Indian affairs

“ It is easy to understand that if the management of Indian affairs were turned over to the military service the interests of the Indians and the interests and convenience of the Army might not always agree ”

“ But those intrusted with the management of Indian affairs must not forget that, with regard to some Indian tribes and reservations at least, the matter is pressing; that the Government cannot control circumstances but is rather apt to be controlled by them, and that it must not only devise the necessary preparations for the change in the condition of the Indians with forecast and wisdom, but must push them with the greatest possible expedition and energy if untoward accidents are to be avoided. ”

“ The reports of the Secretary of the Interior and of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, setting forth the present state of our relations with the Indian tribes on our territory, the measures taken to advance their civilization and prosperity, and the progress already achieved by them, will be found of more than ordinary interest. The general conduct of our Indian population has been so satisfactory that the occurrence of two disturbances, which resulted in bloodshed and destruction of property, is all the more to be lamented. ”

“ I need scarcely assure you that, if, by some legal enactment or some judicial decision declaring the Indians citizens in every respect the equals of all other citizens, the Indian question could be solved, that is to say, if the Indians, such as they are at present, could be enabled “to take their chance” as citizens with other citizens in the contests and competitions of civilized life, with any fair prospect of holding their own, nobody would more eagerly advise that course than those at present managing Indian affairs. ”

“ It is but another indictment against a defect in the form of government which Americans exalt as the most perfect of human institutions, that the central government made treaties in good faith with the Indian tribes, but was unable to enforce their obligations or to maintain their integrity. There is, as all well-informed people know—well informed, at least, in reference to American affairs—a commissioner who makes an annual report to the Secretary of the Interior respecting the Indian tribes in the various locations over the Union and the Territories. ”

“ Not as a matter of justice, but as a matter of fact, the rapid development of the country puts before the Indians the stern alternative of civilization, or destruction by conflict. Wise and human statesmanship will see to it that the Indians do not stand in the way of that development, but become part of it, and benefited by it. This is the “Indian problem” in a nutshell. ”

“ Even fifty years ago, few Indians supposed that the wide Empire of India could be governed save under British guidance, or without the aid of British bayonets. The old habitual forces of disruption were too obvious; the distrust of one race for another was still too keenly felt to allow Indian politicians to imagine a united India under indigenous rule. ”

“ The fact is, however, that this condition of things is one unavoidably growing out of the clashing of adverse interests—the Indians being anxious to check, we to extend our dominion and power as a people; and the causes existing now, were in being nearly a century ago, and will, in all probability, continue until all vestige of Indian existence shall have passed utterly away. ”

“ In a Report for the protection of the Western Frontier, submitted to Congress by the Secretary of War, we have a very fair exposé of the conduct and intentions of the American Government towards the Indians. Although the Indians continue to style the President of the United States as their Great Father, yet, in this report, the Indian feeling which really exists towards the American people is honestly avowed ”

“ While the Indians are officially at peace, according to treaties negotiated with them by the civil officers of the Indian Bureau, the military forces stationed in the Indian country have no jurisdiction over the Indians, and of consequence no certain knowledge of their feelings or purposes, and no power to take any action, either of a precautionary or aggressive character. ”

“ The inaptitude of the Indian tribes generally, for conducting the business of self-government, and their want of a wise foresight in anticipating the relative power and position of the two great opposing races in America, namely, the white and red, has been the primary cause of all their treaty difficulties. ”

“ The effort should be to save these Indians from the consequences of their own mistakes and improvidence and to secure to the real Indian his rights as against intruders and professed friends who profit by his retrogression. ”

“ From the foundation of the Government to the present the management of the original inhabitants of this continent—the Indians—has been a subject of embarrassment and expense, and has been attended with continuous robberies, murders, and wars. From my own experience upon the frontiers and in Indian countries, I do not hold either legislation or the conduct of the whites who come most in contact with the Indian blameless for these hostilities. ”

“ But I desire to point out that by far the larger part of our Indian troubles have sprung from the greedy encroachments of white men upon Indian lands, and that, hostilities being brought about in this manner, in which the Indians uniformly succumbed, old treaties and arrangements were overthrown to be supplanted by new ones of a similar character which eventually led to the same results. ”

“ And yet the solution of the Indian problem is not a matter of theory or of speculation, but is an accomplished fact. It has been wrought out before our eyes. Wild, savage Indian tribes, as fierce, as lawless, as intractable as any now existing, have been tamed, have been taught the arts and ways of peace, have subjected themselves to law, and are now living in orderly, peaceable, industrious communities. ”

“ The Indians must be led by a very plain path and a friendly hand. Feeling and preference are subsequent manifestations. I took this occasion to state to him the objects and policy of the government by the establishment at these falls of a post and agency, placing it upon its true basis, namely, the preservation of peace upon the frontiers, and the due observance, by all parties, of the laws respecting trade and intercourse with the tribes, and securing justice both to them and to our citizens, particularly by the act for the exclusion of ardent spirits from the Indian country. ”

“ That the history of our Indian relations presents, in great part, a record of broken treaties, of unjust wars and of cruel spoliation, is a fact too well known to require proof or to suffer denial. But it is only just to the Government of the United States to say that its treaties with Indian tribes were, as a rule, made in good faith, and that most of our Indian wars were brought on by circumstances for which the Government itself could not fairly be held responsible. ”

