Francis Amasa Walker

“ Savage as he is by no fault of his own, and stripped at once of savage independence and savage competence by our act, for our advantage, we have made ourselves responsible before God and the world for his rescue from destruction, and his elevation to social and industrial manhood, at whatever expense and at whatever inconvenience. The corner-stone of our Indian policy should be the recognition by government and by the people, that we owe the Indian, not endowments and lands only, but also forbearance, patience, care, and instruction. ”

“ Scores of valleys up which population has been steadily creeping would be instantly abandoned; streams that now, from source to mouth, resound the stroke of the pioneer's axe, would be left desolate on the first rumor of war; a hundred outlying settlements would disappear in a night, as the tidings of outbreak and massacre were borne along by hurrying fugitives. As the blood retreats, on the signal of danger, from the extremities to the heart, so would population retire, terror-struck and precipitate, from the frontier on the first shock of war. ”

“ To such a man, as he recalls the undoubted wrongs done the Indian in the past, as he contemplates the fate of a race whose heroic and romantic qualities have been greatly exaggerated, or as he listens to the flattering tale of a missionary returned from some peaceful and half-civilized tribe, it is very pleasant to think that the original owners of the soil are to be protected by the government, saved to humanity, educated in the useful arts, and elevated to a Christian civilization. On such a man accounts of Indian outrages make little impression. ”

“ In good faith and good feeling we must take up this work of Indian civilization, and, at whatever cost, do our whole duty by this most unhappy people. Better that we should entail a debt upon our posterity on Indian account, were that necessary, than that we should leave them an inheritance of shame. We may have no fear that the dying curse of the red man, outcast and homeless by our fault, will bring barrenness upon the soil that once was his, or dry the streams of the beautiful land that, through so much of evil and of good, has become our patrimony ”

“ Instead of exposing to Indian contact, as heretofore, a clearly defined frontier line, upon two or three faces, our settlements have penetrated the Western country in every direction and from every direction, creeping along the course of every stream, seeking out every habitable valley, following up every indication of gold among the ravines and mountains, clinging around the reservations of the most formidable tribes, and even making lodgement at a hundred points on lands secured by treaty to the Indians. ”

“ To-day there is no portion of our territory where citizens of the United States are not preparing to make their homes. To cut off a reservation sufficient for the wants of this unfortunate people in their rude ways of life; to hedge it in with strict laws of non-intercourse, turning aside, for the purpose, railway and highway alike; and, upon the soil thus secluded, to work patiently out the problem of Indian civilization,—is not to be deemed a light sacrifice to national honor and duty. ”

“ We conclude, then, that Indian citizenship is to be regarded as an end, and not as a means; that it is the goal to which each tribe should in turn be conducted, through a course of industrial instruction and constraint, maintained by the government with kindness but also with firmness, under the shield of the reservation system. It is true that this system can no longer be kept up without sacrifice on our part. ”

“ Finally, we have a class of persons, who, from no impatience of the subject, and from no indifference to the welfare of the aborigines, will oppose the policy of seclusion, as an anomaly not to be tolerated in our form of government. These are men who cannot bear, that, from any assumed necessity or for any supposed advantage, exception should be made of any class of inhabitants, or in respect to any portion of territory, to the rule of uniform rights and responsibilities, and of absolute freedom of movement, contract, and intercourse, the whole nation and the whole land over. ”

“ Grant that some petty Sioux chief believes that the government of the United States feeds him and his lazy followers out of fear, or out of respect for his greatness: what then? It will not be long before the agent of the government will be pointing out the particular row of potatoes which his majesty must hoe before his majesty can dine. The people of the United States surely are great enough, and sufficiently conscious of their greatness, to indulge a little longer the self-complacent fancies of those savage tribes, if by that means a desolating war may be avoided. ”

“ The English, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, in their American colonies, only fought the natives when for their purposes they must, preserving the peace when they could by presents, and even by tribute. Statesmen who would have embroiled Europe on a question of dinner-etiquette have fully recognized the principle that there could be no issue of dignity between a civilized power and a band of irresponsible savages, and have submitted, without any feeling of degradation, to demands the most unreasonable, urged in terms the most insolent. ”

“ It is upon men thus exposed, without hope of escape or chance of resistance, that the first wrath of a general Indian war would break. No note of recall would avert their doom. Long before friendly runners could reach them, the war-whoop would be in their ears; and alone, unfriended, undefended, unaided, they would perish, as hundreds and thousands of our countrymen have perished, at the hands of the infuriated savages. ”

