Indian reserve

“ The evidence introduced at the trial was to the effect that this tract called the 'Indian Reserve' was occupied by the Indians, to the knowledge of witnesses, from 1845 to 1885, the Indians living at first in wigwams, and latterly in log houses, and about the time of Adsitt's attempted pre-emption the Indians had at least a half dozen houses on the reserve north of the canal; those located there being employed at fishing in the rapids, or in carrying people over the rapids, and selling their catch of fish to the post, villagers, and those passing through the canal in boats. ”

“ The story of San Pasqual Village is typical of all the Mission Indian rancherias. The agent's serious statement of the conditions there counted as nothing against the efforts of the Vociferous Few. Did ever the vote-seeking Uncle Sam let pass unheeded the clamor of his Chosen? Within a year the President revoked the order establishing the Indian reserve, and once more the gentle white man was at liberty to push the Indian further up into the canyons. ”

“ The disposition made of the great rectangular area bounded by the Alleghanies, the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the Gulf, was fairly startling. With fine disregard of the chartered claims of the seaboard colonies and of the rights of pioneers already settled on frontier farms, the whole was erected into an Indian reserve. No "loving subject" might purchase land or settle in the territory without special license; present residents should "forthwith remove themselves"; trade should be carried on only by permit and under close surveillance ”

“ So, too, when a railroad is built through a section of country, the same result follows. So, too, in respect of lands which have been reserved for the use of an Indian tribe, when the Indian title is extinguished, the same may be said. While such lands are held as reserve, population flows up to their boundaries, and is there stayed. It, of course, constantly grows more and more dense, so that when the reserve is vacated the lands have increased in value, and are always eagerly sought after. ”

“ Then, under the pressure of war necessities, the Government of India explored, as it had never done before, the whole field of India's natural resources and of the development of Indian industries. At the same time an opportunity arose for a group of Indian "merchant-venturers"—to use the term in its fine old Elizabethan sense—who had set themselves to give the lead to their countrymen, to show what Indian enterprise was capable of achieving. What it has already achieved deserves to be studied as the most pregnant illustration of what the future may hold in reserve. ”

“ The mineral lands are worth more to us than the Indians are"—this with a suggestive shrug—"and if the government don't remove them from the reserves, why, we'll have to do it ourselves. There's a great fuss been made about the whites going on the Indian reserves ”

“ The reserve is meant for the Indian alone, and he is allowed to till it and do what he pleases with it. The Government also gives him help in providing him with food. The Indians do, however, make a little by hunting, earning bounties on the slaying of harmful wild beasts, or selling venison and deer's horns to white settlers. Then, again, in certain districts they help to gather strawberries in the middle of the summer, and in other districts pick hops towards the autumn, or fall, as the Canadians call that season. ”

“ The Indians in the reserve territories are in part maintained by the Government, many of them, however, earning their living by shooting and fishing, and also by agriculture. The progress which they have made in farming is shown by the fact that they had under cultivation in 1882 more than 205,000 acres of land, as against 157,000 in India. Moreover, the total Indian population, exclusive of the Indians who are citizens of the United States and of those in Alaska, had increased during the same interval by more than 5,000. ”

“ Mary's, and running back from the river so as to include 16 square miles of land; but by the third article of the treaty it was provided that the 'United States will secure to the Indians a perpetual right of fishing at the falls of St. Mary's, and also a place of encampment upon the tract hereby ceded, convenient to the fishing grounds, which place shall not interfere with the defenses of any military work which may be erected, nor with any private rights.' It is not necessary to determine how the reservation of the particular tract subsequently known as the 'Indian Reserve' came to be made. ”

“ The system of dealing with the Indian tribes which has gradually grown up, and which has worked so far well that no Indian wars have, since the British settlement, devastated Canada, may be said to consist in buying up the native claims, founded on their rights of hunting through the territories required by the settlers, by yearly grants of money or of goods to each chief and family, and by the allotment of tracts of country termed Indian reserves. ”

“ Maybe fifty or sixty prospectors, all told, have got over the lines, dug a few holes and hurt nobody. But I suppose the Indians always stay where they ought to! I guess not. Some of them are off their reserves half the time, and they go off to murder and kill. Do they ever get punished for that? Not much, except when folks do it on their own account. But let a white man get found on the Indian reserves and there's a great howl. I want a rule that will work both ways, and I don't give much for a government that isn't able to protect me on the Indian reserves the same as anywhere else. ”

