Indian problem

“ Whenever an Indian misconducts himself, or the greed or recklessness of white men provoke an Indian trouble, an outcry follows about the disgraceful remissness of the government, and it is at once proclaimed that we are as far as ever from the solution of the Indian problem.
No doubt the history of Indian management, under military as well as civil control, shows many instances of mistake, failure, and wrongdoing ”

“ The difficulties connected with what is called the “Indian problem” have been steadily growing from year to year, as the Western country formerly occupied as hunting grounds by Indians exclusively, is required for agricultural settlement and mining industry. In the same measure as white men and Indians more and more jostled one another their contact has been apt to result in collision. We are frequently told that the method followed by our Canadian neighbors in dealing with the Indians is much more successful than ours, and that we should shape our Indian policy after that model. ”

“ If hastily done, before the Indian knows its meaning, while yet he has little or no idea of tilling a farm and no conception of thrift, there is great danger that a reservation life in tribal relations may be exchanged for the pauperism of civilization instead of its independence and elevation.
The solution of the Indian problem depends very largely upon good administration. The personal fitness of agents and their adaptability to the peculiar duty of caring for their wards are of the utmost importance. ”

“ But while the employment of force for the prevention or repression of Indian troubles is of occasional necessity, and wise preparation should be made to that end, greater reliance must be placed on humane and civilizing agencies for the ultimate solution of what is called the Indian problem. It may be very difficult and require much patient effort to curb the unruly spirit of the savage Indian to the restraints of civilized life, but experience shows that it is not impossible. ”

“ To-day just treatment, education, religious training are rapidly overcoming the assumed ineradicable savageness of the Indian, while the breaking up of the tribal system promises before many years to do away with the political aggregation of the Indians, and distribute them among the other citizens of our country as members of the general body politic. Thus has the nineteenth century happily disposed of an awkward problem that threatened seriously the successful development of our nation a century ago. ”

“ However conscientious the government may be in its intention and endeavor to protect the rights of the Indians at all points, it is evident that the Indians will soon, in every part of the country, be interspersed with an aggressive force, constantly growing in volume and power, which will threaten to overwhelm them like a rising flood. ”

“ I wish now to consider some of the conditions which will retard this fusion, as well as certain other facts which tend to promote it.
The Indian phase of the problem, so far at least as the United States is concerned, has been practically disposed of in what has already been said. The absorption of the Indians will be delayed so long as the tribal relations continue, and so long as the Indians are treated as wards of the Government, instead of being given their rights once for all, and placed upon the footing of other citizens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is to be an annuity paid until the Indians become self-supporting. With this last exception, they become settlers like other people. It is the abandonment of the old and vicious policy, and provides, as that did not, for the civilization of the Indians, and the disappearance of the “Indian question.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may be truly said at this moment that the structure and principles of Indian society are but partially known, and that the American Indian himself is still an enigma among us. The question is still before us as a nation whether we will undertake the work of furnishing to the world a scientific exposition of Indian society, or leave it as it now appears, crude, unmeaning, unintelligible, a chaos of contradictions and puerile absurdities. ”

“ Surely the policy was not designed to perpetuate barbarism, but such has been its effect. The motives prompting these removals are too well known to be noticed by us. If the Indians were now in a fertile region of country, the difficulty would be less; they would not have to be removed again. But many of them are beyond the region of agriculture, where the chase is a necessity. So long as they have to subsist in this way civilization is almost out of the question. ”

“ I am profoundly convinced that a stubborn maintenance of the system of large Indian reservations must eventually result in the destruction of the red men, however faithfully the Government may endeavor to protect their rights. It is only a question of time. My reasons for this belief I have given above. What we can and should do is, in general terms, to fit the Indians, as much as possible, for the habits and occupations of civilized life, by work and education ”

“ There is precisely the same justification for the course of the Government in feeding saucy and mischievous Indians to repletion, while permitting more tractable and peaceful tribes to gather a bare subsistence by hard work, or what to an Indian is hard work. ”

“ It is in no small degree the lack of such a spirit in the conduct of Indian affairs, which has rendered the efforts and expenditures of our government for the advancement of the race so ineffectual in the past ”

“ The fact is, however, that this position 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. ”

