YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

^Jjue Ittibfian

-IN-

RELATION TO THE WHITE POPULATION
 OF THE 
UNITED STATES

 BY 
FAYETTE AVERY McKENZIE

 T H E S I S 
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
COLUMBUS, OHIO
1908

COPYHIGHT 1908
BY
FAYETTE AVBEY MCKKNZIE

PRESS OF THE SHEPPARD PTQ. L PUB. CO., COLUMBUS, O.

LET US TREAT WITH THE UTMOST KINDNESS AND THE MOST PER
FECT JUSTICE THE ABORIGINES WHOM PROVIDENCE HAS COMMIT
TED TO OUR GUARDIANSHIP. LET US CONFER UPON THEM, IF WE
CAN, THE INESTIMABLE BLESSINGS OF CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILI
ZATION; AND THEN, IF THEY MUST SINK BENEATH THE PROGRESS
IVE WAVE, WE ARE FREE FROM ALL REPROACH, AND STAND AC
QUITTED IN THE SIGHT OF GOD AND MAN." HENRY CLAY
On tbe Memorial to Congress to aid tbe Cherokee to migrate to
Indian Territory.

DEDICATED TO THE SACRED MEMORY OF
HARRIET AND STUART

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE
Chapter I. Historical Review 1.
Chapter II. Indian Status: Past and Present.
Policy for the Future. 19.
Chapter III. Results of Citizenship. 37.
Chapter IV. Trust Funds . 47.
Chapter V. Education: Kinds of Schools. 51.
Chapter VI. Educational Policy. 68.
Chapter VII. Results of the Non-Reservation School 82.
Chapter VIII. Voluntary Agencies. 88.
Chapter IX. Mission and Settlement Work. 95.
Chapter X. The Problem 110.

The Indian
in Relation to the White Population
ot the United States

CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL REVIEW.

The discovery of a race problem. Missionary efforts, —
Catholic and Protestant. Efforts of the State. Eliot Tracts. New
England Company. Colonial allotments, reservations. First In
dian treaty of the United States. Colleges for Indian education.
Benevolence of the national policy. Annuities. Early desire to
separate the races. Jefferson. Isaac McCoy. Calhoun. Law of
1830. Official optimism. Act of 1834. Enormous war expenses.
Pectce policy. Board of Indian Commissioners. Division of the
Indian country among the religious denominations. Sectarian
recrimincttions. Walker's criticism of the Peace Policy. Situation
in 1874. The discovery of America was the creation of a race prob
lem. The problem involved the widest range of social phe
nomena, and contained the certainty of a conflict of principles
as well as of races. Material forces and spiritual forces have
seemed ofttimes arrayed against one another; the aspiration
of the Monk and the greed of the adventurer crossed the
Atlantic in the three caravels of 1492, and took joint posses
sion of the continent. Abstract brotherly love and concrete
hatred have both planted their banners on the borders of
race prejudices. Right and wrong seem to have been waging
war against one another for nearly half a thousand years. The
philanthropist is filled at once with admiration for noble
righteousness and with intense horror over brutal wicked
ness. To the student, however, the situation is as but one in
the long series since time began, but one that is of especial
value in the illustration of social forces, because of the com
parative fullness of the information concerning it, and of even
more value because of its bearing upon the policies and fate
of our nation in the immediate future. The sociologist studies

2 THE INDIAN
the story with the view of ascertaining the forces that actually
do operate in human society, particularly in a heterogeneous
society. Volumes have been written and volumes more could be
written, giving the details of the contact of the Europeans
and the Americans, north and south, east and west. It would
be impossible to cite the many separate incidents. Never
theless it will be interesting to note significant facts and
statements here and there as we read the story of conquest
and subjection. Much will have to be assumed; it is beyond
the scope of this treatise to enlarge upon the injustices which
have inured in the past to the apparent advantage of the white
man and to the disadvantage of the red man.
We shall find it more profitable, at least more interesting,
to turn to the efforts made by individuals and government
for the control and for the improvement and transformation
of the primitive man.
The relations of the several races had elements of trouble
from the very beginning. The Indians told Sir William John
son that they believed soon "they should not be able to hunt
a bear into a hole in a tree, but some Englishman would claim
a right to the property of it, as being his tree." (i) The
French seem to have been better adapted to harmonious rela
tions with the natives. "There is a peculiar elasticity in the
French character, and we stop not to inquire whether it be
feeling or philosophy, by which a Frenchman accommodates
himself to any situation in which he may be placed. Upon
the Seine and upon the St. Lawrence, if not equally pleased,
he is equally pleasant ; and during two centuries, in the depths
of the American forests, he has associated with their rude
tenants, and, as he could not elevate them to his own standard,
he has descended to theirs. A mutual and permanent attach
ment has been the result of this intercourse, and to this day,
the period of French domination is the era of all that is
happy in Indian reminiscence." (2)
The Catholic Church began their missionary work with
that indefatigable zeal which has characterized them to this
day. But it was not the church alone which had philanthropic
(1) Wynne: History of the British Empire in America, Vol. I, pg. 188.
(2) Cass: Remarks on the Policy and Practice of the U. S. and Great Britain
in their Treatment of the Indians. North American Review, April, 1887. Also pub
lished by F. T. Gray, Boston, 18S7.

HISTORICAL REVIEW 3
jind missionary purposes. The royal charter for establishing
the Massachusetts Colony declared that —
"To win an'J incite the natives of the country to the knowledge
and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind and the
Christian faith, in our royal intention and the adventurers' free pro
fession, is the principal end of the Plantation." The Colonial seal re
presented an Indian with a label in his mouth, inscribed, "Come over
and help us."
So, too, in the charters to the companies to colonize Vir
ginia, we find emphasized :
"The furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the provi
dence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of his divine
majesty, in propagating the Christian religion to such people, as yet
live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and
worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages,
living in those parts, to human civility, and to a settled and quiet
government." (1).
The enthusiasm with which that object was pursued
by the Protestants in New England can be illustrated by no
better means that the titles of the "Eliot Tracts." (2)
The first (1643) of the eleven "Eliot Tracts" was entitled,
"New England's First Fruits in respect,
f Conversion of some ]
First of the -{ Conviction of divers }¦ of the Indians."
[ Preparation of sundry J
The second (1647), "The Day breaking if not the Sun rising of
the Gospel with the Indians in New England."
The Third (1648), "The clear Sunshine of the Gospel breaking
forth upon the Indians of New England." ,
The Fourth (1649), "The glorious progress of the Gospel
amongst the Indians in New England."
The eighth, 1655, "A late and further manifestation of the pro
gress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England: declaring
their constant love and zeal to the truth, with a re.adiness to give
account of their faith and hope as of their desires in Church com
munion to be partakers of the ordinances of Christ."
It was not until 1648 that the first act for encouraging
the propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians was passed
by the general court of Massachusetts, and the elders of the
churches were recommended to consider means for that pur
pose. In October of that year Eliot preached the first Chris
tian sermon to natives in their native tongue, from the text,
"Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy,
(1) Brown: Genesis of the tl. S., Vol. I, p. 52. "Letters Patent to Sir Thomas
Gates Sir George Somers and others, for two several colonies and plantations to be
made in Virginia and other parts and territories of America. Dated April 10, 1606.
(2) A Sketch of the Origin and Recent History of the New England Company
by the Senior Member of the Company. Spottiswood & Co., London, 1884.

4 THE INDIAN
son of man, and say to the wind. Thus saith the Lord God;
come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these
slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded
me, and the breath came into them and they lived, and stood
up upon their feet, an exceeding great army." But not until
1660 did he baptize any.
July 27, 1649, Cromwell's Long Parliament passed an
Act or Ordinance, entitled, "A Corporation for the Promoting
and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England,"
which corporation, in substance, continues to this day, though
the result of the Revolutionary War compelled it to transfer
its activities to Canada. It aided in the support of the May-
hew family, among others, for one hundred and fifty years.
Thomas Mayhew preached for fifteen years, and after his
death by shipwreck, his father took up the work for twenty-
three years, although he started at seventy years of age.
Equal enthusiasm and hopefulness was manifested by
Roger Williams, who wrote in 1654, "It cannot be hid how
all England and other nations ring with the glorious conver
sion of the Indians of New England." (i)
The Colonists (2) did not confine themselves to religious
propaganda in their treatment of the Indian. Legal rights,
land tenure, and education, were as much a part of their sys
tem as they are of ours today.
In 1656 the Virginia assembly enacted that any lands
possessed by the Indians and reserved to them by any act of
Assembly, should not be alienable, because of the consequent
necessity to make new allotments of lands and possessions.
This was not, however, to preclude any alienation made
through bargain or sale and with the assent of the Assembly.
The Commissioners of the United Colonies in 1658 agreed to
a system for setting aside lands for the exclusive use of the
Indians. Plymouth Colony, in 1685, granted lands to the
"South Sea Indians," which lands were never to be alienated
or sold without the consent of all the tribe.
Massachusetts Bay Colony acted only through John Eliot.
Townships were set aside for the "Praying Indians," for it
was thought that thus all differences in future times with re
gard to the proprietorship of land between the EngHsh and
(1) Plymouth Colony Records, X, 439.
(2) English Institutions and the American Indian, by James Alton James Ph.
D. Johns Hopkins Press, 1894.

HISTORICAL REVIEW 5
the Indians would be removed, and also that the Indian by
this policy would have a definite tract of land which could
not be sold, to render him destitute and discontented.
Massachusetts Bay, however, went further, and as early
as 1746 appointed land committees of three persons in charge
of the communal lands, to make allotments in severalty to in
dividual Indians. (2)
Connecticut by 1680 had a well-developed reservation
system. The allotments to the tribes were recorded and they
duly descended to the proper heirs. To secure these rights,
fines of treble the purchase price were laid upon white buyers
of these Indian lands. By 1683 the state had begun to
pauperize the red man by the granting of annuities. Com
mittees were appointed to assign to the Pequots a tract of
land to be cultivated by them. This failing, certain unim
proved lands were to be assigned to them. Moreover a law
required every town to provide for the maintenance of its own
Indians. There were many forms of self-government on these
reservations. The colonial governments not only took this paternal
and optimistic attitude toward the Indians, but the new federa
tion in the treaty with the Delawares in 1778 seems to have
been actuated by the same motives and ideas. It is of more
than curious interest to read the sixth article of this national
treaty (i) with the Aborigines:
"The United States do engage to guarantee to the aforesaid nation
of Delawares, and their heirs, all their territorial rights in the fullest
and most ample manner, as it hath been bounded by former treaties,
as long as the said Delaware nation shall abide by, and hold fast the
chain of our friendship now entered into. And it is further agreed
on between the contracting parties, should it for the future be found
conducive for the mutual interest of both parties, to invite any other
tribes who have been friends to the interests of the United States, to
join the present confederation, and have a representation in Congress."
The treaty (2) with the Cherokee in 1785, article XII.
provided. "That the Indians may have full confidence in the justice of the
United States, respecting their interests, they shall have the right to
send a deputy of their choice, whenever they think fit, to Congress."
In education the colonists were fully abreast with the
aspirations of the present time. The Jamestown colonists (i)
2) Eng. Inst, and Amer. Indian. James, p. 21.
(1) Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties, Vol. II, p. 4.
(2) Laws and Treaties, Vol. II, page 10.
(11 Bruce: Economic History of Virginia.

6 THE INDIAN
set aside ten thousand acres for the founding of an Indian
university. William and Mary College (1691) admitted In
dian youth. Between 1700 and 1776, from eight to ten Indians
were educated at the college. Harvard College received its
charter from the Commissioners of the United Colonies in
1650: "For all accommodation of buildings and all other necessary provi
sions that may conduce to the education of ye EngHsh and Indian
youth of this country in knowledge and godlyness, it is therefore
ordered and enacted, etc." In compliance with this article, the Mass
achusetts commissioners were to build, by means of certain funds
sent from England, "one Intyre Rome att the College for the con-
veniencye of Indian youthes to bee trained up there according to the
advise Received this yeare from the Corporation in England."
Dartmouth took its start as Moore's Charity School for
Indians. The money necessary to institute the college was
raised in large part by Sampson Occum, a Christianized In
dian, who made a preaching tour in England for the purpose.
It may be of interest to note that there are in 1907 two Indians
at Dartmouth. Four others have spent longer or shorter
periods there within the last ten years.
The results of these educational endeavors were not large.
Dartmouth was soon given up to the whites. Only one
Indian graduate is on record at Harvard. A letter of 1729
concerning the Indians of William and Mary College runs
as follows :
"They have been taught to read and write and have been care
fully instructed in the Principles of the Christian religion, til they
came to be men. Yet after they returned home, instead of civilizing
and converting the rest, they have immediately relapsed into Infi
delity and barbarism themselves * * * Besides, as they unhappily
forget all the good they learn and remember the 111, they are apt to
be more vicious and disorderly than the rest of their Countrymen."
(2). Critics were not wanting even in those days, impartial and
otherwise. And when we come down to the early nineteenth
century it is not strange to find that the sixty-first number
of the London Quarterly Review attacked the American gov
ernment severely for its Indian policy.
"If the mode of warfare of the Indians was ferocious, that of the
enemy with which we had to contend (the Americans) was equally
so * * * We afiirm without fear of contradiction or of error, that
there is not to be found, on the face of the globe, a race of men, so
(2) James Eng. Inst. pp. 65-56.

HISTORICAL REVIEW 7
utterly abandoned to vice and crime — so devoid of all fear of God
and regard towards men, as are the outsettlers of Kentucky, Ohio,
and the other back states." Referring to the statements in Buchanan's
Sketches, this article maintained that, "By the items of this formal
account, it appears that to the year 1820, above 190 millions of acres
had been purchased from the Indians, for which they had received
in annuities something more than two millions and a half of dollars!
while the profits of the republican government * * * amounted to
above $213,000,000."
Cass, on the other hand, in his article in the North
American Review previously quoted, replied that:
"Since the establishment of their independence, the U. S. have
adopted the system of acquiring the aboriginal title by peaceable pur
chase, but they have adopted it with an important change, consola
tory to all who look with sympathy upon the falling race. The plan
of permanent annuities guarantees to the Indians a never failing
resource against want, and its beneficial effects are apparent in the
improved condition of the Wyandots, the Shawnees, and the Miamis.
But one instance in the history of the U. S. can be found, where they
have acquired any title to the unappropriated country by force,
and that was at the termination of the wanton and unprovoked hostil
ities of the Creeks."
Previous to the Revolution the British government was
responsible for the policy toward the Indians. Its orders were
executed by its own officers and during a part of this period,
the crown appointed a superintendent of Indian affairs for the
northern, and another for the southern department. But a
permanent system of annuities was never a part of the British
system. That was introduced by the American government
under the treaty of General Wayne in 1795 (i), "a treaty to
which no parallel can be found in history." The Indians after
their long, bloody war against the whites and after their final
defeat were granted the same terms offered long before.
"Many important advantages were secured to them and per
petual annuities were guaranteed to each tribe."
The interests of the red man commanded the attention of
the presidents from the organization of the Union, and were
discussed in nearly every annual message, certainly for the
first quarter century of the nation's history. Jefferson (2)
proposed in his drafted constitutional amendment at the time
of the Louisiana purchase that all the land west of the Mis
sissippi, east of the Rocky mountains, and north of the thirty-
second parallel of latitude, should be left to the Indians, who
(1) Laws and Treaties, Vol. II, pp. 39-45.
(2) Works, VIII, 241-249.

8 THE INDIAN
should be gradually removed thither. A clause of the
Louisiana territorial act of 1804 reflects in some degree the
idea of Jefferson in this regard. (3)
This constant idea of the separation of the races, some
times advocated in the interests of the white man, and some
times to prevent the demoralization of the red man, found
definite expression in the writings of the Rev. Isaac Mc
Coy. (4). Mr. McCoy (5) was a missionary among the
Miamis of Indiana from 1817 to 1820. He worked among the
Pottawatomies in Michigan from 1820, and among the Otta-
was on the Grand river from 1826. He early conceived the
idea of isolating the Indians. In 1824 he visited Washington
and made to Calhoun his proposition for the removal of the
eastern tribes. In 1828 the government made an appro
priation for the exploration necessary to the carrying out of
this scheme. Mr. McCoy himself was sent out several times
between that date and 1837 as one of the commissioners ap
pointed for the purpose.
Calhoun, in his report of 1825 (i), recommended that the-
Indians be given a perpetual property right in a tract west
of the Mississippi. He located each tribe so as to make the
whole body of Indians, as has been intimated, a continuous
and permanent barrier, from Lake Michigan south, to the
growth of the free states. He said:
"There ought to be the strongest and most solemn assurance that
the country given them should be theirs, as a permanent home for
themselves and their posterity, without being 'disturbed by the en
croachments of our citizens. To such assurance, if there should be
added a system by which the government, without destroying their
independence, would gradually unite the several tribes under a simple,
but enlightened system of government and laws, formed on the prin
ciples of our own, and to which, as their own people would partake
in it, they would, under the influence of the contemplated improve
ment, at no distant day, become prepared, the arrangements which
have been proposed, would prove to the Indians and their posterity
a permanent blessing * '''* Should such principles be established'
by Congress, and the President be vested with suitable authority
* * * and suitable provision be made to meet the expense, great
confidence is felt, that a basis of a system might be laid, which, in a
few years, would entirely efiect the object in view, to the mutual
benefit of the government and the Indians."
However little was actually done to provide a place in
(3) U. S. Statutes at Large, pp. 283-290.
(4) "Practicability of Indian Reform and Their Colonization," 1827 and 1829.
To be found in the -.ansas State Historical Society Library.
(5) "Indian Reservations in Kansas and the Extinguishment of Their Title" — a.
thesis prepared for the University of Kansas, 1902, by Miss Anna Eloise Abel.
(1) Gales and Seaton's Register, 1, Appendix, pp. 67-69.

HISTORICAL REVIEW 9
the west for the Indians, there was no cessation in the effort
to remove them from the east. John Quincy Adams in his
attempts to defend the Indians in the South could not cope
with Governor Troup and finally advocated their removal as
an inevitable thing. The process had already begun. Small
bodies of Indians had emigrated under the direction of the
treaty making power. In pursuance of its vague policy the
government in 1825 (i) ,acting through Governor Clark of
Missouri, entered into treaties with the Kansas and Osage
Indians, by which an immense territory was ceded to the
United States. The United States on its part set aside
definite territories for the use of the Indians, and promised
them annual payments in money or goods. This was a very
definite step in the creation of the reservation and annuity
systems. In 1830 a law (2) legalized removal and prepared for the
organization of an Indian country west of the Mississippi.
It seems to have been the hope of certain men that this would
result in the creation of an Indian State A small federal
reserve was laid out in Kansas but its occupants were soon
obliged to "move on."
The necessity for more efficient efforts toward the
civilizing of the native tribes led to the creation of "a New
Society for the Benefit of Indians," organized in the City of
Washington, February 5, 1822. (i)
This was called, "the American Society for promoting the
civilization and general improvement of the Indian tribes
within the United States."
Although the writer has found no report of the action
taken by this society, nevertheless as early as 1824 the .Com
mittee on Indian Affairs reported to the House of Repre
sentatives that:
"It requires but little research to convince every candid mind
that the prospect of civilizing our Indians was never so promising as
at this time. Never were means for the accomplishment of this
object so judiciously devised and so faithfully applied, as provided in
the above act (making provision for the civilization of the Indian
tribes adjoining the frorjtier settlements, passed on the 3rd of March,
1819,) and the auxiliary aids which it has encouraged. It is believed to
be an essential part of any plan for Indian civilization, that, with the
rudiments of education, the males should be taught the arts of
husbandry and the females to perform those domestic duties which
(1) Laws and Treaties, Vol. II, pp. 217-225.
(2) United States Statutes at Large, pp. 411-412.
(1) See pamphlet, "A New Society for the Benefit of Indians."

10

THE INDIAN

peculiarly belong to their station in civilized life. * * * These are
combined in the exertions now making, and from the good which has
been done, the most pleasing anticipations of success are confidently
cherished. * * * Nq one will be bold enough to denounce him
as a visionary enthusiast, who under such auspices, will look with
great confidence to the entire accomplishment of the object."
In 1826 the principal clerk of the office of Indian Affairs
reported (i) to the Secretary of War, in accordance with
instructions which asked for general information concerning
"the effects as already developed of the present system for
civilizing the Indians, and its probable and ulterior conse
quences upon them as a race, viewed both in relation to their
present situation and that which contemplates their future
and permanent residence upon lands west of the Mississippi."
Suggestions of improvements were to be in the report but
the officer declared that "nothing suggests itself to me in the
way of improvement in the administration of the Indian De
partment, as it is at present constituted."
Requisitions for the first three quarters of the year 1825
included : $143,000 for the Indian Department, $63,000 for
Indian agents and sub-agents, $18,000 for presents for the
Indians, $221,000 for annuities, $31,000 for rations, $225,000
to carry out the Creek treaty, and $11,000 for the "civilization
of the Indians." The total requisitions amounted to $871,-
827.14. The nature, the number, and something of the efficiency
of the schools among the Indians of that period may be seen
or inferred from the accompanying table.

Num ber 2
11

Tribe
Cherokee, Ala.
Choctaw Pottawatomies, Creeks
Ottawas
OneidasOneidas SenecasChickasaw
MissouriQuoddyCherokee Cherokee, Miss.
SenecasOsage
Tuscaroras Michillimackinac
A^yandots Ottawas

Denomination
United Brethren
Amer. Bd. of Commrs. for
For. Miss.

3ai>. Gen. Conven.
Jnited For. Miss. So.
Prot. Epis. N. Y.
Cum. Miss. Bd.
Tesuits IOC for Propagating the
Gospel
\mer. Bd. of Commrs.
Bap. Gen. Conven.

'Jnited For. Miss. So.
^ynod S. C. and Ga.
\leth. Episco.
West. Miss. Soe.

Teach ers

Govern ment
charges

(1) Sen. Doc. lOth Con?. 1st Ses. Id Doc. Ind part

6

$ 300

34

2,250

3915 3
14 7

1,600 950500
400 800

1
52 7

250
2,100 1,060

5312
12
21

1,450 800
800
300

281

$13,550

Pu pils 15
222

144 82333124
eo
169115

133 545710
1159

HISTORICAL REVIEW 11
The number of teachers includes the whole number of
the families of the teachers, mechanics, etc. Prosperous
progress was the purport of the record for the year.
But not every one of that period was so optimistic as the
official head of the Indian Department. Over the signature
of "William Penn," there appeared in the National Intel
ligencer, a critical review of the Indian situation in Georgia,
in which it is claimed that:
"If, in pursuance of a narrow and selfish policy, we should at
this day, in a time of profound peace, and great national prosperity,
amidst all our professions of magnanimity and benevolence, and in the
blazing light of the nineteenth century, drive away these remnants of
tribes, in such a manner and under such auspices as to insure their
destruction; — if all this hereafter should appear to be a fair statement
of the case; — then the sentence of an indignant world will be uttered
in thunders, which will roll and reverberate for ages after the present
actors in human affairs shall have passed away. If the people of the
United States will imitate the ruler who coveted Naboth's vineyard,
the world will assuredly place them by the side of Naboth's oppressor."
(1) , '^^
Although Indian affairs were under the control of the
Department of War from the organization of the government,
not till the acts of 1832 and 1834 was formal recognition ever
given to the "Indian Department." (2). Supervision over
Indian superintendents and agents was vested in the Secre
tary of War. (3). Seventeen years later the bureau was trans
ferred to the Department of the Interior.
The Indian intercourse act of 1834 further provided (I)
for the removal west of the eastern tribes, (II) the assign
ment of territory in perpetuity to the migrating Indians, (III)
their seclusion from white intercourse, and (IV) for Indian
self-government. This act was declared by Francis A. Walker
the outcome of "sound and far-reaching statesmanship." (4)
Notwithstanding the multiplication of words, the results
of all efforts up to 1866 seemed to amount to nothing save
grievous expense in lives and money. Half a billion dollars
had been spent on Indian wars, directly or indirectly, and a
quarter of a billion more in civil expenses, (i) and strife and
expense seemed but to increase as the years went on. The
Cheyenne War of 1864 cost $30,000,000; 15 or 20 Indians were
killed at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece.
(1) "Present Crisis in the Condition of the Ainerican Indians," by Wm. Penn,
Phila; Thomas Kite, 1830.
(2) House Doc. 'ao, 31st Cong. 2nd Ses. Also Laws and Treaties, Vol. 1, p. 1.
(3) Ellis, Cj. E. Red Man and Wnite Man in North America. Little, BrowB
and Company, 1882.
(4) 4 Stat. 736.
(1) Ellis: Red Man and the White Man, p. 671. Ann. Rept. Comm. of Ind.
Affairs, IStS.

