Warren King Moorehead

“ While we all believe in education, yet I affirm that there is neither a man nor a woman in all America who would willingly, and gladly, send one child after another to a school so managed that the children contracted tuberculosis and died. The average white man and woman would refuse to send other children to such a school, after the first one had died; and a system of education productive of consumptives, would be indignantly denounced in unmeasured terms. ”

“ The Indian is groping his way through the dusk of his day upon earth and soon he will pass from our sight and the sound of his footsteps will cease. As he proceeds falteringly, this shred of a great race is comforted by no expressions of good will. ”

“ The real wards of the Government are the full-blood Indians, and they, more than the mixed-bloods, are entitled to the care of the Government, for many reasons, easy to understand; now, in point of fact, mostly all of them, on this reservation, are helpless. They are, if in good health, unable to understand their real interest, and to work as they should. In matters of business they are at the mercy of everyone who chooses to deceive them. But the number of those who are in health is very limited. The vast majority are old, crippled, blind or otherwise helpless. ”

“ With such a start and well-meaning officers, who, when necessary, even would strictly insist that all cultivate their lands properly, most of the Indians would, within a few years, become self-supporting and also support their children. These children, as they grow up, in turn should be made to assist their parents in their home duties.
“Reservation day-schools, as a rule, should suffice also for the Indian children. In these they could surely receive such an education as is necessary for an honest and happy living. Most of the white children in country districts have no better opportunity.” ”

“ The Sioux, the Apache, the Crow and others are doing very well. If we permit foolish or unwise legislation to dominate in the region inhabited by the tribes I have named, we shall destroy the best of that which is left, even as we have destroyed in Oklahoma and Minnesota. I have clearly pointed out the high character of the Ojibwa and the Five Civilized Tribes forty years ago as compared with the present, and that the responsibility for this decline rests with us, rather than with the Indians themselves, or the Indian Office. ”

“ If the better element in that State is defeated by a combination of oil, coal, gas, timber, land, and asphalt interests, the taxpayers of this country will be called upon to support 100,000 homeless paupers. Nowhere else in the United States are 100,000 citizens to be dispossessed, and if this calamity is permitted to occur, the blackest page in all American history shall have been written. A helpless, a trusting, and a dependent people look to us to keep the final one of all our promises. ”

“ It looks rather strange to see yearly thousands of dollars spent in educating these poor children of the desert in distant and magnificent schools. Thousands of well-to-do white parents could not even think of giving their children such a change.
“Sooner or later the taxpayers of the United States will object to having their hard-earned money thus spent. And, if by that time the Indians have not learned to help themselves, depend on themselves, and make a living for themselves, and support their children, then their future will be hopeless.” ”

“ Almost any other body of men and women in the world would be utterly discouraged if they had passed through the same experience that fell to the lot of the Ojibwa Indians of White Earth, Minnesota, during twenty-five years. I am acquainted with no community in the East where, in the minds and hearts of the citizens, there would remain even a particle of respect, or regard, or confidence, in any government, or culture, or civilization, responsible for such a condition. ”

“ The miserable story of the California Indians had dragged itself through twenty-five years; every measure of relief had been blocked in Congress by the interested few—the Vociferous Few in the Indian country. ‘This class of Indians,’ concludes the Commissioner, ‘seems forcibly to illustrate the truth that no man has a place or a fair chance to exist under the Government of the United States who has not a part in it.’ A more illuminating commentary on the Indian’s unhappy status in the land of the Free can hardly be written in one sentence. ”

“ The only thing in this world that was positive, that was true, that was inevitable, was this fact: that every time they touched a pen they lost something; that every promise made to them by a white man was broken; that they had abandoned all hope save one—that when they are gathered to their fathers, in the great beyond, they hope to find some place where they may live in peace and contentment, as in ancient days. ”

“ The decisions of the Supreme Court have established the right of Congress to pass all needful laws for the protection of these Indians and to impose necessary supervision of their affairs, and have hereby clearly shown that Congress alone is responsible for the fate of these friendless people. The objective point of assault will be the next Congress. Will it be able to resist the pressure that will be brought to tear down the pitiful remnant of protection that remains to these wards of our country? ”

“ There is no despotism more whimsically cruel than that of men unused to power, who suddenly find themselves in absolute control of a people whose one vital interest—an advantageous foothold on good land—is in continual conflict with their own chief desire—the possession of that same good land. ”

“ The last one hundred years tend to show that the Indian Office has not within itself the power to initiate any movement for the relief of Indians. The spirit that compels redress has not resided in the Indian Office. The Indian Office has received at all times sufficient reports from the field and may be presumed to have had knowledge of conditions at all times and yet every movement for relief has come from the outside, from individuals, or more often from associations who have compelled an unwilling bureau to act, or, often an unwilling Congress to act. ”