“ They recognize, as we do, that the Indian has a possessory right to the soil. They purchase this right, as we do, by treaty; but their treaties are made with the Indian subjects of Her Majesty. They set apart a permanent reservation for them they seldom remove Indians they select agents of high character, who receive their appointments for life they make fewer promises, but they fulfil them; they give the Indians Christian missions, which have the hearty support of Christian people, and all their efforts are toward self-help and civilization. ”

“ On the other hand, if the Indians think it more for their interest that the Americans should have possession of the posts, and be established in their country, they ought to declare it, that the English need no longer be put to the vast and unnecessary expense and inconvenience of keeping posts, the chief object of which is to protect their Indian allies, and the loyalists who have suffered with them. ”

“ The Indian, thus independent, acknowledging no authority but his own, will proceed without compunction of conscience or fear of punishment, to wage war on the defenceless inhabitants of the frontier, whose lives and property, in many instances, were thus sacrificed at the shrine of an inordinate thirst for wealth in their governors, which in reality occasioned all those evils. ”

“ For it alone lends—and can within any measurable time lend—substantial reality to the mere geographical expression which India is. A few Indians may dream of a united India under Indian rule, but the dream is as wild to-day as that of the few European Socialists who dream of the United States of Europe. ”

“ It may be taken as an axiom that whatever Government might decree, the great British mercantile and other interests in India would refuse to allow any appreciable transfer of authority to the hands of Indians, and in face of their opposition it could not be done. That an Indian should rule Indians they would not mind perhaps, but that an Indian should rule Europeans, and that it should be to an Indian they looked for the maintenance of peace and order and for the administration of justice, criminal and civil, is unthinkable. ”

“ We cannot take the Indians out of the hands of the National Government; we cannot take the National Government into our own hands. Therefore we must work with the National Government in any large plan for the betterment of Indian conditions. ”

“ And here I may state, parenthetically, that we have not been fighting, really speaking, with regard to the position of the Indians in the Colony, but we have been simply fighting for the principle. The object of our agitation is not to swamp the Colony with Indians or to have the status of the Indian in the Colony of Natal defined, but to have the Imperial question decided once for all, namely: ‘What status will the Indians outside British India have?’ That was the principle we have been striving to determine. ”

“ In nearly four hundred treaties, confirmed by the Senate as are treaties with foreign powers, our government recognized Indian tribes as nations with whom the United States might contract without derogating from its sovereignty. ”

“ White men—some of them not even citizens of the United States—in violation of law enter the Indian reservation, steal the Indians’ ponies, drive off their cattle, shoot down a few of the Indians for resisting them, or perhaps for the mere fun of the thing. The Indians, maddened by the wrongs inflicted upon them, go on the war-path. ”

“ And the Indians, William! Only think of going within sound of the Indian war-whoop!”
“The Indians are in a very different state now,” he replied, “from what they were when the Puritan women followed their husbands into the wilderness of this new world. They are few in numbers now. Their spirit has been tamed by accumulated wrongs, and they are too well aware of the power of the United States’ government, to make any aggressions upon those who are under its protection. Besides, you know it is my opinion that the Indians never would have made unprovoked aggressions. ”

“ I refer, of course, to the policy of dealing with the various Indian tribes as separate nationalities, of relegating them by treaty stipulations to the occupancy of immense reservations in the West, and of encouraging them to live a savage life, undisturbed by any earnest and well-directed efforts to bring them under the influences of civilization. ”

“ Just as we choose to construe them at the time, without any reference to the wishes of the Indians, or whether we do them kindness or justice in the operation, or not. We are often prompted to their ratification by persons interested; and we lend ourselves unintentionally to an unjust act of oppression upon the Indians by men who go and get their signatures to a treaty. The Indian's mark is made; the employés of the Government certify or witness it; and the Indians do not understand it, for they do not know what is written. These are some of the circumstances connected with the Indians. ”

“ That during the period of about a century, which has since elapsed, the Indian possessions of this country have been governed and defended from the resources of those possessions, without the smallest cost to the British exchequer, which, to the best of your petitioners’ knowledge and belief, cannot be said of any other of the numerous foreign dependencies of the Crown. ”

“ Thus the continual outbreaks of the Indians, have been a source of trouble and anxiety to the government, which has sought to adjust the claims of the red men in a fair and just manner. That the latter have often been cheated and robbed by unscrupulous agents and traders, no one can deny, but the fact still remains that the Indian nature is peculiarly hard to subdue, and their natural instincts are cruel. ”

“ At war the Indians are under the control of the military, at peace under the control of the civil officers. Exactly what constitutes Indian hostilities is not agreed on; and, besides this, as soon as the military forces, after a hard campaign, conducted with great hardship and at large expense, have succeeded in forcing the Indians into such a position that punishment is possible, the Indian, seeing the result and the impossibility of avoiding it, immediately proclaims his wish to make peace. ”

“ The men who were the strongest advocates of the scheme generally wanted the Indians’ property—the one main cause back of all Indian wars. From the warlike Apaches to the peaceful Nez Perces, all the tribes of the plains were hunted from place to place; then the government resorted to peace negotiations, but always with an army at hand to coerce. Once disarmed and helpless, they were to be taken under military guard to the Indian Territory. ”

“ But the fact is, that by the introduction of that clause, by obliging us to keep within our jurisdiction, as British subjects, the very men who have been the instruments used by Great Britain to promote Indian wars on our frontiers; by obliging us to suffer those men to continue their commerce with the Indians living in our territory, uncontrolled by those regulations which we have thought necessary in order to restrain our own citizens in their intercourse with these tribes, Great Britain has preserved her full influence with the Indian nations. ”