12 THE INDIAN
The Sioux war of 1852-54, the Cheyenne of 1864, the Navajo,
the second Sioux of 1866, and the second Cheyenne of 1867,
cost more than $100,000,000. (2). So in 1867 was in
augurated the Peace Policy. The Board of Indian Commis
sioners, four military officers and four civilians, were appoint
ed to provide for the removing of the causes of war, and the
safeguarding of the frontier and of the Pacific railroad, and
to suggest plans for reclaiming and civilizing the native tribes.
The first report of that Board is exceedingly interesting,
and of unusual importance because of its epoch making char
acter. It outlined the .theory and the practice of the govern
ment for the succeeding quarter century and committed the
government so thoroughly to certain principles that another
quarter century at least must pass before they can be entirely
discarded. Incidentally the Commissioners called attention
to the ignorance and indifference of the people, and even of
the churches, concerning the higher interests of the Indians.
Civilization could come to the' red man only through con
tact with the higher civilization. The things which have pre
vented the living together of the two races were declared to be ;
"first, the antipathy of race; second, the difference of cus
toms and manners arising from their tribal or clannish organ
ization; third, the difference in language, which in a great
measure, barred intercourse and a proper understanding each
of the other's motives and intentions."
"Now by educating the children of these tribes in the English
language these differences would have disappeared and civilization
would have followed at once. Nothing then would have been left but
the antipathy of race, and that too is always softened in the beams
of a higher civilization. * * * Through sameness of language is
produced sameness of sentiment and thought; customs and habits are
moulded and assimilated in the same way and thus in process of time
the differences producing trouble would have been gradually obliter
ated. By civilizing one tribe others would have followed. * * * In
the difference of language to-day lies two-thirds of our trouble." * *
"Their barbarous dialects should be blotted out and the English
language substituted."
"Money annuities, here and elsewhere, should be abolished forever.
These more than anything else have corrupted the Indian service
and brought into disgrace officials connected with it. In the course
of a few years the clothing and provision annuities also may be dis
pensed with. Mechanics and artisans will spring up among them, and
v.-/ Walker: The Indian Question. Exec. Doc. 97. 40th Cong. 2d Ses. Sen.
Ex. Doc. No. 123. 47th Cong. 1st Ses. Letter from Sec. of War R. T. Lincoln.
Sen. Doc. No. 15. 46th Con-. 3d Ses. Rept. (jf Sec. o War Alex. Ramsey.

HISTORICAL REVIEW 13
the whole organization, under the management of a few honest men,
will become self-sustaining."
The Commissioners suggested two reserves: I. Terri
tory bounded north by Kansas, east by Arkansas and Mis
souri, south by Texas, and west by the looth or loist meridan.
II. Territory bounded north by the 46th parallel, east by
the Missouri river, south by Nebraska, and west by the 104th
meridian. Along with the peace movement there had also come a
demand for the transfer of the control of Indian Affairs back
to the War Department. This was vigorously opposed by
the Commissioner in 1868. "Military management of Indian
Affairs has been tried for seventeen years and has proved a
failure, and must, in my judgment, in the very nature of
things, always prove a failure."
"It has only succeeded in illuminating our Indian history with
bloody pictures, in surcharging the hearts of our tribes with hatred
and revenge, and spending the money of the people by the fifty-
million dollars, oft repeated." "It would seem that the cost price of
Indians slain in the Florida War, in the Sioux War, and in the late
Cheyenne War, has been on a fair average about a million each; and
if our Indian troubles are to be ended by exterminating the race, it
is evident, at the present rate of one Indian killed per month, that
the achievement will be completed at the end of exactly twenty five
thousand years; and if each dead Indian is to cost the same hereafter
as heretofore, the precise sum total we will have to expend is $300,-
000,000,000 to complete the extermination. But besides the cost to
the treasury it is found by actual comparison, approximating closely
to truth, that the slaying of every Indian costs us the lives of twenty-
five whites, so that the extermination process must bring about the
slaughter of 7,500,000 of our people."
Despite such arguments. Congress was about to arrange
for the transfer, when the news of the Piegan affair, in which
the blame for inter-racial hostilities was placed squarely upon
military shoulders, caused an instant reversal of opinion. (2)
The peace policy was supported by Secretary of the In
terior Cox in a report (i) to President Grant in 1870:
"I think it still demonstrably clear that, as a mere question of
pecuniary economy, it will be cheaper to feed every adult Indian now
living, even to sleepy surfeiting, during his natural life, while their
children are educated to self support by agriculture, than it would
be to carry on a general Indian war for a single year."
The second report of the Board of Indian Commissioners
is nearly as interesting and important as the first. It declared
(2) Second An. Rept. Bd. of Ind. Commrs., 1870.
(1) Sen. Doc. 57: 41st Cong. 2d Ses.

14 THE INDIAN
"that a great improvement has been made in the manner of
appointing agents, selecting them from men recommended by
the various missionary societies, and thus it is hoped perma
nently withdrawing those appointments from the arena of
political strife for patronage ; and, by act of Congress, military
officers are no longer appointed as agents in this service."
The clause which had been inserted in the army bill, pre
venting officers from holding Indian agencies or civil positions,
induced the Secretary of the Board early to recommend to
the Secretary of the Interior the policy of placing the Indian
reservations under the care of the Christian denominations
of the country. This recommendation was an extension of
the policy already adopted by the President, in placing the
superintendency of Nebraska, and that' for Kansas and the
Indian Territory, under the care of the Society of Friends.
The President and the churches agreed to the plan, and the
country was divided out among the several denominations.
But the policy proved a stupendous failure, and involved the
country in a generation of sectarian recriminations. Never
theless the Commissioners were able to say: "Reports prove
that the Indian population are not only capable of elevation
to a high standard of civilization and Christianity, * * * (but)
that the progress of the Indians in these respects during the
past year have been far beypnd our expectations."
The religious policy of the new administration soon in
volved the Protestants and Catholics in serious controversy.
The Catholics felt aggrieved and in a printed address made
vigorous protest :
"Religious liberty is at the bottom and the object of attack of the
whole scheme, and the United States is made the unconscious tool
of ill-designing societies for illegal and unconstitutional interference
with religious freedom. Dec. 5, 1870, Grant announced his determina
tion to give Indian Agencies to 'such religious denominations as had
heretofore established missions among the Indians.' " "The agent is
expected to administer the civil affairs of his agency in strict harmony
with the mission work. All the employees as well as the agent are
required to be by precept and example as so many missionaries in the
work of civilizing and Christianizing the Indians." "The Protestants
claim 15,000 Indians as Protestants; we claim 106,000 as Catholics"
(even) "confining ourselves to those agencies where we have proved
that we were in full possession of the missionary field. * * * We
claim the right to thirty-eight agencies; the Indian Bureau, however,
has granted us control of only eight. Thus thirty agencies * * * '

HISTORICAL REVIEW 15
have been wrested from us and turned over to the control of Protestant
churches. Thus missions that have been for hundreds of years ex
clusively Catholic, and Indians who profess the Catholic faith, to the
number of 80,000 * * * have been given to the charge of the dif
ferent denominations of Protestants, in whom they have no confidence,
and whose creeds they dislike." The address urges the raising of a
fund for the Catholic office, or Bureau, then established at Washington,
and suggests "a wise and prudent use of the ballot box." * * *
"The Protestant churches spend from seventy-five to one hundred
thousand dollars a year of their own money, and the contributions of
their own members, in addition to whatever means the Government
places in their hands, for the perversion of the faith of Catholic
Indians; shall we hesitate before sacrifices when they are needed to
oppose such a scheme, and save our Indians and with them our
religious liberty?" (1)
The material results of the new policy are indicated in
a quotation from J. V. Farwell concerning the Indians in
Utah: "One tribe numbering 2,500, with the aid of $5,000, has this
season raised $30,000 worth of crops; another of 1,500, with $500
aid, raised $10,000; another of 1,000, with $500 aid, has raised $5,000;
another of 500, with $350, has raised $1,000 worth of crops; another
had four farms, upon which, with $500 aid, they have raised $7,000
worth of crops. One tribe has 5,000 peach trees planted and raised
by themselves. All the above results have been reached in three
years' work by the government."
The Commissioners this year suggested and recom
mended that when reservations lay close together they should
become counties; that the land should be allotted, the titles
to be inalienable for at least two or three generations ; that the
civilized tribes should be taxed ; that the treaty system should
be abolished; that the Indian should be granted the status
of ward ; that annuities be abandoned and schools established ;
that teachers should be nominated by religious bodies ; and
that pupils of mission schools should receive at least rations
and clothing. Here we have the germs of another system,
which grew to vex mightily the nation.
Naturally there were critics of the Peace Policy. Con
gressman John Hancock from Texas,, in a speech on the
Indian Appropriation Bill for 1874, maintained that "the theory
of educating the wild child of the forest, inculcating in his mind
high moral and religious sentiments in advance of learning
him to work, has proved to be an absolute failure." "No in-
(1) Address of the Catholic Clergy of the Province of Oregbn to the Catholics
of the U. S. on President Grant's Indian Policy, 1874. See also: Our New Indian
Policy and Religious Liberty, la the Nation, Vo. 26 (1878).

16 THE INDIAN
ferior race in all historic times has escaped one of these three
results, subjugation, amalgamation, or extermination. * * *
The only remaining position then to be assigned to the
Indians is that of subjugation. He must be subjugated, and
such subjugation as will place him under the control of the
Government." Undoubtedly the keenest and most far-sighted book which
had up to that time appeared on the subject of the relations
of the government and the Indians is Francis Walker's "The
Indian Question," published in 1874. The value of the work
appears the greater when its date is taken into consideration.
Even at that time he saw that:
"To throw upon a dozen religious and benevolent societies the re^
sponsibility of advising the executive in the appointment of the agents
of the Indian service is not a policy. To buy off a few bands, more
insolent than the rest, by a wholesale issue of subsistence, and the
lavish bestowal of presents * * * this, though doubtless expedient
in the critical situation of our frontier population, is the merest
expediency, not in any sense a policy. Yet the two features specified
have been the only ones that have been added to the scheme of Indian
control during the continuance of the present administration." (1)
The law (2) ending the recognition of Indian nations (1871)
"struck the severest blow that remained to be gfiven to the Indian
policy in its fourth great feature." It weakens "the already waning
power of the chiefs, while Congress yet fails to furnish any substitute
for their authority — either by providing for the organization of the
tribes on more democratic principles, with direct responsibility to
the government, or by arming the Indian agents with magisterial
powers adequate to the exigency." "Under the traditional policy of
the United States the Indian agent was a minister resident to a
'domestic, dependent nation.' The act of March 3, 1871, destroys
the nationality, and leaves the agent in the anomalous position of
finding no authority within the tribe to which he can address himself,
yet having in himself no legal authority over the tribe or the
memders of it." (3)
Mr. Walker called attention to the recent granting of
citizenship by treaty or legislation to twelve Kickapoos (4),
twenty Delawares (5), 473 Wyandots (6), 1604 Pottawatomies
(7), 250 Sioux (8), 159 Winnebagoes (9), an unascertained
(1) Walker: The Indian Question. Osgood & Co., Boston, 1874, p. 104.
(2) Laws and Treaties, Vol. 1, p. 8
(3) Walker, p. 117.
(4) Laws and Treaties, Vol. II, pp. 835-836 (1862).
(5) 1.. & T. II, p. 940 (1866).
(6) L. & T. 11, p. 677 (1865). See also p. 960 (1867).
(7) L. & T. 11. 825 & 973 (1861 and 1867).
(8) L. & T. II, p. 1000 (1868).
(9) Laws and Treaties, Vol. I, p. 128.

HISTORICAL REVIEW 17
number of Stockbridges (lo), 6189 Ottawas and Chippewas
(11), and said:
"The majority of the Pottawatomie citizens, after selling their
lands in Kansas, have gone to the Indian Territory and re-associated
themselves as a tribe; of the Wyandots, considerable numbers have
attached themselves to the reorganized tribe in Indian Territory;
of the citizen Ottawas of Blanchard's Ford, nearly all have disposed
of their allotted lands, and are still cared for to some extent by the
Government as Indians; of the Ottawas and Chippewas of Michigan,
a majority certainly, and probably a large majority, have sold the
lands patented to them in severalty." "It will thus be seen that,
of these Indians * * * more than half, probably two thirds, are now
homeless, and must be re-endowed by the government, or they will
sink to a condition of hopeless poverty and misery."
The situation in 1874 was summed up by Mr. Walker in
this way: 130,000 Indians were supporting themselves upon
their own reservations, receiving nothing from the govern
ment save interest on their moneys or annuities granted them
in consideration of the cession of their lands. 31,000 were
entirely subsisted by the government ; 84,000 were partly thus
subsisted; and 55,000 were living by fishing and hunting, or
by begging or stealing. Again he divides the population into
150,000 living on reservations; 95,000 occasional visitors on
reservations for food and gossip; and 55,000 over whom the
government had no sort of control. There were 180,000 under
treaty relations, 40,000 on reservations without treaty, and 25,-
000 not on reservations, but under partial control. 97,000 were
classed as civilized, 125,000 as semi-civilized, and 78,000 as
barbarous. The average annual cost of running the Indian Depart
ment advanced about three million dollars as the result of the
adoption of the Peace Policy, as may be seen from the fol
lowing statistics of annual expenditures :-
Annual Expenditures of Indian OfBce— 1861-1872

1861

$2,865,481.17

1867

$4,642,531.77

1862

2,327,948.37

1868

4,100,683.32

1863

3,152,033.70

1869

7,042,923.06

1864

3,629,975.97

187Q

3,407,938.15

1865

5,059,360.71

1871

7,426,997.44

1866

3,295,729.33

1872 Total ...

7,061,728.88

Total ....

. . . .$19,330,528.24

. .. .$33,692,801.56

(10) L. & T. I, 130. See also 6 Stat. 645 and 9 Stat. 55, and Vol. II, pp. 74S
and 746 for earlier treaties and legislation.
(11) L. & T. II, p. 830 (1862) and 964 (18u.) and p. 868 (1864).

18 THE INDIAN
The third report of the Board of Indian Commissioners
testified to the civilization of the Cherokees, and used it to
show what might be realized among other tribes. "This tribe
is not only civilized and self-supporting, but before the fearful
disasters of the great rebellion fell upon them, were the richest
people per capita in the world." The causes for such progress
were found in a limited and localized domain, in the practice
of the arts of agriculture and herding, m a just system of
property rights, in improved social conditions, and in Christ
ianity. Like the Cherokees, the Choctaws, Chickasaws,
Creeks and Seminoles had advanced to the stage of Civiliza
tion.

CHAPTER II.
INDIAN STATUS: PAST AND
PRESENT.
POLICY FOR THE FUTURE.
Contradictory ideas concerning the Indian. Cause of his
backzvardness. Tribal tyranny. Mohonk policy. Status under
England, the articles of confederation, the national constitution.
Ending (?) of treaties with Indian nations. Federal jurisdic
tion. Non-citizenship. Cases of Standing Bear and Agua His.
The new Indian Citizenship of certain Indians. Citizenship with
allotments. Dawes act. Local denial of civil rights. Agency
government; its evils. Real citizenship ; its dangers and its
benefits. Possibility of government protection of the citizen. A
suggested policy. The Burke bill of 1906 — an alarming reversion.
The liquor problem. The Heff case. The necessity for citizen
ship. Obligation to provide good land.
The Indian is a puzzle, and contradictions make up the
substance of the history of his contact with the conquering
race. These contradictions are most evident in the perpetual
discrepancy between the hopes of his friends and his actual
achievements. We have recalled the enthusiastic expectations
of Eliot and Roger Williams ; they were not more optimistic
than many of the friends of missions today, (i) Yet if we
follow Eliot's society to Canada, we find that their Indians
are "Indians" still, even where the closest contact and the
strongest infusion of white blood has compelled the most com
plete semblance of civilized ways ; the Superintendent of their
school at Brantford apparently feels that after a generation
of effort he is just beginning to get at the heart of the problem
and the secret of the method which the work requires. Should
we review the efforts of the Pennsylvania Friends, of the
Moravians Zinzendorf and Zeisberger, of the Presbyterians
Horton and Brainerd, and then turn to the permanent results,
we should find that same lack of harmony which we have
everywhere noticed.
(1) See Miss Brain's "Redemption of the Red Man." New York, 1904.

ao THE INDIAN
Government officials, too, in each successive period have
called attention to the failures of their immediate predecessors,
but in glowing terms have pictured the glorious transforma
tion which was just about to be achieved. Though every
method has thus far proved unsuccessful, each new man
believes his own innovation will bring the desired result.
But what does history say? We should expect to find the
Indians in New York state, in the midst of eight millions of
the most civilized people in the world, far along on the up
ward path. But it would seem that the raost degraded Indians
are there assured of their degradation by the joint authority
of the state and nation. The hundred Indians of Pennsyl
vania are, with the exception of one family, all nominally
Christian; they hold their land in severalty and do a certain
amount of work. Nevertheless their neighbors are inclined
to put a big question mark after their business integrity and
their matrimonial morality.
Nor is the situation changed if you go west. The white
man either finds no good at all in the Indian, or he tells you
of his good qualities first and in public; only later and in
private to let you know that the Indian is an Indian still.
Compared with Indians, one man will tell you, some educated
Indians are greatly improved, but compared with a white man
he is decidedly inferior and inefficient. A school teacher
avers that the Indian schools are chiefly intended for show;
the western missionary, that the Indian is perfectly capable of
a college education, but it is not wise to give it to him. The
eastern missionary furnishes inspiring accounts of religious
and moral gains, he even joins with a committee in reporting
to the public that land in severalty and citizenship are the
goals to be desired, but in private he concludes that land in
severalty now, and citizenship now would mean annihilation.
This statement of the radical contrasts of facts and ideas
will find many people to controvert it, but each of them in his
quiet moods will controvert himself, by qualifying whatever he
has previously said in criticism of this position. In other
words, it seems almost impossible to convey a just idea of the
situation except by unjust emphasis now upon one side and
now upon the other. Desires and prejudices must be balanced
by reason and facts. The same theoretical reasons for the

LEGAL STATUS 21
granting of citizenship to the wards of New York which were
so strongly urged twenty years ago, are met today by the
same practical considerations which were then presented;
"Wait a little longer and then they will be ready." What does
this mean? The sole reply is, under the existing conditions
the Indian does not make progress towards the goal of self-
determination ; some cause or causes operate to hold him back.
On the supposition, then, that there has been some great
retardation in the process of Indian development, we should
make some effort to discover and state the cause or causes
of that retardation. There are at least four causes which
might be assigned: i. The inherent incapacity of the Indian.
2. The deadening eflfects of the wrong kinds of whites with
whom the reds first and chiefly come into personal contact.
3. The social tyranny of the tribe. 4. The conditions made or
allowed by the government.
There can be but little question that all four causes
operate, the first being of the least weight. This thesis will
proceed however upon the idea that the fourth is the prepon
derating one, especially if we view it as permitting or strength
ening the third.
For many generations self-preservation has necessitated
tribal subjection. Uniform action was essential to existence;
morality was chiefly summed up in the two words obedience
and custom, and they supply the key to much of Indian phil
osophy and practice. Generations of drill in habits of sub
jection produce not only a static society, but static individuals.
Progress is put beyond the reach of personal desire or indivi
dual attainments. Some new and external force must break
the cake of custom before a new life can manifest itself.
Tradition must give way before new thought. These facts
mark out for a "benevolent despotism" the line of its duty.
It should break the bonds of tradition, of custom, of tribal
tyranny. At the very least it should not strengthen, or even
sanction, those which absolutely prevent the possibility of
attaining that for which millions are spent and lives given.
With this negative good secured, the nation's work is half
done. For the Indian we desire change and progress, something
which is directly opposed to the forces of his tradition and
custom. Any considerable change in a short time means the

22 THE INDIAN
absolute rending of those forces. The tribal organization and
the tribal spirit are not compatible with the white man's life
and civilization. Bagehot in his "Physics and Politics" has put this philo
sophy of the static man in a very clear and convincing way :
"In early ages the act of one member of the tribe is conceived
to make all the tribe impious, to offend its particular god, to expose
all the tribe to penalties from heaven. There is no "limited liability"
in the political notions of that time. The early tribe or nation is a
religious partnership, upon which a rash member by a sudden impiety
may bring utter ruin. If the state is conceived thus, toleration becomes
wicked. A permitted deviation from the transmitted ordinances
becomes simply folly. It is a sacrifice of the happiness of the greatest
number. It is allowing one individual, for a moment's pleasure, or a
stupid whim, to bring irretrievable calamity upon all."
Despite the failures of the centuries, the writer must
place himself among the optimists. He believes that rapid
progress for the Indian is still possible, and that it depends
merely upon a better policy and its thorough and consistent
application. The conceivably probable progress of five hun
dred years of evolution through internal forces could be
secured in two generations under a constant and consistent
policy on the part of government and society, that is, through
the action of proper external forces.
The aim of the government, in its political action, should
be to remove as rapidly as possible — and that means very
rapidly — all differences between the red and the white man
in their civil status — to make the red man realize that he has
no privileges of any sort not granted to people of other colors,
and that he has all the obligations which rest upon his fellow
citizens of all colors.
There are two words which stand for the policy which is
here suggested. One is "the vanishing policy," and the other
"citizenship." These slogans are old, but they still retain
their force. Here, as elsewhere, the essential thing is to know
the right, and then to do it. Vacillation, or half-hearted, or
delayed action, is most disastrous. For years the friends of
the Indians, meeting at Lake Mohonk, have declared in their
annual platforms for the early extinction of the reservation
system, and for the granting of full citizenship to the red man.
In 1895 they declared:
"The reservation system is an insuperable obstacle to civilization,
and should be abolished, the tribal organization destroyed, the lands

LEGAL STATUS 23
allotted in severalty, the Indians intermingled with the whites, and the
Indians treated as other men."
In 1900:
"To overcome the difficulties which the natural error of the past
has created, and to bring the Indian into individual relations with the
government as a citizen of the United States with the least inter
mediate injustice and hardship, is the Indian problem."
"W5th rare exceptions the Indians should then be relegated to
that protection of the laws and that stimulating effect of competition
in freedom to which we owe alike our safety and our industrial
inspiration." In 1903:
"In dealing with the Indians the objects to be accomplished
are no longer questioned; they are the abandonment of the reservation
system; the discontinuance of Indian agencies; such education of
all Indian children as will fit them for self-support and self-govern
ment; access to the courts for the protection of their rights; amena
bility to the law in punishment for their crimes; the same liberty that
white men enjoy to own, buy, sell, travel, pay taxes, and enjoy in
good government the benefits enjoved by other taxed citizens; and by
these means a speedy incorporation of all Indians, with all the rights
of citizenship, into the American commonwealth."
In 1898 Dr. Lyman Abbott remarked at Lake Mohonk: "I re
member the third meeting of the conference — a few of us came here
and plead for liberty; a few of us insisted that the reservation must
go; and the Indian be a free man. I remember, and you remember.
how even here liberty was thought a dangerous thing, and the sugges
tion to give it to the Indian too radical. The one thing we need is to
claim liberty for the Indian. Education, religion, food, clothing,
ploughs, all are important. All these may be given by philanthro^
and the church. But the primary function of government is to give
that which thus far it has failed to give — ^justice and freedom."
We have, then, to consider what the status of the Indian
is, and what its evils are; what remedy is proposed, what its
dangers are, and how far those dangers are to be recognized
by the state.
In the first place, the Indian, per se, is not a citizen. But,
in the second place, certain individual Indians, certain classes
of Indians, and certain tribes, are or may become citizens.
Under the Crown of Great Britain, (i) the Indians were
generally recognized as distinct political communities, with
a right to the occupancy of the soil. Under the Articles of
Confederation, the nation inherited the rights of the king.
According to Article IX, Congress was to make treaties of al
liance and peace with the Indians, and alone could regulate
(1) Weil, Robert: Legal Status of the Indian: New York, 1888.

24 THE INDIAN
the trade and manage all affairs with all Indians not members
of any of the states. But the state governments soon ceased
to regard the tribes as distinct political communities, as is
shown by the New York Constitution of 1777, and by the
North Carolina law of 1787. According to the Constitution
of 1787, Indians not subject to the commonwealths are not
to be represented (i) in Congress, nor subject to direct taxa
tion. Congress has power to regulate commerce (2) with
the Indians. These provisions made no real change in the
status of the tribesmen. But the states overrode the govern
ment. Georgia, in 1795, declared that that state was "in full
possession and in full exercise of the jurisdiction and terri
torial right and the fee simple" of all the lands within its lim
its, including the Indian lands. Thirty-five years later the
Supreme Court (3) recognized the Cherokees as a nation
and declared the Georgia status unconstitutional. That
state calmly ignored the Supreme Court and went on its own
course. The XlVth Amendment did not aflfect Indian status. The
Senate, therefore, continued to make treaties with the "do
mestic nations," especially under the influence of the Peace
Commission from 1867. The House of Representatives, in
1870, "tired of making appropriations to fulfill treaty obliga
tions imposed by this hybrid, unpaid, almost irresponsible
commission," added this proviso to the Indian bill, "Nothing
in this act shall be construed to ratify any of the so-called
treaties entered into with any tribe, band, or party of Indians
since the 20th of July, 1867." The Conference report substi
tuted the bill of 1871 (4), which declared that "no Indian
nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall
be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe,
or power with whom the United States may contract by
treaty; but no obligation of any treaty lawfully made and
ratified with any such Indian nation or tribe prior to March
third, 1871, shall be hereby invalidated or impaired."
"This act appears to have left the actual situation almost
absolutely unchanged. Since its passage the Government has
continued to make agreements or contracts with the tribes as
• (1) Art. 1, Sec. 2, par. 3 .
(2) Art. 1, Sec. 8, par. 3.
(3) Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia. Worcester vs. (Borgia.
(4) Laws and Treaties, Vol. I, Sec. 2079.

