Indian frontier

“ 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. ”

“ The Indian gives to the white man all he needs, and aids him in obtaining from the wide stretch of land over which he roams all the wealth that it can afford. Practically one part of the Dominion is handed over to the Red Man and to the half-breeds, for there is an Indian frontier which as yet has not been much encroached upon by any large migration of whites. ”

“ But in the United States we have no longer a dividing line. The “Indian frontier” has virtually disappeared. Our Indian population is scattered over a vast extent of country into which the agricultural settlers, as well as the adventurous element of our people in quest of rapid gain have pushed their skirmishers in all possible directions. Wherever in the far West the enterprise of the whites advances, whites and Indians come into immediate contact and are “in one another's way.” ”

“ As the progress of settlement and enterprise in the far western regions, or, as it is called in a general way, “the development of the country,” advances, the old methods of providing for the Indians become obsolete. Large reservations of wild land, on which the Indian can freely roam and support himself, partly by hunting, will soon be things of the past. Even now an “Indian frontier” does no longer exist. The abiding places of the Indians are almost everywhere surrounded by rapidly increasing populations of white men eagerly pressing upon the Indian lands. ”

“ INDIAN FRONTIER POLICY AN HISTORICAL SKETCH BY GENERAL SIR JOHN ADYE, G.C.B., R.A. WITH A MAP PREFACE The subject of our policy on the North-West frontier of India is one of great importance, as affecting the general welfare of our Eastern Empire, and is specially interesting at the present time, when military operations on a considerable scale are being conducted against a combination of the independent tribes along the frontier.
It must be understood that the present condition of affairs is no mere sudden outbreak on the part of our turbulent neighbours. ”

“ The Indian problem within the United States has been a most serious one, and is still a severe tax on the nation. The union of the colonies and the final separation from the mother country left the United States with an immense western frontier, extending in an irregular way from north to south through the trackless forests of the Mississippi Valley. As the nation grew in strength this frontier was pressed farther and farther westward, while settlements established on the Pacific coast presented a frontier to the eastward. ”

“ One day after dinner, when we had drunk coffee, my sentry shouted that a party of Indians were coming up the river, and I perceived through my telescope that they must belong to one of the civilized tribes, as they were not armed with lances, and bows and arrows, but with firearms, and wore clothes, if we may call them such, consisting of leathern breeches and jackets, and a coloured handkerchief wound round the head like a turban. There were ten Indians, who halted at the great gate of the palisade which enclosed my fort, in a large semicircle, with both its ends joining the river. ”

“ Thus the disintegrating forces of civilization entered the wilderness. Every river valley and Indian trail became a fissure in Indian society, and so that society became honeycombed. Long before the pioneer farmer appeared on the scene, primitive Indian life had passed away. The farmers met Indians armed with guns. The trading frontier, while steadily undermining Indian power by making the tribes ultimately dependent on the whites, yet, through its sale of guns, gave to the Indian increased power of resistance to the farming frontier. ”

“ The progress of population, through the instrumentality of railroads and other facilities for travel, has brought the Indians and our frontier population into close proximity over an immense area of country hitherto uninhabited by civilized man, and entirely occupied by the Indian and the buffalo. Where difficulties arise between Indians and whites in our frontier settlements we can no longer, as heretofore, mitigate or avoid the trouble by removing the Indians into a country remote from civilization. ”

“ Again there is the regular squatter and land speculator, whose interest is always promoted by a war, because it usually results in driving the Indians further back from the frontier. Intermixed with these classes, are many quiet and worthy citizens, who with their families, have been carried to the frontiers, in the ordinary course of events, by the tide of emigration. ”

“ They are located on a reservation of 288,000 acres, in the central part of the State. They are native to the country now occupied by them, and have for years been loyal to the government, having frequently furnished scouts for the army in operations against hostile tribes or marauding bands. Their location, so near the frontier, and almost in constant contact with the Indians of the plains, with whom they have been always more or less at war, has tended to retard their advancement in the arts of civilization. ”

“ And I will here add that in my experience on the frontier, which extended over a long period, it was never my good fortune to meet with an Indian Agent who impressed me as being the right sort of a man to deal with those children of nature, for Indians are like children, and their intuitions are keen. ”

“ But these frontier tribes form some of the finest fighting material from which the Indian Army is recruited, and it may be that years of regular and peaceful administration will destroy the military qualities of these people, as has been the case in South India. The many opportunities afforded by the frontier to the Indian Army for active service, and the training that they get in the little frontier expeditions, may also be looked upon by some as a valuable asset. ”

“ The tribes within the Indian Territory can now muster fifty thousand warriors. They have a fine country, and, in the aggregate, possess a considerable amount of property. Stretching along our defenceless western frontier, they may render themselves indeed formidable, whenever they choose to combine against us. They have horses in abundance, and can transfer themselves, with the fleetness of the Arab, from one point to another. They have fire-arms, in addition to the spear, the bow and arrow, and the tomahawk. ”

“ In short, any eye at all practised in the signs of a frontier warfare might easily have traced all those unerring evidences of the ruthless results which attend an Indian vengeance.
Still, the sun rose on the Lenape a nation of mourners. ”

