Indian question

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The proper treatment of the Indian question requires that we deal with the issues arising out of the peculiar relations of the aboriginal tribes of the continent to the now dominant race, in much the same spirit—profoundly philanthropic at bottom, but practical, sceptical, and severe in the discussion of methods and in the maintenance of administrative discipline—with which all Christian nations, and especially the English-speaking, nations, have learned to meet the kindred difficulties of pauperism. ”

“ The Indian question is full of interest, and comes forward constantly to perplex our government, which regards them as its wards. Articles by the hundred have been written about the red man, his possibilities and capabilities set forth ”

“ 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. ”

“ Much, still, is in the way of experiment, from which may be derived many valuable principles and suggestions for the treatment of the Indian question on the larger scale which will be necessary in the future. ”

“ Were the Indians ten times as numerous, were their claims to consideration stronger by no matter how much, and were the importance to them of seclusion far more clear than it appears, these political philosophers would steadily oppose the scheme. ”

“ This alternative presents itself not as a question looming up in the distant future, to be solved by coming generations, but as a question involving the existence of the young generation of Indians now living. ”

“ In order to answer the third question, “Is their present treatment in accordance with the best British traditions, or with the principles of justice and morality, or with the principles of Christianity?” it will be necessary to enquire what their treatment is. I think it will be readily granted that the Indian is bitterly hated in the Colony. The man in the street hates him, curses him, spits upon him, and often pushes him off the footpath. ”

“ As has been stated, the issues of the experiments tried have been of every kind. To assertions that the Indian cannot be civilized, can be opposed instances of Indian communities which have attained a very considerable degree of advancement in all the arts of life. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Second: it is unfortunately true, that, when the Indian is, by the powerful attraction of a race which his savage breast never fails to recognize as superior, released from the control of the public [Pg 139] sentiment which he has been accustomed to obey, he submits himself by an almost irresistible tendency to the worst and not to the best influences of civilized society. ”

“ It is what we should have at the back of our minds whenever Indian questions are under consideration, and upon the clearness, accuracy, and intensity of it will depend our success in the management of India. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been said, and reiterated so frequently as to have obtained the familiarity of household words, that it is the doom of the Indian to disappear—to vanish like the morning dew before the advance of civilization—before those who belong by nature to a different, and by education and circumstances to a superior race; and melancholy is it to us—those doomed ones—that the history of this country, in respect to us, and its civilization, has furnished so much ground for the saying, and for giving credence to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would perhaps be impossible to find two peoples who are farther removed from each other in temperament and training—whose nature and antecedents are more irreconcilable at all points. While the Anglo-Indian is bold, frank and just, even to harshness, the Hindu is subtle, affable, practiced to dissimulation, with ready susceptibilities to temporize and to barter justice for expediency. ”

“ But aside from these erroneous views, and after making just allowances for his ignorance and moral depression, the Indian is a man of plain common sense judgment, acting from what he knows, and sees, and feels, of objects immediately before him, or palpable to his view. ”

“ As yet I am inclined to think that the idea of the Indians becoming what we call a civilised people seems quite hopeless; those who entertain such benevolent anticipations should come here, and behold the effect which three centuries of contact with the whites have produced on the nature and habits of the Indian. The benevolent theorists in England should come and see with their own eyes that there is a bar to the civilisation of the Indians, and the increase or even preservation of their numbers, which no power can overleap. ”

“ How shall the Indian cease to disturb us, and become a blessing to the nation?
There is really but one solution to the Indian problem, though many have been prominently attempted. We have tried to force the Indian. We have fought him. We have shut him in upon reservations. We have made a pretence of feeding and clothing him. We have tried our hand at civilization, have built school-houses, provided teachers, and gathered Indian children together, and taught them the rudiments of learning. ”

“ In discussing the savage character writers have been too prone to indulge in vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration, instead of the candid temper of true philosophy. They have not sufficiently considered the peculiar circumstances in which the Indians have been placed, and the peculiar principles under which they have been educated. No being acts more rigidly from rule than the Indian. His whole conduct is regulated according to some general maxims early implanted in his mind. ”

“ Self-contained though it be, and easily thought of as a geographical unit, we must not think of India as a racial, linguistic, or religious unit. We may much more correctly speak of the European race, language, or religion, than of the Indian. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For we are reminded that this assurance that the Indian cannot be civilized is not a prejudgment, not a bias against him from the first, not a resource for excusing, justifying, or comforting ourselves under the compunctions for our wrong treatment of the Indians. ”

“ It has come to be such an accepted thing in the history and fate of the Indian that he is to be always pushed on, always in advance of what is called the march of civilization, that to the average mind statements of these repeated removals come with no startling force, and suggest no vivid picture of details, only a sort of reassertion of an abstract general principle. ”

“ The policy here outlined is apt to be looked upon with disfavor by two classes of people: on the one hand, those who think that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” and who denounce every recognition of the Indian's rights and every desire to promote his advancement in civilization as sickly sentimentality ”

“ This view is equally erroneous with that which regards the Indian as a creature possessing the human form but divested of all other attributes of humanity, and whose traits of character, habits, modes of life, disposition, and savage customs disqualify him from the exercise of all rights and privileges, even those pertaining to life itself. ”

“ We may well expect to find not only variety and variance, but discordance, and wholly incongruous and inconsistent representations of Indians and Indian life, coming from such miscellaneous authorities. ”

“ I would encourage the Indians to cultivate them. Let them see how much it adds to their comfort, how it insures to their wives and children abundant subsistence; and then you win the Indian over to civilization; you charm him, and he becomes a civilized man. ”

“ What progress the Indian has made, therefore, toward civilization can be traced directly to his relations with the whites, and similarly the evil conditions of life among a great number of our Indians can be traced to the same cause. ”

“ When the Indian shall have learned to speak and write our language, to earn his own living by his own labor, to obey the law and aid in making and administering it, the Indian problem will be solved, and not until then. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under the circumstances, the question that I wish to put to you is: "Would you do nothing to avert it?" It is in your power to act if you will. The Indians are very easily satisfied. They abhor bloodshed. ”

“ Our palates are accustomed to the food which they have supplied to us from our very childhood, and hence whatever comes to us now from the thought-mines of India is generally put aside as merely curious or strange, whether in language, mythology, religion, or philosophy. But however foreign Indian thought may appear to us, it has filled an important place in the growth of the human race, and that growth is important, whether it took place on the borders of the Ilissos or on the shores of the Ganges. In India we still see, as it were, the last traces of the primordial surprise at this world. ”

“ Admitting the generally asserted and acknowledged fact that the Indian has so often, if not in all cases, so dismally disappointed the expectations of what he would or might be as the result of efforts made in his behalf under some processes and stages of civilization, the fact may help us to form more correct views of his actual place on the scale of humanity and of his natural endowments. ”

“ The friends of the severalty policy, on the other hand, I found to be mostly bright, active and energetic men, some of them full-blood Indians, who trust their own ability to sustain themselves, and are clear-headed enough to foresee what the ultimate fate of the Indian race must be. ”

“ If so, what inducement could have been placed before them, sufficiently powerful, to break down the barriers of nature, and bring men habitually indolent, to so herculean a task? The Indian, as we see him now, never works. He is the sovereign of the woods, and strides over his heritage with the step of a master, and the wild glance of one who disdains employment. ”

“ If the present volume shall, in any degree, contribute to awaken the public mind to a sense of the wrongs inflicted upon the Indians, and to arouse the Christian statesmen of this land, to the adoption of a more liberal, upright and benevolent course of policy towards them, something will have been gained to the cause of humanity and of national honor. ”