LEGAL STATUS 25
organized bodies of men — agreements which are treaties in all
but name. Nor has the right of the tribe to self-government
ever, so far as I am aware, been taken away by legislation
or questioned in any court. The act of 1871 does not appear
to destroy the tribal nationality, unless, indeed, the taking
from the tribes the right to treat with us as nations be con
sidered to do so by implication." (2)
The Indians were not citizens ; they even held their lands
by a mere title to occupancy. (3) They were not foreign
nation, and hence could not sue in the Supreme Court, (4)
and thus were barred from any legal remedy for violation of
their legal rights. So the Indian was neither citizen, alien,
nor foreigner. He was called by Attorney General Gushing
a "domestic subject;" this was "an incapacity of his race."
Daniel Webster (5) declared the Indians "are of that class
who are said by the jurists not to be citizens, but perpetual
inhabitants with diminutive rights."
The legal position of the red man has been largely worked
out under the constitutional provision giving Congress the
right to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes.
"This power includes not only traffic in commodities, but inter
course with such tribes, the personal conduct of the whites and other
races to and with such tribes, and vice versa."
Such intercourse is a subject of Federal jurisdiction. (5)
In the case of crimes committed against an Indian outside
a reservation, but within a State, jurisdiction is local ; if com
mitted against a non-Indian on a reservation, the jurisdiction
is Federal, the "Indian Country" being within exclusive
Federal control. But, in either case, the Indian is incapaci
tated for bringing suit in his own name in either court (i),
though certain treaties provide that Indians of the tribe con
cerned may complain to the agent against outsiders, and the
latter shall furnish the charge to the Commissioner, who shall
(2) Pancoast, Henry S.: Indian before the Law. Indian Rights Ass'n, 1884.
(3) Johnson vs. Mcintosh, 8 Wheaton, 574; Fletcher vs. Peck, 6 Cranch, 87-142;
U. S. vs. Cook, 19 Wallace, 591.
(4) Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia.
(5) U. S. vs. Bridleman, 7 Federal Rept., 898 et seq.; Gibbons vs. Ogden,
7 Wheaton, 189; U. S. vs. Holliday, 3 Wallace, 416.
(1) Karrahoo vs. Adams, 1870. The court stated "there is no provision in the
Judiciary Act, or any other act of Congress, giving to the courts of the U. S.
jurisdiction in civil suits by or against Indians. 1 Dill, 344 Ex parte Forbes, ib. 36S.
See Schurr: Law for the Indian, North Ara. Rev. Mar. 1882. "No attorney has the
right or can appear for an Indian, unless authorized to do so by the Indian De
partment."

26 THE INDIAN ,
cause an arrest.
Pancoast (2) summed up the situation in this way:
"Not only have our legislators from the first fostered the spirit
of tribal nationality, not only have they put a savage people, in their
internal affairs, beyond the control of the law, but in some treaties
(3) they have even gone so far as to deliberately bind the Government
never to interfere with the tribal rights of self-government. By this
extraordinary 'policy', the whole western country is blotted with these
petty states, handfuls of men, who are permitted by the theory of our
law to rob, shoot, or murder each other without the possibility of our
legally punishing the guilty or protecting the innocent. And this
situation is that which, in many cases, we have pledged ourselves to
keep forever unchanged."
In more recent times. Congress has passed special acts
authorizing suits in special cases. One of these authorizes an
Indian claiming right to an allotment to bring suit in the U.
S. Circuit Court — the decision of the court even overriding
any decision previously made by the Secretary of the Interior.
Of course, as we shall see, an allottee is sometimes a citizen,
and has all the rights of citizens, but he is then theoretically
no longer an Indian.
It may appear that the discussion thus far fails to take
into consideration the case of Standing Bear vs. George
Crook in 1870. (i) But that case had reference only to the
right of an Indian to sue out a writ of habeas corpus, and the
decision was based solely upon the fact that an Indian was a
"person." The habeas corpus act describes applicants for the
writ as "persons" or "parties," nowhere as "citizens." It is
very evident, moreover, that, whatever modification this de
cision should have made in the legal status, there was no such
modification in subsequent government procedure or opinion.
The recent case of Agua His vs. Spear, is of apparently
more vital significance. Agua His,, a Yuma Indian, sued
Superintendent Spear for cutting off his hair. Mr. Spear was
so confident that no state court would entertain jurisdiction
that he filed no demurrer. Judge Noyes. however, decided
that he did have jurisdiction, and a verdict for $25.00 was
given. But Mr. Spear has never been officially informed of the
(2) Indian before the Law, p. 15. Bisuop Hare is quoted: "Wisn well to
the Indians as we may, and do for tnem what we will, the efforts of civil agents,
teachers and missionaries are like the struggles of drowning men, weighted with lead
so long as by the absence of law Indian society is left without a base."
(3) Choctaws, 7 Stat, at Large, 833-4; Cherokees, ib. 481; New York Indians,
ib. 652, and Kansas Indians, ib. 369, etc.
(1) U. S. ex. rel. Standing Bear vs. George Crook, 6 Dillon, 463.

LEGAL STATUS 27
decision and has not paid the fine. The situation is deplor
able, because the law has not been enforced. As it stands
now, so far as we can judge from an incomplete legal process,
a tribal (Yuma) Indian can sue in the courts of California.
This one decision is practically sufficient to overrule the prac
tice, if not the law, concerning Indians to the present time.
It may be that Judge Noyes' decision was based on the
same grounds which determined the magnificent ruling of the
Supreme Court of New Mexico in January, 1904, that the
Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are taxable and are citizens,
because of their status under the Mexican government before
the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, taken in connection with
the guarantees of that treaty. (2) If the Yumas are citizens,
then the case of Agua His vs. Spear has no bearing upon
the general status and legal rights of the tribal Indian. If
they are not held to be citizens by virtue of such a treaty,
and if the spirit of this decision be accepted as the law of the
nation, we have entered into a new epoch.
Such is the story of the old tribal Indian. But there is
another Indian, the individual or modern red man. By the
act of 1901, (i) every Indian in Indian Territory is a citizen,
and by the Dawes act of 1887 (2) there are two general
classes of potential Indian citizens. In the first place, one
class includes every native Indian who has voluntarily taken
up his residence separate and apart from any tribe and adopted
the habits of civilized life. The second class is of much more
importance, for it includes every allottee to land in severalty,
but certain tribes., of whom the chief are the Senecas of New
York, were exempted from the provisions of the act.
To appreciate the significance of this law, we must realize
that of the 285,000 Indians of the country, 85,000 are in Indian
Territory, and that allotments have brought nominal citizen
ship to 72,502 more. Moreover, the avowed purpose of the
government is to continue the allotting of the land until every
Indian in the country is made a citizen. The act specifically
states that these Indians "shall have the benefit of and be
subject to the laws, both civil and criminal, of the State or
Territory in which they may reside, and no Territory shall
(2) Territory of New Mexico, Plf. & Appellant vs. the persons, real estate
land and property described in the delinquent tax list of the County of Bernalillo, for
the first half of the year A. D. 1899.
(1) Laws and Treaties, Vol. 1, p. 114.
(2) Ibid. p. 35, Section 6.

28 THE INDIAN
pass or enforce any law denying any such Indian within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the law."
It would seem, then, that citizenship were already secured
or assured, and that any argument to prove its necessity were
an idle superfluity/It would, however, be an interesting study
to discover to wMat extent the apparent grant of the laws is
reflected in the realm of operative fact. And the first discour
aging thing that we meet is, that the government holds that
the land of an allottee is not subject to taxation (3) until the
patent in fee is delivered at the end of the twenty-five year
period. Consequently the local governments ofttimes declare
it an injustice to accord privileges without requiring duties,
and actually do refuse the stipulated favors and rights of the
law. (4)
"The ends sought by the law have not been desired in
those sections of the country where the law must be admin
istered, and by the people who must administer it. This has
heretofore been the point of fatal weakness in our govern
mental policy for the aborigines." (i)
But, beyond the letter of the law, we find a more vital
distinction. It is doubtful whether the Indian or his local
guardian as a general rule realizes any difference of state
before and after the process of enfranchisement. The Agent
still commands, and the treaty for the sale of surplus lands
may provide for the distribution of funds by the act of annual
pow-wows for years after the Indians are impliedly beyond the
tribal stage. In other words, the United States government
or its representatives recognizes the existence of the tribe
long after it has been oflRcially wiped out./ The mass of red
blood still remains segregated in the body politic. The white
man is, however, deceived by words. The red man is deceived.
And the evil is no less than before — perhaps worse, because
unrecognized. What, then, are the evils of the legal status, or more com
prehensively the government status, of the Indian? They
(3) By Laws and Treaties, I, 34, Act of 1887. Sec. 5, the lands are to be
held in trust by the U. S., to be conveyed by patent in 25 years, "free of all charge
or incumbrance whatsoever." See also Mohonk Rept. 1895, p. 43. Rickert Case,
188 U. S., 432.
(4) Rept. of Indian Commissioner, 1906: "The superintendent in charge of
the Yakima Reservation reported on July 21, 1906, that the prosecuting attorney of
the county informed him that as the Indians do not pay taxes he does not purpose
tb put his county to any expense in prosecuting them or in giving them protection."
(1) Barrows: "The Indian's side of the Indian question," Lothrop & Co., 1887.

LEGAL STATUS 29
are the evils of personal government, of despotism, absolut
ism. There are few rulers in the world with more absolute
power than the Indian Agent. The Indian drills at the word
of the Agent, nor looks to any law beyond. ' The Reserva
tion is territory apart from that of the surrounding state.
There are certain national regulations, and certain treaty
stipulations which operate to a certain extent, but the vary
ing commands of successive Agents make their wide powers
only too evident to the Indian, for him to realize the bless
ings of a constitutional government, not to speak of a demo
cratic government. Policy points to sycophancy as the at
titude of those who would be prominent, and especially of
those who would gather the plums of the "Agency ring."
-^ Miss Fletcher tells of the poor red man, punished severely
(2) for teaching doctrines to "subvert the authority" of the
Agent, by telling his neighbors of the Declaration of Inde
pendence. Pancoast refers to cases of men deprived of from
three to six months' rations out of personal pique on the part
of the Agent, or in a moment of passion. It was hoped that
the Indian Courts of Offenses, established under the order
of 1883, would put some measure of democratic control within
the power of the Indians, but in New York State, at least, they
are denounced as sources of corruption, which should be
eliminated as soon as possible. /
It would be unjust to leave the impression that the Agent
is generally cruel and arbitrary. Generally he has no motive
to do wrong. 7 The error is in the system, not in the man. It
is in the reactions of the system upon its administrators, and
finding their climax in the humiliation put upon the man who
after a life-time in the service of the state dared to express
his opinions as to the essentials for the efficient expenditures
of public treasure, and for the salvation of a race, that a basis
is found for criticism. /The Agent is disappearing, but the
system tends to persisj^' Nevertheless if a choice had to be
made, pure despotism would probably be better than pure
democracy. /Invention should bring us some institution or
institutions adequate to the case.y
To get closer, however, to our problem, the real evil of
the situation lies, not so much in the acts of the ruler, as in
the inaction which the situation forces upon the subject. The
(2) Mohonk Report 1903, p. 68.

30 THE INDIAN
former is a negative, the latter a positive evil. An American
does not need to be told that the strength of his people lies
in the energy, initiative, and self-determination which his
political and economic freedom forces upon him. The Indian
of today knows no such freedom. He has been trained, more
over, to expect to have his food, his clothing, and his whole
economic and political life provided and arranged for him.
Gradually rations are being withdrawn, (i) but the spring of
life has been broken, and a special effort will be necessary
if he is to rise to the new situation. As a general proposition
we may say that manual labor is a disgrace in his eyes; he
despises work, the white man, and the civilization based upon
work. Nevertheless we tell him he must work or starve.
When he begins to feel the pains of the alternative the good
people of the country rise up in their wrath and hurl denuncia
tions at the Indian oflfice until the rations are restored.
But at the same moment that we tell the Indian that his
fate lies in his own hands, we also tell him three other things,
namely, that he cannot sell his own lands or use his own
money held by the government, that he cannot sue or be sued
in the courts, and that he is not subject to taxation as all other
able-bodied men are. We do not here mention the further
facts that the government will relieve him from the support and
education of all his children, present and prospective, from
the age of six to manhood and womanhood. What race under
heaven could develop under such monstrous conditions? Make
him a citizen in fact as well as in name! Give him full con
trol of his property and self. Let who will sell and become
their real pauper selves. Better far to support a few in a
general poor house, than to condemn a race to continued de
gradation. The condemnation is but for twenty-five years.
But that means a generation of time, of people, and of money
and resources squandered. It means a generation of con
tinued pauperization. It means another generation taught to
be irresponsible for debt, or person, or fate; another genera
tion kept from learning the lessons of labor, of self-support,
and of economic initiative ; another generation cut off from
the stream of American life and civilization.
The dangers of the freedom proposed are obvious, if not
already intimated. Briefly they are starvation and intoxica-
(1) Commissioner Leupp, 1906: "Mr. Brennan reports that 6,700 of the 6,700
Pine Ridge Indians are still on the ration roll in some way."

LEGAL STATUS 31
tion perhaps both. We are told that the Indian is a child
without a sense of the value of money or property, and that,
therefore, it would take the white man but a short while to
despoil him of all his possessions, leaving him utterly helpless
with nothing but uncertain charity between him and starva-^
tion. Nor is this an unlikely picture of the fate of some if not
of many. But how else shall the Indian learn? Experience
is a teacher whom he will believe before and above all others.
Some in the tribe will go down— some go down now— but
others will take warning. The intelligence of the race will
take heed of the situation. The cunning of the race will
match itself with the cunning of the white man. If we could
know that the tribe would be prepared for self-control by
twenty-five years of tutelage, it might be well to postpone the
day of trial for that period. But the reports that come from the
Puyallup Indians of Washington, now entitled to full con
trol of the lands allotted them seventeen years ago, come in
just the words that are used to demonstrate the necessity of
a period of probation. Commissioner Jones declared: "The
case of the Puyallup Indians illustrates the fact that it is bad
policy to remove the restrictive clause from the sale of Indian
lands, and permit allottees and owners to sell them without
any government supervision. These Indians are disposing of
their lands for an inadequate consideration and are being de
frauded and swindled. I am of the opinion that Indians in
all cases should be aided and protected by the Government in
making land sales. This is the case in the sale of inherited
Indian lands, .... and this course appears to be resulting
in good to the heirs of deceased allottees." The Government
should endeavor to protect from fraud all its citizens, red or
white, and, as we shall see, has the power to act in the matter.
That the granting of citizenship does not operate to pre
vent the Government from reviewing the contracts of Indians
is clearly shown by the decision of the Circuit Court, western
district of North Carolina, against D. T. Boyd and others,
(i) which stated through Judge Simonton that though the
Eastern Cherokee Indians are citizens of North Carolina, vote,
and pay taxes, yet the national government
"Has not yet ceased its guardian care over them, nor released
them from pupilage. The Federal courts, can, still, in the name of the
United States, adjudicate their rights. Nor is this without precedent.
(1) 68 Fed. Rep., p. 579.

32 THE INDIAN
The American seaman, born a citizen of the United States, or natural
ized as such, has extended over him the guardian care of the Govern
ment and is a ward of the nation. The statute books abound with
acts requiring his contracts to be looked into by officers appointed
for that purpose, and every precaution is taken to guard him against
fraud, oppression and wrong." Judge Dick added that "courts of
chancery in this country and England, have, by a wise and salutary
development of the principles of natural justice, built up an extensive,
enlightened and beneficent jurisdiction in equity for the purpose of
redressing wrongs, securing rights, and affording remedies adequate
to the requirements of justice."
But that will not keep any from the necessity of learning
by experience the lessons of responsibility. Postponing the
lesson will not make it any easier. The worst feature of the
present method is that after a long period of hot-house pro
tection, a whole community is suddenly pushed pell-mell into
the cold atmosphere of the outside world. No one has a
chance to profit by the experience of the others. It would be
a great advance if they were released one by one from their
leading strings. The first failure would become an example to
the warning of many. Surely when an Indian boy is retained
in school till he is eighteen, he should be given his allotment
at once, and the right to draw on his government funds in
order to stock his farm, and at twenty-one the patent .n fee
to his lands should be made over to him. By such a scheme,
even though the twenty-five year law should hold for the older
people, the stripes of experience would fall successively upon
a few to the advantage of the many, and those few would be
the ones best able to stand the test, or best able to strike out
anew in case they failed, (i) This compromise between the
present plan and one of immediate full ownership, I would
especially commend to the friends of Poor Lo.
So far no reference has been made to the modification of the
Dawes Act of 1887 effected by the Burke Bill of 1906, which
is a practical repeal of the Dawes Act so far as citizenship
of the present generation of Indians is concerned.
It is one of the marvels of modern legislation how there
could be such a complete reversal of public policy, without
any indication on the part of the people that they know that
(1) The Indian Commissioner in his 1906 report apparently anticipates this
suggestion: "Under ordinary conditions I would rather see an Indian who is work
ing as a section hand on a railroad get his land free from governmental control than
one who has no fixed calling, no matter what may be the relative scholastic education
•{ the two."

LEGAL STATUS 33
such a thing was being perpetrated. The law of 1887 is
amended to read:
"That at the expiration of the trust period and when the
lands have been conveyed to the Indians by patent in fee . . .
then each and every allottee shall have the benefit of and be
subject to the laws, both civil and criminal of the State or
Territory in which they may reside ; . . . . And every Indian
. . to whom allotments shall have been made and who has
received a patent in fee simple ... is hereby declared to be a
citizen of the United States." There is a provision allowing
the Secretary of the Interior to anticipate the twenty-five year
trust period in individual cases, and another provision giving
exclusive jurisdiction to the federal government over all
Indians holding trust patents.
It is easy to see that this postpones citizenship for another
generation. In addition to the argument against such a policy
on the ground of its general inadvisability, there is another
based upon the confusion which it injects and continues in
Indian affairs. In the future we shall have all the Indians
citizens in the Indian Territory half of Oklahoma, while none
of the Indians of New York are in any way eligible to citizen
ship. We shall have former allottees citizens, and future al
lottees non-citizens — and this in some cases, on the same reser
vation. We shall have non-allotted Indians citizens and tax
payers in the southwest, while allotted Indians in the north
west are neither citizens nor taxpayers. We shall be educat
ing Indians for the duties of a citizen at Carlisle and then
compelling the same Indians to live in barbarism in Colorado.
The hope, the only hope, for the Indian, is for him to
jump into civilization The Burke bill ends for those it con
cerns the possibility of hope. For the only way to learn to
swim is to swim.
The problem of alcohol is one that the whites have not
solved for themselves; it is scarcely probable that they will
solve it for the reds. The Indian has an especially intense
longing for whiskey; he gets it even now. But, despite the
attractions of prohibition, many are learning to abstain, and
to despise the white tippler. It is almost certain, however,
that the first impulse of many others under full citizenship
would be to become drunken citizens, but a reaction would
follow, and the hastened extinction of some vvould result in

34 THE INDIAN
the real salvation of many. No community can be half free
and half bound. Make the Indian the equal of his neighbor
in all his possibilities and he will have a motive to control
his passions, and to strive to realize those possibilities. In
this matter the two races must go up or down together.
The liquor problem was intensified by the claim and belief
of many that the laws prohibiting the sale of spirits to Indians
could not operate in the case of citizen-allottees. Commis
sioner Browning, however, urged the matter upon Congress
for several years, until a bill was passed and approved January
30, 1897, (i) prohibiting the sale of intoxicants of any sort
"to any Indian to whom allotment of land has been made while
the title to the same shall be held in trust by the government"
and providing for punishment of any one "who shall intro
duce or attempt to introduce .... any ardent or intoxicat
ing liquor of any kind whatsoever, into the Indian country,
which term shall include any Indian allotments while the title
to the same shall be held in trust by the Government." This
law was inclusive enough in its provisions, but was at
tacked as unconstitutional, and the first provision was annulled
by the Supreme Court (2) in the Heff case, decided on April
10, 1905. The court held that
"When the United States grants the privileges of citizenship to
an Indian, gives to him the benefit of and requires him to be subject
to the laws, both civil and criminal of the State, it places him outside
the reach of police regulations on the part of Congress; that the
emancipation from Federal control thus created cannot be set aside
at the instance of the Government without the consent of the indi
vidual Indian and the State, and that this emancipation from Federal
control is not affected by the fact that the lands it has granted to the
Indian are granted subject to a condition against alienation and
incumbrance, or the further fact that it guarantees to him an interest
in tribal or other property."
But, according to the ruling of the Department of Justice,
there is still available for the protection of Indian allottees
while on the reservations the provision prohibiting the intro
duction of liquor into the Indian country, including lands al
lotted but held in trust by the Government.
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his report for 1905
comments thus upon the situation :
"Experience shows that the only safety of the Indians lies in
keeping liquor out of their reach. Their willingness to buy it at any
(1) 29 Stat. 506. (3) Supreme Court Reports, Vol. 197, p. 488.

LEGAL STATUS 35
cost induces persons engaged in the traffic to break the law in order
to sell It to them at exorbitant prices. The Office has used every
available means to break up the liquor traffic with the Indians, but it
has no power to enforce the criminal laws. The Heff decision will add
^f "^ *° *^^ difficulty of protecting even the unallotted Indians.
Ihe Office is, therefore, moved once more to recommend that Congress
be asked to appropriate $10,000 to be used in obtaining evidence and in
prosecuting parties engaged in the sale of liquor to the Indians."
Such an appropriation has been urged for years, and was
granted in 1906.
It may be argued against the enfranchisement of the
Indian that political rights are the last to be acquired in a
natural or progressive evolution, and that given to him now,
they would result only in his ruin, and that this would involve
his white neighbors. To this it may be briefly replied that
there are several conditions which minimize the possible evils
of civic freedom. In the first place, even though citizenship
be interpreted to include the right to vote, his ignorance of our
language and methods will bar to a great extent any otherwise
undue tendency to the misuse of his new privileges; ignor
ance will meet a partial educational qualification for the fran
chise. Citizenship, for the Indian means chiefly self-responsi
bility, and opens the "door of hope" to those capable of rising
to responsibility. In the second place, if there be any consid
erable danger in giving the franchise to the illiterate Indian,
every state is still free to exercise its duty to enact an educa
tional qualification for the franchise. And in the third place,
with few exceptions outside of Indian Territory, the Indians
are relatively too few to have any considerable power for harm
over the destinies of the dominant race.
It has been urged against a policy of allotment, citizen
ship, and laissez-faire that there are reservations where the
natural resources are not sufficient to enable the people to
bcome self-supporting. But such conditions are not a reply
to a rational social policy, but an indictment of the nation
which permits them. If through ignorance, fraud, or incom
petence, we have shoved the Indian into territories of perma
nent poverty, our first duty lies not in supporting them there
in poverty, but in transferring them to regions where a self-
respecting life is possible. The government should not let a
year go by without ascertaining whether such conditions do
pertain, and if discovered, the means of change should quickly

36 THE INDIAN
be found. Reservation after reservation, now owned by the
Indians, is bought for or by the white. Whenever valuable
surplus lands are available for new peoples, the first thought
should be to inquire if there are other Indians in need of them.
Not until every Indian entitled, for any reason, to land, is pro
vided for, in substance as well as in acreage, should another
acre of Indian land be sold.

CHAPTER III.

RESULTS OF CITIZENSHIP.

Walker's reports in 1874. Eastern band of Cherokees. The
Omahas. The Santee Sioux. The St. Regis and Oneidas. Mr.
Grinnell's argument against general citizenship. The Jicarillas
and the Pawnees. Later reports. The Flandreau Sioux. Evils
of freedom. Necessity of experience. A contrasting policy in
Alaska. Thousands of Indians at one time or another, as we have
seen, have exercised some or all of the rights of citizenship
for which this thesis contends. The results of such privileges
ought to have some bearing upon the advisability of extending
or restricting the franchise in the future. In spite of the dis
couraging relapses which he found, Francis Walker called at
tention to real advances made. The Ottawas and Chippewas
were "well advanced in civilization" and showed "a marked
improvement in regard to breaking land and building houses."
The Santee Sioux were "peaceable, industrious, and well ad
vanced in the arts of life." The Winnebagoes showed a
"steady improvement in condition," the Omahas had made
"considerable advancement in agriculture and civilization."
The Pottawatomies were "educated, intelligent and thrifty
farmers." A favorable report came from the Arapahoes of the
South. Among the Yakimas "the manual-labor school ....
has been a complete success." But the results among the
Pimas and Maricopas were discouraging. "The relations of
these bands with the neighboring whites are . . . very unfav
orable to their interests, and the condition of affairs is fast
o-rowing worse. The difficulty arises out of the fact of the

38 THE INDIAN
use and probably the improvident use, by the whites about
them, of the water of the Gila River, by which they are de
prived of all means of irrigating their lands."
Thirty years later some of these estimates must be re
vised, and we have numerous other illustrations, both of ad
vancement and of retrogression among citizen Indians.
The eastern band of Cherokees, by the constitution of
North Carolina, are citizens of that state, though not citizens
of the United States. They vote, pay taxes, practically hold
their land in severalty and, as a corporation, in fee simple, sue
and are sued, work roads and perform all the duties of citizens.
They are subject to the laws of the state; "none of the laws
applicable to Indian reservations apply to them." The gov
ernment reports for 1903 that the 1457 individuals obtain 97
per cent, of their subsistence by labor in civilized pursuits,
and only one per cent, by hunting, fishing and root-gathering.
279 are communicant church members, attending five churches.
Three hundred families cultivated in severalty 3303 acres of
land. These people might be compared with about the same
number of non-citizens in Wyoming, where only 25 per cent, of
the subsistence came from civilized pursuits, 55 per cent, from
the government, and 20 per cent, from lease-money. The
Cherokees lived in 415 houses as against 139 in Wyoming.
The apparently advanced status of these Cherokees is
negatived by the actual persistence of certain undesirable
conditions. They are organized as a state corporation, and
retain much of the force of tribal control. Lands can be sold,
but only to other Indians, and with the consent of the council.
The actual fullness of citizenship, with the bracing effects of
freedom, are secured only by the few returned students, who
abandon the tribe and settle outside the communal limits.
This is done only under the displeasure of the older Indians,
and involves considerable moral courage.
Although Walker could report favorably upon some of
the results among the Omahas in 1874, by 1895 (i) the con
ditions there were popularly considered a demonstration of
the folly of the granting of citizenship, even though the In
dians voted and had had one of their number chosen judge
of the county court. Possibly the folly consisted in expecting
that division of the land or the possession of the franchise
(1) Mohonk Reports, 1895, p. 17.

