tirm conviction, based upon an inti- mate and thorough analysis of the habits of cliaracter, and native instinct of tlie Indian, and strengtliened and sup})()rted by the almost unanimous opinion of all persons who have made the Indian [)robleni a study, and have studied it, not from a distance, but in immedi- ate contact with all the facts bearing there- upon, is, that the Indian cannot be elevated to that great level where he can be induced to adopt any policy or mode of life, varying from those to which he has ever been accustomed, by any method of teaching, argument, reason- ing, or coaxing, which is not preceded and followed closely in reserve by a superior physi- cal force. In other w^ords the Indian is capable of recognizing no controlling influence but that of stern arbitrary power." ^ On this theorv the armv must be ruled out as a constructing and elevating power 1 "Life ou the Plains." J-F- 48 THE INDIAN S SIDE i; i to bring the Indian up to a fair citizenship and manhood. " Stern arbitrary power " can- not accomplish tiiat. One of the difficulties, and a strong one, in the way of securing tiie ends of the Dawes bill, is that this sentiment, naturally common to the frontier where the civil and moral code have not become prominent and patronized by the army, as in their line of work, holds sway, and puts the Indian beyond the range of the ordinary civilizing forces. The army has its place and W(n'k on the border, but the tactics of West Point are not adequate to the emer- gencies of the Indian Problem. Section 5. — The Courts as Protectors of the Indian Rights. Much reliance is placed on the United States laws and courts to secure justice to the wards of the government. A careful, hesitating con- fidence here will be the wiser course. Law is not a leader of public sentiment or a reformer, but only the legislative utterance of public opinion, and of a reform gained. Law is the will of the people in print. It is the ratchet on the wheel, and will hold only, and not turn, or pull, or lift. If the States and Territories, where the Indians are, do not wish them to remain there. Congress is impotent, and the courts are powerless. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 49 In some cases in the East, where prejudice or passion runs strong, the trial is moved to some distant section, where the jury and court may be presumed to be less biassed, or, as is said, the venue is chini<]^ed. In a case for Indian justice, arising as far west as Coh)rado or Wy- oming, the venue would need to be changed to a county east of the Mississippi, if not of the Alleghanies. In tlie Indian Territory, legislation and the courts have illustrated tlie protection of the Indian by hiw. Cases arising between Indians thev handle themselves ; cases between In- dians and whites go to a United States court in Arkansas. The Indian Commissioner, for 1874, however, says : '^ Lawlessness and vio- lence still continue in the Indian Territory. . . . All efforts on the part of the Indians to es- tablish a orovernment have failed. Such ad- ministration of tlie law in this country, as is possible through the United States District Courts of Arkansas, scarcelv deserves the name. Practically, therefore, we have a coun- try embracing 62,253 scpiare miles, inhabited by moi'e than 75,000 souls, including 50,000 civilized Indians, without the protection of law, and not infrequently the scene of vio- lence and wrong." ^ 1 "Report," 1874, pp. 11, 12. I f 50 THE INDIAN S SIDE In 1880, tliis case was detailed tliere, to the writer, as of recent date. A white man so cnt an Indian in a qnarrel that he was bleed- ing to death. A surgeon was called, who said he could save his life, but declined to do ser- vice, or see the patient, and so let the Indian die. His reasons for refusal were that the case would annoy him by a long, distant, and expensive absence at Fort Smith, in Arkansas, as a witness against a white man ; and on his return his life would be in great peril, for testifying for an Indian against a white man. In the Report of the Commissioner, for 1880, Mr. Walker strongly urges additional legisla- tion for the Indian Territory, to protect the property, and virtue, and person of the In- dians. If, in that compact b(jdy of 75,000, so immediately under the United States, the ad- ministration of law "scarcely deserves the name," how must it now be in the small and isolated reservations, hemmed in by semi-civ- ilized and hostile white borders? Will citi- zenship and land in severalty carry there any- thing more than the shadow of titles, when the new theory is put in practice ? Will there not be needed, indispensable to success, an element of power underneath, outside and co- working, which cannot emanate from Wash- ington ? f I 11 > •.w r-'-.: ' OF THE INDIAN QCJESTrON. 51 All IiidicUi can liuve hut ii poor show in court in the region where such facts are nian- utactured as constitute the hody of this vol- ume. It would not be a case of law and evidence, hut of sentiment. Commissioner Walker makes a statement, pertinent here, and deduced from wide obser- vation : '' The principle of secluding Indians from whites, for the good of both races, is established by an overwhelming preponder- ance of authority." ^ But the time is passed for Indian residence beyond the reach of white men. From colo- nial times, the Americans were always seeking for lands and fortunes beyond uiie last village, and highway, and lone cabin. Nearer to the horizon has been the passion and watchword, till trails have gone everywhere across the prairies, and the blazed trees have marked the bridle- paths through all forests and over all mountains. The Indians cannot be secluded from the 65,000,000 of whites in this country. Section 6. — Eiicouragerneyit- lies in Broader Work. It is expecting very much to see the strong current, so long adverse, turn favorably and popularly for the poor Indian. Yet the pros- 1 " ^„aian Question," p. 63. li lii Hi: f *" i I I i' n i ■ fftj: 52 TFIE INDIAN S SIDK pect is favorable. Tlie revival of the Tndiaii question is ({iiite general, tlie study of it broader than ever before, and the discover}? and admission of our national mistakes have been well made. In order now to the best chance for success, it remains to see and con- fess thtit much of the failure lies in the im- perfect white civilization, bordering on the Indians. We cannot reach the Indians with- out those whites, and we cannot civilize them with such whites. The humiliating declara- tion of the old Cherokee must be kept in sight : '' No Indian can possibly live among such white people as will first settle our countrj^" A more thorough policy and process of white civilization on the border must precede a mure successful Indian civilization. Fur evidently a higher Christian tone in border life is indis- pensable to turn the tide and stay this mortify- ing failure. In our marvellous interior growth, educating and Christian influences have not been made to keep abreast of our immigration and agricultural and mining and rfdlroad development. For nearly forty years we have had mining regions, and for twenty years they have been many times the area of New Eng- land, with their beginnings of cities and States, into which educating and Christianizing forces OF TTTE INDIAN QTTESTTON. 53 have moved much later, and are still moving in tardil)'. All these were white centres in the Indian country. The early neglect of these, because they did not furnish pleasant openings and calls to benevolent and civilizing work, has liad much to do in loading down the Indian question with difficulties and dishonors. It is no comfortable thing to be said or seeji or inferred, that American Christianity does not keep pace with American capital and immigra- tion and industrial energies, as the nation moves west. This whole inquiry shows a failure to pre- serve and locate permanently and civilize the Indians, through a lack of moral element on the white border. The government has not been able to keep its faith and honor in dealing with them, since the people, whose voice the gov- ernment is, have not toned up the govern- ment, and strengthened it morally to bear the liand of equity to the red inan. Oifr new and semi-Indian country, always in the major- ity, has shaped the Indian |)()licy, while we have failed to mould that country for the high- est civil and religious ends. For one of two inferences is irresistible, — either American Christianity is not adefpiate to civilize the Indians, or we have not properly api)lied it. Apparently the failure has been to civilize and ... *r> ill il 54 THE INDIAN S SIDE 1 I Christianize the white border to sucli an extent as to secure its moral respect and toleration for an Indian reservation, which the faith of the government has guaranteed. Now, at this late day of disaster, to give citizenship and land in severalty to the Indian, without touching the cause of so much degra- dation at white hands, will be still to delude and degrade with shadows of better name and a gilding. Probably the best thing to be done for the Indian is to give him a ;;indified citizen- ship, and land in fee-simple under stringent and guarding conditions. Yet these gifts will prove a peril and a mockery if not acc()m[)anied by the elevating influences wliicli white neigh- bors have failed to furnish. Wliile the Amer- ican church is able to reconstruct the religions of the old world, and make civilized nations out of pagan ones, it will expose her administra- tion of Christianity to grave criticism by later historians if she has not been willing to save the native races of her own country from ex- tinction. With a steady failure, for 250 years, to per- petuate the Indian tribes, and to civilize, edu- cate, and Christianize them ; witli but a liumil- iating success in engrafting on the Indian stock the industries of the whites; witli a progressive and almost total extinction of I ■>i! OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 55 Indian titles, and absorption of Indian lands westward to the Mississippi ; with this fron- tier tone toward the Indian, and with this kind of white civilization that borders the Indian belt and reservations — will citizenship and lands in severalty prove sufticient remedies? It is sometimes one half of the victory about to be won to-day, to have discovered where we failed yesterday ; and sometimes it is like doubling our forces to ascertain the weakest place in the lines of the enemy. We start off with much of hoi)e and confidence in this new movement for Indian civilization after having gained the secret of our failures hitherto. The environment, the ah extra conditions of this race, liave foreordained the neutralization and failure of our endeavors. For we will not admit that our common Christianity and our American civilization properly applied cannot make a fair Christian and a fair citizen out of an American Indian. I 56 THE INDIAN S SIDE i i. t f^ CHAPTER II. THE CHEROKEE EXPERIMENT. THE RESERVA- TION SYSTEM A FAILURE. One case is worth two theories on the Indian question, and if a century of trials has not made it evident what we can do with the aborigines, it has shown conclusively that cer- tain things cannot be done. Pj'obably a better case could not be selected to illustrate our successes and failures with the Indian than the Cherokee, since the government and our benev- olent societies have had this tribe on hand longer than any other, and with more liberal expense, and through and around them have tested so many legal questions and civil and social problems of Indian and white neighbor- hood. A few facts will present the Cherokee experiment. Section 1. — Lidian Farmers among White Farmers. The original and first claim on the soil in North America is an Indian right to occupation and use. In the sixteen treaties of the United States with the Cherokees, this claim was cou^ OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 57 ceded to them and respected by onr goveni- nieiit. The first five Presidents rested treaties with the Indians on this chiini. In the fifteenth with the Cherokees, 1817, wliicli sti[)uhited for their going over the Mississi})[)i, this was the eighth article : '' To every head of an Indian faniilv, residino- on the Lands ceded bv the Cherokees in this treaty, shall be allowed a section of land, that is, 640 acres, provided he wishes- 'U remain on the land thns ceded, and to become a citizen of the United States. He shall hold a life estate, with a right of dower to his widow, and shall leave the land in fee- simple to his children." The State of Georgia claimed from Colonial rights the lands west of her present limits to the Mississippi, that is, the present territory of Alabama and Mississi[)pi. Large tracts in this western claim she sold, then repealed the law under which the sale was made, and declared the titles of sale void. The case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the State must indemnify the purchasers. The '' Yazoo fraud," so called, is a long story. Suffice it to say, Georgia ceded to the United States all her right, title, and claim to what is now the terri- tory of those two States, and the United States promised, in return, ^1,250,000, from the first net proceeds from the sale of these lands. w 1^1 i ! V ^ II' ' li- i i I :: 58 THE Indian's side This was not in pc^ynient for the land, or for any claim on it, but " as a consideration for the expenses incurred by the said State, in re- lation to the said territory." It was also stipu- lated that '' The United States shall, at their own expense, extinguish, for the use of Georgia, as early as the same can be peaceably obtained, on reasonable terms, . . . the Indian title to all lands within the State of Georgia." Such, for substance to our purpose, was " the compact of 1802," so called. It would seem that the Cherokees had pos- sessed, in Colonial days, " more than half of the State of Tennessee, the southern part of Ken- tucky, the southwest corner of Virginia, a con- siderable portion of both the Carolinas, a small portion of Georgia, and the northern part of Alabama." Here were about 35,000,000 acres, more than seven times the area of Massachu- setts. Beirween 1783 and 1820 they quit- claimed more than three fourths of this to the United States, and then declined to sell more. Of the balance, 5,000,000 acres were claimed by Georgia, as within her State limits, and in that claim and its outcome the "Cherokee Question " took on its troublesome features, mortifying and humiliating to the United States, disheartening and decivilizing to the Cherokees, and ominously, painfully prophetic to all our Indian tribes. Il !1 OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 59 By tlie compact of 1802 the United States had promised to extinguish the Indian title in Georgia at as early a date a it could be do 'C peaceably, yet if the natives preferred to remai, . there was nothing in any treaty or precedent of the government that could force their removal. They could remain from generation to genera- tion. Moreover, in the treaty of Holston, eleven years before, was this article : '' That the Cherokee nation may be led to a greater degree of civilization, and to become herdsmen and cultivators, instead of remaining in a state of hunters, the United States will, from time to time, furnish, gratuitously, the said nation with useful implements of husbandry; and fur- ther to assist the said nation in so desirable a pursuit," etc. It is quite evident that the government was sincere, and more or less active, in its earlier days, to civilize the Indians and retain them permanently on their old and reserved hunting- grounds. The Delaware treaty, in 1778, even contemplated an Indian State, with its repre- sentative in Congress, and the twelfth article of the Hopewell treaty, 1785, says : " They shall have a right to send a deputy of their own, whenever they think fit, to Congress." The Delawares are now in the Indian Terri- tory ; they numbered 71 souls in 1885, and are I ' H-f 60 THE Indian's ride li coinbiiiod witli eight or ten tribes under one jigency. There ore, tlie Clierokees were en- conniged and aided l)v the fjovernnient and bv benevolent societies to develoi) agriculture, l)lant towns, establish a S3'stem of laws, found schools and churches ; in brief, do just what is l)eing done to-day for the Indians. With a full faith in the wishes and promises of the government, the Clierokees made quite as much advance in these lines as could be expected. They began to dispose of their lands in order to lessen the range of hunting-ground, and take on agricultural limits as well as pursuits. They welcomed secular and religious teachers, and agriculture, education, and religion carried them upward, so that in 1808 a teacher, ap- pointed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, reported : " The period has at last arrived on which I have long fixed my eager eye. The Cherokee nation has, at length, determined to become men and citizens. A few day^ ago, in full council, they adopted a constitution, which embraces a simple principle of government. The legisla- tive and judicial powers are vested in a general council, and lesser ones subordinate. All crim- inal accusations must be .established by testi- mony." ^ 1 *' His. of Am. Board," p. 68, OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 61 Section 2. — Mixed Socief// : The civUlzuKj Indian : the tvild Indian : the hostile White Man. It was quite natural tliat a portion of the tribe should prefer to continue the free, lazy, and wild hunter-life of their ancestry and childhood. A delegation to Washington drew a dividing line. The Upper Towns asked for a permanent allotment of their propor- tion of the lands, that they might settle down in perpetuity in their old homes and new farms in Georgia, and follow a civilized life. The Lower Towns asked for an exchange of their proportion of land for new homes beyond the Mississippi, where they could in- dulge, without molestation, their hereditary passion for the wigwam and the chase. It was easy for the government to send ex- plorers, as it did, to select wild lands for the Lower Towns in the remote West, but the welcome evidence of a growing civilization, and a disinclination of two thirds of the tribe to leave Georgia, annoyed the citizens and perplexed the general government, as it was obligated to remove them as early as it could be done amicably. The theory of the govern- ment was to civilize and establish them where they were, while the Holstou treaty and Geor- ;:.? 