Indian reservation

“ The condition of these Indians, except those upon the White Earth reservation, has been but little changed during the past year from that of several years preceding. Great difficulty is still experienced in inducing the Indians to remain permanently upon their reservations. A roving life is still preferred by many, their old haunts presenting more attractions for them than new homes with the unavoidable necessity of labor for subsistence. Yet no inconsiderable number are already evidencing by their efforts, as well as by their professions, a new spirit of industry and enterprise. ”

“ The truth is that we impose treaties upon the Indians, and observe them just so far as suits our own pleasure, and no farther. When the white population presses closely upon an Indian reservation, as now upon that of the Utes in Colorado, the Indians are made to give way. Of course the advance of civilization must not be restrained. ”

“ The Indians of the country are considered as the wards of the nation, and whenever the United States set apart any land of their own as an Indian reservation, whether within a state or territory, they have full authority to pass such laws and authorize such measures as may be necessary to give to these people full protection in their persons and property, and to punish all offenses committed against them or by them within such reservations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are still about 100,000,000 acres of choice land in Indian reservations, and as a consequence of the pressure upon this resource and also because of the unwisdom of the old reservation system, the policy has now been adopted of dividing these lands among the Indians in individual ownership, under careful safeguards, and of assimilating the Indians to the rest of the population. ”

“ But considering the frequency, length and safety of 'tirades' in all parts of America, it seems unjust not to permit Indians to deliver them. However, they do come under the head of 'spontaneous productions of the soil;' and an Indian on a reservation is invested with no such proprietorship in anything which comes under that head. ”

“ Under the best management which we have ever had in the Indian Bureau—let us say under its present management—a reservation containing tame or peaceable Indians is only a pauper asylum and prison combined, a nuisance to the respectable farmers, whom it deprives of useful and necessary laborers, an injury to the morals of the community in whose midst it is placed, an injury to the Indian, whom it demoralizes, and a benefit only to the members of the Indian ring. ”

“ Many reservations have been abolished, and the Indians allotted land in severalty. If the Indians held such lands as white men hold their farms, the whole Indian area today would be as large as formerly, even though reservation lines are abolished. ”

“ I know that there are many persons within reach of this reservation, and other reservations, who suppose that the Indians will be removed, and they are waiting for places on them. These men will be told by their candidates for Congress that they will get the Indians removed. If they should ever succeed, and I do not believe they ever will, it will be with the certainty that the Indians will get the full value of their lands, and I believe the man who waits here to get a pre-emption claim on this land will die a poor man, still waiting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is doubtless true that some tribes could still remain together as social, even after being dissolved as legal, communities; but the fate we have indicated would certainly befall by far the greater part of the Indians of the plains, were the reservation system broken up in their present social and industrial condition. ”

“ As no funds are at the disposal of the department with which to make the necessary improvements, and to provide temporary subsistence for Indians removed, the work has not yet been fairly commenced. The Indians who should be collected upon this reservation are now a constant source of annoyance to the white settlers. They hang about the settlements and military posts, begging and stealing; and, unless some prompt measures be taken to bring them under the care and control of an agent of the government, serious trouble may result at any time. ”

“ This Indian Agent is only too anxious to fill up his wasting ranks of Indians. They are dying every day. And if they all should die, sooner or later the fact may be known at Washington, and in the course of a few years the Reservation and office would be abolished together. And then each additional Indian contributes greatly to the Agent's income, for each Indian must be fed and clothed—or at least, the Agent is permitted to draw clothing, blankets and food for every Indian brought upon the Reservation. ”

“ There were nearly nine thousand Indians on that one Reservation. They had been subdued by the Californian troops after great exertions, and the Territory rendered comparatively free from those terrible Indian raids that for so many years had laid it waste from one end to the other; that so long as those raids continued the industry of the people would be suppressed and crushed out, and that the best guaranty which could be given the inhabitants would be to retain the savages on the Reservation. ”

“ The act of January 14, 1889 (25 U.S. Statutes at Large, p. 642) , evidently contemplated the voluntary removal of the body of all these bands of Indians to the White Earth and Red Lake reservations; but a proviso in section 3 of the act authorized any Indian to take his allotment upon the reservation where he now resides. The commissioners report that quite a general desire was expressed by the Indians to avail themselves of this option. ”

“ The Indians' friends have welcomed with one accord the breaking up of the reservation system, the allotment of lands in severalty, and the curtailment of rations—but with these steps in advance comes the necessity for the sale of the surplus Indian lands. ”

“ The reservation-system has reduced many of the Indian tribes to a state of economic dependence, but it has also helped to preserve their cultural autonomy. In most cases the isolated communities on the reservations are distinctly Indian communities. ”

“ 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 ”

“ And, too, when the Indian thinks his right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" extends beyond the confines of his reservation into his old hunting-grounds, the story shifts to the War Department, and Generals, Colonels, and Majors take a hand at the record. ”

“ In theory, most of the Indian reservations are still regarded as subject principalities, and the Indians confined within their boundaries are almost entirely cut off from the economic, social, and political life of the neighbouring white communities. ”

“ Certain Indian tribes now own certain Indian reservations and the Indian Territory, and this right of property ought to be most sacredly guarded. But it does not, therefore, follow that these Indians, in their present state, ought to control the present use of this property. They may need a long training before they are wise enough to manage rightfully what is nevertheless rightfully their own. ”

“ The fact that Indians are sometimes taxed like other citizens does not even remotely indicate that Congress has weakened in any way its policy to preserve 'tribal lands embraced within Indian reservations.' Moreover, cases dealing with individuals who are not Indians are not applicable to tribal reservations. ”

“ Despite certain undesirable features of Indian Reservations, the general conclusion is that for a number of tribes survival has been considerably greater today than would have been the case if the Indians had had to shift for themselves in competition with the whites. ”

“ The residue of the tribes who have recently ceded their lands should, therefore, be considered (subject, in a few cases, to a contraction of limits) as permanently fixed. Already the white population is occupying the lands between and adjacent to the Indian reservations, and even going west of and beyond them; and at no distant day all the country immediately to the west of the reserves, which is worth occupying, would have been taken up. ”

“ And just coincident with the pressure of these urgent reasons conflicting with the theory and the working of Indian reservations, philanthropical and economical considerations, having in view simply the best good if not the preservation from extinction of the natives themselves, come in to indicate the necessity of a radical change of policy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus it happened that the Indians, who had, according to generally accepted views as to the rights acquired by long-continued occupancy and cultivation, the best right of all Indians to the land of their ancestors, were to receive from the Government not even the color of recognition. In all the great book of Indian treaties, there is not one treaty or agreement with the Mission Indians. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a preliminary step to the organization of such a Territory, it will be necessary to confine the Indians now resident therein to farms of proper size, which should be secured to them in fee; the residue to be used for the settlement of other friendly Indians. Efforts will be made in the immediate future to induce the removal of as many peaceably disposed Indians to the Indian Territory as can be settled properly without disturbing the harmony of those already there. ”

“ Nor are the interests of the Indians any better served by the existing order. Many tribes, even were they disposed to agriculture, would not find suitable land within the limits assigned to them. Others are in a position to be incessantly disturbed and harassed by the whites. Others still, while they stand across the path of settlement, are themselves, by ill-considered treaty provisions, cut off from access to hunting-grounds, to fishing privileges, or to mountains abounding in natural roots and berries, which would be of the greatest value to them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”