RESULTS OF CITIZENSHIP 39
would bring civilization at once, and in concluding a new
policy wrong because it did not achieve at once what the old
policy had failed to achieve at all. It was true, however, that
the fact of citizenship was used to justify the sale of liquor
by the whites to them. The civilized white man did not fail
to take advantage of his rights as a liquor-dealer. The other
forces (2) at Omaha, civil and religious, failed to measure up
to the demands of the critical moment. Freedom does not
mean immediate strength. It means the right of choice, and
when the choice presented is only evil, the results will be evil.
It is moreover only too sadly true that the path of the good
is marked out by the failures of the bad. But the results of
citizenship are not always bad. The Rev. A. D. Riggs of
Dakota, reported in that same year (1895) :
"I am not at all discouraged, because I think we are simply
brought to the necessity of looking into the subject more thoroughly.
It is not enough to study a thing in theory. Things must be brought
into practical relations. At Santee we have been able to make a
success in bringing the citizen Indian into true civil relations, and
so I believe it can be done in other places * * * The Indian is
ahvays amenable to law. You may go down to our penitentiary at
Sioux Falls, but you will not find any of our citizen Indians imprisoned
there. There may be Indians there, but they are not those who have
come into citizen relationship. That means a great deal. It means
that, where they have an understanding of their position and re
sponsibility, they have met it half-way."
The St. Regis Indians, oLNew York state, are njpxally the
most adY.anced.,2f the large tribes in that state. In 1887 the
Wfnpple commission''arN«'#"'¥6f^" reported that
"All the church books as well as the singing books are written in
Indian * * * and the records of the nation are kept in Indian."
Some of the Indians are fair farmers. "Many of these Indians can
not be distinguished from white people. In point of morals they are
far in advance of most other Indians. This is largely on account of
their having become so thoroughly white, but principally because of
the Christianizing influence of the Jesuit priests."
Without in the least discounting the work of the Catholic
Church,— for it must be confessed that they have secured re
sults which are scarcely equalled by other denominations in
religious discipline— we shall do well to recognize another
force of prosaic interest, but of active potency. These In
dians have escaped the bonds of an unwise and demoralizing
privilege which the government has so long accorded the race.
The Commission tells us that "by common consent, rather
(2) Mohonk Report, 1895, p. 80, 69, 17, 21.

40 THE INDIAN
than by virtue of any statute, the individual Indians can sue
and be sued in the courts of inferior jurisdiction of the state,
and, in case a judgment is obtained against an Indian, execu
tion issues, and is enforced in like manner as against a white
man." They have thus provided an economic basis for morals,
and taught themselves the responsibilities of contracts. They
lack many things yet, but evidently the prime essential of
manhood — a sense of responsibility — has taken some hold on
them. There are less than two hundred Oneidas in New York
state. "They have no tribal relations and are without chiefs
or other officers ; they, as a tribe, receive no money from any
source, but receive a small annuity from the general Govern
ment, amounting to about eleven yards of cotton cloth to
each person per year."
"The land formerly known as the Oneida Reservation, and now
commonly known as such, by an act of the legislature was long since
divided among the Indians there in severalty, and they now own it in
fge * * * These Indians not only manage and cultivate all of this
land themselves; but in many instances have purchased quantities of
land from the whites, and paid for them. They have observed the
habits and practices of the white farmers among them, and have so
profited by their examples that the Committee in going over the
territory was unable to distinguish, in point of cultivation, the Indian
farms from those of the whites." Could we expect much better
results from any Indian policy? This is not the doings of any Indian
bureau. It is simply the natural evolution under freedom.
The major part of the Oneidas, however, settled at Green
Bay in Wisconsin — about seventeen hundred of them. They
"Support themselves by farming, cutting stave-bolts, hoop-poles,
and cord wood. Many of them have large and well-tilled farms, and
are as well off as the average farmers among their white neighbors.
Recently, by an almost unanimous vote, they have decided to allot
their lands in severalty and become citizens, for which they are well
prepared." So reported the Agent in 1887. In 1903 he called atten
tion to their farming, their creamery, cheese-factory and probable
sugar factory: "Two years ago polling places were established on the
reservation * * * As I stated last year, I do not see any reason why
the Oneidas should not soon be able to look after their own property
interests." Civilization is certainly progressing when an Indian Agent
can practically declare that his position is no longer one of
usefulness. The only possible answer to this argument by
example is that the Oneidas are inherently superior to other
Indians, particularly to other Iroquois — and that would be

RESULTS OF CITIZENSHIP 41
a difficult thesis to prove.
Nevertheless this is the assumption of Mr. Grinnell, who
in his Indian of Today has written one of the sanest and
most interesting books to be found in Indian literature. In
fact it is the only book ever written discussing fully and
rationally the status apd condition of the modern Indian in
general and of each tribe in particular. His conclusions
reached after years of personal observation and study, both in
the field and in Washington, are entitled to the greatest weight
and most careful consideration. He lays down a number of
broad propositions, which are striking and important.
In the first place Mr. Grinnell declares that the Indian is
radically different from even the ignorant peasant of the white
race. "His mind does not work like the mind of the adult
white man."
"The differences which exist in mental attitude do not imply
that the Indian is intellectually feeble, for when the young Indian is
separated from his tribe and is brought up in association with white
people, and so has an opportunity to have his mind trained to civilized
modes of thinking and to imbibe civilized ideas, he is found to be not
less intelligent than the average white. The difference in mind means
merely that the Indian, like every other human being, receives his
knowledge or his mental training from his surroundings."
"People who have no knowledge of Indians imagine them to be
merely ignorant people, like uneducated individuals of the white
race — perhaps like the peasantry of Europe — and liken them to the
poorest of the Italian, Polish and Russian itnmigrants to this country.
They suppose that if the Indian were willing to take a spade and
shovel dirt, and to send his children to school, the whole great
problem of his progress would be solved at once, and the race would
become a self-supporting part of the population of the United States,
able to hold its own in the competition which is becoming more and
more a feature of American life." But Mr. Grinnell avers that this
is not so.
It will be necessary to note, in passing, that this is not
a fundamental difference in mental constitution, but a differ
ence in tradition — a difference in the social mind. Our author
recognizes, apparently, that it is a social and not a personal
psychology which he is considering, and he furnishes in this
single statement a powerful argument for the non-Reservation
school, and particularly for the Outing System. He does
not substantiate the literal meaning of the words, "The In
dian is not like the white man of any class or condition ; be
cause his mind does not work like the mind of the white man."
Nevertheless this interpretation of his words does not cover

42 THE INDIAN
up the fact that the various Indian tribes are in different stages
of social development, and will, therefore, respond to the same
social forces in different ways.
Upon this latter hypothesis Mr. Grinnell criticises those
who find in land in severalty and citizenship the panacea for
all Indian woes.
"In some cases the allotment law has worked well, in others it
has brought in its train untold misery to the people who were to have
been helped by it. In many cases it has brought to the Indian the
very evils from which his friends wished to protect him, and in place
of making him self-supporting and self-reliant, it has made him a
pauper who is now without hope of escaping from his pauperism. It
has placed in the way of the education of his children a stumbling
block that in many cases can hardly be surmounted, and has made
his hard lot harder, and more hopeless than it was before. The
fatally weak points in the allotment law, as now carried oiit, lie in
the tendency to apply it to all tribes, no matter what their condition,
progress or situation, in the provision that citizenship shall go with
allotments and in subsequent legislation allowing allottees to lease,
or in some cases even to sell, their lands. In all these respects the
policy is radically wrong and should be changed."
"The Oneida Indians have had to do with the white people for
nearly three hundred years. They speak English, understand more or
less of business affairs, have some knowledge of the methods of our
government, possess farms which they cultivate, and earn money in
other ways. They have received their allotments and are citizens,
and vote at elections with perhaps as much intelligence as the average
man. The Jicarilla Apaches have practically no acquaintance with the
ways of white men, speak only their own tongue, or a little Spanish,
inhabit a desert, earn nothing, have not even a school for their
children, have never learned any lessons of self-control, and are as
ignorant from our point of view as it is possible for a people to be.
They also have received their allotments and are presumptive citizens."
"The tribe first named have been benefited by receiving their
allotments; the Jicarillas are likely to be destroyed by theirs.
"A few years ago the Pawnees, though even then a dying race,
were a fairly industrious farming people. As they had always done
from time immemorial, they tilled the soil and raised the crops on
which they subsisted. At last they were forced to take allotments,
and ever since that time they have been deteriorating more rapidly
than ever. They have leased their farms and moved off to camp by
themselves, spending their time in idling and dancing. Whiskey
is freely sold them and they drink more than ever before. Freed from
the influence and control of the agent, they object to sending their
children to school, and altogether they present a spectacle of phys
ical and moral decadence that is pitiable to one who knew them in
the old days of their partial strength and apparent independence."
In his review of the conditions at the several agencies

RESULTS OF CITIZENSHIP 43
Mr. Grinnell further strengthens his position by calling atten
tion to the progress or retrogression subsequent to the allot
ment of lands. True he speaks of progress evidenced in about
the same number of instances as he does of retrogresion. This,
of course, is in entire harmony with his general theory of
tribal differences. It may be worth our while, however, to re
view briefly some of the instances he cites of palpably bad
results. The Jicarilla Apaches are victims of drunkenness and of
careless allotments, whereby many will be deprived of land.
The Indians of Omaha and Winnebago Agency, the
Quapaw Agency, the Ponca, Pawnee, and Oto Agency, the
Sisseton Agency, and the Umatilla Agency, he cites as suffer
ing from the demoralizing effects of the power to lease lands,
and from .drunkenness. The Osage Indians are the richest
people on earth, and have an income from trust funds and from
leases sufficient to insure their continuance in idleness and
degradation. In one case, the Indian is put "in a position
where he could not work if he would," in another it is only
"when their money shall be gone that improvement may
begin again." The Shawnees and Pottawatomies are allowed
to sell their lands in excess of eighty acres. They squander
their money for drink and trifles. The local taxation on im
provements is so high that it robs the lands of much of their
value. The policies of the nation and of the state thus "place
every conceivable barrier in the way of advancement." Never
theless, they "have taken hold in most praiseworthy fashion,
and many of them are doing exceedingly well."
A later statement of the condition of the Jicarilla Apaches
is found in the report of their superintendent for 1903. It
would indicate that the direction of change is upward rather
than downward.
"The very important matter of Indian allotments is in a more or
less chaotic state." "That the issuing of rations to the whole tribe
is neither necessary nor prudent is evidenced by the fact that a
conservative estimate of money earned by the tribe will show $15,000
during the past year * * * If the present policy of paying for labor
in lieu of issuing rations is continued for a few years, I feel assured
that the Jicarilla Apaches can be placed in such a position that they
will no longer be dependent on the bounty of the government."
"The greatest stumbling block in the path of the Jicarilla Apaches
has been the ease with which they could obtain liquor. A certain

44 THE INDIAN
wealthy Mexican owns five saloons on the borders of the reservation,
and for fifteen years has debauched this tribe in defiance of the law.
Last April I succeeded in securing a conviction of this man, and
although he claims to be one of the wealthiest men in New Mexico,
he was obliged to spend sixty days in the Federal jail as a common
criminal. It is a significant fact that there has not been a case of
drunkeness on this reservation since the conviction mentioned above."
Another of the tribes which Mr. Grinnell reports as ad
versely affected under the Dawes Act is that of the Sisseton
Sioux. The Superintendent very kindly writes me on the
4th of April, 1905 :
"It is a mistake to say that there is a backward tendency of the
Sisseton Sioux Indians. While the advance of the Indians is not so
rapid as we might desire, yet when you take into consideration the
inherited nature of the Indian, a person must be blind if he cannot
discern an improvement in the mode of living, habits and deportment
of the Sisseton Indian. Of course there are many who are shiftless,
and dissipated, yet they will compare fairly well with many white
people. Were it not for the disreputable white grafter and boot
leggers who prey on the unbusiness experience of the Indians, their
progress in civilization would be more marked. However, this
abuse is being gradually overcome by the vigorous methods adopted
by the Indian department."
The case of the Flandreau Sioux might be considered as
a demonstration of the poor policy of granting the full owner
ship of land to the Indian. They took up their land under
the homestead law. The Superintendent in charge of these
Sioux reported in 1904:
"Nearly all of the Indians who originally had 160 acres of land
have sold from time to time, so that many now possess only five or ten
acre tracts, and in some instances these are encumbered to nearly
their full value. Had all the Flandreau taken land under the allot
ment act instead of under the homestead law, they would be in much
better circumstances today."
The force of this argument would be much stronger were
it not for certain additional facts. The government has con-
¦) tinued to demorail?e^these people Wg^iJ^^ rations, and
r the possibility of easier income has tempted them to become
\ day laborers off the farm, and so has removed the necessity for
holding land.
"There is a great demand in this section of the country for labor,
and many of the men have worked on farms and public works";
"the last census shows an enrollment of 288 people, although nearly
one-half of that number are residing in Minnesota, Nebraska, and
elsewhere." (1).
Nevertheless Supervisor A. O. Wright, the same year,
reported of the Flandreau Indians:
(1) Rept. of Comm. of Ind. Affs., p. S04.

RESULTS OF CITIZENSHIP 45
"A few of these Indians are acquiring property, a few are very
poor, but most have small pieces of land with small houses, raising
a part of their living at home, and working by the day for the rest
They earn good wages when they work, but they do not work very
steadily. * * * The parents are voters and taxpayers. The above is
the result of thirty years of missionary and government influence
on a selected body of Sioux, and shows what we may reasonably
expect other bands of Sioux to attain in the course of time."
Summarized the evils of the allotment policy are chiefly
these : When the Indian is able to lease his lands he is apt to
do so and then to spend his income largely on whiskey. The
fact that he can not sell his land makes it impossible for him
to sink any lower. He is certain of a kind of existence, regard
less of his own actions. Could he sell his lands he would
soon realize the need of effort, and have at least a slight chance
of rising to a better level through the exertion necessary to
self-preservation. Pe^niisaiajLto sell his lands would be better
thari_£eriaJSiai^ to lease. The Indian who can speak EngHsh
and who has been "educated by the government should be
free to sell his lands and to sink to the bottom.
This is a hard doctrine. That its application will give
good results remains for the future to demonstrate. The
first exposure to temptation and the consequent downfall
do not prove that the lower condition will be a permanent one.
Experience will result in reformation for some of the indivi
dual Indians, and, in time, for the tribe as a whole The depth
of degradation of the parents will strike a stronger contrast
before the minds of the children. The pains of poverty will
fill the Indian schools, and enforce the lessons of industry and
morality therein taught.
There are other reasons why we should discount the evils
of citizenship. In the first place those evils will gradually
filter even into the reservation life itself, as it has done in so
many instances both in the east and in the west. And in the
second place the Indians themselves are learning to avoid the
.evils. It would be foolish to think that whiskey, for instance,
is kept off the unallotted reservations, and it would be equally
foolish to think that drinking among the Indians amounts to
anything like the figures that mere opportunity to secure
whiskey would warrant. Yet it is true that an increase of in
come has the same tendency among Indians that it has among
white people to plunge them into dissipation. It may be that

46 THE INDIAN
a temporary burst of dissipation is a sign of progress, though
not an element of it.
It will be well, of course, to secure the rights of the Indian,
by any means which will not deprive him of the testing ex
periences of self responsibility This does not mean that the
control of an agent or bonded superintendent must be ex
tended or even continued. Legislation might strengthen the
power of equity courts to rectify unfair contracts, and to
punish severely any evident attempt to take fraudulent and
undue advantage of the ignorance or the passions of the Indian.
Apparently this is all that can wisely be done in his protec
tion, provided, that, in addition, citizenship and full ownership
of land be granted, as suggested in the previous chapter, to
the youth of the race as they become of age.
The evils of our Indian policy are so patent that when
Alaska began to be developed Dr. Sheldon Jackson protested
against its introduction there. "It was at first a constant fight
to keep from being called Indians. We wanted to commence
where the friends of the Indian left off. We wanted to avail
ourselves of the experience of the past on the Indian question,
and so we have no Indians, we have only natives. The natives
have all the rights that any white man has. There never has
been a time since the establishment of courts in that land when
a native could not go into court, could not sue, and be sued,
like any white man."
The results have demonstrated his wisdom.

CHAPTER IV.

TRUST FUNDS.

Demoralization. Duty of allotting the funds. The Lacey
bill. The bill of March 2, 1906, a disappointment. Compromise
policy; gradual payments as the youth attain majority.
As is commonly known, the Government holds in trust
for many of the tribes larger or smaller sums of money, the
interest on which is annually paid to them. The total amount
of these funds in 1906 amounted to $36,352,950.97, and the
interest paid out, to $1,788,237.23.
The zealous care for these funds is evidence of the honesty
of our intentions, but not of our wisdom and kindness. Over
and over the records and stories from the reservations show
that these unearned incomes are sources of demoralization
and positive causes of retrogression and ruin.
It is almost certain that a wholesale and final payment of
his money to the Indian would be vastly better than the
annual premium on stagnation and vice that he now receives
at the hand of the government. The Indians would advance
more rapidly than now, if the government should confiscate
their funds.
In his book, "The Indian of Today," Mr. Grinnell has
much to say of the harmfulness of the unearned incomes
of the Indians. "The Osages are the richest and
* * "^ the least progressive of any tribe in the United
States." As for the Sioux of the Sisseton Agency:

48 THE INDIAN
"When their money shall all be gone, improvement may begin
again." So it is everywhere in greater or less degree, though
it is those who most depend upon the payments, who are most
demoralized by them.
The truest friendship for the Indian would wish these
incomes might vanish, or that they might be controlled by the
government and expended for the education of the children
as is, in part, done in Canada. But such a solution of the
problem is not possible here. Before we glance, however,
at a solution which is both wise and practicable, there is one
element in the situation which we must consider.
While it is true that certain tribes receive large cash in
comes, the majority get but small amounts from the govern
ment. The evil is less in the latter cases, but only less. It is
evil to the extent that it operates to lessen the need, and es
pecially the motive for exertion and self-dependence. But it
is more evil in the necessity it creates for the continuation of
the tribal organization and relations, and in the annual lesson
it gives in the belief that there is another source of subsistence
than resides in the individual himself. The Senecas get but a
very few dollars and a few yards of cloth a year, but these few
dollars and these few yards furnish the excuse, if not the
necessity, for the tribal organization, for the assembling of the
clan, and for the more efficient domination of the regressive
elders over the younger and more progressive element. The
possibility of progress is sold and the bargain sealed for a
mess of pottage.
We must remember then that the problem of loosing the
Indian from the bondage of custom is not solved when lands
are allotted. Tribal funds, like tribal lands, stand in the way
of full freedom. Congress makes a mistake whenever it makes
any provision for the gradual accumulation and the gradual
distribution of tribal funds. The opening of parts of reserva
tions, upon the provision that the Indians shall receive the
actual proceeds from year to year and distribute them by
tribal action, is a policy diametrically opposed to the spirit
of the Land Allotment Act of 1887, and equally opposed to
sound reasoning.
The first step in the forward movement will be the pas-

TRUST FUNDS 49
sage by Congress of what is known as the Lacey Biii. (i)
The recent discussion over the question of the use of trust
funds for sectarian schools has made prominent the necessity
of allotting those funds to the individual members of the tribes.
When that is accomplished, the individual will deal directly
with the government, in the receipt of his money, and will
expend it as he chooses, being in the matter entirely free from
interference or regulation by the tribe. This will be the op
portunity for the upward movement of the progressive, and
the downward movement of the unprogressive. For many
it will be the means of squandering an uncomprehended for
tune and of bringing them down to solid rock from which
alone they can build.
As already implied the second step will be the early
distribution of the capital fund to its owners. This is an es
sential element of the "vanishing policy." It is equally essen
tial to the policy which would transform a ward into a citizen.
Here again, as in the case of the granting of a title in fee to
the land, it may be necessary to adopt a compromise plan. If
it be held that the old Indians who cannot speak English are
not capable of handling their own funds, at least it should be
granted that the youth as they are dismissed from school must
accept the responsibility for their own fate, and should be
allowed to squander their money as fast as they legally can.
Many will suffer heavy losses — the white man will help see
to that — but some will accumulate as others lose, and all will
learn the lessons that only individual and racial experience
can teach.Under such a policy as this, claims of minors upon these
(1) "A bill providing for the allotment and distribution of Indian tribal funds.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED, That
the President is hereby authorized, in his discretion, from time to time, to designate
such Indian tribe or tribes whose members he may deem to be sufficiently advanced in
civilization to be prepared to receive and manage their individual shares of the tribal
funds then or thereafter on deposit in the Treasury of the United States to the
credit of such tribe or tribes; and thereupon shall cause the money held in trust for
such tribe or tribes in the Treasury to be allotted in severalty to the members thereof.
That thereupon a roll of such individuals in such tribe or tribes shall be made by
the Secretary of the Interior, and the funds apportioned and credited in severalty to
the individuals entitled thereto and placed to the credit of such individuals upon
the books of the United States Treasury.
Sec. 3. That the President may, bv Executive order, from time to time, order the
distribution and payment of such funds, or the interest accruing thereon, to such
of the individual members of any such tribe or tribes as, in his judgment, it would
be for the best interests of such individuals to have such distribution made.
Sec. 3. That the President shall, by Executive order, prescribe rules and regu
lations to carry out the purposes of this act. Such regulations may also provide
the method and proceedings for the distribution of the share of any allottee who may
die before payment and after such allotment on the books of the Treasury Department.

50 THE INDIAN
funds will all be satisfied within eighteen years. The shares of
the older people should be handed over as soon as the several
tribes shall be deemed prepared to receive them. Probably
nothing now foreseen should keep any of these funds in the
hands of the government for more than twenty-five years.
Probably a safe rule would be that when the school-graduates
constituted one-third of the adult population, the funds should
be placed at the disposal of all.
When the funds are distributed, the first tendency of the
Indians will be to spend the money freely. The swindler will
be on hand to get all he can. The banker could do a good
business with some. The saloon-keeper will have no trouble
except with the law. The mission schools will have a season
of prosperity. The man or the institution on hand and familiar
with the ground from long establishment, will have a sudden
and wide opportunity to do the evil or the good which lies in
the nature of his or its work.
Before closing this chapter it is necessary to call attention
to House Bill No. 171 13, approved by the President, March 2,
1907. This bill has the appearance of the Lacey bill, but
utiSlk-J£isats«4lie.,£bject^^ advocates of the
allotment in severalty of Indian trust funds. It proposes that
the President be authorized:
"In his discretion, from time to time to designate any individual
Indian belonging to any tribe or tribes whom he may deem to be
sufficiently advanced in civilization to be capable of managing his or
her own affairs, and he may cause to be apportioned and allotted to
any such Indian his or her pro rata share of any tribal or trust funds
on deposit in the Treasury of the United States to the credit of the
tribe or tribes of which said Indian is a member."
The great object of the Lacey bill is to secure a complete
division of the tribal funds upon the books of the Treasury,
thus separating the interests of the individual from those of
the tribe, and obviating all such contests as occur in connection
with the use of tribal funds for the support of mission schools,
which is not secured by the bill which has been passed.
Moreover by the terms of the latter bill, an immense
amount of work would be involved at each appli
cation for such segregation of his holdings by an individual.
I The share of each individual in the common property varies
i with each birth and death within the tribe. The labor neces
sary for such individual allotting would practically preclude
any enforcement of the law. The bill is both unwise and
impracticable.

CHAPTER V.

EDUCATION.

KINDS OF SCHOOLS.