62 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE I i ! K ]■ I gia contemplated their ultimate removal. The l)erplexity of the govenuneiit was the greater, since the ciyilizing agencies and inilucnces that were lifting the Cherokees toward in- telligent and thrifty citizenship were from abroad. The State of Georgia and the white neighborhood of these natives were not aiding and abetting in this work. While the Indian farms and growing villages were in the wilds of her interior or borders, that State was indiffer- ent to what foreign benevolence was doing within her boundaries. So the colony of Oglethorpe began to fall into line, with all the older ones, in the consent that Indian farming is a good theory, and an Indian farm a good thing — afar off. The nearer they came to being " persons of industry and capable of managing their property with discretion," — as many were recognized and named in the Calhoun treaty of 1819, when one square mile was se- cured in fee-simple to each of those, — the more unwelcome they were to the whites. In this divided public sentiment and sym- pathy on the Indian question, the general government adopted a divided policy, which is quite natural where the people rule. They provided for those who would go, and for those who would stay, and progress was made only as fast as white settlements and specula- I OF THE INDIAN QUKSTION. 63 tive land interests advjinced on the reserva- tions. The Cherokees did not show them- selves unwilling to sell their hinds so long as an iideiiuate motive was ]>resenced to their nunds I) urinor ever y ad ministration of our national government, applications were made to them for the purpose of obtaining achlitional portions of their territory. These ap[)lications were urged, not only nor principally by the consideration of the money or presents which they were to receive in exchange, but often and strongly by the consideration that they would become an agricultural people, like the whites ; that it was for their interest to have their limits circumscribed, so that their young men could not have a great extent of country to hunt in ; and that, when they became attached to the soil, and engaged in its cultivation, the United States would not ask them to sell any more land. Yielding to these arguments, and to the importunities of the whites, the Chero- kees sold, at different times, between the close of the T 3Volutionary War and the year 1820, more than three quarters of their original inher- itance." ^ Indian matters lingered and progressed, and 1 "William Penii on the Indian Crisis," 1829, p. 8, — an adniiiablo pamphlet of twenty-four letters from "The National Intelligencer." I ! w 64 THE INDIAN S HIDE white settleiueiits in Cieor^ia lulv.iuced, and land speculators and Indian men sliuwed in- creased activity. On the 8th of 'Hily. 1817, a most important treaty was arranged with tin; Clierokees, well illustrating those wliite pressures on Indian reservations that have gone grinding over them like Arctic ice-floes over capes a;nd islands and Eskimo huts. It ceded large tracts of land to the United States, provided for a census of the Cherokees who preferred to go over the Mississii)pi, divided the annuities in ratio be- tween those remaining and those going, granted land, acre tor acre, beyond the Misssissii)pi to those who might leave, paid for improvements on lands left by the emigrants, and ceded, se- cured, in fee-simple, 640 acres to every head of an Indian family who preferred to remain where he then resided within any large ceded tract, and to become a citizen of the United States, reatlirmed all previous treaties with the Chero- kees, and provided flat-binit transportation and provisions to the emigrating party. This treaty is signed by Andrew Jackson and other com- missioners, and by thirty-one chiefs and war- riors of the party who were to remain, and by fifteen of those of the party who were to emi- grate. As to the quality and condition of those ! OF THE INDIAN QirKSTION. 65 who then went over the Mississippi and set- tled in the recently omanizcd Indian 'J'eiri- torv, one statement will illustrate. Si»oaking of the Chei'okees aloni,' the Arl msas and below Mnlbeny River, Major Long says: '* These settlements, in respect to the com- forts and con vci deuces of life they afford, ap- pear to vie witli, and in many instances even surpass thos(? of the iVmericcvUS in that [)art of tiie country." • In 1819 one more treaty was made with the ^herokees. Its [)reand)le states the fact that *' the greater part of the Cherokee nation have expressed an earnest desire to remain on this side of the Mississippi," and wish " to com- mence those measures which they deem neces- sary to the civilization and preservation of their nation." The treaty is mostly a provis- ion of ways and means for carrying out the preceding one, and also sets apart 100,000 acres of the ceded territory for school pur- poses on the unceded, assigns one thiixl of the annuities to the emigi-ating body, and forbids whites to enter on the ceded lands prior to January 1, 1820. 1 Long's "Expedition from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains," 1819-20 ; vol. ii. p. 347. I-. u.-l ■mi li iMK ii tfliiM i mmemasss^s& L'tfgagsar'r.'s:!'^*- 66 THE INDIAN S SIDE Section 3. — Lidian Civilization Adjourned, Meanwhile the emigrating ones took up their sad journey toward the setting sun, after the usage of all red men since white men settled on the Atlantic coast. Of course it may be said, in technical and strictly legal phrase, that they went freely, yet the emigration was origi- nated and consummated by the most over- bearing forces known to civil and social life. Extracts from missionary records will suggest the painful and humiliati'ig facts. "Nov. 4, 1818. The parents of Catherine Brown called on us. The old gray-headed man, with tears in his eyes, said be mast go over the Mississij)pi. The white people would not suffer him to live here. Tliey had stolen his cattle, horses, and hogs, until be had very little left. He expected to return from the agency in about ten days, and should then want Catherine to go hon)e and prepare to go with him to the Arkansas. . . . These people consider the ofi'ev of taking reserves, and becoming citizens of the United States, as of no service to them. They know they are not to be admitted to the riglits of freemen, or the privilege of their oath, and say no Cher- okee, or white man with a Cherokee family, I OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 67 !l f' L can possibly live aiiioiig such white people as will first settle this country. **Nov. 28. The great talk, for which the people began to assemble on the 20th of Octo- ber, was closed yesterday. The United States commissioners i)roposed to the Cherokees an entire ch.mge of country, except such as chose to take reserves, and come under the g(nern- ment of the United States. This [)ropositio!i they unanimously rejected, and continued to reject, as often as repeated, urging that the late treaty might be closed as soon as possible. Nothing was done." ^ One other treaty, and onlj- one, was formed with the Cherokees of Georgia. We have alreadv outlined it, — the one of 1810. After this the citizens of Georgia, and politicians 'uid speculators outside, at Washington and else- where, struggled, by various expedients, to reopen negotiations for the extinguishing of more Indian title and the removal of more Indians, but in vain. They pressed Congress for appropriations to aid in reopening — a white man's bargain with red men is very expensive ; the entire administration of Mr. Monroe was teased for this pur[)Ose ; but chiefs and warriors, at home and at Wasliing- toix. refused energetically. They declared in I " His. of Am. Board," p. 75. HI If 68 THE INDIAN S SIDE \m writing that the treasury of the United States liad not money enough to buy anotlier foot of Cherokee land, (jreorgia, ini[)atient of the gov- ernment dehiy and failure, and tr3'ing for several years to reopen treaty negotiations with the Indians for the rest of their hinds within the State, and obtainino- onlv the stern refusal to sell more, lirst u[)braids the g(jvernment for not making another treaty and procuring the rest of the Indian lands, and then takes the ground that the Indian tribes are in no such sense a nation as that a tr^^aty can be formed with them, and that no treaty proper has been formed with them by the general government, or is necessary in order to remove them and take possession of their hinds; that prior to the compact of 1802 Georgia, by her own right as a sovereign State, could have taken those lands either by negotiation or force, as she might elect, but consented to have t.he g^eneral m)Y- ernment do it at government expense. This was in 1827. m Section 4. — Indian Civilization Fatal! f/ Struck. In the following year this law was passed by the Legislature of Georgia, and approved : ''That all laws, usages, ai"^ customs, made, established, and in force in the said territory, OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 69 by tlie said Cherokee Iiuliaiis, be, and the same are liereby, on and after the first day of June, 1830, declared null and voint lier own limits, or to remove beyond tlie Mississippi, . . . carry- ing along with yon that protection which, there situated, it will be in the power of the government to extend." ^ In order to dispossess and remove the Ind- iaiis, the plan was matured by (leorgia to seize all their lands, divide them into ])arcels of 140 acres each, and dispose of them by lottery. The scheme appealed well to the speculator and demao(.o;ue and border white man. Natu- rally the missionaries would be in the way in executing this i)rogramme, and a. law was passed for the pur])ose of expelling them, and under it thev were cast into the i)enitentiarv, and the missions broken up. With great in- dignities and severity and cruelty, these men of God were chained to each other by the ankle in pairs, or, with chain and padlock on the neck, were made fast to a horse or cart, and so compelled, on foot, to traverse rough and wild ways, some of them even fifty miles. Tliey ap- pealed to the President for relief, but he de- clined to interfere, on the ground that Georgia was sovereign for all such matters within her own bounuaries. Tlie case went to the Su- j)reme Court, when Chit^f Justice Marsluill declared the act of Georgia, in extending^ her 1 " Records of the Department of War,'" April 18, 1829. , ) ! 74 THE INDIAN'S SIDE I ; jurisdiction over the Cherokee lands, repugnant to the Constitution, treaties, and hiws of tlie United States, and therefore null and void, and ordered the discharge of the nussi(»naries. The Georgia court refused the mandate, and so set the United States Supreme Court at defiance. Afterward the Legislature repealed the uncon- stitutional law. After much ao-grnwatinof dehiy, and the cultivation of '• nuUilication,*' the mis- sionaries were discharged, yet with great lack of dignity and manliness on the part of tlie authorities. This was in 1833. A short time before, Webster had made his remarkable speech against nuUiiication, but Georgia was still affected somewhat with that political heresy. Section 6. — The Sad Journey of Sixteen Thousand into Exile. Prior to tliis, and meanwhile, the work went on of despoiling the poor Cherokees. Tlie lottery was drawn in the autumn of 183:2, amid the revels of whiskev and debaucherv, in which man}" good Cherokees stumbled, being abandoned of the general government and disheartened. The removal was mainly in 1838, and the number about 10,000. Thev persistently refused to go unless forced, yet said they would not resist. Some thousands OF THK INDIAN QUI'^STION. 75 of United Stales troops went into tlieir coun- try, inulei' Oeneral Sc(jtt, and began the work by making prisoners of single families, and thus gathering them into gron[»s. l'\)urteen eani}) divisions were made, and linally ilie sad march began. Ten months from the time they began to l)e gathered, this sad e\'0(bis commenced. The distance was about 70U miles, and the time was four to live months. Credit is given for good management and kindness in the sorr(>wful work, vet in the removal a])out 4000 sunk under the trials, — about one in four of the whole number died. ** Their sni'ferings were greatly aggra- vated by the conduct of lawless Georgians, who rushed lavenously into the country, seized the property of Cherokees, as soon as they were arrested, appropriated it to their own use, or sold it for a trifle to each other before the eyes of its owners ; thus reducing even the rich to absolute indigence, and depriving families of comforts which they were about to need in their long and melancholy march." ^ We follow these wanderers and exiles from the white settlements with an intense sympa- thy and suspense. They have gone over the Mississippi, not merely under the i)ressure of Georgia, or of one President, or Secretary of 1 " His. Aui. Board," p. 372. t' i «i m i1f 76 THK INDIAN S SIDE War. 'J'akiiig the in(»st apologetic or sectional view of the case that can be taken, the re- moval, excepting (.'crtain atrocities in it, was a national removal, and, under the chronic pres- sure of two centuries. Congress indorsed it as the voice of tne people, and in the line of an old adopted polic}'. Sharper points in that p(jlicy were then developed, but they were sustained. The opposition to them came from the older States, from which the Indians had been mostly removed, but the newer States, — through which there were yet scattered rem- nants of tribes, — and our border life and the wilder elements of the frontier prevailed. In lonpr sti'u^wles over Indian issues these have always carried a majority. Neither Georgia, therefore, nor that Congress or administration is to be reproached preeminently. The}' were only an index, for the time, of a national spirit that two thirds of the country has some- how always nuule predominant. I Section 7. — Another Morning Overclouded. But let us follow up the Jiew experiment, inaugurated by the completion of the Chero- kee removal in lo38. A reservation was as- signed to them that now appears to be 7861 ^1 OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 77 square miles, — nearly as large as Massachu- setts. Scliools and Indian agents, churches and ploughs, and human symj)alhics folh/wed them ; also, white emigration, and speculators in wild lands, race prejudii-es, and whiskey, and semi-civilization. Into that total Indian Territory of 02,253 square idles, — -nearly as large as eight States like Massachusetts, — and around the Cherokees, the government has h)cated about forty tribes. Around this Ter- ritory we liave also located — and since it was set apart for the Indians — tiie States of Mis- souri, Arkansas, Texas, and Kansas — young members in the American family, and full of the blood of youth and growth, and, of course, andjitious for good neighborhood. In the strong tide of emigration that has set toward the south-west, and specially since the war, this Indian Territory has lifted itself u[) in the cur- rent midway, and made it divide right and left. This is a condition exposed to any damaging influences that may go with our lirst waves of population, and if its people and natural re- sources decline assimilation and absorption in national interests, social and civil and com- mercial chafings must inevitably occur. It is quite likely to be the old Georgia case re- peated, unless Indian and white natures are much changed. What are the facts? n 78 THE INDIANS SIDHi m The Cherokee '* nation,'' as the Cherokees greatly prefer to he called, has a government oi its own, constituted hv the elective fran- chise, and consisting of* the legishitive, judicial, and executive branches, and it has exclusive jurisdiction where all the parties are citizens of the nation. Mixed cases of red and white go to a white arbitrator, the agent of the general government for the Indian Territory, or to the United States Supreme Court, at Fort Smith, Arkansas. With 6000 whites living among the Indians, citizens of the United States, but not of the Territory where they live, it is not strange that the arbitrator is overborne with cases. ^ " The letters received from within the limits of the agency asking for information, decision, instruction, or advice, average from ten to fifteen daily." ^ The disorder from intruding whites and from intermeddlincj ones over the border is a source of regret and coni[)laint in almost every report. "The country continues to afford an as;;lum for refugees from justice from the States, and III It ^ I 1 In the quotations imniodiatcly following, reference is sometimes made to the whole Indian Territory, and some- times only to the Clieroke«>s. The text and context will readily locate the reference. - " Keport of Commissioners of Indian Affairs," 1880; p. 94. OF THE INDl^VN QUESTtON. 79 to invite the iinmigmtion of the very worst class of men that infest an Indian border.'" ^ '* [lawlessness and vioh'nce still continue in the Indian Territurv. The two or three United States niarshalls, sent to enforce the intercourse haws by protecting Indians from white thieves and bufialo hunters, have been entirely inadequate/' etc.'-^ *''J'liey are willing* that the wild Indians from the plains shall be settled on their un- occupied lands, but they most emphatically object to the settlement of the wild white man from the States among them." "The intruders, as a chiss, are unfit to be in the Indian country, and some measures should be adopted that will rid these people of their pres- ence." "It is estimated that nine tenths of the crimes conmiitted in the Territorv are ft. caused by whiskey, and its many aliases. It is introduced from the adjoining States, where it can be purchased in any quantity." " The band of desperadoes, whites and Indians, who made their head(|uarters in the western part of this agency, and beyond, and who were the terror of the whole country last year, have all been killed off', or placed in the penitentiary." ^ " Such administration of the law in this 1 "Report for 1875," p. 13. 2 •« Report for 1874," p. 11. 8 '' Report for 1880," pp. 94, 95. M I n4 80 THE INDIAN S SIDE V i' ' i' i i country as is [)ossible through the United States (listiict courts of Arkansas, scarcely deserves the name. Practicall}', therefore, we have a country end)racing (32,253 square miles, inhabited by more than 75,000 souls, including 50,000 civilized Indians, without the protection of law, and not infrequentb^ the scene of vio- lence and wrong." ^ " Tiiis large population becomes more and more helpless under the increasing lawlessness among themselves, and the alarming intrusicni of outlawed white men." From the tenor of the reports it would seem that the civilization of the Indiaris has not risen to even a second rank in national pur- pose. '' They ought not to be left the prey to the worst inlluences which can be brought to them, in the life and example of the meanest white men. They deserve such guardiansliip and care, on the part of the United States, as will secure for them the powerful aid to eleva- tion which comes from the presence of law." What is said of low whites who enter the country to labor for the Choctaws and Chicka- saws has like bearing on the tribe whose second experiment we are tracing. "These whites, once in the country, are seldom known to leave, and thus their numbers are rapidly in- creasing. The result will be a mixture of the ' ''lieport, lb74," pp. 11,12. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 81 lowest white blood with the Indian, thus prop- agating, instead of curing, the indolence and unthrift with which they are already cursed." ^ Section 8. — Forehodmgs^ and the Doom of the Reservation Theory. No one, of course, can be surprised that the Cherokees are haunted and i)aralvzed with the fear of another removal. If tliey were in the way of the whites when in their old home, much more may they suppose they now are, and if old treaties, compacts, and promises, and even decisions of the Supreme Court could not protect them in their homes and rights on the east of the iVlississip[)i, why may they now expect it? The remark of the agent cannot be unexpected: "Their only fear is that the United States will forget her obliga- tions, and in some way deprive them of their lands. They do not seem to care for the loss in money value, so much as they fear the trouble, and the utter annihilation of a great portion of their ])eople, if the whites a. per- mitted to homestead in all portions of their country, as is contemplated by so many of the measures before Congress." ^ 1 " Report for 1874/' p. 71. - " Report tor IPSO,'' p. U4. i ( ! 82 THE INDIAN S SIDE k— ■ I " They feel the pressure of the white man on every side, and, among the full-bloods especially, there is a growing apprehension that, before long, the barriers will give way, their country be overrun, and themselves dis- possessed." ' They may well have this apprehension, when the Indian Commissioner makes a point to show, and with much practical sense and force, that their separateness cannot long continue, and that "no Indian country can exist perpet- ually within the boundaries of this republic without becoming, in all essential particulars, a part c the United States." Many of those fears would be abated if the Cherokees could feel assured, not only that their land titles to single farms would be made as safe in title as a white man's, but that such white men would become their neighbors as would make those titles worth keeping, and be themselves such men as Indians could endure. Cherokee expe- rience had been the reverse of this. A verv liberal use of official statement has now been made, that a fair view of the pres- ent condition of the Cherokees miglit be had. As government and paid agents are reporting their own work, we may presume that the view given by them is as favorable as the facts 1 " Report for .875," p. 13. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 83 will warrant. The state of the case is too pain- fully similar to the Georgia experiment to be satisfactory as a result or hopeful in its outlook. Surrounded by States, and pressed bv the ris- ing tide of immigration ; infested and raided by miserable or unscrupulous wliites ; railroads clamorous for right of way, and our multitud- inous white interests and energies standing on tip-toe to go in, pioneered by insatiable land- speculators, this second experiment with our leading tribe under the " reservation theory" seems to be nearly ended. What is obvious to us is almost experience to them, so fully is it in their fears and expectations. The official reports of both civil and benevo- lent work performed by the government and by religious bodies in the Indian Territory make one more satisfied and hopeful than a visit and personal observations. Our longest and most expensive experiment on the reservation theory, under the joint endeavors of statesmen and ])hiic.nthropists, seems to have culminated in lifting the Indian to the saddle as a first-class stock-raiser. Together with this elevation he has obtained many of the best qualities of the citizen and Christian, while he is vet restrained by circumstances unfavorable to their develop- ment and practice. In 1880 we heard three eminent Indians address 2000 of their people m 31 V I Ill 'If 84 THE INDIAN S SIDE at their Ntitional Indian Fair at Muskogee. r)iie was an ex-chief of the Cherokees, one was of the Supreme Bencli of that luition, and the other II graduate of a New England college, and an eminent lawyer for some time in one of the western States. Their interests and pros- pects were freely and ably discussed on the stand. Farming was not a popuhir idea with the speakers or the audience, though the Cher- okees then had about 90,000 acres in rough agriculture. They declined the ownership of land in severalty and private farms in fee- simple, in memory of their experience on the east of the Mississippi, where they were called, with some propriety, '^ a nation of farmers." They were not disposed to prepare more farms for a second lottery. Hence their agricultural show at the Fair was meagre in the extreme, and their mechanical show was more so. This was sixty years after the government of the United States had presented to them, through General Jackson, two ploughs, six hoes, and six axes, and had promised a loom, six spinning- wheels, and as many pair of hand cards, and the American Board had commenced Christian- izing work among them. Of course the}^ were blinded by their painful memories of hard endeavors, discouragements, and failures to obtain the white man's civiliza- I OF THE INDTAX QUESTION. 85 tion; they liad no confidence in government indorsements and solenni treaties, when a white man's interests shonhl overtake them. Yet there was evidently a des[)airing and o-rowing acquiescence in the new policy of- fered, of land in severalty, citizenship, and the dissolution of the *' nation." These par- ties were so evenly balanced and so warm on the new policy as to make its discussion perilous. (xood sense, indifference, and de- si)air have since given it a quiet majority. Evidently the Dawes Bill, the soul of which is the new policy, opens up to the brightest out- look into their ominous future. Others, how- ever, must do their hoping in it, and its success or failure will depend very much on the Indian's white neighbor. m m I 86 THE INDIAN S SIDE CHAPTER III. INDIAN FAKMING. Section 1. — /Some l\ r// SiiKjnlar A.^.9i(mptio7is. Indian farming lias lately been put forward as a leading remedy for Indian troubles. It has been si)oken of as if it were an industry, unknown to the Indians, and might be made to work as a newly discovered expedient, to relieve both races, on this vexed question. The fact is overlooked that farming by the aborigines of America is as ancient as the Mound-Builders, that is, older than histor}^, and that the leading grain now is Indiaii corn. Our newly discovered farming theory, for the ills of the poor aborigines, goes on the assumption that the Indians were never acquainted with this industry, have not jiractised it, and, so far as they can be made to understand it, are now averse to it. But what is the fact? Agriculture has been a leading industry in Noi'th America from })re-historic times. Among the Aztec ruins of New Mexico and Arizona, and in the extant pueblos, are abundant evidences OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 87 of primitive and rudimeiital fciriiiing. '' At the period of Kuropeau discovery, maize was found cultivated and a staple article of food in a large part of North America and in parts of South America. There were also found beans, squashes, and tobacco, with the addition, in some areas, of peppers, tomatoes, cocoa, and cotton." Through the greater part of the San Juan region. New Mexico, there is '' evidence of Indian occupation and cultivation," in its ancient prime. The writer brought up from that country very handsome specimens of corn from fields that bore the same before the Span- iards arrived there under De Vaca about 1536. The Alound-Biulders have left c^ood evidence that they were agricultural tribes. Before the Spaniards gave Christianity to the pueblo of Taos, its iniiabitants had their fast days, ap- pointed by authority, much after the New Eng- land style, "for offering })rayers to the Sun to supplicate him to repeat his diurnal visits, and to continue to make the maize, beans, and squashes grow, for the sustenance of the people." The Mandans of the upper Missouri had their high scaffolds for drying corn and vegetables. Beyond Bismarck, where the Nor- thern Pacific Railroad crosses the Missouri, the Indians have raised corn from ancient time. " That the culture of this trrain has p is ! » I I 88 THE INDIAN S SIDE 'tr been carried on by the aborigines from a very remote period, is shown by the fact thai nume- rous fossilized and many charred (m)iii-c()])s, in a perfect state of preservation, are still found in the excavated bluffs along the river and very dee]) <' :)wn in the oldest mounds.'*' Sii- Richard Orenville, visiting the Indijin towns in Virginia before the days of Jamestown, 1085, says: ''Their corn they plant in lows, tor it grows so large, with thick stalk and broad leaves, that one plant would stint the other, and it would never arrive at maturity. In the fields they erect a stage in which a sentry is stationed to guard against the de[)redations of birds and thieves." When Dankers and Sluv- ter visited the Long Island Indians in 1079-80, they gave them corn-bread, the grain being unripe, coarsely broken, and half-baked — the l)rototyj)e of colonial sani}). When Green- balgh visited an Iroquois settlement at the outlet of Honeoye Lake, N. Y., in 1677, he says : " They have a good store of corn, grow- ing to the northward of the town." This town was situated at Mend.on, near Rochester, and the old author says: "It con- tains about 120 houses, being the largest of all the houses we saw, the ordinary being fifty or 1 " Northern Pacific Railroad Guide," by Henry I. \\'inser. 1883 ; p. 118. ^ M :- at M ....ii OF THE INDTAN QUESTION. 89 sixty feet long, with twelve and thirteen fires in one liouse. . . . Fioni the i'oof-[)()les were sns[)en(le(l tlieir strings of corn in the ear, braided bv i\i(i hnsks, also strinQ-s of dried squashes and [)uin[)kins. Spaces were con- trived liere and there to store awav tlieir ac- cumulations of provisions." ^ Section 2. — Early Indian Farmincf in New Eniflanil^ Neiv York, iWssourf\ New Mexico, Georji'ia , Minnesota, Dakota^ Canada, Mich- igan, Iowa, and Florida. The agricultural habits of the New England Indians when white men first came amono- them is well shown by Roger Williams, in his *' Key to the Language of America," written in l()4o. He speaks of their " parch'd meal, which is a readie very wholesome food, which they eat with a little water hot or cold. T have travelled with neere 200 of them at once, neere 100 miles through the woods, every man carry- ing a little Basket of this at his back, and sometimes in a hollow Leather Girdle about his middle, sufticient for a man for three or four 1 ii I ^ " Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines." By Lewis II. Mori;;ui. Vol. iv. of rontributions to No. Am. Ethnology, U. S. Department of the Interior, pp. 110, 120, 123, 129, 151, 192-3. 90 THE INDIAN S SIDE ■■f claies." " The corne of the Countrey, with which they are fed from the woiiibe.'' "Their Women constantly beat all their corne with hand ; they plant it, dresse it, gather it, barne it, beat it, and take as much [)aines as any people in tlie world." ''Against the Birds, ihe Indians are very carefuU. . . . Tliey put u^) little watch-houses in the middle of their fields, in which they, or their biggest children, lodge, and early in the morning prevent the birds," etc. Speaking of strawberries he says: "The Indians bruise them in a Morter, and mixe them with meale and make strawberry bread." " There be diverse sorts of this Corne and of the colours." "Where a field is to be broken, they have a very loving, sociable, s[)eedy way to dispatch it. All the neighbours, men and Women, forty, fifty, a hundred, &c., joyne, and come in to helpe freely." " The Women of the Family will commoidy raise two or three heaps of twelve, fifteene, or twenty bushells a heap, which they drie in broad, round heaps." ^ An early author thus speaks of the new vil- lage of Onondaga, New York. The old one was burned by the occupants when they fled before Count xxontenac, in 1696. "The town in its present state is about two or three miles long, J " Coll. of the R. I. His. Soc," vol. i. pp. 33, 50, 59, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93. 4 OF THE INDIAN gUE'STlON. 91 yet the scattered cal)iiis on both sides of the water are not above i'orty in nnniber : man}' of them hold two families, but all stnn> .% ?y 7 %\f> > .^^1 ^. fi r4 tj »> C? ^ 6^ 92 .». THE INDIAN'S sn»E it l! •! I ' 4', twelve foei widc-j and ^e\\lh feet liigh, .p to thf tlooiiiig. Here they [)iaced lur drying their corn, meat, vegetables, and skins." ^ Jii his notes on New Mexico, General Emory says that *^ the Maricopas occupy thatched cot- tages, thirty or forty feet in diameter, made of twigs of cotton-wood trees interwoven with straw of wheat, cornstalks and cane." *' The Mahas seem very friendly to the whites, and cultivate corn, beans, melons, squashes, and a' small species of tobacco." ^ Major Amos Stoddard was our first governor of the Upper Louisiana, taking charge when the Territory was transferred to the United States. Speaking of one Delaware and two Shawnee villages in the present Missouri, in 1794, he says : ' The houses of all the villages are built of logs, some of them squared and well interlocked at the ends, and covered with shingles. Many of them are two stories high, and attached to them are small houses for the preservation of corn, and barns for the shelter of cattle and horses, with which they are well sui)[)lied. TIteir houses are well furnished with decent and useful furniture." ^ Poor remnants i! 1 Morgan, at supra, pp. 125-129. - Bradbury's "Travels in the Interior of North America," 1809-11; p. 69. ^ Stoddard's *' Sketches of Louisiana," p. 216. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. of these iwu tribes are now found in the Ind- ian Territory. The treaty of Greenville was hastened by the great victory which General Wayne gained over the Indians, in August, 1794. In moving irre- sistibly on to that triumph — (leneral Wayne had gained from the Indians the name of Big Wind, or Cyclone, by the force and speed of his marching — he swept through the heart of Indian civilization in the primitive Ohio. "The extensive and highly cultivated fields and gar- dens, which appeared on every side, exhibited the work of many hands. The margins of the beautiful rivers Au Glaice and Miami had the appearance of a continued village, for several miles above and below their junction. They were covered with extensive cornfields, and gardens containing a great variety of vegeta- ble productions." ^ In Judd's " History of Hadley, Mass.," the estimate of Indian cornfields between Mount Tom and Sugar Loaf, on both sides of the Connecticut, falls somewhat within seventy acres, and, in the Pynchon purchase, one field of about sixteen acres, in Hadley, was reserved by the natives. A part of the payment was the ploughing of this amount, and probably this field. 1 Burnet's " Notes on the Early Settlement of the North- west Territory," p. 169. I i! 1' ! I hi" i; h 94 THE INDIAN S SIDE In the winter of 1623, the Pilgrims, hard pressed for food, made a tour among the Ind- ians for corn, and liaving purchased more tlian they could take back to Plymouth, Standish was sent for it the next month, and ^* also to purchase more at the same place." Drake says that *^ The Muskogees (Creeks) had an excel- lent regulation ; namely, the men assisted the women in the planting before setting out on their warlike and other expeditions." ^ The same author si)eaks of beautiful corn- fields along the Oakmulge, to tlie extent of twenty miles. Even at the Gasp(i, far nortli, Cartier found the farm products, in 1534 and following. When he moored near Montreal, a thousand Indians welcomed him, and threw fish and corn-bread into his boats. In the approach to the city the next day, " we began to finde goodly and large cultivated fieldes, full of such corne as the countrie veeldeth ft.' . . . wherewith they live even as we doe with our wheat. . . . They have also on the top of their houses certain granaries, wherein they keepe their corne to make their bread withall. . . . They make also sundry sorts of pottage with the said corne, and also of peas and beans, whereof thev liave ijreat store, as also with other fruits, great cowcumbers and other fruits. ' Drake's " Indians," bk. iv. OF THP: INDIAN QUESTION. 95 . . . These people are given to no other exer- cise, but oiiely to hualnindrie and fishing for their sustenance." * "The Iroquois have always been an agricul- tural people. Their extensive plantations of maize, beans, and pumpkins excited the admi- ration of the first explorers. Since their re- moval to Canada, their industry and aptitude as farmers have been notable. The wheat mar- ket of r>rantford has, for many years, been Largely sui)[)lied from the Reserve '' — the Grand liiver Reserve, in the Province of On- tario.2 In 1809, Colonel Visger, government agent for the Indians in the vicinity of Detroit, re- ported that the Wyandottes " had planted 160 acres of corn, and two individuals had sown 12 acres of wheat; that farming utensils were in great demand, and that successful experi- ments in agriculture had been made in six villages of Indians within forty miles of De- troit/* In 1884, the Wyandottes had been re- moved to the Indian Territory, and numbered 284, and wxn-e occu})ying 40 dwelling-houses. Under date of February 1^), 180G, Lieutenant Pike makes this entry in his narrative: "The Sauks and Reynards are planting corn and 1 Cartier's " Narrative," 1534 et seq., Hakluyt's Trans. 2 *'Mag. of Am. His.," LS85; p. 120. i m m .i-j i tit- ill Si I '-! I 51 I 1 { i i 1 1' i in h ii 1 It \' THE INDIAN S SIDE raising cattle.*' ' In 1810 the 1/Abie Indians ''sent In tlie Mackinaw market more tlian 1000 bushels of corn, for which they received jjayment in money or goods. In some years they have sent more than 3000 bushels. They use the lioe only, in cultivating their lands, having no ploughs, oxen, cows, nor, but in a single instance, horses." "On Menominee Kiver is the only i)ermanent village possessed by the Menominees, where corn, potatoes, pumpkins, scjuashes, etc., are raised." Then they numbered 3900; now 1450. '*The Winnebagoes will suf- fer no encroachment (1820) upon their soil, nor any persons to pass through it without giving a satisfactory explanation of their mo- tives and intentions. In failing to comply with this peremptory style, their lives would be in danger. They cultivate corn, potatoes, pumpkins, squashes and beans, and are remark- ably provident. They possess no horses." Their number then was 5800 ; now 2144. " The whole of Fox Kiver was owned and occupied by the Sauks and Foxes more than a century since. Ma.ny traces of fields culti- vated by them are still visible." This was also in 1820. They then numbered 6500 ; now they are broken up into five locations, ' Pike's '• Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi, etc., Appendix, vol. i. p. lU. t» OF THK INDIAN QUKSTION. 