“ The treaties made with Indian tribes have, of course, been mainly treaties of cession. Most of our readers will be surprised to learn the extent of lands east of the Mississippi which are embraced in sales to the United States; being no less than the entire States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, with considerable portions of Tennessee, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And these treaties were not a mere form to amuse and quiet savages, a half-compassionate, half-contemptuous humoring of unruly children. ”

“ In the first place, it should be remarked that there can be no question of national dignity [Pg 35] involved in the treatment of savages by a civilized power. The proudest Anglo-Saxon will climb a tree with a bear behind him, and deem not his honor, but his safety, compromised by the situation. With wild men, as with wild beasts, the question whether to fight, coax, or run, is a question merely of what is easiest or safest in the situation given. Points of dignity only arise between those who are, or assume to be, equals. Indeed, nothing is at times so contemptuous as compliance. ”

“ Is it a matter of wonder, that men who are contemplating things so different as are the Eastern philanthropist and the Western settler, when Indians are spoken of, should imagine that they disagree as to the policy of the government, and come to entertain contempt or repugnance for each other, while, in fact, on an honest statement of a given case, neither would dissent in the slightest degree from the views of the other? ”

“ So long as the attention of the executive department is occupied by efforts to preserve the peace; so long as Congress is asked yearly to appropriate three millions of dollars to feed and clothe insolent savages; so long as the public mind is exasperated by reports of Indian outrages occurring in any section of the country,—so long will it be vain to expect an adequate treatment of the question of Indian civilization. ”

“ Some who cannot bear to hear Indians spoken of as savages, or to contemplate the chastisement of marauding bands, may blame our frankness. But we hold fine sentiments to be out of place in respect to a matter like this, which in the present is one of life and death to thousands of our own flesh and blood, and in the future one of incalculable importance to a score of States yet to be formed out of the territory over which the wild tribes of to-day are roaming in fancied independence. ”

“ Are the Indians destined to die out? Are we to make such provision as has been indicated, or such other as the wisdom or unwisdom of the country shall determine, for a vanishing race? Or are the original inhabitants of the continent to be represented in the variously and curiously composed population which a century hence will constitute the political body of the United States? ”

“ The very men who bear themselves most loftily, according to the native standards of virtue, are quite as likely to fall, under exposure to white contact, as are the weakest of the tribe. Their familiar attractions all broken, their immemorial traditions rudely dispelled, their natural leadership destroyed, the members of a wild tribe, strong and weak together, become the easy prey of the rascally influences of civilized society. ”

“ Whether, in such an event, the Indians, thus left to meet their fate by themselves, with reasonable provision by the government for their instruction in the arts of life and industry, will waste away in strength and numbers, is a question quite too large to be entered upon here. Popular beliefs and scientific opinion undoubtedly contemplate the gradual if not the speedy decline of Indian tribes when deprived of their traditional freedom of movement, pent up within limits comparatively narrow, and compelled to uncongenial occupations. ”

“ There is another and much larger class of Indians from whom no organized violence is to be expected in the course of the complete settlement of the country, not because they are rendered helpless by the force of their location, nor because they have any traditional friendship for the whites, nor because they do not experience suffering enough to impel a warlike people to a struggle for life, but because they are not fighting Indians. Actual outrage might drive some of these tribes to resistance ”

“ With him, as with all persons and peoples in whom the imagination is predominant, the effect of disaster is not measured by the actual loss and suffering entailed, but by the source, the shape, the suddenness, of it. Indeed, it is astonishing how completely the spirit of an Indian tribe may be broken by a catastrophe which does not necessarily impair its fighting power. ”

“ However, it may be said, in a word, of these Indians, that their civilization must follow their submission to the government, and that the first necessity in respect to them is a wholesome example, which shall inspire fear and command obedience. So long as four-fifths of these tribes take turns at raiding into Texas, openly and boastfully bringing back scalps and spoils to their reservation, efforts to inspire very high ideas of social and industrial life among the communities of which the raiders form so large a part will presumably result in failure. ”

“ The reservations assigned to tribes and bands are generally proportioned to the needs of the Indians in a roving state, with hunting and fishing as their chief means of subsistence. As the Indians change to agriculture, the effect is to contract the limits of actual occupation, rendering portions available for cession or sale, which with proper management may be so disposed of, without impairing the integrity of the reservation system, as to realize for nearly every tribe and band a fund equal, per capita, to that of many of the civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. ”

“ The ruggedest flint hill of the Cherokees or Sioux is sweeter to him than the greenest pasture which lies open to him under the homestead laws of the United States. There is scarcely one of the ninety-two reservations at present established on which white men have not effected a lodgement: many swarm with squatters, who hold their place by intimidating the rightful owners; while in more than one case the Indians have been wholly dispossessed, and are wanderers upon the face of the earth. ”