Former disbelief in education. Reservation boarding school.
Simple, mental and industrial training. Its evil lies in its whole
sale character. The Non-Reservation boarding school. General
Pratt. Outing system. Carlisle; its great work. Experiment
in Sussex Vale. The Day School, the type of the future. Irreg-
idar attendance. Contract day schools. Sectarian appropriations.
Question of rations, of trust funds and of treaty funds. Indian
vs. Alaskan methods.
In education we see the one phase of governmental
activity which has a really bright aspect. The nation through
its armies had subjugated the native. Through its reserva
tion system it has cowed and dulled him. Through its
schools it has started him on the path to a new and better
civilization. Through its churches it will crown the work.
Strange to say it has been only within comparatively recent
years that education has been actually believed in. This does
not mean that even now the details of a system are agreed
upon throughout the land. They are not. But the germs of
a consistent plan are in existence, and will bring their full
results in time.
Three quarters of a century ago the state of Georgia passed
a law forbidding the missionaries to teach the Cherokees to
read the gospel, and when Missionary Worcester, upon the
advice to "do your duty, and then suffer the consequences",
violated the law, he was imprisoned, even though the Supreme
Court declared the law unconstitutional.
Georgia, however, was not the only opponent of educa
tion. General Morgan in 1898, in speaking of this subject,
said :-

THE INDIAN
"The first step (toward education) was the securing of the neces
sary money from Congress. In 1876 this was done largely through
the instrumentality of Senator Dawes. Twenty thousand dollars
was appropriated from the United States Treasury for Indian educa
tion. Slowly the appropriations increased from year to year, but it
required almost herculean efforts on the part of the friends of educa
tion to secure a sufficient amount from the Government for the doing
of this work. There was a wide-spread conviction or prejudice that
the Indians could not be educated. A member of the Finance Com
mittee of the Senate said to me with great positiveness — a man who
had lived among the Indians, who felt that he knew whereof he spoke,
— This is a simple waste of money. Every dollar that you put into
Indian education is thrown away.' The Assistant Secretary of the
Interior, through whose hands the recommendations in the Indian
School service passed, said to me: 'You are a fool; you cannot do
anything in educating the Indians. There is not a case on record of
an educated Indian. You are not only throwing away public money,
but you are antagonizing Senators, and you are acting very fool
ishly.' " (1).
"I might multiply such speeches indefinitely to show the difficulty
of getting from Congress the money necessary to carry on Indian
education. It was only because of the sentiment expressed through
the Mohonk Conference year after year in every platform, and through
the agency of the great religious newspapers of the country, and
through organizations bringing to bear upon Congress such pressure
of public sentiment, that forced it to grant these appropriations.
While Senators would privately ridicule the suggestion of money
being given for Indian education, they would, in obedience to public
sentiment, vote the money necessary."
Annual appropriations made by the Government from and includ
ing the fiscal year 1877 for the support of Indian schools have been
as here shown. SCHOOL EXPENDITURES

Per cent

Per cent.
Year
Appropriation
increase Year
Appropriation
increase
1877
$ 20,000
|1892
$2,291,650
24.3
1878
30,000
50.
|1893
2,315,612
1.04
1879
60,000
100.
1 1894
2,243,497
(a)
3.5
1880
75,000
25.
|1895
2,060,695
(a)
8.87
1881
75,000
11896
2,056.515
(a)
2.
1882
135,000
80.
|1897
2,517,265
22.45
1883
487,200
260.
|1898
2,631,771
4.54
1884
675,200
38.
|1899
2,638,390
.25
1885
993,800
47.
|l900
2,936,080
11.28
1886
1,100,065
10.
11901
3,080,367
(a)
4.91
1887
1,211,415
10.
|1902
3,244,250
5.32
1888
1,179,916 (a)
2.6
|1903
3,531,250
8.24
1889
1,348,015
14.
J1904
3,522,950
(a)
9.23
1890
1,364,568
1.
11905
3,880,740
10.15
1891
1,842,770
35.
[1906
3,777,100
(a)
2.67
(a)
Decrease.
[1907
3,925,830
3.93
(1)
See Mohonk Report, 1898, p. 49
KINDS OF SCHOOLS 53
Opposition did not stop with the granting of appropria
tions. In many instances people on the frontier did not
believe in education, and consequently did little more than
maintain the form of a school. I have been told of one board
ing school where the agent took no interest in the school,
beyond the fact that it provided convenient salaries for his
relatives and friends; the matron visited the school once in
three months. That Reservation and School show today the
evil results of such criminal ignorance and negligence.
Present day methods, however, are probably compounded
of very much less indifference. The evils of the system are
due, in chief part, to the inconsistencies of administration and
the inefficiency of the field force.
At the present time we have three types of government
schools, the Day School, the Reservation Boarding School
and the Non-Reservation Boarding School. Each has its
advantages, each its disadvantages.
The Reservation Boarding schools, of which there are in
1907 ninety, with 11,007 pupils, have a local patronage, and
can adjust themselves to local conditions. Generally the chil
dren go home for summer vacation, and the parents can come
to the school, and in many cases the children go home on
Saturday and Sunday. The larger force of employees and
teachers necessary to the care of so many children makes it
possible to divide the work among specialists, and so the
children are given a better instruction than can be provided
in a day school where one teacher must handle all the classes,
literary and industrial.
It is the purpose of these schools to provide for the
scholars the essentials of a civilized home-life, and to train
them in all those simple duties which make up the routine of
the average civilized rural family. The boys are taught the
work of the farm, the care of stock and the use of the tools of
the carpenter and engineer. The girls have their industrial
training more particularly directed to the arts of the kitchen,
the laundry and the sewing room. But neither boys nor girls
are limited to these few subjects, and in some schools the
provisions made for the teaching of many industries almost
rival those of the more elaborate Non-Reservation Schools.
It is plain to be seen that the Indian child is offered a

54 THE INDIAN
chance to learn the essentials of our farmer's life. Yet it may
be questioned whether the girl who helps to cook for one
hundred and fifty children will gra,sp the process of providing
for a family of two or three. The girl who darns stockings
continuously three hours a day for two months stands a chance
of acquiring a decided preference for hole-y stockings.
If any more money is to be spent in the building of Indian
boarding schools, that money should not be put into immense
dormitories, kitchens and dining rooms . The same wisdom
which would abolish institutional orphan asylums for white
children and create Placing-out societies, would ensure the
erection of a sufficient number of cottages for the home life
of small groups of children. This would cost more money,
but it would tend more surely toward the end of the govern
ment — the revelation of a new life to the on-coming generation
of Indian children. With the object attained the expense
will cease.
The Non-reservation Boarding school has led the way in
Indian education, and been the object of much praise and
much abuse. Valiant work has been done in it, and great
victories won. It has been blamed not often for what it has
done, but chiefly for what it has not done. It has endowed
the Indian youth with many possibilities; it has not always
realized on those possibilities. To a certain extent it has made
a new creature and sent it to an impossible environment.
The solution of the problem lies not in the preservation of the
old creature, but in the attainment of a new environment.
And this was not within the power of the school. Our govern
ment and our people have failed to realize this truth, and to
act upon it. The backslidings of "returned students" can not
be laid exclusively upon the school, nor upon the scholar. We,
as a people, may have done the first half of our duty, but we
have neglected the second half — that is, our duty to the scholar
after he leaves the school. Bagehot calls attention to a prin
ciple which is not commonly understood. It affords an expla
nation of the wild character and frequent retrogression of the
half-breed, and of the educated native. Both are freed from
the old social control, both are apt to be equally free from the
bonds, of the dominant race:
"The mixture of races has a singular danger as well as a singular

KINDS OF SCHOOLS 55
advantage in the early world. We know now the Anglo-Indian suspi
cion or contempt for 'half-castes.' The union of the Englishman and
the Hindoo produces something not only between races, but between
moralities. They have no inherited creed or plain place in the world;
they have none of the fixed traditional sentiments which are the stays
of human nature. In the early world many mixtures must have
wrought many ruins, they must have destroyed what they could not
replace — an inbred principle of discipline and of order."
There are two ways of saving the new Indian. One is
associated with General Pratt's dictum : The way to civilize
the Indian is to put him in civilization and to keep him there.
This is undoubtedly the most effective means for the par
ticular individual who is thus persuaded to leave his own
people. There are very many Indians scattered all over the
country who are successfully living the civilized life. But the
instincts of the majority carry them back to the Reserve,
from which the older people, too, can never go. These people
are in large measure left out of General Pratt's scheme.
The second way of reaping the harvest prepared in the
non-reservation school is found in many forms of industrial,
settlement, and spiritual work to be carried on on the reserva
tion itself. This subject will be referred to again in another
chapter. The purpose of the non-reservation school is almost im
plied in its name; the adjective is more suggestive and im
portant than the substantive. It is the theory of its advocates
that the surest and quickest way to transplant an individual
from a state of barbarism to civilization, is to move him when
a child bodily from barbarism to civilization. Let him feed on
the substance and breathe the air of civilization, uncon-
taminated by the poisons of barbarism. The theory is sound,
its application has been inadequate, its results all that could
have been expected.
The farther apart the two stages of culture, the more
imperative is the cutting of connection between the life of the
young from that of the old. The young shoot must be
grafted early and firmly upon the better stock. A Jesuit
priest after years of experience and thought told me that he
planned the equivalent of a non-reservation school right at the
mission on the reservation. He saw but one hope of elevating
the Indian race, and that was to keep the Indian girl from the

56

THE INDIAN

age of ten continuously at the school, without a single night's
stay at home, until she left after marriage at the school to an
educated boy. To that end he intended to devote ten years of
his life, and the results were to determine the continued ex
istence or the immediate abolition of the mission. A Canadian
Superintendent after a generation of experience told me that
the practice of allowing Indian children to go home from the
reservation boarding school summers, Saturdays and Sundays,
meant simply the postponement of results for twenty-five
years. The non-reservation school has two widely different phases
of work. Properly speaking it is a higher school for the
education of the brighter minds among the Indian youth.
They are particularly well provided for training in the indus
trial arts. The school at Chilocco, Oklahoma, claims to be the
"best equipped school in the Indian service for imparting a

NON-RESERVATION SCHOOLS. Date of Em-
Location of Schools Opening ployees

Pupils

Carlisle, Pa 
Chemawa, Oreg. (Salem) 
Chilocco, Okla 
Genoa, Neb 
Albuquerque, N. Mex 
Lawrence, Kans. (Haskell Institute) .
Grand Junction, Colo 
Santa Fe, N. Mex 
Fort Mohave, Ariz 
Carson, Nev 
Pierre, S. Dak 
Phoenix, Ariz 
Fort Lewis, Colo 
Fort Shaw, Mont 
Flandreau, S. Dak. (Riggs Institute) .
Pipestone, Minn 
Mount Pleasant, Mich 
Tomah, Wis 
Wittenberg, Wis 
Greenville, Cal 
Morris, Minn 
Chamberlain, S. Dak 
Fort Bidwell, Cal 
Rapid City, S. Dak 
Riverside, Cal 
Total 

1879

80

1,025

1880

42

.581

1884

73

778

1884

30

334

1884

30

311

1884

69

834

1886

21

238

1890

34

367

1890

21

226

26

290

1891

17

157

1891

61

763

1892

22

199

1892

32

354

1893

39

406

1893

21

214

1893

33

340

1893

27

300

1895

14

1,55

1895

9

99

1897

19

178

1898

19

201

1898

9

79

1898

26

250

1902

46

600

820

9,279

KINDS OF SCHOOLS 57
practical knowledge of the agricultural industries." Its adver
tisement tells of about twenty-five industries taught in the
trades school. Hundreds, if not thousands, of white boys and
girls would jump at the chance to get the free support and
education of a school, having thirty-five buildings principally
of stone, heated by steam and hot water, lighted with electri
city, and provided with the most modern conveniences and
equipment. Such institutions are evidences of the munificent provision
which the government would make for the Indian race. The
chief objection, of course, is that the equipment may be too
fine, and train the youth to the use of tools which he cannot
secure or apply on the reservation. It is not probable that the
girls, for instance, will be able to use electric heated irons at
home. But such criticisms are ofttimes more factious than
genuine. The second phase of the non-reservation school work
is that known as the Outing system. The credit for the idea,
and especially for its thorough working out, belongs to General
Pratt, of the Carlisle School. The system is but the logical
outcome of the general theory of non-reservation methods.
If civilization is to come by contact with civilization, it surely
is more certain of attainment if the child is not merely taken
from the reservation, but is passed on from the institutional
life of the big school to the home life of an American family
and to the close association with white child life as found
there and in the public school. No more intimate contact
with the realities of our civilization can be imagined. Other
schools have tried this plan, both in this country and in
Canada, but none has carried it out on anything like the scale
that Carlisle does. Out of fifteen hundred children Carlisle
keeps about five hundred scattered among the homes, prin
cipally on the farms, of Pennsylvania.
These children are not received as paupers or as subjects
of charity, but are paid for services which they render on the
farm and in the home, while they attend the schools of their
neighborhoods. And even under these conditions the demand
for them is several times the number available. It would seem
that the system is capable of very great extension. The cases
of Dr. Charles Eastman and of the Reverend Sherman Cool-

58 THE INDIAN
idge are but illustrations of the results accruing to adoption in
white families. Both were taken prisoners as boys and brought
up in white surroundings and in white schools Both are in
full sympathy with civilization, and both have returned to
draw their own race to the light which they have seen.
if more children could be sent to the non-reservation
schools, and through them into white families, and if they
could go earlier and stay longer, the Indian problem would
be solved so much the sooner. It would be even better, if
through governmental means, and through the efforts of some
voluntary association, many children could be sent out into
families ready to adopt them. If Pennsylvania can absorb
five hundred a year, the country at large could profit from
the home care and the return service of five thousand Indian
children, (i) Such a system of distribution could best be
accomplished by an undenominational religious organization,
backed by the government and its various agencies.
The rule that requires the people who take the children
to pay them for their services doubtless operates to limit the
applications of those who would unduly exploit the labor of
the children. But it must also limit applications from those
who would furnish the best of influences, but who cannot
afford to support and pay outside help. The government could
well afford to assist such families, at least for the first few
years, when the children may be more expense than help.
There would be danger in this, as a little experiment in New
Brunswick in the first quarter of the nineteenth century shows.
There a plan was devised "of apprenticing children of Indians
in various families in Sussex Vale, with an annual allowance
of from £io to £20 each. (2) But after fourteen years'
trial, the scheme was found to have been greatly abused, and
was therefore abandoned gradually as was found possible."
With a full recognition of the dangers, it is possible to see also
that the plan would operate to the great advantage of many
children, and to the saving of much money to the government.
It is probable, however, that even under the present methods,
very widely extended distribution of the children coujd be
secured, should the government really desire to send them
(1) Commissioner Leupp at Los Angeles, 1907: "The outing system I should be
glad to see extended to every boarding school in the service. Indeed, x believe the
outing system is the best feature of our schools.
(3) History of the New England Co., p. 18.

KINDS OF SCHOOLS 59
from the schools. Economy and results certainly lie in that
direction. Doubtless many individual scholars could be brought
into more intimate contact yvith our civilization, if they could
be transferred from the government boarding schools to many
of our private boarding schools, in the same way that they
are sent to Hampton. Direct contact and competition with
white scholars could be secured, as in the Outing .system,
without, of course, the home influences, but also without the
possible lowering of the standard of school work. This would
tend to the elimination of the necessity of a government school
plant. Such a suggestion brings up at once the question of sec
tarian appropriations. That question is a serious one, and one
which we have in considerable degree settled so well, that we
do not want to have to settle it again. Yet if for the last two
years of the school life, the scholar could be allowed to choose
from among standard white normal and industrial schools and
colleges, the government could well afford to turn over to the
pupils half the usual yearly expense of their training to enable
those so inclined to enter more thoroughly into the white
man's world.
The day school constitutes the third type, and judging
from the practice among the white race, it is destined to be
come the main type in primary education among the Indians
also, (i) It is a local school for the training of the children,
while they remain in their own homes. It cannot raise the
standards and ideals of the individual child so rapidly as the
boarding schools, but it is perhaps the chief existing means
for the raising of the standards of the tribe as a whole. Each
return home on the part of the child doubtless tends to lessen
the influence of the teacher upon the child, but it also tends
to change the notions of the parents. So an equilibrium of
influences is established, but it is a moving equilibrium.
Advances, even though very slight, are made, and the progress
(1) Commissioner Leupp at Los Angeles, 1907: "In time we shall put one
reservation boarding sc jol after another out of commission. Finally our little
day schools, which are at the foundation of our whole system, will in all probability
merge in the course of 20 or 25 years, into little village schools continued by the
local white government, but conducted for all the people alike; they will become a
part of the great common school system of the United States which has done so much
to make our country what it is today."

60 THE INDIAN
made has a solid basis, in that it is largely either unconscious
or voluntary, and no opposition is created between the youth
and the adults. No conscious gulf of difference is made to
yawn between the young and the old, over which the voice of
ridicule and scorn can call with such withering effects. The
boarding school is preeminently the hope of the coming genera
tion, while the day school is the hope of the past generation.
There are several difficulties in the way of the establish
ment of a complete system of day schools. But the first great
argument against them lies in the difficulty of securing regular
attendance. From two important sources in Canada I heard a
decided opposition expressed to the day schools because of the
irregular attendance upon them; government reports in New
York and elsewhere point out the same difficulty. Neverthe
less, it is an obstacle which must be met and surmounted. It
is not an impossible problem. Indian police can fill up the
day school just as well as the boarding school. State laws for
compulsory education can be just as effective over an Indian
population as over a white population. Whenever the nation
or state so wills it, the law and the means of compulsion will
be found. Any failure will be the white man's failure. Safety
and economy demand efficient legislation and action in this
regard. A stitch in time saves nine.
There remains still to be discussed the contract day
schools. They are not essentially different from those we have
CONTRACT DAY SCHOOLS

Year

No. of
Schools

Contract No.
of pupils

Enroll ment

Ave, at
tend ance

Ratio to en
rollment Per cent.

1891

8

91

7

4

57 l-f)

1892

14

212

190

106

56

1893

16

268

212

133

58

1894

27

.259

204

101

50

1895

36

487

319

192

60

1896

45

558

413

294

Tl

1897

38

384

315

195

63

1898

31

340

314

197

57

3899

36

359

336

167

51

1900

22

175

346

118

48

1901

19

121

357

131

51

1902

16

110

189

98

52

1903

12

99

164

81

49

1904

7

61

97

57

59

1905

6

56

84

51

60

1906 6 67 94 50 53
Such irregular attendance could and should be prevented.

KINDS OF SCHOOLS 61
been considering, save in the manner funds are disbursed.
When it is possible the government allows the Indian children
to attend the local district schools, just as they will do as a
general rule when the tide of white advancement intermingles
the two races more closely together. The government pays
the tuition fees for the Indian pupils. The results thus far
have not been so satisfactory as it was expected they would
be, nor as they are likely to be in the future.
A sense of historical completeness requires some
reference at this point to the practice of aid to sectarian mis
sion schools. The Peace Policy, as we have already seen, early
led to jealousies, bitterness, and even unseemly squabbles
among the religious denominations of the country. The
Catholics were first aggrieved in the allotment of ecclesias
tical territory, but later the Protestants found that the energy
and persistence of the Catholics was reversing the position of
advantage not only in territorial control, but particularly in
the distribution of government funds. The evils, necessary
and unnecessary, of the competition of churches for such
funds resulted in action which finally led to the complete
cessation of government aid to sectarian mission schools.
James M. King in an address (i) in 1890 maitained that:
"Responses from thoughtful and liberal Protestants, Roman
Catholics, and Jews * * * have shown all but a unanimous consensus
of opinion against such appropriations, as both perilous in precedent
and harmful in results." As general secretary of the National League
for the Protection of American Institutions, he was then preparing
"an appeal to all the religious denominations, asking them to with
draw all applications for appropriations, and to refuse to receive
appropriations from the National Treasury."
The Protestants as a whole did withdraw their applica
tions. Naturally the struggle did not stop with a contest over
funds, but extended to the control of offices and particularly
of policies. In the following year another pamphlet (2) main
tained that:
"During the last administration, the Superintendent of Indian
Schools, Mr. Riley, was a Catholic, as was the Chief of the Educa
tional Division in the Indian Bureau, his first assistant and principal
clerk. The Commissioner of Indian affairs was subservient to Catholic
interests, and in fact the Indian Bureau was completely dominated
(1) King: Sectarian Indian Scnools, or the Relation of the Churches to the
General Government in the Education of the Indian Races, 1890.
(2) King: Facts concerning the iJureau of Catholic Indian Missions, 1891.

62 THE INDIAN
by the Catholic Bureau, in consequence of which the government
Indian Schools were neglected and the Catholic schools fostered in
every possible way." "When the present Commissioner announced
his intention of non-partisan, non-sectarian Government Indian
schools, modeled after the public schools, the Catholic Bureau im
mediately became alarmed, and entered upon a most vigorous carn-
p'aign to obstruct his work. The Catholic Congress assembled in
Baltimore appointed a strong delegation, with Bishop Ireland at its
head, to wait upon the President and demand that he should recall
the nomination of General Morgan, which he declined to do. The
head of the Catholic Bureau then filed charges before the Senate
Committee, accusing the Commissioner of falsehood, bigotry, and
dishonor, and a tremendous outside pressure was brought to bear
upon individual Senators to induce them to vote against his confirma
tion * * * But the Commissioner was confirmed."
Entirely regardless of the facts in the case, the situation
was an intolerable one, humiliating both to Congress and
people, demoralizing to sectarians, and ruinous for Indians.
The first step toward the elimination of the seeds of discord
was taken in the Indian appropriation bill for 1896, which
provided: "That the Secretary of the Interior shall make
contracts, but only with present contract schools, for the edu
cation of Indian pupils during the fiscal year ending June
30th, 1896, to an extent not exceeding 80 per cent of the
amount so used for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1895, and
the government shall, as early as practicable, make provision
for the education of Indian children in Government schools."
In 1900 it was enacted "that the Secretary of the Interior may
make contracts with contract schools, apportioning as near as may be
the amount so contracted for among schools of various denominations,
for the education of the Indian pupils during the fiscal year 1900, but
shall only make such contracts at places where non-sectarian schools
can not be provided for such Indian children, and to an amount not
exceeding 15% of the amount so used for the fiscal year 1895, the same
to be divided proportionately among the said several contract schools,
this being the final appropriation for sectarian schools."
This was the last appropriation to such schools by Con
gress. With this, however, the question was not settled. Appro
priations continued under the guise of rations. But on August
23, 1901, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs sent instructions
to Indian agents as follows: "You are directed not to issue
rations or anything whatever to any child attending a mission
school, whether it is entitled to rations at home or not."
Later in the same year he wrote to heads of mission schools :

KINDS OF SCHOOLS 63
"Congress has not only made no provision for furnishing of
rations or provisions to sectarian schools after July i, ultimo,
but has distinctly declared that it is to be the settled policy
of the government to hereafter make no appropriation what
ever for education in any sectarian school. The Department
has no discretion whatever in this matter of issuing rations
or clothing or anything else to sectarian schools. The spirit
as well as the letter of the law must be carried out by agents."
An effort was made in Congress in 1902 to change this
decision, but it failed.
Bishop Hare of the Episcopal Church, whose mission
schools were fatally struck by this order, appealed to the
Secretary of the Interior, and then to the President. The
latter referred the matter to the Attorney General, Mr. Knox,
who held that "the issuance of rations to them (mission
schools) for the benefit of Indian children in their case would
certainly offend the spirit of the acts of Congress last cited,
for in saving the necessary expense of maintenance, it would
have the beneficial effect of a direct appropriation. I am
therefore of opinion that the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
who must respect the settled policy of the government, as thus
declared by Congress, has no authority to grant Bishop Hare's
application." The Bishop abandoned his schools, and the matter was
settled again.
What was then the surprise of the country to learn in the
summer of 1904 that large contracts for the conduct of mis
sion schools were being made by the Department of Indian
affairs with two different denominations. It was finally shown,
however, that the funds appropriated were not government
funds at all, but Indian moneys held in trust by the govern
ment, Attorney General Moody ruling that the government
retained its trustee rights over Indian funds 'notwithstanding
the declaration of Congressional intent not to make appro
priations in the future of public moneys of the American people
for sectarian institutions." Thus was another definition made
in American policy : the most ominous feature of the situation
lay in the fact that thousands of dollars had been expended
for years with scarcely a man outside the Department aware
of the fact. Such secrecy is not essential to republican institu
tions.

64 THE INDIAN
The question, therefore, remains unsettled. Moreover,
suspicions evidently had been aroused at the opening of the
year 1905 that rations were still being issued to some few
missions. Both House and Senate requested information on
the point, and received answer (i) from Commissioner Leupp
in almost identical words to the effect that "No part of any
funds appropriated by Congress has been used, so far as this
office knows, in the purchase of rations for the children attend
ing the sectarian schools." This statement, of course, must
be interpreted in connection with a possible violation of the
law, which he had reported to the House Committee on Indian
Affairs on January 31, 1905. The possible exception involved
an interpretation of the law and of the Black Hills Treaty
with the Sioux in 1877, to which the Northern Cheyennes and
Arapahoes were party. This treaty promises rations, schools,
etc., for the Indians concerned, and is met by annual appro
priations by Congress; there is no permanent trust fund in
volved. Commissioner Leupp, then but newly inducted into
office, put the case thus :
"On July 1, 1904, a contract was executed between this office and
the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions for the care and education at-
St. Labre's Mission, Tongue River Reservation, Montana, of sixty
Indian pupils.
"The question has arisen, can the appropriation for the Northern
Cheyennes and Arapahoes, already quoted, be legally used to pay the
bills arising under this contract? In other words, is it a Government
appropriation within the meaning of the inhibition relating to sectarian
schools? "Up to 1904 this office always acted upon the assumption that this
and similar appropriations were made from Government funds and not
from funds that are in any way vested in the Indians.
"The agreement of 1877 obligates the Government * * * and to
fulfill these obligations Congress places at the disposal of the Indian
Office a certain sum of money annually. If, after these obligations.
are discharged, any of this money remains unused, it belongs to the
Government and not to the Indians. Acting upon this principle, at
the end of each fiscal year the Office returns the unexpended balance
to the Treasury to go back to the surplus fund there."
The Commissioner asked for a ruling on this point from
the Attorney General.
President Roosevelt, February 3, in a statement to the
Secretary of the Interior, said: "The special case of the
St. Labre school stands by itself, the question being whether
(1) House Doc. No. 374, Feb. 28, 1905. Senate Doc. No. 179.