97 i!' and nninber l>-4 souls. The principal Kox vil- lage was where Daveiijudt jkiw stands, oppo- site Rock Island, and where thev had about J)00 acres under cultivatirorse. D.D., to Jolin C. Calhoun, Sec. of War," 1820. ApiR'inlix, pp. 17, 24, -IT, 48, 01, 152-7, 259, 300-10. ■'M 98 THE INDIAN S SIDE i i I • r) for their su])sistence ; if tliey have a surplus, it goes to the families of their masters. . . . One Indian, called Friday, who is an industrious man, cultivates and fences his lands, splits rails, etc., but is lau<^lied at and discarded hy his neighbors, because he * works like a negro.' Wlien thev see this man at work, thev ex- claim: * Are we reduced to this degraded state?' They are unwilling to leave their country." It would, of course, be unreasonable to call the aborigines of this country an agricultural people in the ordinary sense, and eciually so to deny that they had the primitive elements of agriculture, propensities to it, and many habits and practices of it. That bas-relief panel in the Capit<>l at Washington, of the Landing of the Pilgrims, where an Indian offers them an ear of corn, is an emblem true to history. The symbol properly associates the Indian with Indian (forn, declarative of the general fact that before the white man came, America was a cornfield, and the red man worked it. When Ked Jacket was on a visit to his Great Father, and they showed him this panel picture, he must have felt the truth it set forth to his eye, and it would not be strange if the (Id chief had some painful reflections ovar the way in which the white strangers have responded to that generous welcome. f OF THK INDIAN QUKSTION. 99 In speaking <»f the North Aiueiican Indians as a wiioh', IJancroft says: "All the tiihcs south of thf St. Lawrence, excejtt remote ones on the north-east and tlie north-west, cultivated the earth. Unlike the people of tlie Old World, they were at once hunters and tillers of the ground." ' In this r^suni^ of Indian agriculture, a few items should be consichn-ed in c(»nnection with the sclieme to turn the Indians from the chase to the farm. The early ex[)lorers and settlers found them tilling the ground to this extent, and resuming it will be no novelty. The prijd- ucts of their cultivation extended to a variety of articles, and they were careful in their means of preservation. Some had timber-framed houses, like those of white people, though they were destitute of tools of metal or ani- mals f(jr hauling. They (hired cultivation in the far north, where now the whites are much discouraged in the same work. Cartier repre- sents them as confining themselves to hus- bandry and fishing for a living. In some cases they cultivated for the white market, though confined to the hoe only, and their cr ^s went up to thousands of bushels. Some i)ushcd farming enterprise to such an extent as to own and employ slaves as plantation hands. 1 **Hls. U. S.," vol. iii. p. 271. I ; i > h ! m T : I 1 r 100 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE I Tliis should be regarded as ultimate evidence of the Indiairs capacity and willingness t(» he a faimor. 11' the ardor has died out and the ]»ur- suit ceased, which liancroft represents as gen- eral south of the St. Lawrence, we may be able to lind the causes. We may work, there- fore, in the hope of removing the causes and of restoring the j)ursnit. Happy indeed if we could also reinstate the honor and honesty which liradbuiy ascribed to them: ** I never heard of a single instance of a white man being robbed, oi- having anything stolen from him, in an Indian village." ^ With this agrees an interesting incident, which Hradbury details on page IIH) of his narrative. One Uichardson came down the Missouri with him, and seemed to anticipate life again within civilization. When I^radbury was sick in St. Louis, Richardson called on him, and among other things said: ''I lind so much deceit and selfishness among white men that I am already tired of them. The arrow- head, which is not yet extracted, pains me when 1 chop wood. Whiskey I cannot drink, and bread and salt 1 do not care about. 1 will go again amongst the Indians." 1 '* Travels of John Bradbury in the Interior of North America," 1809-11; p. 167. OF THK INDIAN QUESTION. 101 ice iiir- reij- be Section 8. — The best Indian Farms the far- thest from Wliite Neii/hborhood. It is to be noticed tbat these Indian fields now named were far in advance and at wide remove from tlio wliite settlements, and that they have disappeared with the aj)))r()ach of the immigrants. So Hancrctft recof^nizes farm- ing among the l*okaii(»kets of King Philip, before the intrusion of the whites. Then, ''as the English villagers drew nearer and nearer to them . . . their best fields for planting corn were gradually alienated " ; '* repeated sales of land had narrowed their domains . . . and as wave after wave succeeded they found them- selves deprived of their broad acres." ^ The Merrimac, Connecticut, and Hudson valleys saw, from time to time, the Indian fields staked off into white men's farms, while the original owners moved on. When Lieu- tenant Pike was exi)loring the upper Missis- sippi, in 180<), lie found fine cornfields, where are now magnificent wheat fields. He obtained a grjint of 100,000 acres, including the Falls of St. Anthony, for two hundred dollars' worth of presents and sixty gallons of spirits, and in his Report to the War Ofhce, he says, with 1 "His. U. S." ii. 09. 11: r 102 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE cliainiiiig siinj)li('ity, " You will j)tMceive that we have obtained about 100,000 aeies, equal to .•i<200,000, for a soug."^ Very true, St. Anthony and St. Paul and Minneapolis look better and are better ban Indian cc)rnfields. Still, it is well enoiigh to notice why the Indians gave uj) farming there. The regions around Detroit and Mack- inaw have become fruitful and most beautiful in the farms and towns and cities of wliite men, but we are false to history if we trace the changes only to Indian indolence and un- thrift. From colonial times hitherto we have had the national theory of Indian reservations with some agricultural hope, and at the same time the national practice of breaking them up. The encroachment of the whites on the Ind- ians, and the api)ropriation of their lands, by treaty, purchase, exchange, (jr force, lias quite destroyed their even poor practice of farming, and anv ambition for it. Their constant re- movals from old homes to a farther front have made tiiem hopeless and heartless. No white race, certainly not Americans, would follow up farming in such circumstances. It is pleasant to enter one exception to the ' "Pike's Kxpedition," Appendix, pi. i. p. 10, Supple- ment, p. 25. at to lid iiii OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 103 general rule tliat the whites encroach on the cultivated grounds of the Indians and expel them. The question was put to one, huig and widely familiar with Indian life in the far West, and lie made this reply to me, on the willingness and aptness of the Indian to culti- vate the land : — '' From the Shoshones here in Wyoming and west, tliey take kindly to it, and are anxious to learn. Sagwitche, a Ute, left his tribe, went to farnung with fifty others, and he raised 1300 bushels of snuill grains. This was in Thistle Valley, Utah. The white settlers re- tired from the Indians, and a contribution paid them off for the improvements which they left." And to another related question the same gentleman nuide this reply : " The whites, bor- dering, lack the civilization to get along well with the Indians. The kinder the whites are, the kinder the Indians." It may not be im- proper to add that if the Indians had published as many papers as the whites, in their i)ropor- tion, we of the East would now have quite different opinions of the Indians and of their white neighbors. P il I M ti 1 .- ' I M r? ^ J k 1 1 ; I ■ It; If V v-'- I! m I \i ! ! 104 THE INDIAN S SIDE Section 4. — The Uncroachments of Immigrants and the Violations of Treaties^ as related to Indian Farminy. As to tlie keeping and breaking of Indian treaties, Senator Dawes is leported as making this strong statement in a senatorial debate, in April, 1880 ; * Government has never kept its promises to tlie Indians, and there are no indi- cations that it ever wilL" Some time since, Indian Inspector PoHock gave this testimony before a committee of the Senate : — The Indians have "almost uniforndy ob- served treaty obligations, -hen they under- stood them, while, on the other hand, lo the best of his knowledge and belief, scarcely one of over 360 entered into with the Indians by the government had ever been fuliilled in ac- cordance with its terms, and manv of tliem had been ojrosslv violated." The Indian Commissioner for 1872 gen- eralizes the reasons for breaking old treaties, and granting new reservations, in this man- ner : — *' These treaties were made from time to time, as the pressur(} of white settlements or the fear or the experience ol Indian hostilities i h M . ti ti Lj— J \nt8 to OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 105 made the demand for the removal of one tribe after iinotlier urgent or imperative." ^ Ml-. Walker, quoted above, says of the causes for making new reservations: '• Hiere is scarcely one of the 92 reservations at present estab- lished (1874) on which white men have not effected a lodgement; many swarm with squat- ters, who hold their place by intimidating tiie rightful owners; while in more than one case the Indians have been wholly dispossessed, and are wanderers upon the face of the earth." =^ And to see what our government treaties and reservations amount to, and how we discourage the Indians in any tendencies to agriculture, settlements, and civilization, let a few cases be cited: — "The progress of the Indians in Michigan in civilization and industry has been greatly hin- dered in the past by a feeling of uncertainty in .egard to their permanent possession and enjoyment of their homes." "^ Of the Mille Lac Chi})pewas, he says : ''Their present reservation is rich in tine lands, the envy of lumber dealers, and there ,1 r -1 I ' " IJoport on Indian Aifairs," 187:>, pp. 8.S-4. '^ ••'I'lic Indian Qnestion," by Francis A. Walker, 1874. p. 70. '^ Ibid., Ind. Ques., 154, # II; i-r 106 THE INDIAN S SIDE M is a strong pressure on all sides for their early removal." ^ In the Minnesota and Sionx War of 1862, the Winiiebagoes remained friendly to the whites, yet, says Mr. Walker, -'the people were so determined that all Indians should he removed bey! 't- J! 114 THE INDIAN S SIDE i I :. Its iiifluenoe was widely felt on the wild tribes around. Even the Chilkats, a fierce tribe in Alaska, came 000 miles to see the wonder, and asked to see the book which had done so much to work the wonder. When the I^ii)le was produced, and its ])()wcr explained, eacli of the wild Alaskans touched it reverently with the tip of his ilnger, exclaiming. " Ahm ! ahm ! " It is good ! it is good ! A thrifty village business sprang up, of a domestic kind, and some foreign, specially in canned salmon. Then border and harpy traders, who hang everywhere on the sel- 'vage and thrums of civilization, and keep just in advance of the Decalogue, forced them- selves on this comparative Eden in the great north land. As this i)rimitive planting of a better life had a government in and of itself. and as weak as it was sovereign, Mr. Duncan found it exceedingly difficult to protect it from decivilizing influences of poorly civilized whites, — Hudson Bay traders on the one side, and coasters on the other. The simple colo- nists were constantly tempted to the lowest vices, usually led mi by vicious whiskey. Mr. Duncan had not seen the way clear as yet to introduce the church proper, with its creeds and ceremonials, but had directed his labors mainly to secure an every-day moral I OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 11;") )('S ill lid ell as he and Christian life. This phm did not coni- meiid itself to the resident oflicials of the Church Missionary Society, which had been somewhat auxiliary to the growth of the enter- prise, and they therefore sought to embody the colony in the general church organization lor British Columbia, and put it under the cere- monies and rituals of their form of Christianity. Still Mr. Duncan preferred to keep these simple and devout natives for the present to a few great and good points of daily life, which kee[) one so close to the sources of spiritual power and to the simplicity of the apostolic forms of Christianity. Then the bishop assumed to occupy the colony as a mission, and took ecclesiastical control, while yet nine tenths of the colonists adhered to Mr. Duncan as their redeemer from [)aganism and cannibalism, and ; their teacher and spiritual father, and the civil founder of their prosperous State. Then was illustrated that critical saying of Bishop Patterson : '• I have for years thought that we seek in our mis- sions a great deal too much to make English Christians." The missionary society had some claim on the buildings because of some contributions toward their erection, but when, because of this, they wished to encumber these natives in their 'II ! f : ■ !■ 116 THE INDIAN S SIDE simple piety with an ehibonite and stately wor- shi[), depose their pastor and impose one not of their choice, they objected, and asked the society to remove the buildings (jointly owned) if they would, and leave the Indiar.s in peace- able possession of their own two acres of land. This brought the (piestion of title to the land to the front, and the native Christians wrote to the society as follows : ** The God of heaven, who created man upon the earth, gave this land to our forefathers, -some of whom once lived on these very two acres, and we have re- ceived the land by direct succession from them. No man-made law can justly take from us this, the gift of Him who is the source of all true law and justice. Relying on this, the highest of all titles, we claim our land, and notify the societ}^ through you, its deputies, to move oft' the two acres." In giving this notice they relied on what the Governor-Cxeneral of the Dominion of Canada, Earl Dufferein, had said, in a speech on the land question, in 1876, at Victoria: " In Canada, no government, whether provincial or central, has failed to acknowledge that the original title to the lands existed in the Indian tribes. Before we touch an acre we make a treaty, and having agreed upon and paid the stipulated price, we enter into possession." OF THE INDIAN QUtiSTION. 117 The Metlakahtlans also laid their grievances, as to title, before the Siii)erintcn(ltMit of IiHliati AnUirs, as one ))riinch of the <;o\'ernnient, and witli much conliderce of success. Me advised that the Church Missionary Society withdraw and leave the Indians in peaceable possession, as of their own land. Yet the fjovernniont took no steps, nor did the society accede to the oflicial judgment. When another notice was served on the bishop to remove, the government came to the defence of the society, and in- formed the Indians that they had no rights whatever in the land, but that the title rested in the ({ueen. Then, government sur- veyors appeared to bound off, and cut up the two acres, that it might be secured formally to the Church Missionary Society, through tlie bishop. The })owerless natives next took coun- sel of an eminent lawyer at Victoria, who gave opinion *' that the Indians cannot be molested in the possession of lands occupied by them prior to the advent of white men, unless in i)ur- suance of treaties duly entered into by them." This opinion was obtained by a visit to Victoria, 600 miles away. Then, to secure their rights and to settle all difficulties amica- bly by a direct arrangement with government, a deputation of these Indians went to Ottawa, a round trip of 7000 miles. This: was in i»i ■f:- f 1 118 THE INDIAN S SIDE the summer of 1885, and they brought back promises that all their grievances should be lifted. But the hopes thus given were not to be realized. The question of title was traced back to the terms of union on which British Columbia came into the Canadian Dominion, in 1871. When that union was consummated, British Columbia had about 60,000 people, of whom one half were abo- rigines. The province contained 390,344 square miles — about three times the area of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Of all this, ten square miles only were re- served for the Indians — about two acres apiece ! It appeared to be a deep scheme to put that immense domain within the reach of land-hungry speculators, — a huge Indian- ring. The plans to reserve even the poor remnant to the Indians lacked definiteness and real worth ; for in 1875 the minister of justice reported that there were no reserva- tions in British America, while the govern- ment had obtp.ined no surrenders from the native occupants. The government simply assumed possession in a declarative way. More recently, the Chief Justice for British Columbia declared at Victoria, while arguing the land question, that the Indians have no rights what- ever in the soil. Afterward, it was officially OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. Ill) r It IS Ih 11 Is It declared to tliein that though they inherited the land from their ancestors, before the white man came, they were suffered to be in the lands in mere charity, and by the grace of the crown. In defence of this opinion, the decision of Chancellor Boyd, of Ontario, is Ljuoted : " As heathens and barbarians, it was not thought that they had any proprietary title to the soil, nov any such claim thereto as to interfere with the plantations and the general prosecution of colonization. They were treated 'justly and graciously,' as Lord Bacon advised, but no legal ownership of the land was ever at- tributed to them." The government ordered the land of Metla- kahtla to be surveyed as crown lands, as I have stated. The Indians considered this an inva- sion of private rights, and prevented variously the survey, though without any violent or riotous proceedings. Then, armed vessels and soldiers protected the surveyors, and the work was completed, and for nominal sums previously arranged, it is said, the Indian lands passed intc^ the hands of white men. But we need not detail. Suffice it to say that this series of events terminated in the utter defeat of the Indians. Law and prece- dent were quoted from colonial and provincial New York, from the edicts of the Charleses, i| I % SIHHBI i 120 THE Indian's side I I ^ ; J: m and from the hard and mediieval times of Great Ihitiaii, as if oppressive usage should not wear away under the softening Christian spirit of the advancing centuries. Without treaty or compensation, and even without war and coiKiuest, the Indians were official Iv declared to liave no rights in the hxnd of British C'olum- bia. Being thus l)eggared by law, they were allowed but ])ai'cels of land for teni[)orary use, and