“ After many years of study of the subject, I firmly believe that the welfare of the Indian depends upon the creation of such a Commission as has been indicated—one composed not of those interested in political parties, but on the contrary of competent men who understand Indians and their needs, of men who are willing to devote the best years of their lives to transforming the rough, uncertain trail along which the Indian has toiled, into a broad highway, upon which the Red Man may safely travel to his ultimate destination—the civilized community. ”

“ Expeditions, not only of United States troops but of adventurers, buffalo hunters, and miners, penetrated to various parts of the great West. Among these travelers were men who regarded an Indian no higher than a dog, and fired upon peaceful parties of hunting Indians without the slightest provocation. Wagon-trains were often in charge of men from the East who knew nothing whatever of Indians or their habits, and becoming insanely frightened at the approach of either friendly or hostile red men, opened fire without the slightest thought of consequences. ”

“ But few men appreciate what the buffalo was to the Indian. Thousands of men flocked west to hunt buffalo solely for their hides. Most of them were inexperienced and destroyed many animals before they learned how to properly prepare a robe for sale. The great Platte valley, the Arkansas, the Niobrara and other Plains rivers, were in a few years lined with millions of skeletons a pitiful spectacle—wretched relics of a once noble creature. Complaints were made by the Indians, who depended solely upon the buffalo for existence, to the Government at Washington, but without avail. ”

“ With but few exceptions, nearly every white man who went on the frontier as a scout, miner, trader, hunter or explorer, exhibited the worst side of his character when among Indians. It is natural that when a man is in a new and wild country, far from restraint, untrammeled by laws, unchecked by society or the refining influence of women, all that is bad in him comes to the surface. ”

“ We all admit that we owe the Indian much. Nobody denies that we have done the individual Indian a service, through our education and civilizing influences. Why, then, is it that there is not more land under cultivation today than in 1871? Because of the conflicting rulings and laws, the breaking of treaties, the cancelling of agreements entered into by States, and, finally, the taking of individual farms. ”

“ In charge of the litigation has been placed an official commonly reputed to be a personal appointee of Senator Owen, the United States attorney who was at one time himself a defendant in the suits. I do not mean by this to imply that any one, or all of these gentlemen, have not or will not accomplish much good for these people, but I do wish to contend most emphatically for the utmost singleness of purpose and freedom from all possible entanglements which might even unconsciously warp judgment in the men selected to deal with these and all Indian matters. ”

“ A prophet need not draw deeply for inspiration to see in 1919 the Oklahoma delegation rising in Congress and demanding of the Government:—‘What of your stewardship of these Indians, these children of nature, whose vast property they entrusted to your protection? Fifteen years ago they owned in fee simple—by the same title that we own our homes—an estate which today is worth a thousand million dollars, and one-half of them are paupers. Look upon your work for just one generation. ”

“ He feels himself out of his environment. He becomes dissatisfied. Such young white men become failures in life. It is similar with the Indians. He has seen all that is best in the East, and his eyes are opened to the poverty and the dull monotony of reservation, or Indian community life. Unless he is willing to put his hand to the plow and work for his living, he is pretty apt to fall into ways of idleness, to draw inheritance money, or annuity, or sell a piece of land. One of the problems in Indian education is to overcome this. ”

“ The principal cause of the appallingly great and rapid decrease in the Indians of California is not the number directly slain by the Whites, or the number directly killed by whiskey or disease, but a much more subtle and dreadful thing: it is the gradual but progressive and resistless confiscation of their lands and homes, in consequence of which they are forced to seek refuge in remote and barren localities, often far from water, usually with an impoverished supply of food, and not infrequently, in places where the winter climate is too severe for their enfeebled constitutions. ”

“ As has been said, the Indian was by nature a warrior and hunter, and was trained as such from earliest childhood. It is taken for granted, by the great mass of civilized peoples, that the uncivilized redskin had no idea of education. This is an error. For years, I was among the wild Indians of half a century ago, and I know from personal observation that they had as thorough a system of education for their children, in their line, as that boasted by the civilized white race. From the time the Indian child was able to walk, his or her education began. ”

“ The many scientists of our research institutions, both large and small, are energetically seeking out what little remains of tribal and aboriginal customs and beliefs. They know that in a few years it will be too late to make scientific researches among Indians. They employ patient search and much discrimination to here and there discover a smouldering ember of the ancient council fire. And, I think, it requires further energy and patience on the part of the ethnologists to fan the feeble ember until it bursts forth into flame! ”

“ It seems to me to be an attempt to make them leap from the bottom to the top rung of the ladder of civilization without having them touch those that lie between. They are not yet far enough advanced in civilization and culture to enable them to follow successfully the higher pursuits of civilized social life, against which the present educational methods try to put them. Thus when leaving school, they are unable to compete with Whites of equal education, while they are unwilling and often unqualified to take up farming or mechanics. ”