“ They could not conquer India except by playing on the fears of some and the hopes of others, and by seeking and getting the help of Indians, both moral and material. The record is as black as it could be; but nothing succeeds like success, and all that is largely a forgotten page so far as the present generation{101} of Indians is concerned. Only one feels disposed to smile when one hears of Indian nationalists being charged in British-Indian courts with attempting to subvert “the government established by law.” ”

“ There is no reason to doubt that in most, if not all, of such cases, those who conducted Indian affairs on the part of the Government, not anticipating the rapid advance of settlement, sincerely believed in the possibility of maintaining those reservations intact for the Indians, and that, in this respect, while their intentions were honest, their foresight was at fault. ”

“ One tribe after another would be planted on a reservation millions of acres in extent and apparently far beyond the home of civilization, and almost in a twelvemonth the settler would be upon its border, demanding its broad acres. The reservations were altered, reduced, taken away altogether, at the pleasure of the government, with little regard to the rights or wishes of the Indian. Usually this brought about fighting, and it produced a state of permanent discontent that wrought harm for both settler and savage. The Indian grew daily more and more treacherous and constantly more cruel. ”

“ If they stand up against the progress of civilization and industry, they must be relentlessly crushed. The westward course of population is neither to be denied nor delayed for the sake of all the Indians that ever called this country their home. ”

“ He says, in speaking of this same subject, that “the current opinion of Indian character is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes which infest the frontiers, and hang on the skirts of settlements. These are too commonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its civilization. The proud independence which formed the main pillar of native virtue, has been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. ”

“ While we find cause of satisfaction and encouragement in the adoption of an Indian policy for the future which will rectify our errors and wrongs, we must not imagine that we are thus to relieve a most serious and perplexing duty of its difficulties and embarrassments. The Indian question will be a troublesome one to our Government and people so long as there are Indians. ”

“ Thus do we too often find the Indians on our frontiers to be the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes, who have lingered in the vicinity of the settlements and sunk into precarious and vagabond existence. Poverty, repining and hopeless poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes their spirits and blights every free and noble quality of their natures. ”

“ The great obstacle to its complete success is that no change has been made in the laws for the care of Indians. The Indian is left without the protection of law in person, or property, or life. He has no personal rights. He has no redress for wrongs inflicted by lawless violence. He may see his crops destroyed, his wife or child killed. His only redress is personal revenge. * * * In the Indian's wild state he has a rude government of chiefs and headmen, which is advisory in its character. ”

“ It is only explained, as thousands of other things in the history of our dealings with the Indians are only to be explained, by the habitual indifference, carelessness, and inattention with which questions relative to Indian affairs and legislation thereon are handled and disposed of, in whatever way seems easiest and shortest for the time being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rapacity of our people, for their peltries and their land, the feeble execution of laws made for their protection, and the loose morality which has governed our general intercourse with them, have wasted their numbers, debased their character, and tarnished the honor of that nation, which, from the very organization of its government, has claimed to be their benevolent protector.
The plan of removing the Indians beyond the limits of the United States is not new. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though social reform has been checked, it has not been altogether arrested, nor can it be arrested so long as British rule, by the mere fact of its existence, maintains the ascendency of Western ideals. Happily there are still plenty of educated Indians who realize that the liberation of Indian society from the trammels which are of its own making is much more urgent than its enfranchisement from an alien yoke. ”

“ If, then, we may assume that Indian civilization is not altogether impossible, let us inquire what should be the policy of the government towards the Indian tribes when they cease to be dangerous to our frontier population, and to oppose the progress of settlement, either by violence or by menace. ”

“ Sir, it is the violation of treaties, and the bad faith of the white man and his aggressive course, that cause the inquietude of the Indian, and we feel it very much in the section of country in which I live. There is a remedy, and that remedy must be applied, or the Indians exterminated, at an expense ten times beyond what would civilize, in half a century, every red man who walks upon the soil of America. ”

“ Here it needs only to be said that all the most hopeful interest of our present efforts centres upon the principle, adopted as an axiom, that the Indian must be rid of all his savage qualities and habits by being, even compulsorily, subjected to civilizing processes, before he can receive any real benefit from our religion or humanity. ”

“ We have, on other occasions, let the Indian severely alone just so soon as it was ascertained that his power for harm had ceased, and have left him to find his place in the social and industrial scale; to become fisherman, lumberman, herdsman, menial, beggar, or thief, according to aptitude or accident, or the wants of the community at large. True it is that the modes adopted, in fact, in dealing with particular tribes, have generally been due to chance or to the caprices of administration ”