KINDS OF SCHOOLS 65
the contract entered into is one authorized by the finding of
the Department of Justice in January, 1904, or whether it is
one of those cases forbidden under the decision of the Depart
ment of Justice of January, 1902. The Attorney General will
speedily report the category in which this case comes." Evi
dently the chief of division in charge of such contracts did not
hear of any adverse decision upon this point, for the contract
was executed and fulfilled. As a matter of fact no decision
was rendered up to December 23, 1905, for on that date, and
in lieu of such decision, the President in a letter to Commis
sioner Leupp distinguished clearly between trust and treaty
funds, but, pending Congressional action, ruled that contracts
already made for that fiscal year might be paid from treaty
funds. In May an injunction suit was filed by certain Rosebud
Indians to prevent the execution of the contract with the St.
Francis mission, and to test the legality of such use of both
trust and treaty funds. No contracts which involved the
granting of treaty funds to mission schools were entered into
for the fiscal year 1907. Trust funds continue to be so used.
It was the delay, and particularly the secrecy in Indian
affairs in the past, that constituted the great injustice in these
matters against which protest might have been made. During
this same period a contract similar to the St. Labre was carried
out on one of the reservations, without any record of the facts
in the Indian office, and not for a whole year could the truth
be so presented to the Commissioner that he could take notice
of the matter and order the continuous misappropriation of
government property stopped.
If a treaty obligation constitutes a fund so vested in
the Indian that it is distinguishable from Government funds,
how many former "appropriations" will become Indian pro
perty, subject to the disposition of the Department of the
Interior? There is, apparently, one, and only one, solution to this
problem. That is to forbid under any guise the handing of
government or tribal funds or goods to sectarian associations.
It is obvious that such a policy would be to the peace and
prosperity of Congress, people, and sectarians. It is almost
equally obvious that it would be to the advantage of those
dependent peoples whose interests are supposed to be the

66 THE INDIAN
object of any and every policy. Nevertheless the last Con
gress provided for the granting of rations to mission schools.
There has been some talk of transferring the management
of the Alaskan schools from the Bureau of Education to the
Indian office. National Commissioner of Education Harris
very kindly put in my hands a copy of a portion of a letter
opposing such transfer, written in the spring of 1904:
"The question ought to be settled on the grounds , first, of
efficiency of management of schools, and secondly, on the ground of
economy of expenditure from the United States Treasury." "As now
managed the Indian Office certainly deserves the commendation of all
who are interested in the education of the aboriginal races of America.
. There remains, however, another question as to the management of the
natives of Alaska, namely, whether the methods which have been
adopted by the Bureau of Education are more economical than those
of the Indian office, and whether the methods adopted are as good
or superior in the matter of results."
Dr. Harris finds that the per capita cost of the education
of the Indian children is $129.79 per year. The average cost
for the Alaskan children is $26.10. If the cost of reindeer
supplied to apprentices in Alaska be added to the school expen
ditures for the year, the per capita cost of education rises to
$28.80 per annum. One more expenditure can be reckoned in ;
about eighty Alaskan children are educated per year at Carlisle
at a cost of $167.00 apiece. Combining this with the preceding,
we get a final average cost of $34.66 per capita.
"It is submitted that the method which the Bureau of Education
has been obliged to adopt for the sake of ecqnomy, the appropriation
of the Government never having been one-third as large as it should
be for the establishment of schools enough to meet the demands of
all of the natives of Alaska * * * is far more economical than the
expenditure for Indian schools in the States, because of the saving
for food, clothing, and shelter, which is forced upon the parents not
to their injury, but to their benefit in making them self-supporting."
It would almost appear that if any transfer of jurisdiction
were to be made, it should be of the Indian schools to the
Bureau of Education rather than of the Alaskan schools to the
Indian Bureau. The present Indian Commissioner, however,
now holds that:
"The present practice of feeding and clothing and lodging an
Indian free in order to make it easier for us to force upon him a
degree of learning which he does not wish, and of which in most
cases he can and will make no use, is all folly. (1) "* * A grounding
in the rudiments he should have, whether he seeks it or not; but
everything above that he should aspire to, and be willing to work
for, just as the white youth does."
(1) At the Los Angeles Institute, 1907.

KINDS OF SCHOOLS

67

The following tables show the statistical history of the govern
ment schools since 1877.

Year

BOARDING SCHOOLS
No. Attendance

DAY SCHOOLS
No. Attendance

TOTALS
No. Attendance

1877

48

102

1878

49

119

1879

52

107

1880

60

109
1881
68
106
1882
71
3077
76
1883
80
3793
88
1884
87
4723
98
1885
114
6201
86
1886
115
7260
99
1887
117
8020
110
1888
126
8705
107
1889
136
9146
103
1890
140
9865
106
1891
146
11425
110
1892
149
12432
126
1893
156
13635
119
1894
157
14457
115
1895
157
15061
125
1896
156
15683
140
1897
145
15026
143
1898
148
16112
149
1899
149
16891
147
1900
153
17708
154
1901
161
19464
143
1902
163
20576
136
1903
162
20772
144
1904
162
21582
141
1905
167
21812
145
1906
169
21848
14.9
16371893 22371942
2370 25002715
24062367 21632745
2668
2639 31273579
3650 3536363138603613354436103522 36433644
150168159169 174
147 168 185
200214 227233
239240256275275
292 282
296288297 296
307 304
299 306303312 318
3598
4142 4448
4651 4976
4714 5686 6960
81439630
1052011420
11552 12232
135881516716303
17220 1818819262
1867619648
205222156823077 24120
24382 251042545525492
CHAPTER VI.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY.

Need of consistent theory. Distribution of scholars. Func
tion of each type of school. Power of the Office. Records^
Efficiency in each school. Importance of the WHY. Training
vs. drudgery. Literary vs. manual. Need of more teachers.
Specialization of advanced schools. Proposal of a winter school
for the adults. Supreme importance of the teacher. Appointor
ment. Civil' service. Other induceiments. Superintendent of
Schools. Inspectors. Field Assistant. Salaries. Pay of
kindergartners. Higher education. Race leadership.
The chief need in the educational work for the Indian is
in the first place a consistent theory of the relations of the
parts of the system, and in the second place a thorough and
uniform application of the theory. The lament, implied or ex
pressed, in the reports of the Indian Office, over the undue in
crease of the non-reservation schools, is almost pitiful, (i) It
indicates the possibility that it is not always the need of the
Indian that inspires the building of the handsome large Indian
school, but rather the needs of the Congressman and the desires
of his constituents for a market for produce. The struggle
for scholars among the various schools, and the per capita
system of appropriation of the school funds to them, which
causes the struggle, are not matters tending to school effi
ciency or national pride. Even under recent rules, limiting
the fields of competition, conditions are bad enough. The
government should have the power to apportion absolutely
both pupils and funds. The interests of the scholars should be
the sole criterion of the policy of the department; the rise or
(1) That this lament does not grow less is indicated in the statement made
this summer by the Commissioner at the Los Angeles Institute:
"The non-reservation schools, most of them, are simply kept in existence by send
ing out runners in every direction to gather the children in by main strength, if they
have to be half-torn to pieces in the process when two or more emissaries get after
them at the same time." — Indian School Journal, Nov. 1907.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY 69
fall of particular schools should have nothing to do with it.
There should be no struggle for scholars in order to secure
equipment, nor for equipment in order to secure scholars.
In the second place, each kind of school has its particular
function. It should exercise that, and it should not entrench
upon the field of the other. The Commissioner of Indian
Affairs in his report for 1903 says : "The ideal system therefore
is — and it could be carried out but for the excess in number
of non-reservation schools — to enroll the young child of the
camps in the day school, then pass him into the reservation
boarding school where he should remain until he has com
pleted the sixth grade, when, if he possesses the natural apti
tude to acquire a trade or further education, send him to a non-
reservation school * * * This is an ideal system, but for
reasons over which the the Department has no control it seems
impossible of being carried into effect." This fundamental
weakness of the Indian Office could and should be cured.
When the Office has been given the power essential to
efficiency, it should make that power evident throughout the
whole educational department. The multitude of differing
policies on the reservations and in the schools should be
brought into subjection to the one great controlling plan
formulated in Washington. This does not mean the exercise
of petty tyranny, but it means the prevention of pettier tyran
nies of a thousand kinds. The office should fix the conditions
under which the pupils should pass from one type of school to
another, nor leave the decision to the Agent or Superinten
dent who may not believe in one type or another, or who de
sires credit for a full school, or who wishes to get rid of
troublesome pupils, or who wants a free trip across the conti
nent as chaperon of a party of Indian children. The policy
should not be a vacillating one. The school that sends out a
party of children to a non-reservation school, and then for
twenty years forgets to repeat the process, cannot hope to
secure results. The larger the proportion of returned students
on the reservation, the greater the probability that they can
maintain their new standard against the old. (i) The policy
(1) The Indian Industries League report for 1903: "Above all other points of
difference, the degree of progress of a tribe is in proportion to the number of its
young people who have seen for themselves something of the white man's life and
have had opportunity to carry out their ideas."

70 THE INDIAN
once begun involves its own continuance. Stoppage or inter
mission destroys the hope of profit from the step already taken.
Logic further requires that the child's welfare shall not
be subject to the whim of the parents. The merest trifle will
often turn the guardian's mind just at the critical moment,
and ruin the child's prospects. So long as the Indians are to
be treated as wards, and compelled to attend the day school,
or reservation boarding school without any choice in the mat
ter, it is equally the duty of the government to command at
tendance at the non-reservation school, if the ultimate good
of the child demands such action. Not policy, not sentiment,
but duty should rule in the matter.
Having established the stages of progress at which the
transfers are to be made, the Office should keep a record of the
work done at the various schools, and call to account those
schools that, considering local conditions, do not come up to
the mark. If the criteria of judgment are "literary", no school
should be excused on the ground of false or even true indus
trial training. There are schools in the service far behind
their rightful position because of the indifference or wrong
notions of the local authorities.
A thorough-going plan of this sort might seriously inter
fere with one or more of the existing non-reservation schools.
Even though some had to be closed that should not prevent
the exercise of wisdom in the care of our wards. Shut them
up if necessary. However, there are plenty of children in the
country who need care, training and education. White chil
dren of pure American stock could profit from such schooling
as much as the red children do. Then, too, there are
thousands of children of many races, even orphan children,
who could enter such an institution to learn lessons in English,
in industry, and in race toleration. Commisioner Leupp favors
turning 19 or 20 of these schools into State schools for both
races. Along with an efficient organization of the system of
schools should go an equally efficient organization of the work
at each school. It is important that the twelve years of school
life should tell immensely in many ways. Intensive rather
than extensive work should be the rule, that is the thorough
ness of the work should be considered far more than the
number and variety of the studies and industries taken up.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY 71
The how and why of the school work should be carefully
foreseen, before the work is begun.
The government inspector who lays down the rule that in
industrial training it is more important to teach why a thing
is done than how it is done may not find a ready acceptance
of his views on all the reservations, but he speaks an essential
truth. For, contrary to the opinion of many, it is not inability
to do things that keeps the Indian idle ; it is lack of motive.
The Indian is strong, the Indian is industrious in his own way.
and the Indian is adept in the work that appeals to him. The
main purpose of education is to furnish him with the standards
and motives, which will induce him to apply the arts and in
dustries which he incidentally acquires, (i) Such a view does
not disparage in the least the best and most exacting training
which our schools can furnish, but it will serve to keep in
balance the hours and kinds of instruction. Incidentally it
means that there is a distinction between training and drud
gery. Work for work's sake, and work for the object's sake
are not primarily training. (2) The government should hire
enough help to do all the work of the school and farm, except
such as can be included in some fairly well planned scheme
of instruction. A thing done out of order is apt to be botch-
work, and to confirm botch methods. A thing well learned is
not improved upon by repetitions required because of the need
of a particular object; the work is apt to be waste effort,
(1) Since the above was written, the principle has been expressed more exactly
by one who can speak with authority. "Many mistakes have been made, arising from
the wrong notion of the object of manual training. Hence in one locality manual
training has a stron- tendency to run into trade training; in another it runs into art
work- in another it runs into the factory idea anci aims at production rather than
education Some people fancy that manual labor is the same as manual training. We
are frequently told that the boy from the farm has had manual training; and it is
true he has had some manual training, but he has had a great deal of manual labor
with it I know, because I was a farm boy and learned everything that could be
learned on a farm previous to my college course. * • * Nineteen-twentieths of my
time was spent simply in. hard labor, which had no education in it beyond an in-
cdentrand'^lmperfe^t knowledge of crops and soils and the market." "Manual train-
ir,t would have been of great value, and a few lessons would have saved me much
Ze and mu h mone".'" Calvin Milton Woodward, in the Outlook, Dec 16 1905.
(2) "More and more every year, from what I see m my own school and else-
V . .1^ T Hpnlnre the waste of opportunity in needless repetitions, and the folly
Tf had arranglments. I have seen^incompetent teachers yielding to the lawless
of bad ^;""e™^"7 .,, ^hen those whims and fancies should have been guided
* r^Urollfd The untaught boy has no appreciation of the importance of sequence.
^"^ rneces^itrof knowing just how tools should be used before he undertakes
to use ther His object 7s not' manual training; it is a 'finished article,' a piece of
to use tnem. n j estimate of the value of manual training is based upon
furniture, or ^ toy .and his. estimate ^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^.^
the value of the "^^P'^.^". f *^rtkle and that, were all the exercises of the year
*1:'"^,'h into the furnace and burned so far as' they are combustible, all the manual
Sg would s^rXe in the developed brains and trained functions of the pupils."
Outlook, Dec. 16, 1905.

72 THE INDIAN
because the time might have been put to the acquirement of
some new power. (3)
The more or less equal division of the time between
literary and industrial work requires a no less careful previ
sion, and an equally rigid execution. Care should be taken
that one does not entrench upon the other. The tendency at
the present time is for the industrial to dwarf the literary —
and industrial means, ofttimes, any sort of manual labor.
Nevertheless it is not advantageous to take a boy out of school
even a half day to level off a tennis court on which white
people are to play. Nor is it wise to let a boy choose to dig
potatoes or ditches instead of learning his lessons. Such things
as these are small, but they retard the pupil, the pupil holds
back a class, and the class may slacken the pace of a tribe.
In literary work half the time for twelve years ought to
bring much larger results than are sometimes obtained. It
is a disgrace to the country to turn out of school at eighteen
years of age scholars who cannot speak fair English, and with
out a fair comprehension of the subject of fractions in arith
metic, not to mention division. That such conditions obtain
is due to a number of causes. Two that contribute to it are
the entrenchment upon the school hours, and the over-crowd
ing of the school rooms, particularly of the kindergarten
rooms. The teacher who has twenty-five wriggling little
wild creatures, speaking but one language and that unknown
to her, does well if she keeps them interested and quiet. But
when the number is raised to thirty-five or forty, can anything
at all be expected of her? The question is a serious one, for
until the children learn English the rest of their education and
of their career halts and waits. Frequently the Indian child
can not read our first reader with any ease until he is ten or
older. Is there any remedy? It would seem so. It were
foolish to expect any industrial work of economic value from
a child under ten. He should be kept in school, that is under
the control of teachers, as many hours a day as his health
will permit. It is not at all essential that he should be kept
indoors at hard work all that time, but if kept under control
(3) Professor Balliett says: After muscular movements "become automatic by
practice, the brain relegates them almost wholly to the spinal cord. Such movements
cease to be of educational value when they are no longer directed consciously, by
the brain. Any process in manual training oughc to stop when it ceases to be brain
work. * * * Its purpose is purely educational." Outlook, Dec. 16, 1905.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY 73
and in contact with the English language five hours a day;
the average child will learn the language very rapidly. This
may require the services of another teacher, but the results
will exceed the cost. It seems not improbable that the stress
of training should be put upon literary work up to the period
of "mental retardation," or "arrested development," which
comes about twelve or fourteen and lasts for several years
before the power to study effectively returns again. It might
be equally advantageous to throw the stress on industrial
training during that period.
If intensive methods should be used in kindergarten years,
no less should they be used in the later years of training.
Especially in the industrial work after a preliminary all-around
general training, the pupil should, if possible, take the course
and pursue the work that will be of direct service in his adult
life. One school is pre-eminently prepared to teach the farm
ing industry; perhaps the brightest farmers should be sent
there. Another school will probably take the lead in some
other special industry, and so in time may come a natural
distribution of scholars according to the pursuits they have in
mind, (i) One quite serious objection has been brought
against Carlisle and Pennsylvania as places of preparation
for farming. Many of the western reservations are irrigation
countries, and must follow farming methods impracticable and
unknown in Pennsylvania. It is not improbable that this ob
jection could be met in a way which would combine several
advantages. If the scholars could come to the non-reservation
school and the adopted homes at twelve years of age, they
could stay there for four years and then those desiring to farm
at home could return to the reservation boarding school for
the last two years of training. This would give them ex
perience, under competent direction, in the kind of work they
were to follow, and at the same time it would enable the
reservation school to strengthen the lessons of an outside
civilization during two years of partial contact with the old
tribal life.
A gentleman high in the councils of the mission and
school work of the Methodist church in Canada pointed out
to me the unfortunate fact that the Indian children were ex
cused from school at eighteen years of age, "Just at the time
(1) This seems to be the desire of the new Indian Commissioner.

74 THE INDIAN
when they were best fitted to gain from instruction." It may
be doubted whether either the government of Canada or our
own will ever fix the school age above that figure. But there
is nothing in the nature of things to prevent the government
from allowing the youth of the tribes, and possibly even the
older members, to share in the instruction and life of the
reservation boarding school during such portion of the year as
there may be little work to claim their attention at home. A
winter school of several months' duration might be the source
of a great social uplift on a number of the reservations.
If a University is "Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and
a student at the other," a school is a teacher with one or more
scholars. The strength or weakness of a school lies in the
quality of the teacher. The ideal teacher in our own schools
stands for the best in our community life. He drills in the
language, in the concepts, and in the culture already known to
his pupil. The teacher of Indians teaches an unknown lan
guage and an unknown life. He embodies the religion, the cul
ture, the concepts, and the language which the child is to be
taught to know and live. If any teacher needs character, cul
ture, education and skill, it is the teacher of Indians. Upon
him devolves the transformation of a race. Shall we measure
our interest in the Indian by the inducements we offer to
teachers to enter the Indian service? If we do, our interest
cannot be estimated as of a very intense nature.
The government has in recent years protected the teachers
in their positions by including them in the protected civil
service. The permanency of position is an attraction to many
persons previously in the public schools of the country. But
it is a commonplace that the civil service system is inelastic
and cumbersome. Its merit is that it shields its officers from
the control of politics and intrigue. Its weakness, in the pres
ent case, is that it does not attract nor ensure a high grade of
education or efficiency. It puts a premium, therefore, on the
average, upon little education and little efficiency. The ex
aminations are such that a high school scholar can pass them
— and pass them with higher marks than a college or univer
sity man who has been too long away from the elements to re
member them. Appointments, too, are based upon locality,
an attempt being made to apportion to each state its share of
positions.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY 75
There is not, however, such a rush for positions in the
Indian service, that special ability, once an applicant, may not
expect an appointment. Nevertheless, the conditions are such
as to discourage rather than to encourage candidacy. The
generally long interval between the examination and the ap
pointment probably operates to keep the better man from pass
ing through the process necessary to enrollment as eligible to
appointment, (i)
The government necessarily is precluded from fixing any
religious or any specific moral tests for admission to the Ser
vice. Dr. Jackson, of Alaska, said in 1895 : "We require
efficiency in our teachers, not politics ; and we require religion.
So far as I know, there is not a teacher in the public schools
in Alaska that is not a Christian. In sending to the native
races, the gospel must be the foundation." (2) The Indian
office could not make such a statement as that. It is prob
able that appointments have no political significance — though
the Civil Service Commission compels you to register your
politics — but it is impossible to fix the same standards in the
Indian Service that Dr. Jackson maintains in Alaska. Nor
can one school fix any such standard. As a rule, the schools
must accept whomever the office sends. But surely every
opportunity should be afforded for the securing of the highest
talents that would enter the service. The value of the "merit
system" lies not so much in the means of admission to the
service as in the protection from sinister motives after ad
mission. Graduates of agricultural colleges are exempted
from examination for the position of Farmer on an Indian
Agency. A similar rule might recognize graduates of standard
colleges as eligible to appointment as teachers. At least some
definite recognition might be given to the fact in the system
of marking which the Civil Service Commission employs. A
widened list of superior talent would enable the office to raise
(1) Report of Indian Commissioner, 1906, p. 64: "For various reasons 47 per
cent, or nearly one-half of all eligibles receiving appointments decline them. This is
sometimes due to their having waited so long that their plans have changed, or between
examination and appointment they have found other employment, or illness in the
family interferes with any immediate disturbance of its personnel, or the appointee
does not fancy the country or the climate into wnich he is to be sent, or he regards the
salary offered as too low, or what not."
(2) In a letter of April 6, 1905, Dr. Jackson says: "I regret that I cannot
now say, as you report me to have said, that every teacher in Alaska is a Christian,
but t have strong reason to believe that a very large proportion of them are such,
especially in the Eskimo, Indian and other native schools, as I do not believe tbat
the ordinary teacher, that is not a Christian, can do his best work and be satisfied
to remain in one of the native schools."

76 THE INDIAN
greatly the efficiency of the schools, and hasten equally the
civilization of the Indians. (2)
Life on a distant reservation is at best a hard one; at
the worst it is misery. Much could be done to make existence
more bearable, even more comfortable, for the reservation
teacher. Such action would make more attractive the frontier
life, and so increase the number of available candidates for
government appointment.
In varying degree the success of the whole process of
civilization depends upon the character and qualifications of
the other employes in the field service. Any system, for in
stance, of appointment of old soldiers as "additional farmers,"
without special knowledge of the work, or subsequent genuine
application to the nominal work of the position may be sat
isfactory as a means of granting pensions, but is a farce and
fraud so far as the good of the Indian is concerned.
Some time some one will make an investigation of the
organization of the Indian Department at Washington, and
will suggest to Congress the need of one or two changes there.
The public does not know, and it would perhaps be hard to
day to state just what the difficulty is and how it could be
remedied. Nevertheless it is impossible to escape the con
clusion that to say the least the position of Superintendent of
Indian Schools is an anomalous one. It might be accurate to
say that it is a useless expense, a fifth wheel in the Depart
ment. If Congress desires to have an actual Superintendent,
the will of Congress is thwarted. Able, talented, conscien
tious, energetic as the present Superintendent is, she is prac
tically compelled to be a mere figure-head. The nominal
powers of the position are exercised by lesser clerks, while she
is allowed to occupy her time with harmless efforts in the
drawing up of schedules of study, instructions for the planting
of school gardens, and suggestions for the formation of literary
societies. Her power is practically nil.
This situation constitutes an extreme injustice to an able
Superintendent. But worse than that, it suggests a total in
version of values in Indian philosophy and practice. That
(2) The Alaska School service is not under civil service, but applicants are
carefully investigated as to their training, health, moral character and ablity. Dr.
Jackson reports "this method of selecting teachers makes a great deal of work, but
it has proven quite successful, and we think that we are securing a better class of
teachers than the average in the Indian service. Nearly all of our new teachers last
year (1904) were college graduates." And this in ...laskal

EDUCATIONAL POLICY 77
which should be the chief element of Indian work is degraded
by a policy which makes its nominal director the most insig
nificant factor in the whole service.
The efficiency of the field work, and its co-ordination and
harmony with the plans of the whole system as laid out in
Washington depends to a very large extent upon the kind of
inspectors placed in the several districts. If appointments are
made for political reasons or given to men of any but the
highest ability, training and motives, the whole work must
sag below the maximum line of efficiency. And it can not be
too often repeated that inefficiency is useless cost, if not worse.
Mr. Grinnell, with an inside knowledge of the work of the
reservations and of that of the Washington Office, has this
to say on this point: Inspectors and special agents oft-
times "have received their appointment through political or
sectarian influence, and are inefficient, inflated with a sense of
their own importance, talking much but doing nothing, and
respected neither in the field where their work is, nor in
Washington where their reports are known. They are so
much dead weight which the Department is obliged to carry
and the government to pay for." The situation is very much
the same today.
President Roosevelt in his message to Congress in 1905
urged the appointment of a Field Assistant for the Commis
sioner of Indian Affairs for this very purpose of more closely
co-ordinating the work of the department. Congress would
do well to heed the suggestion. For President Roosevelt has
also seen both sides of the Indian problem, and knows in
timately of the need whereof he speaks.
The great preventive of a high level of teaching ability is
the .ow salaries which are paid teachers. Figures compiled
from the government report for 1903 shows that in the actual
school room service, 72.8 per cent, of the teachers earn between
$600 and $720 per year, while only 4.9 per cent, receive above
$720; 99.3 per cent, of all receive less than $1000 per year;
only three persons receive above that amount. As a matter
of fact, those receiving above $720 are in the largest boarding
schools, and in several cases have not only the title of Prin
cipal, but also that of Assistant Superintendent. The salaries
below $500 are few, and paid mostly to assistant teachers, the

78 THE INDIAN
majority of whom are Indians. Practically the salaries range
from $540 to $720, and even of the 81 positions carrying the
latter amount, 43 are paid for services in the day schools, in
even more complete isolation than in the reservation boarding
school. It is easy to see that the amount of the salary, and the
hope of advancement, are not sufficient to attract the type of
teacher we ought to have in the service.
In this survey I have not included the kindergarten
teacher, for I wished to emphasize the unvarying standard of
recompense fixed for her. The government prints the state
ment (i) that teachers are paid, not in accordance with the
grade of scholars that are taught, but with the kind of work
done; elementary work can be as highly rewarded as that
of a more advanced nature. The Report of 1903 records 47
kindergartners. One receives $540, one $720, one $660, and 43
receive $600. It is certain that there are others named as
teachers who do the kindergarten work, but it is very doubtful
whether any considerable number get above $600 a year. These
teachers, added to those we have already considered, show that
95.5 per cent, of all teachers get $720 or less per year, and jj
per cent, get $660 or less ; 46 per cent, get an even $600.
The term industrial teacher I have excluded from the class
of teachers, for many of them have no connection with class
room work. They belong rather with the industrial class.
Their pay runs a little above that of ordinary teachers, and
more nearly on a par with that of the farmer, the carpenter,
and the engineer.
It must be remembered that these positions carry the
holder far from the scenes of civilization, and often bury him
in the desert along with a few other white people whom he can
not abide. He has to pay large railroad and stage fares to
reach his place of duty. He must be on duty eleven months
of the year, and perform many unusual pieces of work in the
semi-socialistic community in which he resides.
The male members of the teaching force have, or are com-
(1) Rules for the Indian School service, 1900, p. 18, rule 1281. "The salary
of a teacher has no relation whatever to the grade or class intrusted to his or her
care. If a teacher is promoted in salary, it does not imply a change in work. The
teacher who has the highest class may liave the lowest salary, and vice versa. * * •
Increase of salary will rest upon proved efficiency in the work, and other things being
equal, upon successful experience."