“ I do not advocate the lending out in India of any part of this reserve, or of the Cash Balances, at the expense of the stability of the Gold Standard, or until adequate measures can be taken in other ways to ensure this. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Similar complications may arise at any time where the pressure of advancing enterprise upon Indian reservations is very great, and sustained by a numerous and rapidly increasing population, but especially where valuable mineral deposits have been discovered or their discovery is in prospect. There is nothing more dangerous to an Indian reservation than a rich mine. ”

“ The reservations assigned to tribes and bands are generally proportioned to the needs of the Indians in a roving state, with hunting and fishing as their chief means of subsistence. As the Indians change to agriculture, the effect is to contract the limits of actual occupation, rendering portions available for cession or sale, which with proper management may be so disposed of, without impairing the integrity of the reservation system, as to realize for nearly every tribe and band a fund equal, per capita, to that of many of the civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. ”

“ But understand me, once the reserve is set aside, it could not be sold unless with the consent of the Queen and the Indians; as long as the Indians wish, it will stand there for their good; no one can take their homes. ”

“ But as the endeavors of the Government have not always in similar cases had the same success in the past, they may not always be equally successful in the future, and there is now scarcely a single Indian reservation in the country that will not soon be exposed to the same chances. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to the Indians, as well as to the country generally, that a policy be adopted which will secure to them and their descendants the safe possession of such tracts of land as they can cultivate, and a fair compensation for the rest ”

“ 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. ”

“ The difficulties of access to the mines will soon be ameliorated, as small steamers are to be put on the river, to ply as far up as the rapids will permit them; but as to the Indian difficulties, it is much to be feared they will increase until a military force is sent into the country to overawe them. ”

“ These reserves are to be determined, not by a fixed extent of acreage, but by the requirements and habits of each nation, and they will be increased or diminished according to the variations of the Indian population. The different modes of life of the tribes of the interior who possess horses and cattle, and those on the seacoast who live by fishing, afford a reason for diverging from the plan in force in the older provinces of Canada, and for adopting a more elastic rule in dealing with their several claims. ”

“ Then, as the white men are coming in and settling in the country, and as the Queen wishes the Indians to have lands of their own, we will give one square mile, or 640 acres, to each family of five; but there will be no compulsion to force Indians to go into a reserve. He who does not wish to go into a band can get 160 acres of land for himself, and the same for each member of his family. These reserves are holdings you can select when you please, subject to the approval of the Government, for you might select lands which might interfere with the rights or lands of settlers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lands in the reservation are very fertile; and the climate admits of a widely varied growth of crops. More produce being raised than is necessary for the subsistence of the Indians, the proceeds derived from the sale of the surplus are used in purchasing stock and work-animals, and for the further improvement of the reservation. Several of the Indians are engaged in cultivating gardens, while others work as many as twenty-five or thirty acres on their own account. ”

“ Of the 2,800 Nez Percés now living, nearly half located on the Kamiah and Lapwai reservations in northern Idaho, and a few others settled on lands outside the reserve, are prosperous farmers and stock-growers. The rest are 'non-treaties,' who, with other non-treaty Indians in that region, make every exertion to induce the reservation Indians to lease their farms and join them in their annual hunting and root-gathering expeditions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I regard the Canadian system of allotting reserves to one or more bands together, in the localities in which they have had the habit of living, as far preferable to the American system of placing whole tribes, in large reserves, which eventually become the object of cupidity to the whites, and the breaking up of which, has so often led to Indian wars and great discontent even if warfare did not result. ”

“ The land, cultivated by the most primitive of means—for the Indian will never accept any innovation, however practical and excellent—is generally very limited in extent, unless the neighbourhood of a city of a mine calls for a greater production than usual. Moreover, thousands of Indians are taken away from' their fields by all manner of tasks—by the necessity of transporting merchandise, provisions, machinery, etc., on the backs of mules, asses, llamas and even men, in countries innocent of other means of transport, to the mines and factories established in barren and uncultivated regions. ”

“ Besides, the fact of the reserves being scattered throughout the territories, will enable the Indians to obtain markets among the white settlers, for any surplus produce they may eventually have to dispose of. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rapid inflow of population to the fertile lands, together with the rush of prospectors to newly discovered supplies of gold and silver, caused increasing demands from the Indians for protection, and from the whites for the extinguishment of Indian land titles. ”

“ The space which is by common agreement thought both equitable and practically expedient to assign to each Indian for fixed occupancy and improvement by his own forced or voluntary labor, is one hundred and sixty acres, — leaving the remaining undivided part of each Reservation as a common stock for investment for the whole tribe. If this scheme should take effect, with assured and recorded legal guarantees, it would prove the first real recognition ever made of land-tenure for our aborigines. ”