as a charity of which, at any time, they were liable to ])e dispossessed, under the pres- sure of white neigh})ors, or by the scheming of speculators. Bancroft, in his history of British Colum- bia, sums u}) the policy of British Amer- ica with the Indians in very plain words: " Tlie cruel treacheries and massacres, by which nations have been thinned, and flicker- ing remnants of once powerful tribes gathered on government reservations, or reduced to a handful of beggars, dei)endant for a livelihood on charity, tlieft, or the wages of prostitution, form an unwritten chapter in the history of this region. That this process of duplicity was unnecessary as well as infamous, I shall not attempt to show, as the discussion of Indian })olicy is no part of my present purpose. Whatever the cause, whether from an inhumane civilized policy or the decrees of fate, it is evi- I m OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 121 dent that tlie C'olunibiiiiis, in common with all the aborigines of America, are doomed to ex- tinction.'' The villaoe of Metlakalitla, nnml)ering ahont 1000 souls, is now a petitioner to the United States for permission to move ovei* into Alaska, from whose border it is about thirty nules, and the i)roject is regarded favorably at Washing- ton, and will [)robably come before Congress at its next session. I have presented this case with its outline facts and laws, in skeleton, and it must be confessed that it is a very ghastly skeleton. Two reflections will show the pertinence of the reference to the general topic of this volume. The North American Indians are in quite similar relations to the government of the whites on either side of the international boun- dary, and in substance their treatment is quite alike by both. The Indians usually receive their first practical knowledge of the government of white men by being forced to the defensive of their ancestral rights and usages. The land title, on which so much of all a whil3 man prizes depends, and all of worth to a red man, he soon finds is generally and practically a nullity in the- opinion of both British and American governments. Chief Justice Mar- HI n i i 9 i f •■ f ^ jp5 109 THE INDIAN S SIDE shall has stated brieHy tlie Indian laws of Eng- land in this country when we were colonies, and tlie States have inherited, and, with modifi- cations, ad(>pted the same : "According to the theory of the British constitution, all vacant lands are vested in the crown. ... No distinc- tion was taken between vacant lands and lands occupied by Indians. . . . All our institutions recognize the absolute title of the crown, sub- ject only to tlie Indian right of occupancy, and recognize the absolute title of the crown to ex- tinguish that right." With the exception of a few parcels of land, and wide asunder, the Indian has no guarantee, like that of a white man, to the soil of his truck-patch and the lot of his Avigwam or framed cabin. The land of the white owner, under deed properly executed, is as good to him and to his heirs as the government is strong. With the Indian, his treaty titles are as perisli- able as the paper on which they are written, and often as short lived as the grass on the house-tops, "which witliereth afore it groweth up." Xor is the force of this strong statement much abated by the fact that often the inexor- able pressure of the border men or of govern- ment has some formalitv, and some simulation of just and orderly proceedings, when finally it ^ Johnson anU Mcintosh and Wheaton. ■ 'i il! OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 123 gains its end, and the irresistible party closes in on the coveted Indian lands. The Provincial governments on the north of us boasted of a kinder and wiser policy than that of the United States, and referred to the friend- ship with which they and the natives were jointly occupying the same territory. In our ''Oregon: Tiie Struggle for Possession," we took occasion to show that this might well be and continue while the great North Land was held bv the Hudson Bav CVnni^anv ns a sfame preserve, and the white man set steel-tra[)s with the Indians, and made social and domestic equal- ity with them ; but that when the factory took the place of the steel-trap, and civilized homes the place of promiscuous forest-life, trouble and Indian wars would come. That time has arrived sooner than we expected. Our Northern Pacific Railroad hurried the coming of the Canadian Pacific, and that precipitated the Indian turbulence and wars north and west of Winnipeg, in the wide and wild lands of the Indian owner and the white adventurer. Riel and his struggles for his people are sample and type. Now comes the Metlakahtla case, blood- less because they have been won to Christian- ity. The remaining 29,000 may not welcome the surveyors over the graves of their fathers so gently. Their future is ominous, and the IMi 124 THE INDIAN S SIDE •' L vision is not encouraging. But yet we are not ready to see what Bancroft does : " The Col- umbians, in common with all the aborigines of America, are doomed to extinction." The other reflection weighs on us very sadly. Witii a superior civilization, and with the gentle reli xtent of country number about 1100, and are composed of the remnants of fifteen different tribes." We obtain a gkmce at the large body of Indians in Oregon in those early days by read- ing a passage like this : " Half a century ago they came by thousands, and tlie desohite shores were alive with them. . . . Now, only a few score Indians come to remind the whites that a remnant of the race still lives." The author is speaking of the salmon fisheries on the Columbia, at tlie Dalles." ^ In 184:0 five missiiniaries, with associates, — thirty-six adults and seventeen children, — arrived in Oregon to enlarge the Methodist Mission. '* Not long after the arrival of this last reinforcement, affairs began to grow more discouragino^. The Mission school near Salem dwindled to almost nothing. ... A tour was made in the Unipqua Valley, where they 1 '* Guide to tlie Northern Pacific liailroad." Jiy Henry I. Winser. 188U. P. 233. ri ^ i i II 152 THE INDIAN S SIDE preached to the Indians, on many occasions, but concluded that it was not wise to o[)en a mission tliere, partly owing to the ra[)i(Uty with which the Indians seemed to be wasting away. Tlie station on Puget Sound was so unsuccess- ful that it was abandoned." The superintend- ent was superseded, but Mr. Hines, one of the authors on Oregon, defends the Mission and Mr. Lee by saying that " the Indian population had been wasting away like the dews of the mornr'T^. »' 1 Commander Wilkes noted the same decrease of Indians in Oregon in 1841. " We hoped to get sight of the Indians of the Methodist Mis- sion, whom they were teaching, but saw only four servants. We were told, however, that there was a school of twenty or twenty-live scholars ten miles away. In a few days we visited the mill where the school was situated, but were told that it was not in a condition to be visited." " During my stay at Vancouver I frequently met Casenove, the chief of the Klac- katack tribe. . . . He was once lord of all this domain, . . . and within the last fifteen years his village was quite prosperous ; he could muster four or five hundred warriors; but the ague and fever have, within a short - " History of Indian Missions on the Pacific Coast, Ore- gon,'' etc. By Kev. Myron Eells. 1882. I'p. 22-24. IP OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 153 space of t^me, swej)t off the whole tribe, and it is said they all died within three weeks. He now stands alone, his land, tribe, and [)r()perty all departed, and he a dependent on the bounty of the Company (Hudson's Hay Company). Casenove is about fifty years of age, and a noble and intelligent-looking Indian. At the fort he is always welcome, and is furnished with a plate at meal-times at the side-table. . . . He scarce seemed to attract the notice of any one, but ate his meal in silence and retired. . . . Casenove's tribe is not the only one that has suffered in this way ; many others have been swept off entirely by this fatal disease, without leaving a single survivor to tell their melan- choly tale." 1 Campbell, in his *' Northwest Boundary," page 133, makes this statement in the same line : '' The whole inside of the north- eastern part of San Juan formerly belonged to a tribe kindred to the Lummies, and now extinct." And the follow^ing is of the same import, only more comprehensive : " The race, as such, is doomed to extinction in Oregon."'^ ■ " Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedi- tion." By Charles Wilkes, Commander of the Expedi- tion. Philadelphia, 1845. Vol. iv., pp. 3:2, 369-370. 2 "Oregon and Her Resources."' By Ilugli Small. 1872. P. 14. i ; n' 154 THE INDIAN S SIDE i Ui 18 I hliiili Still another and more recent author shows the whole by sample : " One Sunday I was at the Siletz Agency, and, hearing the church-bell calling to service, went in. . . . There was a great variety of type apparent, for the remnants of thirteen tribes of the Coast and Klanuith and Rogue River Indians are collected on this re- servation." ^ In his " Sketches of Louisiana," page 206, Stoddard says that in the early days of white settlements among them " the Arkansas nation of Indians was deemed one of tlie most power- ful in the country, and the French, to preserve peace with them, and to secure tlieir trade, intermarried with them, . . . who are now reduced to a very few in number, and live in two snuxll villages." That was early in this century. Now the very name is lost to any living Indian, and is preserved in a State which contains one hundred and ninety-five Indians. Section 4. — Some Persoiial Investigation^. Three months in the autumn of 1885 were spent by the author between the Missouri and the Pacific, and with a leading purpose to ' " Two Years iu Oregon." By Wallis Nash. 1882. P. 139. I OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 155 study our mixed Iiidiau aud American life in tliiit region. The freedom of the private travelling citizen, and exemption from all official relations which might hias him or expose him to any [)ersonal aims of his in- formants, afforded some exce[)tionally good opportunities for seeing the inside of the "'Indian question." An oHice-holder among the Indians or an oflice-sfeeker, a border land- speculator or an Indian agent, secuUir or sacred, will appreciate this statement. The principal informant, intelligent and candid, had spent more than thirty years west of the Missonri and between our northern boun- dary and Mexico, had been the most of this time in the em[)loy of the government, and spoke four Indian languages. Questions were put and the answers written out at the time. "The Gos-Ute,*' he said, in answer to the question whether the Indians are increasing or decreasing, '• was once a very numerous tribe on the deserts of Western Utah and Eastern Nevada, now nearly extinct, — less than 400. In 1860, when I guided Lieutenant Weed's command, Battery B, Fourth Artillery, in Eastern Nevada, we estimated them at 1200." "Possibly the Utes hold their own numbers, but not any other tribe, and I have ranged, since 1853, from the British r ii \\ THE INDIAN S SIDE border to Arizoiui, and on tlie East from the divide to the Pacific." " The Indians must go. They are dying out. The Nava* hoes liave the niilitaiy and missionaries, Catho- lic and Protestant. But the sokliery will iiave access to tlie reservation. The officers and missionaries cannot prevent it, and the tribe is being consumed with imported diseases. The Arapalioes are anotlier case." Of these the Report for 1880 sliows about 4000, of wliom 712 are tabulated in the column of venereal diseases. "In 1858-18G9 it was difficult to find an unchaste Ute or Snake woman. After they went on the reservation virtue was destroyed by the soldiers. I doubt if one virtuous woman can now be found among them. Liquor can be had freely on the reservation. It caused the Ute massacre of Meeker and of Jackson, the teamster. . . . From the corruption of the whites the Navahoe tribe is now one vast pest-house." " The tribes are ruined beyond all chance of hoj)e by the soldiers and cow-boys and ranchers. 'J'he officers generally are gentlemen, and hold themselves above corrupting influences over the Indians, but the soldiers are of the lowest grade originally, and are simply dreadful. You can have no conception of their out- rageous conduct." ** Can we iu any way 1 I OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 157 save any tribe fiom extinction?" ''Only by keeping .I'oni them the wliite intlnonces which arc now destroying tliein." '• Wonhl a fair Ohio neiohborlioocl aroniiil save them?" "Yes, beyond a (h)ubt ; and yet 1 do not know but these imj)ortetl vices have too strong and destroying a hold to be stopped." The testimony just quoted covers, it will be noticed, quite an area, and quite a number of years. It agrees well with what Commis- sioner Walker says in his " Indian Question," page 152: ''The Indian tribes of the continent, with few exceptions, have been steadily de- creasing in numbers." An illustration to the same effect from Vancouver Island is in point : " It is pain- ful to know, as I do from frequent iniiuiry of Indians in Victoria streets, how very few of them outlive infanc3\" ^ itfi H 1^ Section 5. — Increase or Decrease in Cali- fornia. In this historical disquisition on the increase and decrease of the American Indians, those of California have been reserved for a sei)arate consideration, for several reasons. California had, from the earliest days of Europeans there, 1 "Daily Chronicle," Victoria, Nov. 2, 1886. 1 ' <1 ^ f • i>! i 158 THE INDIAN S SIDE the fair experiment of the Church and State policy combined to open u]) a new country. The Roman Catholic Mission had there, in its twenty-one *' Missions," a fair and unmo- lested show of its theory, running through more than sixty years. An American border life among Indians had there an exceptionally good illustration in the extent of its range — having the combined areas of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Nowhere besides, in our domain, has there been such a mixture of Indian, mining, and ranching life — each a very positive element in the oper- ation of a civil and Christian State. Therefore a better field than California could not be found in which to studv the civilization, Christianization, and perpetuity of American Indians. The Franciscans planted Missionb among the Indians on the coast between San Diego and San Francisco. There were linally twenty -one of these Missions, in a shore belt about 500 by 40 miles, and so far adjoining as to rule out settlers between. The first was established in 1769 and the last in 1823, and the Padres were both lords spiritual and temporal. They so far Christianized and domesticated the natives as to reckon 18,683 as connected with the Mis- sions. These were all servants, and worked for OF THE INDIAN QUKSTION. 159 n a living merely, not accuniulaiing property in their uwn right. By tiiis policy the Fathers became immensely wealthy. In LS^o the Mis- sion at San Francisco owned T<»,00<) head of cattle, oOOO horses, 79,000 sheei), and other ranch interests in proportion. Their white and red wines obtained high re[)ntc in the East, the Mission of San Gabriel i)r()dncing annually from four hundred to six hundred barrels. The civil, social, and '^Cin'istian " condition of the native converts may be S( i in one passage from Cronise : — " Both men and women were required to work in the fields every day, except those who were carpenters, blacksmiths, or weavers. None of them were taught to read or write except a few who were selected to form a choir, to sing and play music, for each jNIission. The only instruments were the violin and guitar. They never received any payment for their labor, except food and clothing, and instruc- tions in the catechism. The single men and women were locked up in separate buildings every night. Both sexes were severely pun- ished with the whip if they did not obey the missionaries, or other white men in authoritv. . . . Both men and women were flogged or put into the stocks, if they refused to believe or to labor. . . . Eminent men of science from Eng- H ■• I 160 THE Indian's side ■1" ! '■'' V|! II Mil !:^h land, France, Russia, and the United States who visited the coast, and saw the unfortunate natives under tlie Mission r(}ginie, in its pahni- est da3^s, all bear witness to the wretched state of bodily and mental bondage in which they were held." ^ So in Mexico, the converted Indians were reduced to slavery on the land and in the niines.2 Of the vast interior of the countiv and the great majority of pagan natives the "Missions" took no account. It does not a[)pear that they explored to see whether the lands or the natives, far inland, were worth attention. When the Convention at Monterey, in 1849, was discussing the question where the eastern boundary of the young State should be, they were bewildered, as in an unknown land. One proposed a line that would have included one half of Nevada ; another, the whole of Nevada and a large part of Utah; and yet another, all of Nevada and Utah, the most of Colorado, and portions of Nebraska. Indeed, the vastness, the amplitude of American geog- raphy has always been confusing to both citizens and foreigners. The home govern- ment of old S[)ain made liberal grants for these i"Tlie Natural Wealth of California." By Titus Fye Croni^e. Sail Francisco, 1808. Pp. 25, 26. 2 " Am. Kncyc," 1875. Mexico, p. 476. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 101 Missions, as settlements to develop the country as a part of the S[)anish Eh![)ii'e, and the Catholics patronized them generowi-jr' for the extension of the Churcli. Yet the sohliers and colonists sent there hv the orovernment were often rutBans and renegades, trans[)()rted for crimes at home. Such was the S[)anish theory of the civilization and Cliristianization of the Indians as practised in California. In 1821 Mexico assumed independence under Iturbide. It became more and more evident that the polic}^ of California was a failure for either civil or religious i)urpose, and in 1826 the Missions began to be broken up by govern- ment, and the vast wealth in them conliscated to the young republic. This was completed by statute in 1833, when the Mexican Con- gress abolished tlie Missions, removed tlie mis- sionaries, and divided the cattle, lands, and remnants of property among the natives and the settlers. Santa Anna, coming tlien into power, broke the full force of this decree, yet their power waned ; the successive insurrec- tions, or changes in partie,, despoiled them, and in 1845 government sold the last of the " Missions " at auction. The domesticated Ind- ians suffered severely from these changes. They had been educated for servitude and not citizenship, and Jjiexr conversion to Chris- III ii ': 1 1'''- 1 iv: I! i I i I THE Indian's side tiaiiity liad been ceremoiiiiil vatlier tluui vital, and they had received no training in civiliza- tion above the wants of their menial life. Their relapse, therefore, was not only inevitable, but they became more of an obstacle to the future settlement and development of the country than the wild Indians themselves. Indeed, they stood in the wa}" of civilizing the uncivil- ized Indians, for tliey had only so far left the savage state as to adopt the vices of their half- civilized masters. They had lost the virtues of their wild life, but had not attained to those of civilized life, and would class with that refuse of whites on our frontiers who are the princi- pal obstacle to the elevation of the Indians. Of these '' Mission " Indians, as has been stated, there were finally 18,683. The last of these establishments was constituted in 1823, in which year the first official census was taken of the Indian race in California. The number reported was 100,826. That was about sixty years ago, and by latest official reports that number has fallen to 16,277 (1880). The estimates of the number of Indians in the coun- try, prior to any tolerable census, must be taken with grave distrust. Schoolcraft put tlieii- num- ber at 1,000,000, when America was discovered, while Catlin')^ estimate was 14,000,000. II OF THE l^'DIAN QUESTION. 