“ Sitting Bull probably understands it better than some of us do. Our remaining Indian tribes not yet gathered into treaty reservations, or objecting to be sent south into the Indian territory, tend to cluster in our northwest border, just where we bound upon the vast expanses of the wilderness held by Great Britain. If we still pursue our war measures with the Indians, many of them when hard pressed will find a refuge, a breathing spell, and — we may as well speak out what we know — aid and comfort on the other side of the geometrical boundary line. ”

“ The reservations ought to be sold, and the proceeds devoted to educating the Indians and setting them up in a self-sustaining existence. They should be allotted an abundance of good land, in the region to which they are acclimated, in severalty, and under such restrictions that they cannot alienate it at least for a generation or two. As the Indian is now, he will neither work, nor keep clean, nor live decently. ”

“ It was plainly evident that the Indians were constantly being reinforced. Their whooping and yelling grew more and more derisive, and they began to extend their lines so as to flank the men of the frontier. ”

“ The settler and miner are beginning, or at least threatening, to invade every Indian reservation that offers any attraction, and it is a well-known fact that the frontiersman almost always looks upon Indian lands as the most valuable in the neighborhood, simply because the Indian occupies them and the white man is excluded from them. ”

“ It is these handfuls of men, natives of India all, stationed in stone watch-towers twenty miles apart along the Border, who keep the gateway of India barred; and who will keep it barred against all intruders for all time. The unobtrusive strength of India's Frontier amazes the new-comer. But only those who have spent their best years in its service know the full price paid for the upkeep of that same strength in hardship, unremitting toil, and the lives of picked men. ”

“ Doctor, “is in all respects a country to be desired by Indians. It is a mild climate—the land is good, the forests full of game, and the lakes and rivers abounding with fish. The region itself is not only remote from the territories claimed by the individual States; but it is in the exclusive occupancy of Indian tribes, and destined in the plan of the national government for that purpose. Besides, it is vast, and not only sufficient for the tribes already there, but more than sufficient for all your purposes and theirs. ”

“ As we gaze on in mute admiration, we behold the race of the red man receding westward before that same power pictured in this wonderful face: now the Indian tribes pass the Rocky mountains, they come within the roar of the Pacific, and, growing less and less, they at last vanish away into the uncertain mists of the ocean—a lost people, who have served the purpose for which they were created, and disappeared from our continent to make room for a nobler humanity. ”

“ With but rare exceptions our most expensive expeditions against the Indians on the Plains have been supplied by contracts made with parties far inside the limits of civilization, who probably never saw a hostile Indian, and who never even visited the Indian country. ”

“ The travel across this broad stretch of Indian territory was in the main confined to a very few well defined pathways through an open, unprotected country on which the strength of a traveling outfit could be fairly estimated by the enemy concealed in the many hiding places in ravines intersecting the prairie, so that freighter and emigrant were exposed to unexpected forays at any moment, and especially when the relations with the Indians were not entirely friendly. ”

“ The soldiers who have been to the Great War tell us much about England, France, and Germany; but the country where the Indians still have their hunting grounds is larger than all of these countries put together. The region is covered with evergreen forests, a great silent land of deep snow and trees and cold. It is too cold and rocky for the white man to make farms, so he has not cut down the trees. There are no cities nor houses, nothing but forests where the Indian hunts game and lives in his tent as he has always lived. ”

“ The policy has been to collect the Indians as rapidly as possible on reservations, and as far as practicable within what is known as the Indian Territory, and to teach them the arts of civilization and self-support. Where found off their reservations, and endangering the peace and safety of the whites, they have been punished, and will continue to be for like offenses. ”

“ Indians may go to, but never from that country. Originally intended as an exclusive refuge for the American Indian, where he might learn the ways of civilization and eventually become a part of the national life as an Indian State, the Indian Territory had degenerated into a general dumping-ground for every tribe that in its own home was an obstruction to the grand scheme of national upbuilding. ”

“ The dispersion, which must have been the effect of unlimited choice in lands—the mode of life pursued by those who depended upon the chase for subsistence—the gradual estrangement produced among the separate tribes, by the necessity of wide hunting-grounds—the vast expanse of territory at command—causes operating so long, as to produce a fixed and corresponding nature—are the sources, to which we may trace almost all the Indian's distinctive traits. ”

“ In the West, American traders poured into the land, and, freighted with fire-water, purchased their peltries and their horses, and impoverished the tribes. In the East, white men took possession of the soil and made for themselves homes, and as time went on steamboats were placed on the inland waters--surveyors passed through the territories--and the "speaking wires," as the Indian calls the telegraph, were erected. ”

“ The settlers, the rangers, the surveyors, went westward over the trails which he had blazed for them years before. Their enduring works are commemorated in the cities and farms which today lie along every ancient border line; but of their forerunner's hazardous Indian trade nothing remains. Let us therefore pay a moment's homage here to the trader, who first—to borrow a phrase from Indian speech—made white for peace the red trails of war. ”

“ The wave of our population has been from the east to the west. The Indian was found on the Atlantic seaboard, and thence to the Rocky mountains lived numerous distinct tribes, each speaking a language as incomprehensible to the other as was our language to any of them. As our settlements penetrated the interior, the border came in contact with some Indian tribe. The white and Indian must mingle together and jointly occupy the country, or one of them must abandon it. ”