EDUCATIONAL POLICY 79
ing to have, an incentive, which will be in large part denied
to the women. The increasing number of superintendencies,
and the combination of the duties of the Superintendent and
Agent, and the policy of placing them all under the civil service
rules, thus necessitating promotions from the lower positions,
furnish a prospect which may draw better men into the ser
vice. Whether the Department can find in the service men
capable of filling the vacancies as they occur remains to be
seen. It is generally considered that the executives of the
schools and agencies are improving in type.
Statistics show that there are possibilities of promotion
up to about $1500 in the position of Superintendent; above
that there were 19 positions in 1903. One man, assistant
superintendent at Carlisle, touched $2250. The Superintendent
of Chilocco gets $2200, and two men get each $2000. These
are not enormous salaries for the heads of great industrial
schools, or for men who run a boarding school and control an
Agency. The salaries of Indian Agents proper run up to
$1800, that of the Agent for Indian Territory being $2500.
President Roosevelt in a recent message called attention to
the meagre salaries paid to Indian Agents and recommended
that they be increased. They should be, but it is probably
even more important that the employes who come into per
sonal contact with the Indians, and who probably exert the
greatesc influence upon the native race, should also be much
better paid. The teacher, in particular, should be a man or
woman of the highest type, secured and retained by an
adequate compensation.
It should be a matter of rejoicing that the standard of the
teacher in the Indian Service is above what the salaries would
warrant. There are a number of motives that operate to secure
a higher average of ability among them. Some go into the
Service for the sake of their health. Some go for the sake
of the novelty of the experience. Some go with the purpose
of the missionary; the Indian service is a great missionary
field. The last class is ihe one that is apt to have the most
lasting qualities, and to do genuine good. Nevertheless we
must recognize the fact that the servants of the government
in the Indian field go for the money that they can make. Not
many can afford to earn less than they are able. So the reward
offered determines the class of service secured.

80 THE INDIAN
The first need of the Indian is an education that will fit
him to earn his own living in contact and in competition with
the white man. But any theory of education that proceeds
from a belief in his essential inferiority or that would limit
him to the lower ranks of life and of thought, is a libel on
human nature and on the spirit of American democracy.
Education of any amount will not make a man, and it may
strengthen a rascal. But the undoubted dangers that accom
pany education are greater in proportion to its limitations and
inadequacy, not in accordance to its fullness and amount.
Pride in the results attained by our specific Indian schools
should not blind us to the fact that there are higher schools
for intellectual and industrial training. The manual training
school is not the technical college. The former suits best the
needs of the mass of Indians and of the present time. The
latter will be the need of the not distant future. A grammar
school education is, perhaps, all that the race could assimilate
up to the present time ; it is an immense advance over nothing,
but it is not the basis of a high order of civilization. Through
out the whole system should be spread an ambition to equal
the highest attainments and culture of the white race. This
is a higher ideal than the accepted bread and butter philosophy
so common at the present time. Nevertheless it is not op
posed to that philosophy rationally stated. It is simply an ex
tension of it. Nor would it involve the raising of the standards
of existing schools, nor the creating of Indian colleges. But
I should give the scholars an occasional — or a frequent —
glimpse over into the fields of a higher, broader, and more
thorough education, and encourage the capable ambition that
would leap racial boundaries and compete in the intellectual
world with the best that the world produces, and under the
stern rules which there prevail. That this has been done to
some extent in the past, and that we have able lawyers, min
isters, artists, doctors, teachers and engineers sprung from
the native race is the best evidence that we have done well
by the aborigine, and is the best and most patent proof that
the Indian is capable of the highest attainments. Such educa
tion is practically the one way of creating that racial leadership
which is the chief hope and means of attaining an accelerating
progress.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY 81
This thought is not a new one, even though it needs oc
casional emphasis. Harvard College, as we have seen, was
founded for the education of English and Indian youth in
knowledge and godliness. The charter of William and Mary
College, in Virginia, provides for the education of Indians as
well as for white men. President Dreher stated in 1896 that
for twenty-six years they had had Indians in Roanoke College,
of whom, however, only three had completed the course. There
are a number of colleges in Indian territory. Henry Kendall
College, at Muskogee, reported in 1898 seventy Indians in the
college department, and tuition fees are paid by the students,
not by the government. Indian University, at Bacone, in its
last catalog reports fifteen students in the college department.
It is probably wise and necessary to maintain colleges espe
cially for Indians in a section where they are so numerous as
in Indian territory, but as a general thing the student adapted
to a college education will get the most out of a college in
tended primarily for scholars of the dominant race. That the
other race needs the college, however, must not ever be
entirely forgotten. For, as General Morgan has said :
"In preparing this system do not let us forget that after pro
vision has been made for the education of the masses, so that every
boy and girl shall have a chance, that it is the education of the few,
in a broad and all-round way, that is to do the great work for them.
That which has made America what it is today has not been the public
schools alone. It has been Harvard, Brown, Yale, Amherst and
Princeton, and other colleges and universities, that have filled our'
halls of Congress, our judicial benches and other important places
with men of breadth, culture and power. I believe thoroughly in the
common schools, but I Jo not believe in belittling education for our
selves, for the Indians, or for the Filipinos. We should make pro
vision for all schools, for industrial education, for the high school,
the college and the university. To the few among the Indians and
other peoples who are destined for leadership the opportunitv for the
highest education should be given."

CHAPTER VII.

RESULTS OF THE NON-RESERVATION SCHOOL.

Office statistics. Carlisle. Haskell. Hamipton. Evident
possibilities. In the year 1901 the Indian office sent out directions to
Agents and Superintendents to make a careful canvass of all
returned students then living on the reservations, and to give
their estimates of the character and conduct of those students.
"From the data thus obtained statistics relating to returned
Indian pupils were collected, from which it appears that the govern
ment officials, who are thrown in immediate contact with this class of
Indians, rate t^in£|£,,,,,£&g,^,,,,^^ the results of the educa
tional methods demonstrating tnatttey have talcen full advantage of
them, standing out above the average returned pupilsran3'"w6uld be
¦classed, if in a white neighborhood, as men and women elevated
somewhat above those with whom they are brought in contact; 76
R.e£^cjI}Jj,.,Cj3iiJ^!4rg^^fa^o^^^ white boys and girls under similar^
circiimstances, and indicated by their actions, since their return to
the reservations, a carjeer."S*milar''t© that„oi,>the average white man;
13 per cent, have raised themselves someAvhat above tKeTevel"ol'"f11fe
Indians in the same environment, but the result of whose education
cannot be said to be good; I_gerc3t,,aba5{;^,^gt been, so far as their
lives and actions are concerned, .yi anyj^y benefited by the education
which as been given them." '>,»,,.„„..--
These figures are verygTat]^f|^iig, even though we should
discount themTaTTEtl'T't^anow for" official' pride. It must be
recognized, however, that these are reservation judgments up
on non-reservation accomplishments, and are therefore not
likely to be much exaggerated.

NON-RESERVATION RESULTS 83
If we take the catalogue of the Carlisle School for 1902,
we find there a list of the graduates from 1889 to 1901, with a
statement of the positions in life that they are filling. Of the
total number of boys, 156, 48 have no assigned occupations;
probably most of these have returned to their reservations,
where they may or may not hold to their higher standards.
Eight are school teachers, five are disciplinarians, nine have
other positions in the government schools. Twenty-five have
employment in the government Indian service outside the
schools. Five are farmers off the reserve, while fifteen are
entered as farming on or near the reserve. There are four
clerks in stores. The following situations number two each:
blacksmith, assistant bookkeeper, student at business college,
student at preparatory school, stockraiser, and superintendent
of an Indian school. There are three studying at normal
schools, four at universities, one medical student, one student
at Mt. Hermon, one normal graduate, and one law graduate,
and one football player.
Among the occupations claiming but one man each we
have railroad work, printer, salesman, assistant postmaster,
steam fitter, hack driver, photographer, electrician, assistant
cashier, real estate, civil engineer, and soldier.
This is not by any means a bad industrial showing. The
wide variety of the occupations in itself indicates a capacty
on the part of the Indian which we have been very slow to
recognize. Naturally, when we turn to the girls, we find that the
larger proportion are recorded as wives. So we are not sur
prised to know that 63 out of the 108 graduates have no assign
ed occupation. But the remaining 45 are an interesting lot.
Sixteen are teachers, four are school matrons, two assistant
matrons, two clerks, one principal teacher, two seamstresses,
and eight are in other government employ. There are three
graduate nurses and one other nurse, four normal students,
one business student, and one assistant postmaster.
Haskell Institute of Lawrence, Kansas, is one of the very
finest schools in the Service. Superintendent Peairs of that
school has most kindly provided me with a list of his graduates
between the years 1896 and 1904, accompanied by a statement
of the tribe to which each scholar belongs and what his present

84 THE INDIAN
occupation is. From that list I make out that of the fifty-nine
normal graduates, information concerning at least fifty-one is
available, and their positions are as follows: Naturally a
large number, eighteen, are enumerated as married. Twelve
are teachers, three are farmers. There are two each of
managers of stores, clerks, lawyers, and one each in the
occupations of Superintendent of an Indian School, musician
in a band, painter, clerk in bank, civil engineer, postmistress,
disciplinarian, nurse, steel worker, stenographer, matron,
printer. In addition one is "at home," and at least one is
dead. Of the thirty-two commercial graduates, eight are stenog
raphers, five are clerks in the Indian Service, three are other
clerks, two are married, two are farmers, and one is claimed
by each of the following: Disciplinarian, merchant, stock-
raiser, industrial teacher, printer, professional ball player. One
is dead and nothing is known of the remaining five.
The thirty-eight domestic graduates include six married
girls. There are five each of housekeepers, seamstresses and
cooks. Three pupils are continuing in school, and one has
been graduated from the wagon shop. A matron and a nurse
make up the total of twenty-seven, whose whereabouts are
known. Among the sixteen trades graduates four are shoe and har
ness makers, three are engineers, two are farmers, two are
blacksmiths, two painters, one printer, and one band musician
complete the list of the fifteen still alive.
Out of seventeen academic graduates, two are still in
school, two are studying law, and two are teaching. Besides
these there a housekeeper, a nurse, a bookkeeper, a stenogra
pher in a railroad office, a teamster, a superintendent of log
ging, and a disciplinarian. Three are not reported.
Summing up, we see that Haskell can account for 136
out of her 162 graduates, 84 per cent. This is a remarkable
showing. The superintendent makes no attempt to classify
the students into moral classes, nor to estimate the proportion
of failures and successes. But these facts speak for themselves ;
if they are not great accomplishments, they are signboards
of great significance. Excluding the twenty-six girls reported
as married, we find that Haskell has turned out in nine years,
fifteen teachers, seven farmers, eleven clerks, ten stenograph-

NON-RESERVATION RESULTS 85
ers, six housekeepers, five seamstresses, five cooks, four shoe
and harness makers, three engineers, three merchants, three
painters, three printers, three disciplinarians, two lawyers, two
musicians, two nurses, two matrons, two blacksmiths, and at
least one each in nine other occupations. All this from her
graduates, who unfortunately are only a fraction of Haskell's
total patronage.
The government still continues to send Indian children to
Hampton Institute under a contract with that undenomina
tional school. There can be little doubt that it is a tremendous
influence for good for the children privileged to go there.
They are picked scholars, and the results are correspondingly
good. Miss Folsom, who has charge of. the records of re
turned students, gives us a most interesting and instructive
brief statement (i) as the results of Hampton methods.
"It is twenty-five years ago this month that Captain Pratt
brought the first Indians to Hampton. . . . Since that time the school
has taught 938 Indian boys and girls, 673 of whom are now living.
These returned students are doing work and exerting influences
ivhich, according to our best knowledge, we classify as follows: Ex
cellent, 141; good, 333; fair, 149; poor, 43; bad, 8. According to this
classification 474 returned students are entirely satisfactory, 50 have
poor records, and 149 amount to but little either way. They are
largely the sick and deficient."
Since the successful first class of three, "79 : : : have been gra
duated. Of this number seven have died, and the others rank as fol
lows: Excellent, 48; good, 23; fair, 7; poor, 4; bad, 1. Fifteen of these
have taken the post-graduate course at Hampton, and 16 have taken
advanced courses elsewhere."
"It will be seen that the grading of the graduates, compared with
that of the undergraduates, makes a tremendous showing in favor of
a good education — one that really prepares the student for some defin
ite life work. The per cent, of undergraduates doing excellent work
is about 25; that of the graduates over 50, even with a somewhat
higher standard to live up to. The percentage of those graded as
'good' is lower among the more highly educated, because their advan
tages place them where they are either a decided success or the op
posite. All those classified as 'good' live Christian lives, are indus
trious, temperate, moral."
Incidentally, Miss Folsom touches upon the relation of
the academic and industrial features of the school.
"Under the old system many boys were allowed to enter trades
who could make little or no progress in their academic studies,
with the result that in the minds of the students the industrial de-
parment was of secondary importance. But since the opening of the
trade school with its beautiful building and competent corps of in-
(1) Annual Rept. Dept. of Interior: Indian Affairs, 1903, pp. 436-441.

86 THE INDIAN
structors, this department has acquired a dignity that was impossible
under the old regime. A certain academic standing being now re
quired for admission to the trade school, the industries are no longer
considered stepping stones to the academic department. There is no
question but that the work of the hand is looked upon with much
greater respect than was the case ten years ago."
These are but three schools out of about twenty-five. But
they give us the most favorable reports which can be had.
They are optimistic and their figures seem to justify their
optimism. Nevertheless it is well to keep in mind the fact that
common opinion is not so sanguine, and on the reservations,
and near them, disbelief in the methods and results of these
schools is very prevalent, if not prevailing. The latter opinion,
however, like the former, may be biased by personal prejudice,
race feeling, or by unfortunate experience or observation. The
man who is hunting for success sees only the successful and
the man who is hunting failure sees only the unsuccessful
contingent that returns to the Reservation. Frequently, too,
the bases of comparison are not just. It will be wisest, there
fore, to find in these statistics not primarily results, but
tendencies — not achievements, but possibilities. So regarding,
we may congratulate ourselves that individual achievements
frequently repeated indicate the possibility of ultimate racial
achievements — all depending upon the wisdom of the govern
ment supplemented, as it should be soon, by native leader
ship and assistance. Such leadership will come when the
educated representatives of the race shall organize in the un
selfish hope that by combined action they shall create the basis
for a future leadership. Personal ambition would ruin such
an effort; delay may be equally fatal to racial prospects. The
conditions are ripe for organization, (i)
But apart from the possibility of the creation of a new
racial consciousness, and leadership which we may discover
in the statistics of the non-reservation schools, we may
find even more evident certain truths. Some of these are :
(i) The more thorough and the longer continued the school
training, the more vital and the more lasting the results.
(2) Many individual Indians are capable of acquiring a
high degree of skill and culture, and of sustaining the
highest type of character. (3) The Indian is not
(1) At the Mohonk conference for 1906, Dr. Lymann Abbott laid stress upon the
need of native leadership.

NON-RESERVATION RESULTS 87
adapted to one mode of living, but is as varied in his tastes
and aptitudes as the white man. (4) To raise the Indian race
will require as careful, as varied, and as complete training as
is given to the white race. (5) The Indian is largely the crea
tion of his environment, and therefore cannot be maintained
much above the standard fixed by the environment provided
for him.

CHAPTER VIII.

VOLUNTARY AGENCIES.

National Indian Association. Indian Rights Association.
Mohonk Conference. Vast sociological experiment in race trans
formation. Function of government and of volunteer agencies.
The government has expended much effort, time and
money in the care of the Indian. But the wise directing of
that expenditure has not been solely due to the wisdom of the
government. There have been numerous instances of out
right fraud and corruption in the use of government funds as
well as useless expenditures in thousands of ways. These have
bred societies to expose fraud, to put down wrong, and to
study conditions with a view to the formulation of sound
policies. Moreover, it has been recognized that at its utmost
the government must fall short of meeting all the needs of the
Indian, and so there have sprung up societies to supplement
the work of the government.
Among these societies, one of the largest and most im
portant is the National Indian Association. This was organized
in 1879, ^^^ fiv^ years later it began to send out missionaries
to tribes otherwise destitute of care. Up to the present time
they have in this way gone into fifty fields of Indian work.
When a mission is well established, it is turned over to de
nominational care — any Protestant denomination — and the
same energy is then transferred to the pioneer work of another
field. Sometimes a school is started in an unpromising tribe,

VOLUNTARY AGENCIES 89
and then when success has been assured, the work is turned
over to the government as was done in the case of the Digger
Indians of upper California. Started in 1890 with twelve pupils,
the government took it over in 1896, a school of 80. Now it is
a permanent institution in buildings costing $60,000.
'The Association (1) has other than missionary departments; does
not duplicate the work of any society, and was the first association
devoted wholly to the Indians to ask for lands in severalty and citi
zenship for them, as it did in its third annual petition, that of 1881,
and these pleas were granted by the passage of the Dawes Severalty
Bill in 1887."
'This Association has given special education to bright Indians,
training them as physicians, nurses, teachers and missionaries to help
and lead their people. It has built homes from its loan funds, placing
many Indian families in civilized and Christian homes, and these loans
are honestly repaid. It has mission, legislative, hospital, industries
and temperance departments, and has built missionary cottages,
chapels, school-houses, and homes for the aged."
For nearly a score of years Mrs. Amelia S. Quinton has
been the leader and head of this work, and to her must be
given much of the credit for the splendid work for the ex
posure of evils, the reform of abuses, the spread of mission and
industrial training, and the building up of a healthy spirit of
interest throughout the nation, which has been accomplished
by this association.
The Indian Rights Association was founded on December
15, 1882, at the home of the Hon. John Welsh, in Philadelphia,
and has from the beginning been inspired and guided by its
present Corresponding Secretary, Mr. Herbert Welsh. Its
membership has been largely that of the Mohonk Conference
and of the National Indian Association. Indian workers join
with various organizations for various ends. If we may dis
criminate the special field of the Indian Rights Assoc. ation,
it is indicated by its title, and consists of vigorous activities for
the enforcement of law upon the various reservations and the
exposure and punishment of frauds upon Indians wherever
perpetrated. It sends its agents to investigate all sorts of com
plaints, and maintains, in addition to its headquarters in Phila
delphia, a representative in Washington to confer directly with
the executive departments of the government, and to urge
advance legislation or to oppose evil legislation in Congress.
Along constructive lines its first efforts were directed to the
extension of civil service reform to the Indian service, and to
(1) "A Retrospect and Its Lessons," a publication of the National Indian
A*sociation.

90 THE INDIAN
it must be given the credit for the great strides, in fact the
almost complete success, of that reform in the service. It
claims the credit for the passage of the General Allotment
Act of 1887, as a result of its efforts "in placing the entire
subject in the clear light of facts, and thus convincing mem
bers of Congress and their constituents" of the wisdom of
enacting the law "devised and prepared in accordance and co
operation with the plans and objects" of the Association.
Their agent, Mr. Brosius, was enabled to strengthen that act,
by drafting a law ,approved April 23, 1904, to protect the
title of allottees, by removing from the government its right of
arbitrarily cancelling a land patent at any time previous to
the expiration of the twenty-five-year trust. To enumerate
the details of the results accomplished by the Association
would be impossible here. Suffice it to say that its purpose
has been to perform a continuous service of disinterested de
fence of the Indian, of warfare against fraud, corruption and
wrong, of propaganda for the best in legislation and perform
ance for the Indian. Such a programme invites criticism and
violent opposition. That the Association has generally re
tained the friendship of the Indian Office is proof of its power
and of the general wisdom of its procedure.
The Indian Industries League is a more recent organiza
tion which is working in the direction of modern needs. It be
lieves "that the acquirement and practice of useful arts and
industries are necessary to the civilization and elevation of the
Indians of our country," and it is seeking to make practicable
those industries by providing the means of starting them and
a market for the sale of the products. It is thus helping in
dividuals to special education or to special work, and aiding in
the extension of beadwork, basketry, and lace-work sales. Its
far-sighted wisdom is seen in its declaration in 1904, that "the
Indians must be helped in selling their bead-work and basketry
and in whatever way relieves their present distress, which is
acute. But if they are ever to eat bread with the white man,
they must fight their way to it with the white man's in
dustries." In 1883 a number of friends of the Indian assembled at
the invitation of Mr. Albert K. Smiley, at Lake Mohonk, to
consider the needs of the race, and in every subsequent year

VOLUNTARY AGENCIES 91
Mr. Smiley's hospitality and inspiration has brought together
a similar body of devoted, intelligent and broad-minded men
and women for further consultation and discussion. It would
hardly be too much to say that the bulk of the progress in
Indian affairs has found its inception or its effective statement
and propaganda at Lake Mohonk, and through its publications
and the influence of the widely scattered membership of the
Conference. Here have met the civilian and the government
official, the missionary and the philanthropist, the western and
the eastern man ,the theorist and the practical worker. Each
year they have adopted such a platform as all could agree upon.
Many of their plans have been realized, and nearly all have
had at least a partial trial. They have represented the crystal
lizations of public sentiment, and have therefore been of neces
sity great forces in the field of politics and legislation. The
conference has compelled the righting of great wrongs, merely
by focusing the heat of public opinion upon them. But it has
been especially as a constructive framer of broad and far-
reaching policies that it has earned a sure place in the regard
of the present and the future. It found a condition of chaos ;
it now sees the government bent upon carrying out the sub
stance of those policies which it has so long worked for. It
may be that its political activity in the interest of the Indian
has reached its consummation; it ought to be true that the
government could carry out its policies without the constant
watching of this body of volunteer statesmen. The confer
ence is turning part of its time to new colonial problems, and
should be enabled, by wise Indian legislation and administra
tion, to devote its energies to these less obvious problems of
colonial and tropical administration, — if so be that its philan
thropic impulses shall continue to exist. It has done the great
work for the Indian, and indissolubly linked its name with the
fate of the Indian, and been able to reflect much lustre upon
the record of the Indian administration of our country. All
of the long list of eminent men and women who have "for so
many years gathered at Mohonk are proud to recognize their
leader as well as their host in the Quaker Friend of the Indian.
It is interesting to note some of the recommendations of
the first Conference. These included, first, that the laws of
any state or territory relating to crime, marriage, and in
heritance, be extended over the Indians on reservations within

92 THE INDIAN
the limits of such state or territory, except in the case of the
Indians in the State of New York and in Indian Territory ;
the said laws of the State of Kansas to be extended over the
Indians in Indian Territory, exclusive of the five civilized
tribes. Second. That the Indians be admitted to the United
States citizenship so soon, and only so soon, as they are fitted
for its responsibilities. Third. That all Indians who are ready
and anxious to receive titles to separate homesteads, and are
capable of taking care of property, should be empowered to
do so by proper legislation, which shall, at the same time,
secure the. lands so allotted from alienation and incumbrance
for a period of twenty-five years, or such time after that period
as shall be determined by the President and Secretary of the
Interior. The Conference opposed leasing of lands, favored
the purchase of cattle for the Indians, argued for more schools.
"Public opinion should give hearty support to Congress in making
bountiful grants to these (non-reservation) industrial schools, which
have already proved themselves to be such 'important factors in the
civilization of the Indians.' The sum of 167 dollars a year will not
permit thorough instruction to be given Indian children in trades.
This allowance should be increased to two hundred dollars." "We
would urge an increase in these (school) appropriations to at least
twice the present amount."
Similar recommendations were made for increases of the
salaries of Indian Agents, and of the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs. The latter should have equal powers with the i^om-
missioner of Education and of Agriculture. The platform was
signed by Clinton B. Fisk, E. Whittlesey, Albert K. Smiley,
W. H. Lyon, Dr. James E. Rhoads, Gen. S. C. Armstrong, Rev.
Addison P. Foster, Rev. C. C. Pointer, James Tallcott, John B.
Tallcott, Benjamin P. Smith and Herbert Welsh.
This should be compared with the platform adopted by
the one hundred and seventy members of the Conference of
1904. The Conference
"rejoices that so much has been accomplished. . . . We feel that our
paternal care must be continued for some time to come, while to pro
long it unduly will result, as such care always does, in weakness and
permanent injury. . . . We desire to reaffirm the statement made last
year that 'in dealing with the Indian the objects to be accomplished
are no longer questioned; they are the abandonment of the reservation
.system; the discontinuance of Indian agencies; such education of all
Indian children as will fit them for self-support and self-government;
access to the courts for the protection of their rights; amenability to
the law in punishment for their crimes; the same liberty that white

VOLUNTARY AGENCIES 9S
men enjoy to ov,fn, buy, sell, travel, pay taxes and enjoy in good gov
ernment the benefits enjoyed by other taxed citizens; and by thest
means the speedy incorporation of all Indians, with all the rights
of citizenship, into the American Commonwealth.' In continuation
of the foregoing it is the sense of this Conference that the initial
steps should early be taken by Congress looking to the closing up
of the business of the Indian Bureau, as soon as it may safely be
done, leaving to the operation of the laws of the Nation, and of the
several States and Territories the protection of the Indians in their
rights of person and property, the education of their children, and in
securing to them the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship."
"Day schools for Indians, where such are necessary, should be
extended. Reservation Schools and Indian Boarding Schools must be
continued for some time to come, but we believe they should not be
enlarged nor increased in number, nor should heavy apppropriations
be made for permanent improvements. The policy of education,
whatever its details may be, should ever have in view the strength
ening of family ties, and the developing of the sacred relations of the
home." "The real duties before us with all dependent peoples is the up
building of character. This must be accomplished by the combined in
fluences of religion and education. Our government can provide for
the latter, but it devolves upon the Christian people of our land to
see that the vast interests of religion are not neglected."
The Indian question is entering upon a new stage, and our
volunteer agencies, if needed at all, will have to change their
methods and purposes, if they are to meet fully the new situa
tion. More and more the condition of the Indian must ap
proximate that of the white population, more and more meas
ures and means must assume forms applicable to people of
all colors.
.^ By force of circumstances the government and people
of the United States have been led to undertake a unique
piece of sociological work and experimentation, and whether
we like it or not, the ultimate results will be applied to other
peoples and on larger scales. If the people of the country
shall yet have the intelligence and the devotion to effect a
rapid transformation of this small body of redskins from
a low to a high state of civilization, it will not only effect a
marvelous piece of social work, but will demonstrate a method
for the regeneration of the populations of the globe.. It will
revolutionize the practical philosophy of the world.V The gain
will be first for the people concerned, but chTefly for the
greater number of people who shall ultimately profit by the
lesson learned. We are spending immense sums upon the

94 THE INDIAN
Indian, it may be that we ought to spend more, but a suc
cessful outcome of the experiment will more than repay the
cost. If we do our full duty, we shall reap a reward that will
astonish ourselves, and astonish the world. The real ques
tion involved is, can a culture and civilization be transferred
from a higher to a lower people ? Can. one race acquire in a
few generations what another race has with difficulty gained
through many generations? The implication of our national
policy is an affirmative answer to the question. The result of
that policy must be the answer worth recording. ,
It is, then, by the assumption that we are engaged upon
an important sociological experiment in race transformation
that the line of work for future voluntary associations is fixed.
The forces of change must be marshalled in strength and in
harmony with this great idea.
^.¦' What, then, are the fundamental elements of our national
policy? (i). The strength of tribal control must be broken.
The reservation must go. Gratuities must cease. Distinc
tions of race must disappear. Closeness of contract with the
real elements of civilization must be made wider and more
vital. These are within the province of governmental action.
(2). Civilization must be carried to the reservations, and up
held there. Initiative for industrial and religious life must be
carried to the Indian by the social settlement and the mis
sionary. These are the fields of voluntary associational ac
tivity. / The time for the harvest has come. Delay will lose
the harvest ; now, and only now, can the reward be ensured.