168 Section 6. — The Government Census quite Im- perfect^ yet Shows much iJecrease. The facts now given, miscellaneous of necessity, only partially olHcial, and as compre- hensive as data at hand would allow, point dis- tinctly to an apparent decrease in the number of the American Indians. Of course results of this investigation can be stated only approxi- mately, since the government tables contain many blaidvs, and when tilled tliey frequently have the foot-notes ; *' from report of last year " ; '' estimated " ; " partially reported " ; *' an under-estimate, many tribes not being re- ported." While the twenty -six columns in the usual table are generally filled, except when ob- viously there was nothing to be inserted, as boarding-schools, or missionaries, or donations, only twenty-eiglit per cent, of the blanks for births and deaths are filled. Every tribe fur- nishes material for these blanks, and their vacancy is a serious hindrance to this investi- gation. In the reports for ten years, ending with 1884, there are 2585 blanks for the entry of the population, etc., yet onl} 729 of these contain the figures of births and deaths. We have, there fm'e, only twenty-eight per cent, of the material or conditions for working tlie prob- lem in hand. With these very imperfect re- . 1 : i ^ 'I HI J Ml ; 1 • 'i' li i •! • *| sit 164 THE INDIAN S SIDE turns, the average annual return for ten years* ending with 1884, is 518 births in excess of deaths. One of the Indian Commissioners throws a farther perplexity over the tables on which we would like tr rely on the question of increase or decrease. Mr. Walker mentions an increase in certain tribes, and then says: '* An increase of 402 over the number reported for 1871 ; due, however, perhaps as much to the return of absent Indians as to the excess of births over deaths." ^ Only " civilized " Indians are officially re- ported, which fact may have left some to a hopeful delusion as to increase. For example, the total reported increase for 1881 over 1880 \\ as 5913 ; but the increase by births over deaths was onlv 350. Whence the additional increase of 5563 ? It is an increase of " civil- izerl," not of new-born Indians -^ an annex of so many from the wild Indians. Dropping the bUmket for the pantaloons does not add to the " wards of the nation " ; it is merely a change in wardrobe, and very slight indeed at that. Thus, in 1882, the number falls off 2219 from the preceding year, not perhaps a decrease by death so much as by a relapse into the "unciv- ilized " class. 1 " The Indian Question," p. 155. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 165 re- A wider range among the figures may serve still farther to remove this delusion, for an ob- scurity covers them, tending to skepticism on what we would like to say, that the Indians are on the increase. The Report of the Connnis- sioner for 1874 gives their number as 275,003, but the Report for 1882 gives it as 259,(332. Here is a loss of our Indian total in eight years of 15,371. We have elsewhere quoted a government Report for 1820, showing that the ^' Five Nations," or five civilized tribes in tlie Indian Territory, then numbered 72,010. The Report for 1880 — sixty years later — shows that they had decreased to 59,187, — a loss of 12,823. It should be here added that those five tribes have been the favorites of the government and of our educating and missionary societies. And if one is still more critical over some of these figures, he ^ ly become more skeptical as to their accuracy. The increase in the ''Five Nations " for eight years, ending with 1882, is 5381. As it does not appear that any wild Indians have been added, during this time, to the number of those five tribes, this increase must be the excess of births over deaths. But the excess of births over deaths among all our Indians for those eight years was only 4560 — 821 less than the number assigned by the Re- Vf] f III !! 1G6 THE INDIAN S SIDE ports to the Five Nations alone. No doubt the per cent, of natural increase sliould be qreater among those favored tribes than among any others, for they have enjoyed an actual " reservation " for sixty years or so, and liave been able to establish a family life. Under their present liabilities and anxieties as to a new civil status and separation and wanderings, this natural increase must not be expected to keep np its average. It is unfortunate that we have not conn)lete and reliable vital statistics of these five favored tribes, that we might know what the State and the Church have ac- complished, and may reasonably undertake. Section 7. — Some impleasant Conclaslons, It was the purpose, in this paj^er. to prepare a disquisition and not an argument. The fig- ures and quoted statements from authors named are, therefore, left to work their own way, with what force they may inherentl}^ have, without offered inferences or rhetorical enforcement. We started with the government Report of Dr. ]\Iorse, giving the number of American Indians in 1820 as 425,766. We have added to those, on the Mexican census of 1823, the number of 100,826, which body, more or less, and increased or decreased, we took into the OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 167 American Union, with California, in 1848. These two sums make 5211,592 Indians witliiii the present teri-it(jry of the United States, Ahiska excei)te(l, and are to be now accounted for. We have cited authors to show their abundance at times and in sections; also to show the wasting and even total disappearance of powerful tiibes, and the reduction of others to feeble and petty renniants, till a half score of old tribes made only a handful for an agency. We have called attention to deficient, and some- times discrepant, tabulations. A few totals for a few years from oflicial and annual reports on the Indians may well close this chapter. The earliest at hand is for 1866, when their number was 295,774; in 1868 it was 298,528. In 1872 theii- inunber reached the maximum in official returns, when it is put "about 300,000."' Five years later, 1877, they fell to their minimum reported number, which was 250,864. Six years afterward, 1883, the number had risen to 265,565, but the next year, 1884, fell off to 264,369, —a loss of 1196. It will be noticed tliat since 1866 the Indians have decreased 31,405. If we go back to 1823, and take the ao-o'ieo-ate numbers of the United States and of C'alifortiia — 526,592 — it \\\\\ be seen that their decrease since 1823 has been 262,223. It may be well said that the numbers of long ;t » in r^: III II -ill ii I 108 THE INDIAN S SIDE {i^o were a crude e!-;tiiniite, and that losses com- puted on tliem will need a wide margin fur variation. This cannot be said of the reguh^ir government returns of the hist eigliteen years, during wdiicli the average annual loss has been 1744. As has been already stated, in the Indian census only the ''civilized " or "[)artially civil- ized" are enumerated and reported. All others are unreported, and are reckoned only by esti- mation. The only guide offered by the Com- missioners, as to the number of tlie uncivilized and unreported, is that the reported are about five sixths of the wdiole number. According to the nflicial reports of the last eighteen years the average decrease of the " civ- ilized " or " partially civilized " has been some- thing less than 2000 a year. One of highest authority on this subject, within government circles, informs the author that our Indian sta- tistics are very far from reliable. There are many and obvious reasons for this, and some special ones for making the statement of their numbers in excess of fact. Neither the State nor the Ch;..'ch can readily consent to the criti- cism that the aboriginal race is diminishing un- der their mutual care, and the error in the statistics is most likely to be in making the number too high. Be that as it may, as the OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 1G9 the official reports sliow that there has been a steady decrease for many years in the total of the civilized, the increase, if there has been any, must haA^e been anicmg the uncivilized. It will be a most unwelcome and rei)roachfnl inference, if forced on us, that only wild Ind- ians can increase by birtli in the United States, while civilization, as we Jipply it to them, or make a show of it ourselves, on our white bor- ders, is gradually wasting them away, or is prov- ing incompetent to save them from extinction. And yet another point. It appears that the "civilized" or "partially civilized" Indians, tab- ulated in the census, are decreasing at the aver age rate of about 2000 a year. If, therefore, there is an increase in the total of the aborigines within our borders, it must be among the un- civilized, who are not reckoned in the census. By estimation, this unknown quantity is put at abont one sixth of the whole, that is, about 50,000, as the reported total for 1885 is 259,244. Thus, to make the increase claimed, this 50,000 of wild Indians must first gain enough to make up the loss of 2000 a year in the civilized 259,244, and enough more to enable us to say that the American Indians, in their totality, are on the increase. It is an impossible snpposi- tion that 50,000 wild Indians are doing this, wdiile five times as many civilized ones cannot hold their own. Wi ill I I 'P 170 THE INDIAN S SIDE Uii iV Section 8. — EnjUalt, Partnership in the Indian Decrease. As some relief to American dishonor, offer- ing mitigation \vitlK)iit comi'ort, it must be added tliat the Englisli are partners, to an ex- tent, ill the re[)r()ach of Indian decrease. After tlie treaty of 1783, and in viohition of it, they continued to hohl, and for more than ten 3'ears, several north-western posts within the American lines, and used them as centres for stinndating, and honoring, and compensating the Indians to make war on the settlements. Following 1783, " the whole Indian war had been the result of intrigue between agents and emissaries from the British posts along the Canada frontier, whose avowed object was to check the advance of pop- ulation northwest of the Ohio." ^ Under their instigation and patronage Tecumseh visited the southern Indians, and for the second time in 1812, and made "connnon cause with the Eng- lish ill the extermination of the frontier settle- ments of Georgia and Tennessee, with those of the Mississippi Territory.'' ^ " British officers and emissaries had been ac- tively engaged in arousing the Indians of Flor- ida to renewed hostilities,"' and Colonel Nichols 1 Monette " His. Miss. Valley," ii., 203. '^ Ibid., 395. OF THE 1^'DIAN t^UESTiOiJ. 171 lian ffer- , be 1 ex- ^i•tel• tliey ears, ricaii itiiig, Lus to 1T83, ,ult of m tlie whose if pop- tlieii' ed the Line in 3 Eiig- settle- liose of een ac- f Flor- Nicliols of the Britisli stjuadroii, at Pensacoha, offered tlie Indians ten doHars for (^vcrv white soal[).^ So sucli merchandise was pnt on the sched- ules of commerce — the silver-fjrav of ajje, the flowing tresses of maidenliood, and the flossy, (h)wny covering of infant lieads. In liis mes- sage of Novend)er, 1812, Madison says: "The enemy has not scrupled to call to his aid tlie ruthless ferocity of the savages, armed with in- struments of carnage and torture, which are kncnvii to s[)are neither age nor sex." Of course, Indians by the thousand, and even whole tribes, stimulated tlius by bawbles, whiskey, and promises to throw down the gauntlet of war, perished miserably. Section 9. — Has American Christianity done its best ta Preserve the Indian ? '' While Protestants have skunbered ; while the wealthy and powerful church of our own establishment (Church of England) hath been inert ; while missionaries, reared and supported by British piety and by British generosity, have labored and died in other countries, the poor Indian of North America, a cast-off savage peo- })le, the most interesting perhaps in the world, iiave been left in ti:e gall of our common i...- ' Ibid., 428-9. %. i ■r^p b r f !i I, I I i 172 THE INDIAN'S SIDE ture, or abandoned to the efforts of a sect — Catholics. . . . Can we not iind amongst our millions another Hraincrd? Or liave we no souls but for the comparatively easier toils of Eastern missions ? " ^ In the wasting and disappearing of these an- cient and primeval races, we cannot too much admire the benevolence and the Christian ten- derness which are comforting their last days and smoothing their trail into the twilight. It is the present highest attainment of our civili- zation to watch and comfort the dying, till death come, no matter how imbecile or useless or degraded the departing may be. But if our civilization has done its best, while it a[)propri- ates their lands, and vitiates their blood till it ceases to flow, and spares only geographical names as memorials, some of its praise must be abated. The civilization which cannot make citizens out of Indians, or the religion which cannot make Chrifi^tians out of the aborigines, must become modest in its pretensions ; and, reasoning from our American experiment on home heathen, it may become a question how far we can make a success in those lines among the inferior in foreign lands. If American Christi- anity and American civilization can do their ' " Emigrant's Guide to Upper Canada," etc. By C. Stu- art, Esq. London, 1820. Pp. 258, 259. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 173 best only by easing and gracing the extinction of tlie East Indian, and Turk, and Hawaiian, preparatory to tlie snj»reniacy of an Knglish- speaking peo[)le over tiieir ancestral d(»inains, the theory of Christian missions exposes itself to grave criticism. In this home work and threatened failure, nothing can be charged off on the government as a force separate from the people. For all practical purposes they are one and the same. The national government on the Indian (ques- tion is only an alias for the people. Probabl}- in the cool, historic i)eriod which is coming, when old States and new, and base and border lines shall be blended, and the provincial be ruled out by the national, it will appear that civilization and religion had hard times at the front, with scant encouragement from the older States, and the Indian and his white neighbor degenerated. For the good of the red man and of the border white man there has been too much East and too little West, and very mucli foreign, in the divisions and apportionments of our benevolent work, and in our popular enthu- siasm. Very likely the progressing failure in our civilization and Christianity to save the Ind- ian races will by and by be properly traced, not to any inherent weakness in the systems, but to their unfortunate administration. It is to be de* i||.| 'l! I 1 111 ■MMWM If ' . ■ I I i 174 THE Indian's side voutly hoped that we will not be too late in the discovery that the household phrase, Home Mis- sions, means for this new and broad continent a p(nver to nialie a nation to order. Providence has given out the order, and, if it is not filled, tlie '•es})onsibility must come on those having the management of the work. In discussing the Louisville Canal Bill, in the United States Senate, in l8o(J, and against much Eastern op- position and ignorance of the Western growth and i)reponderance of the nation, Webster, as usual with him, took a national view of the question, and said it was his habit to ask, not where an improvement was pro])osed, but what it was. Then he added : " There are no Alie- ghanies in my politics." We have needed Clinstian contributors and benevolent adminis- trators of Christianity as continental as such statesmen. Some, with k'ng and wide patriotic and Christian plans, have gone '' from sea to sea," but the number of these has been all too small, and tlierefore these ugly Indian and Mormon and Socialist questions trouble the nation on its Western side. OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 175 I the Mis- uent ence illed. Lviiig ssing itates II op- owtli er, as f the k, not what Aiie- eeded miiiis- i such tiiotic sea to ill too 11 and )le the CONCLUSION. We have had several epochs in oiir Indian history, but no one has come with tlie gravity which attaches to the bill that secures land in severalty and citizenship to the riulian. It gives to hini three things, any one of which is more than all that the nation has before con- tributed toward his manhood : se])arateiiess from the tribal relation, land as truly and absolutely his as is that of a millionnaire, and all the rights, privileges, and immunities which per- tain to a citizen of the United States. It does not surprise us that tl«3 author of the bill re-wrote it seven times, and has given to it six or seven years of senatorial life. We indicate its leading features. When the President sees an Indian so far advanced that in his opinion he can maintain himself, and wishes land of his own, he is authorized to allot to him, if the head of a family, 1(30 acres of land, and if single 80 acres, and to each child of this head of a family, 40 acres, within their reservation. For twenty-live years no one can obtain any legal title, claim, or lieu to any !i If HI (4 tit im ! 176 THE INDIAN S SIDE of this land, and then the government conveys it absolutely to the Indian in fee-simple. Land within the reservation, not so disposed of finally, may be sold to the white settlers, by consent of the tribe ; and the income from such sales the government shall hold for the bene- fit of the original Indian occupants. But the white man purchasing must dwell on the land five years continuous before he can obtain a title. After this manner, aix' eventually, the reservation system and the tribal relations will disappear, but only as each Indian chooses the new style of life. This will come about imper- ceptibly ; and so almost unconsciously all these "wards" of the nation will become citizens in full. There are two marvels about the bill: . "le is that its fundamental provisions are so simple, and the other is that we have been so long in coming to it. The bill imposes certain grave ohligations on the people. The government can bestow the land and confer citizenship, but not till the Indian is fitted for them and desires them. Here comes in a first great duty of the benev- olent to prepare the Indian for this step, and to lead him up to desire it. On this Mr. Dawes has well said: "The o()vcrnment can furnish money, but it cannot teach a school. The government can give land, but it cannot " OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 177 veys and l of , by such )eiie- ; the h^nd Uin a , the 5 will s the mper- these jns ill J bill: are so ien so 071S on iw the ill the them, benev- 3p, aiul lis Mr. lit can school, cannot teach how to cultivate it ; that must be done by private and benevolent effort, or not at all. It would be idle to take him out and oive him 160 acres of land, ignorant how to use it; bet- ter let him be where he is. . . . The Indian is to be trained and educated, not by government ofificials, but by private effort. Teachers sliould be paid in large degree by the government, and the government has shown its readiness to sup- ply everytiiing that can be done in educating them."i Certain dangers or perils lie about this bill, and in this speech now quoted, ]\Ir. Dawes says, and with force ; " The great dan- ger with the Indian is that he will be cir- cumvented ; that he will be cheated, if not directly out of his property, yet that in one way or another he will lose it. The State is hostile to his coming there and settling." This anxiety seems to follow the distinguished Sena- tor and in an address at the Conference of the Missionary Boards and Indians Rights Associ- ations, in Washington, January, 1887, he re- curs to these dangers again: '*• Suppose it became a law just as we want it, wliat is the thing next to be done? Are we to step down and say that we have enacted this great work into completion? I never knew any good to 1 "Mohonk Lake Conference," October, 188G. Ill li If' jifii' III" THE INDIAN S SIDE come from any such course of action. I am greatly oppressed with the feeling that it will be considerable of an undertaking to get the peo- ple of this country to feel and understand . . . that unless we coniprehend it, and feel it as a living principle, after all, it would have been better that the law never should have been enacted." This bill can become of force in actual re- sults only as fast as the benevolent people of the land advance the Indians up the line of civilization, and prepare them for this new and citizen life. The philanthropic and Christian associations are to lead this unfortunate race along in a prejjaratory course, till, in the judg- ment of the President, they are qualified to be graduated from their wild state of pupilage and enter into the individualism and indepen- dency of American citizens. In his Washington speech, Mr. Dawes urges this benevolent action in earnest words : " It is possible to lose all the benefit of this (bill) by indifference, or by the apprehension that you liave accomplished it all, when you have got a measure upon which you have set your hearts as capable of working out the result. Witli the passage of this bill you will only have gotten the instrument, that is all. . . . We must understand tliat we are carrying along not 1^1 OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 179 am ,11 be peo- • • • as a been been al re- »le of lie of ^ and ■istiaii i race to be pilage depen- uvges it, It 3 (bill) 11 that Li have t your result, ly have . . We ong not only the Indian, but we are carrying along [)ub- lic opinion, which, up to this time, lias been in an altogether different direction, and holding back. We are to educate ivhite men as well as Indians in this matter."' With this the remarks of General Porter on the same cccasion were in accord: "You can do nothing in law, or in the i)ractical opera- tions in the progress of a people, that is con- trary to that progress, or the public sentiment controlling it. It does not make any differ- ence what you enact in the shape of law ; the public sense of a country is what will shape its course. . . . The idea of lands in severalty has been for the last fifty years a pet scheme for the solution of the question as to the civiliza- tion and the C'hristianization of the Indians. It has been repeated and failed times without number. While Maiiypenny was Commissioner of Indian Affairs, there were not less than 15 or 20 tribes that took lands in severalty, with the option of becoming citizens. Where are those tribes to-day? Reduced in numbers, reduced in morals, without si)irit, they have been cast into the Indian Territory, and given small reservations there. They took lands in severalty. At first they seemed to progress, which is perfectly natural ; believing in it inspires them to work out its end, but just as I w Hi! 180 THZ INDliVN S SIDE soon as their enviro7i77ients are contrary to it, they lose courage, and it dies, and tliey want to get away. The surroundimj settlements of Indian reservations, where the land lias been divided in severalty, have invariably had such experience as to result in petitions to Congi ss to get rid of the worthless Indians." ^> We must not conceal from ourselves the fact that the policy of land in severalty and citizen- ship for the Indians is attended with no little peril to the new citizens. Their friends, there- fore, as well as the friends of a progressive civ- ilization, must stand by them with all the more steadfastness and watching and sacrifice when they enter on this higher plane of living. An experiment of years ago in Massachusetts is full of suggestions, and is calculated to make one somewhat timid and anxious over our new policy. About one hundred and fifty years ago the Housatonics were a remnant quite respectable in number and quality in Stockbridge and vicin- ity. Late in the year 1749, an order was passed by the Legislature that their lands, held on the tribal theory, should be divided and apportioned among them on some plan and scale of equity. Moreover, the order in council says that '' it is further declared that the Indian inhabitants of the town of Stockbridge are and shall be sub- «v OF TIIK INDIAN QUESTION. 181 D it, vant ts of been such gi ss i fact tizen- Uttle the re - e civ- move when . All jtts is make Lr new go the ectable [i vicin- \ passed on tlie ii'tioned equity, it " it is tants of be sub- jected to and receive the benefit of the hiws of this Government to all intents and purposes in like manner as other His Majesty's subjects of this Pruvince are subjected or do receive.'' An official of the government aided them in making the divisions and apportionments, ^rhe Indian proprietors decided to appropriate at first but one-half their reservation, so that thev might have lands to grant to Indians of other tribes who might wish to make home with them afterward. It was found tliat sixty were entitled to land, an(^ '^ vras assigned in parcels ranging from ten res to eighty. Some Eng- lish families had previously been invited by the Indians to settle among them, as farmers and mechanics, for purposes of instruction, and these al: "dy had lands in possession. The I .dians at once laid out a common for a training-field, cemetery, and church lot. The races thus mixed in neighborhood life consti- tuted the town of Stockbridge, as the tribe of Indians was called Stockbridge, or Housa- tonic, and the town records of that early day show that the red men shared with the white the offices of selectmen, assessors, constMl)les, and deacons, and several of the aborigines Ijore military responsibilities and titles during tlie French, Indian, and Revolutionary wars. They had had good training under the missionaries 182 THE INDIAN S SIDE Ifl I Sargent and Edwards, and, with the possible ex- ce[)ti()n of the Cherokees, there was never, in the United States, a tribe 'oetter prepared for the experiment whicli they tried. ±\ie Indian pro- l)rietors hekl their annual and some special meetings from 1750 to 1781, and liad the man- agement of their affairs in their own hands, among whicli were the control and disposal of the undivided half of their reservation. And yet, in less than forty years, the experiment failed and was abandoned, and the Stockbridge Indians moved off and united with the Oneidas of Central New York. Why the failure of a policy founded on land in severalty and the ballot and equal privileges under the laws? The proprietors' record book answers the question somewhat, though unde- signedly. The undivided land was sold, accord- ing to vote, from time to time, to pay the debts of the proprietors, till it was all gone. Indi- viduals were allowed also, by proprietors' vote, to sell their private land to pay off personal debts, till they were reduced to poverty. The quotation of a few votes will make it plain. '' Voted, that T. Woodbridge, Esq., make sale for the just debts of the Indian proprietors, who have not ability otherwise to discharge their debts, all that tract of land lying," etc. "Voted and granted to Elias and Benj. Willard ^\l OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 183 le ex- iu the )L' tlie 1 pro- pecial ; iiuui- iiiiids, )sal of And riliient bi'idgi' )iieidas n land .vileges •d book 1 unde- accord- le debts . Indi- L-s' vote, personal y. The aiii. ake sale [)rietors, ischarge ng,'' etc. , Willard one hundred acres of land, in consideration of their discharging X50, New York currency, debts due to them from sundry Indian pr(>i)ri- etors." ('aptain Daniel Niiidiam, 'M)wing a large sum of money, which he cannot pay, except by the sale of his original grant," is given liberty to sell. "Granted to William Goodrich, in consideration of his having his ox killed, fifty acres of land." One article in the warrant for the meeting in 1771 reads thus : *' To see if the said projnietors will order and grant some of their common lands to be sold for the payment of several Indian debts, who have judgments of courts and executions issued against them, and must unavoidably be com- mitted to jail except relieved by the propri- etors." And in 1780 all the common lands in the south part of the town were sold for the payment of public debts. These are samples of some sixty votes f»n the Indian land sales within thirty years of the time when the land was granted in severalty. We are at no loss to conclude why some of these debts were contracted, nor does it sur- prise us that white men would trust Indians, so long as Indians owned land. When emer- gencies came, they could be persuaded or forced to part with it to satisfy the shrewd creditor. The Saxon greed and schemes for f 184 THE INDIAN S SIDE 1^ land lire not new with us. It was thought best to mingle the two races socially and civilly, and yet the fatal weakness in the policy of tlie council ol" 1T41> was in peiinitting that near- ness of the white man lo tiie red man. Slowly, but inevitably, the shrewder and sharper race absorbed the pro[)erty of the inferior neighbor, and so the life of the Indian commonwealth ran only for one generaticm. In epitomizing tliis experiment of the Massa- chusetts Colony with the llousatonic or Stock- bridge tribe of Indians, an author remarks : " The simple fact seems to have been that even without attributing deliberate intention of fraud in the premises, the natural and inevitable re- sult of the contact of simplicity with shrewd- ness, of ignorance with intelligence, oi indolence with industry, of barbarism with civilization, happened in this case, as methinks it will ever happen — the weaker party must go to the wall." 1 Mr. Dawes referred to this same adverse pub- lic sentiment on the border and in Washington, when he said, in his Molu ': speech : '' I liave been for years in a fight with western men, who are bent upon taking land from these Indians without the slightest regard to their 1 E. W. B. Canning, 'VMag. of Am. His.," August, 1887. m OF THR INDIAN QUESTION. 185 riglits, or the obligations tlie government had entered into. 'llie re is an organization in Washington of very excellent men, bnt their pnri)ose is to perpetuate the existing state of tl nil g^ ?» ai In the execution of tlie bill, a specific danger ises. The President has to do it tlnonoli the Secretary of the Interior, and he through the Commissioner of Indian ^Vllairs, and he tiunugh fifty or a liundred agents scattered among tlie Indians, and some of them a thousand miles olT. If all are good men and true, competent, faith- ful to their trust, and in full sympathy with the Indian cause, it will be well with the bill. But the peril to the aim and end of the bill is obvious when the interests of white men are known to be in the ascendant. There is a large body of men East and West, land specu- tators and jobbers in Indian reservations and supplies, who wish to have the old conditions continued. This bill will put all their schemes and usages concerning Indian lands among the impossibles. Thousands will be thrown out of employment and fortunes. But above all and more than all dangers and perils which cluster about the opening of this new Indi" i era, is the dominant white hostil- ity to the Indians as neighbors. This becomes, practically, hostility to their preservation and m <>, :<^T^ >, .^^-'<^V IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 4is ^ % ^o 1.0 I.I us ^ 12.2 1.8 11-25 111.4 11.6 V2 7 7 ^ '^ ?^ THE INDIAN 8 SIDE civilization, witli a part of tlie American [)eople. Tills is recognized in the [)iii'ases. in the [)rece(l- ing quotations : '' The State is hostile to his coming," ''public opinion holding hack,'' " environments," " surrounding settlements.*' This obstacle is recognized in the s[)eeciies but not in the bill, since law cannot niacii it. The appeals to the people for benevolent and moral and Christian aid, to make the law effec- tive, are not too strong, are well put, and are recognized as carrying a force indispensable to success." After all, the public at hirge are to do the work. The tone of national feeling toward the Indian, and the prevalent habit of the nation in handling him, are indicated in two federal money facts. Last year the In- terior Department had ^6,000,000 to use in caring for, edncating, and civilizing the Ind- ians, and the War Department had '*i?17,000,- 000 to use in subduing them, and in holding them in subjection by military force. Three times as much ft)r enforcing subjection as to enligliten and civilize and lift him out of the ordinary chances for savagery. These two facts are a measure of the moral convictions of the government on the Indian policy; and the Indian severalty bill opens this new Indian era in the face of these facts. There is no lack of equity and humanity and Christian statesman- I ( OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 187 leople. reced- to his buck," lents.*' es but The t and 7 effec- iid are ible to are to feeling abit of tted in he In- use in le Ind- L7,000,- lolding Three 1 as to , of the vo facts s of the nd the lian era hick of tesman- shi[) in tlie scheme, but its "environment" puts its success in great peril. The American people are hardened into discouragement and apathy toward the Indian by successive and abor- tive experiments. Even philanthropic and i»hi- losoi)hical men are drifting to the i)Ositi(in that the Indians must be reckoned among the eftbte races, as the Pueblos, Aztecs, and some earlier ones, who have passed from our continent, leav- ingf only fjraves without headstones or names. More people than is generally supposed are willing that the Indians should perish utterly. V^arious causes operate to this: greed of land, a wanton, semi-civilized delight in warring on them, as on aninuils whose heads offer a bounty ; an affected or real fastidiousness about Indian neighborhood, as elsewhere shown concerning a negro as i)assenger, or hotel guest, or occuj)ant of a [)ew ; impatience witii their in- feri(jr grade as standing in the way of the prog- ress and civilization of the nineteenth century. Mence the semi-serious judgment, fel^ by many more than ex[)ress it: *^ The good Indian is the dead Indian." That is hapi)en- ing which is not novel in the growth of su- l>eiior nations and under foreign invasions. In the agrarian military divisions of Italian Rome the immigrants and new settlers had only to say : — ** ILtc mea sunt : veteres migrate 188 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE II ■ coloni." In our border and very vernacular English, this is rendered : ** The Indian must go-" It is not apparent that neighb()rh(»od feeling in our border land is anv more tolerant toward an Indian farmer on the other side of the fence than it was in Georgia under the Cherokee experiment. Indeed, lapse of years, with con- stantly failing .experiments, have begotten the conviction that tolerant and kindly neighbor- hood between the parties may not be expected. Chapters one and three, made up so largely from official sources, are i)ainfully full to aid this conviction. But, what is more — that neighborhood has not yet been established, ex- cept in rare cases, and those Lack time to show that they are a success. We have said that we are opening on { 3W Indian era, and, it is safe to say, tlie most hope- ful one ever offered to this unfortunate race. It is with the superior race to make it a success Oi.' a failure. The whites are masters totally of the situation, tliough cumbered by much which Indian heredity has entailed, and by discourag- ing antecedents, and by various adverse cir- cumstances and incidents now immediately pressing. Still, like all impediments to a good cause, these things are simply obstacles to be overcome. It is much to aid in doing it that OF THE INDIAN QUKSTION. 180 lular nust eling ward Pence 'okee I 0011- n the ;hbc)r- 3Cted. irgely CO aid — that (d, ex- show sw ; hope- race. ;iiccess ally of which jourag- *se cir- (Uiitely a good s U) be it that now, to a remarkable degree, the moral sense of the people is awakened, {ind the honor of the nation is under conviction, in view of mortify- ing failures in its policies for the Indian. And what is, probably, to become a strong auxiliary for success in this new era, is the wide and growing [)ersiiasi()n that we have not only or- ganized wrongs thoughtfully for this prior and feeble race, but we have suffered wrongs to be extemporized and sprung on them by schemes- of marauding and plundering. We have winked when we should have frowned, and we have hurried away the victims under the pretended convoy and i)rotection of arms, when those arms should have been turned against the in- vaders of Indian rights and the violators of national pledges. It is hopefid that we have come to some hu- miliation in view of what the fathers did, and the nation is taking unto itself some of the dis- honor which it has allowed belts of territory and sectional masses of the people and greedy financial schemers to accomplish. Rei)aration is thought of by many, and that is hopeful ; for the unwise and the unkind of the past always become, when discovered, a stimulus with good men to secure a better future. It is one of the j)roofs of the advancing civiliza- tion of the age that the nation is beginning to I 190 THE INDIAN S SIDE show compassion and some sense of justice for the Indian. At this critical epoch it will not be wise to look only to the future, since true progress is achieved by a huge exi)euditure of study on the i)ast. The simplicity and hunuinity and statesmaiishi[) and vigor in the new scheme, now a law of the nation, must not divert our study of tiie one fatal weakness in all i)receding schemes. The first three chapters of this book have been made (^uite elaborate in historical re- search, and perhaps to the reader tedious, in unfolding the mutual relations of the two races. We have traced their relations along the line of neighborhood, and among the adjoining and in- termingled farms of red and white men, for two centuries. We have also outlined the same re- lations in an eminent and protiacted national experiment, to secure a conterminous if not intermingled neighborhood life. For the ma- terial for these chapters, we have not drawn from the resources of philanthropic romance, or hypothetical benevolence, or from the sym- pathies and testhetics of unworking though most humane parties. We have worked mostly along the hard, cold line of oificial records in territo- rial and state and national dealings with the American Indians. With painful reluctance and with mortification, we are forced to the OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 191 3 for se to ;ss is y oil and leiiie, t our 3 cling book ;al re- us, in races, line of lid in- 3r two me re- itiunal if not lie ma- drawn mance, e sym- rh most y along territo- nt\\ the uctance to the conclusion, from these three chapters, that, for the perpetuity, elevation, and civilization (»f this race, the white man has stood in the way of the Indian. It remains to be discovered whether this opi)osition to Indian civilization has been es- sentially abated. Here is the pivotal point on which the new policy will turn for good or evil, and the struggle will come, as always heretofore, along the dubious border where the two races meet. From all that we have shown in this detail of official and other reliable information, it is evident that the power of the military forces and of the courts alone cannot carry the end sought for the Indians. If public sentiment on the border, where alone the question must become practical, and be wrought out practi- cally, is unfavorable, it easily can and will put a veto on any proceedings, whether congres- sional, civil, or military. In any large sections of the domain, the people will have their own way in handling the Indian and his land; and the sections in question constitute the western front of our nation, extending in a deep belt from Mexico to the British dominion. No process of venue can remove the trial of the (question from the vicinage of its origin, which is a thousand miles by live hundred. If' 192 THK INDIAN\S SIDE When we have used the civil and niilitaiv powers on this issue to tlieir extent, we have exhausted the forces of the national govern- ment, since it cannot legishite and execute on questions of mere sentiment or public opinion. The new scheme is, apparently, eminently well adapted to the end sought, and it can be car- ried with all the efiiciency which a United States statute can possess ; but if the main difficulty of execution lies in the tone and tcui- per of public sentiment, the scheme nuist be inadequate to overcome the difficulties. No man can be made amiable toward an Indian by Act of Congress, but unamiable neighbors make civilized and permanently settled Indians an impossibility. Our labors, therefore, to make the new Ind- ian era a success are narrowed to a few points. The work is to be done mainly on the Indian and white borders, and only indirectly and partially at Washington ; it is to be extra- constitutional, that is, social and moral, and not mainly legislative and civil and executive ; and it is to be wrought principally on wiiite men. They must become tolerant and neigii- borly and patient and enduring with tlieir inferior neighbors, and helpful toward unfor- tunate and abused nii-tive Americans. I'he bearing towards the Indian needs to become OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 198 itiuy hiive (vevii- ite on inion. y well )e ciir- jnited lUiiin (1 tlMU- usl be IS. No IikUuu icrhbors Indians ew Incl- points. Indian tly and e extra- >ral, and ecutive ; on Nvhite d neigb- iih tbeir id unt'or- lis. Tlie become like that wliich old States sliow, where all social and moral and educated and financial grades, and all bloods and colors dwell harmo- niously together, within limits ample enough for the widest choice, and so constitute what is called a civilized society. Reflections and regrets are perhaps vain, yet we may not be so near the end nf this work as to make them valueless. The civilizing and Christianizing forces of the older States have been allowed to be scanty and feeble on our emigrating and projjagating borders. The sur- plus of benevolent sympathies and funds and men have been i)ut to the front tinndly, and often with a crippling, impoverishing support. We have allowed patriotic heroes and heroines to depart quietly for picket duty, and a i)erpet- ual absence on small rations. If at the end of twenty or thirty years some of them have re- turned to visit only graves at the homestead, and incidentally to stir a hoi}' crusade for a tier of new States and Territories, tliey have made the pilgrimage usually at their own costs, and out of scrupulously saved moieties. It is only to praise an eminently wise policy when we say that we have treated the islands of tud sea, and idolatrous Asia, and the Dark Continent, with more worldlv wisdom and witli more of Christian tenderness. Now, in carrying this Dawes bill, ;1 194 THE INDIAN 8 SIDE 80 humane and so Christian for a statute, into our American waste pUices, we are baffled, and painfully, by the scanty and feeble civilization whicli our administrations of benevolence have entailed. While, therefore, governmental machinery is manufactured at Washington, — and vastly bet- ter we think of late than ever l)('f()re, — a good moral and social and philanthropic public opinion must secure a fair chance for its working. The locomotives must have a good track, and kept clear. Indian associations will find the very best of causes for benevolent work in arousing ])op- ular feeling, and in organizhig for frontier field work. Whenever a tribe adopts the Dawes bill, and resolves itself into a community of incipient American citizens, Indian friends should be ready and willing at once to sur- round those Indians with a social police, and to throw over their new homes and hopes a network of protective influences full}'' up to the intent and tone of the bill. This will require agents on the ground, of rare sympathy and energy, and watchfulness and prudence, and men too who know the border by experience. It will be turning to some practical account the enthusiasm of mass-meet- ings for the wards of the nation, and the work will be quite unlike that of cheering eloquent OF THE INDIAN QUKSTIUN. 195 , into I, and zation e have iiery is tly bet- a good opinion J. The id kept ery best ng pop- ier field 1 Dawes unity of friends to sur- [ police, id hopes fully up II. This of rare luess and lie border to some nass-nieet- the work g eloquent speeches. We must i'ot forget how much most excellent legishiting li?is been done by Congress for the Indians since the Republic was founded, and designing, selfish, unprin- cipled men have made it inoperative, till hope of saving the Indians from extinction is very feeble. This bill awaits the same opposition in social dislike of the Indians, and in contempt of them, and in satisfaction at tlieir decrease, and in a greed for tlieir lands. Sympathy with the bill and for its object must make itself felt on the ground where it is jjroposed to execute it, and this sympathy must be organized and concentrated and made perma- nent by well supported agencies, constantly auxiliary to government, and never relaxing watch and ward. Il I: II NOTES. I. '*Tl)e early Jesuit inissinnaries all write of well cultivated fields, cared for by the Uiitives, who pursued the same course as our fron- tiernieii Iwive followed ever since — s to decay, gTubbing up the bushes, and theu T)lant!n2f." ^ "The iMlg-rinis very often send their shallops to the coast of Maine to buy corn of tin; Ind- iaus," and they used on the New England coast lish for fertilizers, as the whites have con- tinued to do.2 The Indians in the region of the present Deerlield once took fifty canoe loads of corn to towns in the valley of the ronnecticut below, which were in distress from famine. When Governor Endicolt raided Block Isl- 1 The Bed Man and the White Man, George E. Ellis, D.D., p. IT."). 2 11)1^1^ 197 ' 198 NOTES, and, he found and destroyed two hundred acres of '* stately fields of corn." In the French wars, it was found that the Iroquois had on hand a stock of corn for two years, with good store of vegetables, and ap})le orchards; and the Abenakis of Maine were good farming Indians. II. As to the treatment of the Indians in the colonial East, some facts should be added, and they should be remembered, too, when their treatment in the new States and Terri- tories is criticised. Governor Penn of Penn- sylvania, grandson of the eminent })liilanthro- pist, offered, by proclamation, Jtfl35 for a male Indian prisoner, and ?130 for a female. The Commissioners for that colony agreed to send to England for fifty couples of blood-hounds, to be used by the Rangers against the Indian scalping parties. Official papers in the archives show that the Massachusetts Colony offered bounties for Ind- ian scalps, — to the regular soldiev ten pounds sterling, to the volunteer twent)^ and to patrol parties fifty. These bounties were claimed, paid, and recei[)ted for. Mrs. Dustin so re- ceived bounty for ten scalpc which she had taken with her own hands. NOTES. 199 ndred 1 the )quois , with uuds ; viiiing in tlie added, when 1 ern- Peiin- 111 til ro- ll male . The send loinids, ludiiin lat the or Ind- pounds 1 patrol laimed, so re- jhe had III. As to the decrease of tlie Indians, some per- sonal reminiscences will not lie thought out of place. In 1840 the Indians were abundant in large sections of Michigan and Wisconsin, and the author found it a common thing to fall in with them in Missouri; and in 1841 they thronged him at Keokuk and in the present Iowa and Minnesota. Speaking generally the quadrant cornering on St. Louis and running north by the Mississippi to the British line, and west beyond the Rocky Mountains, the coun- try in 1840 was alive witli Indans. In a ramble in and about that region this re- cent autumn the scene is wonderfully changed. The Reservations have some, but those vast spaces of plains and mountains and valleys show but very few. In a saddle ride of eight hundred miles on the heads of the Colorado and Columbia rivers, and near to those of the Missouri, and among the Big Horn, Wind River, Teton, and Bridger Mountains, only a few squads of the Snakes and Bannacks were met. Where Lewis and Clark met so many in 1803-6, and Lieutenants Pike and Longr much later, and Dr. Whitman and companies from 1836 to 1843, and the Oregon and California emigrants afterward, and Frdniont in all his Fp 200 NOTES. » exploring tours, and tlie builders of the Union and Northern Piicific, and Kansas railroads, we have found the Indians almost as scarce as the buffaloes. A tew times only we came on their tents, or the murks of their lodge-poles, in our dusty trail, where they had dragged them along on their lonely wanderings. 'I'he Delawares, whom the goveinment once pro- posed to form into a State to enter the Union and sit in Cougress, were reduced in 1884 to 74. i INDEX. Agriculture for the Cherokees, 130. Agriculture of Indians. i»re-liist<)ric, S6. Early, WA-l, 1<)7-S. American and Enirlisli Indian policy compared, 128. American Board's opinion on decrease, 148. American Board's testimony to Indian progress, 127-9. •aches in 1858 and in 1880, 145). Ardent spirits for the Indians, 34-5, ISti. Arkansas totally extinct, 154. Army costs and civil costs for the Indian work, 186. Army and courts alone not enough, 101-2. Army rule of the Indians, 44-8, 144-5, 155-7. Bancroft, Georoe, on Indian farming, iH), 101. Bancroft, H. H., and the Indians, 120-121. Border civilization imjterfect and unfriendly to Indians, 51. Borthwick's Indian hunt, 107-8. Bounties in Massachusetts, 198. Pennsylvania, 198. Bowles' " Across the Continent," 31. British Coiumbia and the Indians, 111-125. Burnet, Judge, on Indian wrongs in Ohio, 37. Testimony to decrease, 144. California and Indian decrease, 157-168. Canadian Dominion and the Indians, 111-126. Decrease of Indians in, 145-(>. Casenove, the last of a great tribe, 152-3. 201 202 INDEX. ratlin's wild estimate of numbers, 102. Census of the governmont defective, 103-6. Cherokees, etc., in 1820 and in 1H80, 143. Cherokee lands past of Mississippi, 58-60. Experiment and failure, r>0-84. Opinion on farming, 130. Progress in civilization, 127-S). Christianity lu-gligent of tho Amorican Indians, 171-4. Christianizing, early success in New England, 18. Christians and outlawed Christian Indians, 124-5. Church of England inactive in Indian missions, 171. Church Missionary Society and the Metlakahtlans, 115-125. Church work of early colonists, Protestant and Roman Cath- olic, 20. Civilization destroys inferior nations, 45, 46. , Civilization and Christianity of whites, how high, 124-5. " Civilized " Indians only entered in the census, 164-8. Conclusion, 175-1)5. Corruption of Indians by the whites, 156-7. Crawford, Gen. William C, on intermarriage, 28-9. Custer, General, on Indian civilization, 47-8. w ? Dakota, farming by Indians in, 132-3. Dawes on struggle for Indian land, 33. On need of a new policy, 132. Dawes bill, what, 23-4, 175, 176. People must enforce, 176-91. The success of, where, 3-8, 176-8. Decrease of Indians west of Mississippi, 148-68. Delawares and an Indian State in the Union, 126-7, 200. Drake on failing to Christianize, 13. Dufferin, Earl, and the Canadian Indians, 116. Duncan, William, and the Canadian Indians, 111-125. Dwight's estimate of number in early New England, 139. 'i: Edinburgh Review on Indian traders, 41. Ellis, George E., D.D., on early farming, 197. English emissaries excite Indians to war, 170. English influence on decrease of the Indians, 170-4. English law and Indian rights to laud, 121-2. Exile of 16,000, 74. INDEX. 208 Failure in homo missions for whites, the radical failure for the ludiaii.s, IT^M, 193^. Failure of Christiaiiity in its administration, 173-4. Failure to civilize, why, ;j-8. Farjns of Indians tlie best farthest from whites, 101-3, 132-0. Farming, Indian, 87-«), 197-8. Farming and Indian migrations, 125-31. Georgia and her claim to wild lauds, 56-60. Outlaws the Indians, 68-72. * Present number of Indians in, 131. Trookin's estimate of uumbtr iii early New England, l.'J9. Crovernment a fiction separate from the people, 39, 40. How much can it do for the Indians, .'i3-44. Still experimenting and preventing Indian farming, 132- 135. Great benevolent work of the country to enforce Dawes bill, 177-80, 191-5. Hennepin on number of Indians, 145. Holston, Treaty of, I.JO. Home missions in Massachusetts in 1035-6, 21-2. Home missions too provincial to reach the frontier, 173-4. Too tardy, .~».'>-5. Hostility of the English to Indians, 108-9. Housatonirs and land in severalty, 180-84. Hunting Indians in California, 107-8. Hurous or Wyandots once and now, 142. Illinois Indians once and now, 145. Increase or decrease of the Indians, which, 137-171. Indian and whites mixed in society, 01-5. Civilization of, and John Smith's Virginia colonists, 40, Cost of supporting wild, 147. Era, a new one, 188-90. Expelled from Georgia, 61-4. Fair at Muskogee, 43; Farmers and white neighbors, 56-9. Indian farming in New England, 89; in New York, 90; in Ohio and ^Missouri.91-;?: in New Mexico, 92 ; in Canada, 91; in Michigan, 95-7 ; in Florida, 97-8. Notes (1), p. 197. [ li 1 ]| 1 204 INDEX. Indian frtrming a protended discovery and novelty, 133-6. Indian Judgment on wliite neighbors, 40. Lands, stru^ifglc for, .■>2-;{. Indians, numbers of, east of Mississippi in 1820, 141-8. Indian rights in tlie soil ((inccdcd, "iiMlO, Safety only in distance fntin w hites, 38. In Kentucky once and now, 14.*). Number of, in early New Enjiland, 138-40. Remnants of, in Massachusetts, in 1801, 140. Separation of, from w liites, [iroposed and impossible, 51. Indian 'I'crritory, aica. population, 7(5; design of, 127. (Jloomy antiei])atir>n in, Hl-85. Government in, 78. Indian titles to land, and the law of nations, 147. In Dominion of Canada, 11(5-125. Intermarriage, 25-9. Introduction, 3-8. Inxpiois as farmers, 95. Is Christianity able to Christianize Indians, 172-4. .Taoksox, President, on tlie only chance for the Indians, 3a. Jackson, President, on reservations, 12(), 130. Kansas, hostility to Indians in, 32. Kirk wood, Secretary, Indian policy of, 131. Land in .severalty, experiment of with Housatonics, 180-84. Law as the protector of the Indian, 48-51, Illustrative case of, .50. Lawlessness in the Indian Territory, 49, 77-81. Mattikk, Cotton, his views of the Indians, 19-20. Marshpee Imlians and Richard Bourne, l.'}-14. Massacluisetts, hostile legislation of, 17. Massachusetts Indians, education of, in colony times, 17-18. Metlakahtlans and the Canadian Dominion, 111-125. Missions, Franciscan, in California, 157-1()2. Monette on border men, 41. Montana, Indian farmers in, 1.33. Morse, Rev. Dr., estimate of Indians in 1820, 139. On Indian removals, 125-6, INDEX. 205 Arouml-Ruildevs as fanners, 06. Mouinful journey, li-ii. Xarha(;a\setts once 30,()00, i:\S. Nationality of Indians deniod by Congress in 1871, 110-11. Necessary for the people to enforce the Dawes bill, 176-91. Newfoundland, last Indians in, 14'-'. Number of Indians, decreasing, ;$, i:J8-l<3(), 199-200. Official figures on their number, lG3-{5. Opposition to the Dawes bill on the frontier, 184-9. Opposition of (Jectrgia to Indian elevation, (51-84. Ordinance of the North-west Territory, 'S-i, IM. "Oregon: The Struggle for Possession" on Indian policies, 12;'.-4. Oregon Indians once and now, 150. Osages crowded off their reservation, 41-2. Outrage of drunken officer on Indians, 44, 45. Pkxn-Ixdian treaties, peculiar, 15. Pemfs Delaware Indians, in 1810, 17, 126-7; in 1884, 200. Personal testimonies to the author, 154 --7. Philip III. of Spain and Indian Missions in New Mexico, 20. Plymouth Court an