CHAPTER IX.

MISSION AND SETTLEMENT WORK.

Relation of the religious, the intellectual and the economic
phases of personal and racial development. Importance of the
economic. Need of industrial opportunity on the reservation.
Inadequate church statistics. New statistics. Efficiency of mis
sions. Work of Rev. Merrill on the Oneida Reserve. Miss
Carter's lace industry. Mohonk Lodge. Christianized indus
try in Alaska. Proposition of Mrs. Etheridge for the Navajoes,
Morgan's advocacy of a factory system. The success of Mr.
Church. William Duncan and the Metlakahtlans. Opportunity
for industrial settlements. Opportunity of labor and capital.
It should not be inferred from what has been said that
existing societies must disband, in order that new ones may
spring up, for it is very probable that most of the existing
agencies will continue under the old names. But they will
change the emphasis of their work to meet the needs of the
new conditions. The National Indian Association in its varied
departments contains the germs of the plans — in fact has been
carrying on the kind of work — which the situation demands.
But new energy, and a different emphasis must be found in
the future. The churches, too, must wake to their neglect.
Above all, the missionary and the philanthropist must realize
the inter-relation and the interdependence of the religious,
the educational, and the industrial phases of life and instruc
tion. The missionary tends to minimize the work of the
teacher, and the artisan. Mission schools, as a rule, do not
attain the maximum of efficiency. The educator is inclined
to sneer at the manifestations of religion in the Indian, and
to question the utility of much of the industrial training. And,
with similar narrowness, the industrial teacher maximizes the
ability of earning a living by manual labor. As a matter of
fact no one phase can develop to its highest without a develop
ment of one or both of the other two.

96 THE INDIAN
From the earliest forms of culture we have had combina
tions of religious feeling, intellectual processes, and indus
trial activity. That they were at first exceedingly crude does
not affect our judgment of them ; we must postulate their
early existence. But that, on the other hand, the three
faculties corresponding to the three processes develop at equal
rates seems utterly unlikely. So it is an important question
in developing a theory and plan of racial transformations to
know which faculty to stimulate first. Which one will furnish
a basis for the development of the others? The answer seems
plain that the economic activities not only condition the de
velopment of the intellect, but furnish the only positive frame
work of support for the moral life, and provide the basis for
the development of both the intellectual and religious life.
First the industrial, then the intellectual, and lastly the re
ligious. It is impossible to think save in the terms of our
surroundings, our activities, and our experiences. It is by no
idle chance that the place of torment of the Jew describes the
elysium of the Esquimau. Our ideas are the outcome of our
doings and experiences. That is the reason that the white race
will never put much faith in the red man's religion until the
Indian shall enter into the activities and thoughts of the
dominant race. Until that occurs, the religion will be a dif
ferent one, though called by the same name. Not until religion
and industry are fused into an inseparable unity is religion
genuine or industry healthy.
The three phases, however, are not separate and succes
sive developments in human nature. We may hold that,
broadly speaking, the economic activities come first in time,
and the spiritual last, and yet know that each phase reacts
upon the other. After the first few steps, each faculty stim
ulates the other. Our industry owes much to religion. Our
thought intensifies our industrial activity, and purifies our
spiritual aspirations.
Upon this assumption, then, of an order of development,
and an interdependence of human faculties, what policy must
we pursue with reference to the Indian? It seems to me that
we must lay strong and well the foundations, and broad and
high the walls, of religion, in economic possibilities and in
tellectual training. Then upon those foundations and within
those walls, the churches should be ready to perform instant

MISSION WORK 97
and constant work.
Who is to do this preliminary work? The government
schools are training the intellect and the hand. But is that
sufficient? No, for, fine as is that training, or fine as it can
be, the government stops just short of the result. When the
boy returns to his reservation, he has his training, but general
ly little else. He needs tools. He needs above all else en
couragement, and finds naught but discouragement and ridi
cule. Nor do all Indians want to farm, as we expect them to
do. Of course we train many to the various industrial pur
suits, but we do not provide an opportunity for the exercise of
those pursuits on the reservations. At the time of the last
Presidential Inauguration, a number of distinguished Indian
chiefs were persuaded to make a show of themselves in Wash
ington in their former costumes. On their way east they
stopped at Carlisle and made speeches to the children. Ameri
can Horse said : "When this school first opened up I send my
children all here. I have one at home who served his time,
and went home. He could not get any work to do and all I
could have him do was to carry water for me." Such a remark
is pitiful in its suggestive import, for it is but typical of many,
many cases. On one reservation there are said to be several
excellent shoemakers among the Indians, but to get a shoe
mended it must be taken or sent fifteen miles to a white man.
A census gatherer at Pine Ridge told me that of three hundred
boys, returned students, only two were practicing the trades
taught them at the non-reservation schools.
The lesson is a plain one. Initiative and an opportunity
must be provided for some or many of the returned students.
The government does not do it. The church and other so
cieties can do it and thereby secure a ready entrance for the
best and most fruitful of missionary work. Every time the
government cuts off rations, every time an Indian loses his
free income, a case of human need presents itself. And
human need is the soil on which grow the crops of missionary
endeavor. From today, the next thirty years are the years of
salvation for the Indian race. These will be the years of pro
bation under the Dawes Act of 1887. The result will be deter
mined within fifteen years.
The churches, however, have not been entirely idle. The

98 THE INDIAN
government reports for 1903 enumerate 386 missionaries and
31,362 Indian communicant members of churches. Miss Mc
Kean (i) of the National Indian Association in a recent
pamphlet states that a review of the government reports in
dicates that:
"There is no religious activity whatever reported in forty-two out
of the one hundred and sixty-five enumerated groups of Indians." "It
thus appears that nearly thirty thousand of our native heathen are
still without any religious instruction of any sort whatever." "In
many places not included in the above list, the work is pitifully inade
quate — one missionary, perhaps one church building, and a few hun
dred dollars spent for church work in an entire agency; sometimes
a small communicant church membership reported, with no minister
or missionary, no church buildings and no funds."
She goes on to show that whereas for all the tribes the
number of births (4907) is one-eighth larger than the number
of deaths (4352), the deaths (103) greatly exceed the births
(59) among the unevangelized tribes. These figures are gov
ernment statistics, and doubtless are not complete, (i) But
they make evident the fact that the churches have not yet oc
cupied the field which lies open before them.
Government statistics of missions, however, do not seem
to be entirely correct. According to the report of the Indian
Bureau, the one quoted by Miss McKean, the Catholic Church
maintains thirty boarding schools and three day schools for
Indians on the reservations, while Protestant denominations
of all sorts support fourteen boarding schools and one day
school. Of the latter the Presbyterians maintain four, and
the Episcopalians and Congregationalists each three. About
80 per cent, of the scholars enrolled are in the Catholic schools
(2). These figures are repeated year after year in the Com
missioner's report, and yet they are practical falsehoods. Prob
ably the figures are to be explained on the ground that only
the former contract schools burden themselves with the labor
of filing an annual report. Yet it would seem that any one of
three or four reasons should be sufficient to remedy this dis
ci) See pamphlet "Unevangelized Tribes." 1905.
Miss KcKean recognized the possibility of error in these figures. But be
cause they are the only ones extant, they are gradually being accepted as substantially
correct, and are quoted as fact. See addresses of the President and Honorary Presi
dent of the National Indian Association, Dec. 8, 1905, in the Indian's Friend for
January, 1906.
In April, 1906, Mrs. Quinton publishes a list furnished by Commissioner Leupp
cutting the number of tribes without missions down to twenty.
(2) Catholic interests use these figures to urge upon Congress the justice of aid
ing their schools.

MISSION WORK 99
graceful lack in our mission as well as our government sta
tistics. The problem can be approached from the other side by
appealing to church literature, church statistics and church
bureaus. But even here the investigator finds himself, par
tially baffled. Few of the denominations have collected and
summarized their Indian mission data. It is not improbable
that others than the writer may find that the figures of the
church annual report will not harmonize with private statis
tics of the mission secretary, and that neither will agree with
what he may glean from field sources, nor with standard mis
sionary books of the denomination. (3).
Nevertheless, enough may be learned to demonstrate the
essential inaccuracy of the government reports. >^he Presby--
terian Church, North, apparently alone among Protestants,
issued in 1904 a tabular statement of Indian churches, Sab
bath schools and mission schools, showing the support of four
teen schools, and the existence of sixty-five churches, thirty-
five white ministers, twenty-five Indian ministers, and 4644
native communicants. As a result of much inconvenience and
effort on the part of the several church boards (i), it is pos
sible to say certain fairly definite things about a number of
other important missionary churches. The Presbyterian
Church, South, supports five white missionaries and four
native and six mission schools. They have 675 pupils and
500 native communicants. The Episcopalians have seven mis
sion schools in the United States proper, with 116 pupils (2).
To these could be added the eight schools and 369 pupils in
Alaska. The church has 18 white clergy and 29 Indian, plus
10 white and i Indian in Alaska. The number of communi
cants is 4645 plus 223 in Alaska. Their lay workers number
39 whites and 66 Indians.
The American Missionary Association of the Congrega
tional church maintains forty-seven white and fifty-two native
missionaries, and have 1496 communicant members. These
figures include two white and one native missionaries and
(3) The writer has mail in his possession returned from the Dead Letter OfBce,
although directed to mission schools and nlaces named in church reports.
(1) The writer certainly appreciates the kindness of the officials who have worked
hard to supply the facts here given.
(2) The number of pupils in three schools is not given, however.

100 THE INDIAN
loo converts in Alaska. The church supports four schools
with an attendance of 213 pupils.
The Methodist Church, North, claims 1738 Indian mem
bers and probationers. The Church South maintains one
school for full-bloods, with 90 pupils, besides several for both
white and mixed bloods. They have two white and two
native preachers working among the Indians.
The Baptists support twenty-three missionaries and re
port "about 4500" native communicants. They have four or
five schools with an attendance of above seven hundred.
The Friends have ten mission stations in Oklahoma and
Indian Territory, with twenty-two white missionaries, three
native helpers, and about 500 members. They support three
day schools, nine Bible schools, and two boarding schools.
There are about 84 pupils in the latter.
These denominations thus maintain over fifty mission
schools, where the government knows of but fifteen. Their
membership totals about 18,000 natives. In addition the
Mennonites have at least three mission stations, the Lutherans
maintain themselves in several fields and the Dutch Reformed
have at least one strong station in Oklahoma. May the
churches cease to hide their light under a bushel !
The government figures, too, are not fair to Catholic
missions. The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions (i) report
152 priests, including one Indian, and 107 catechists, includ
ing 69 Indians; 71 boarding schools, and 26 day schools with
4942 pupils, besides 1108 Indian pupils in Catholic white
schools. Their enumerated church membership numbers
56,774, but the Bureau states that the statistics are not com
plete and that the real number probably exceeds 100,000.
These figures may be compared with the government
report of 31,362 communicants (1903-1904), which, however,
is marked as only partially complete. The report for 1904-5
similarly indicates a membership of 37,526. These figures, it
must be recognized, do not include the five civilized tribes,
thus making it impossible to compare sectarian with govern
mental estimates.
If we should grant that the Protestant communicant
(1) Report of the Director of the Bureau of CatTiolic Indian Missions for
1903-04. Statistics of Catholic Indian Mission and School Work from the report of
the Director, 1903-04.

MISSION WORK 101
membership might be multiplied by three to represent Pro
testant adherency, we could say that the Protestant bodies
were represented by 54,000 Indians. Adding this to the
enumerated 56,000 Catholics, we should find that 110,000 In
dians, or one-third of the whole number, were under Chris
tian influence and control. Taking the estimated number
of Catholics, the sum would be increased to 150,000, or one-
half of the Indian population of the country.
One of the most effective religious efforts among the
Indians is that being done by the Young Men's Christian
Association among the Sioux. Of the 285,000 Indians of the
country, 25,000 are Sioux, 5000 of whom are young men, and
1442 of these are members of 36 or more Christian Associa
tions. They also conduct a series of annual gatherings or
conferences on perhaps six of the Sioux Reservations at
tended by an average of one hundred young men each. This
work is in charge of a traveling secretary, Mr. Arthur T.
Tibbetts, a full-blooded Sioux, and a graduate of the Santee
Normal School, and also of the three years' course in the
Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The preservative power of this work cannot be estimated.
The Christian Association would be glad to extend the work
to other tribes, if the number of contributors of money could
be increased. Our chief interest, however, in Indian missions lies not
in numbers, nor in the workers, but in the efficiency of the
work that is actually being carried on. The heroic men and
women in the field will not criticise a plain statement of the
facts. Some have grown discouraged, or at least their ex
pectations have been greatly lessened. Most will acknowl
edge that the results are small in numbers, and not altogether
satisfactory in quality. Conditions are unfavorable for rich
harvests. Government largesses and communal property
obliterate the tangible lines between the good and the bad,
and prevent the economic exegesis by which nature usually
enforces the doctrines of the missionary. What we term an
industrial life is a necessary prerequisite and accompaniment
of Christianity (i). This industrialism must be carried to the
(1) J. B. Harrison, 133: "The theory of all the missionary work * * * is that
nothing but Christianity can elevate the Indians: that there is no hope for them in
either education or civilization, except as these are employed as instruments of the
Gospel of Christ. * * * It has transformed and purified hundreds of lives, and is
still a potent social, educational and practical force, working in conjvvnction with

102 THE INDIAN
Indian community. By whom? By the missionary, or, bet
ter, by some form of social settlement — insofar as the returned
students can not take it themselves to their own people.
The work of the Rev. W. F. Merrill and the Episcopal
Mission on the Oneida reserve in Wisconsin furnished a very
good example of the industrial and social methods which can
be utilized in the Indian field. His great piece of work was
the erection of a creamery and the providing of cows. The
Indians rent the cows, and the results have been good, almost
surprising. The special value of work like this lies in the
fact that it creates industries to compete on an even business
basis with similar industries in the hands of white folks;
they do not depend upon any fanciful or varying interest in
the products of another race. The results are solid, substantial
and permanent. The work involves regularity and constancy
— it is not the occupation of an idle hour. A cheese factory,
a pea cannery, and a sugar factory are other present or pros
pective inducements to genuine, profitable farming by these
people. It is not surprising, therefore, that the agent can
report: "There are four church buildings on the reservation,
with an aggregate membership of about twelve hundred, and
practically all members have been baptized. The churches
are largely responsible for what progress has been made, and
due credit should be given to the missionaries for their earn
est, persevering efforts." Mr. Merrill said in 1902 : "The
gospel I preach is the gospel of cows. An old lady to whom
I said this once, exclaimed: T have given my prayers and
my tears for the conversion of the poor heathen Indians, and
now you tell me they are to be converted by cows and dairies ;
that is all very strange. It completely upsets my ideas.' "
The women on the Oneida reserve earned $1200 in eight
months during the year 1901, making lace.
Miss Sibyl Carter (i) has started the lace industry, so
she reported in 1903, at ten different points in the United
States, and has about 550 Indian women employed. At the
Buffalo Exposition their lace took the first prize, and at the
Paris Exposition the second prize, in competition with the
other influences, for the improvement of great numbers of Indians. * * * The limita
tion or defect of the work of the church is in the fact that her leaders and teachers
do not usually adequately understand or value the other great world forces besides
religion, the fateful power of the state to destroy what is ripe for its end, and to
create new social and race conditions."
(1) Moh. 1898:73. In 1898 Mohonk friends gave Miss Carter $1,000 to start
glazed pottery work among the Indians.

MISSION WORK 103
world. These women earn $5000 a year from the sale of
their handiwork.
In 1898, Mrs. W. C. Roe, who works with her husband
for the Reformed Church among the Indians of Oklahoma,
told at Lake Mohonk of her wish for a social hall to aid in
the gathering and the holding of the people in the better way.
"It seems to me that such a house could stand between the
government school and the camp life, and, little by little, the
women could be shown what it is to have a home, a refuge,
and a friend to meet them." The small sum needed for that
important work was quickly contributed, and Mohonk Lodge
has become famous as a social and religious center, largely
because it is also an industrial center. The women there
often receive four hundred dollars a month from the sale of
their bead work. An additional building has been put up
for the care of the sick.
Dr. Sheldon Jackson in 1903 told a marvelous story of
the results of Christianity and Industry, or, better, of Chris
tianized Industry.
"Commencing in southeastern Alaska great progress has been
made in schools, missions and churches. Speaking religiously there
has been a constant revival for the past four or five years in south
eastern Alaska, and there are a large number — over a thousand native
communicants — in the churches which have been established in that
section. Some of the better class of American capitalists are now
trying to exploit Alaska in that section. I remember one instance at
Kasaan, on Cape Prince of Wales Island, where a syndicate of Con
necticut Christians . . opened up copper, lumber, and fish interests.
The syndicate came with the proposition to the United States through
their Alaska agent that they would erect a building that could be
used for school purposes for the native population if the government
would supply a suitable teacher. Further than that, they would lay out
an improved American village — that is, the platted ground for a vil
lage — if the government would use its influence with the barbarous
tribes, still heathen, that lived in their native filth some miles away,
to induce them to move and build up an improved village, where the
syndicate would give them constant work winter and summer. The
thing was undertaken; a graduate of one of our western colleges was
secured as a teacher; the company carried out their pledge; Mrs.
Kinney started a free library for the miners and employees of the
syndicate; the government teacher gave his evenings largely to mis
sionary and religious work, and a native evangelist was brought to
assist. And in that village of 150 or 200 last year, 90 of those natives
who in 1877, when I first visited Alaska, even captured American
schooners and held their crews for ransom — 90 joined the church and
and commenced Christian living, erected small cottages on their lots.

104 THE INDIAN
and kept them in good condition. They are making great progress,
and it is simply a sample of what can be done in every village through
out all that land if the churches will furnish missionaries to co-operate
with the government teachers.''
Mrs. Etheridge, Field Matron among the Navajoes, in 1897
made a far-sighted proposition that a mill be erected there
with looms for the working up of the local supply of wool.
"The Navajo wool loses only about 30% in working up, and I
think it would be a paying business to work up this wool into yarn,
and have the old-time Navajo blankets woven, also bed blankets on
looms, and to have a couple of knitting machines to knit cardigan
jackets, hose, mittens, etc * * * I have such faith in the industry
that if I had money I would not hesitate to put it all into such an
industry." Mr. Grinnell calls attention to the "interest taken in
knitting by the women of a certain small band of Piutes, an
interest so great that it has almost driven gambling from the
camp." Gambling is the main occupation of many Indians.
This example shows how it may be banished; it shows the
expulsive power of the good over the bad, of the regular over
the irregular, of the economic over the speculative elements in
human life.
The important role which industrial operations might
play in Indian affairs is, of course, not a new nor a novel
idea. Lewis H. Morgan, than whom we probably have had
no abler or more thorough student of Indian nature, customs
and possibilities, as early as 1871 (i), in a series of articles
discussed a Factory System for Indian reservations, and ad
vocated the factory as a partial solution of the Indian problem.
"The factory system can best be illustrated by an actual experi
ment originated and conducted by Mr. Philetus S. Church among the
Ojibway Indians of Lake Superior * * * He selected Sugar Island in
the St. Mary River, where he first pre-empted and finally purchased
700 acres of land. In 1848 he constructed a residence, a warehouse,
a store, and a dock, and commenced operations "^ * * At a later time
he built a steam saw-mill." With the aid of Indians whom he at
tracted there, he manufactured raspberry jam, ornamental articles
of birchbark, rugs, and floor-mattings of rushes, maple sugar, snow-
shoes, ball-bats, bows and arrows, moccasins, and ornamental leather
and bead work. "After years of persevering labor he was rewarded
with success beyond his expectations. He established his own pros
perity, as well as that of his Indian colony." "In 1863, the colony
upon the Island numbered 800 Indians. From a few families in 1848,
they had gradually increased to this number, most of whom lived in
their own houses, and who were better housed, better clad, and better
subsisted than they ever had been in their previous experience."
(1) The Nation. Vol. 23.

MISSION WORK 105
The sales for 1S62 amounted to $40,000. "Mr. Church spoke in the
highest terms of the industry of the Indian women. He said they
were universally industrious, 'the most industrious of womankind'—
that the men had also done fairly well, and were not averse to labor
if properly treated and fairly paid." "The Indian women, by their in
dustry, will solve the problem in every tribe, and raise the Indians
gradually into a vastly improved condition, if to their industry a fair
chance is given." (i)
These words are a ringing challenge to the philan
thropists of the higher civilization.
A plan of this nature, which, without any power of com
pulsion, can live and succeed for upwards of twenty years, cer
tainly is deserving of attention. Nevertheless it is with a
distinct sense of disappointment that one reads this state
ment from the Secretary and Superintendent of the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin, written on February i, 1906:
"I am sorry to say that after diligent search we fail to find any
record of the industrial colony to which you refer." For the
present nothing can be said as to the time or the causes of
the disappearance of this significant enterprise. But inter
preting the silence in the worst way, the ultimate failure does
not weaken the demonstration afforded by a quarter cen
tury of success. It is probable, too, that the kinds of industry
were not adapted to permanence; the raw materials and the
demand for the products were both certain to lessen, if not
to disappear. All these various illustrations are given here to show
the possibility and the need of industrial settlements, and to
justify the claim that, in the end, life is a unity, which allows
no long separation of its parts. The religion, the culture, and
even the education of a people are not complete and cannot
reach their full fruition, without the corresponding develop
ment of the economic life. In the following quotation from
Miss Anna Beecher Scoville, I understand her to develop
practically the same thought which I am trying to express:
"I am assured that neither church nor school can or should try
to make the Indian a white man, but that their work is to set him
free to grow;" .(1) that we must redeem the best of his own life; that
any help we would give him must be deeply planted and slow of
growth, if we would not work for artificiality and hypocrisy; and
that whenever we disregard this primal element of thought in the
children we teach, our education, our civilization, and our Christianity
will be only a surface shell, which, like thin ice, may look well, but is
(1) The italics are mine.

106 THE INDIAN
sure to break through to the deep water of pagan savagery.
"My second thought depends upon the first, and is, that to
truly teach him we must go half way. How shall we establish this
point of contact unless we are willing to live among them on the
same plane by which college settlements are established in our cities?
* * * Is there no one who will go there and live, not for church,
or school, or government, but for all three, and bring home these
young people, and form not a college settlement, but a Christian
settlement, that shall be a nucleus for a purer, higher life for old and
young?" The Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for
1898 calls attention to "the romantic story of the life and work
of Mr. William Duncan in British Columbia and Alaska."
"After raising theTshimshean tribe of Indians from the lowest
grade of barbarism to a high state of Christian civilization, Mr. Dun
can, to escape the oppressive acts of the white people of British Co
lumbia, determined to remove his Indians from that province and to
seek protection under the flag of the United States. Annette Island,
on the coast of Alaska, was selected for their future home. To this
lonely, rocky and densely wooded island they came in the year 1887,
abandoning their comfortable houses, their mills, their church, and all
their improvements for conscience sake.
"In 1891 the island was, by act of Congress, 'set apart as a reserva
tion for the use of the Metlakahtla Indians, and those people known
as Metlakahtlans who have recently emigrated from British Columbia
to Alaska, and to such other Alaskan natives as may join them.' There
they have lived eleven years in peace. By hard work, equal to that of
early pioneers in our Western States, they have cleared away the
forest, built a village of about 200 frame houses, erected a salmon
cannery capable of packing 20,000 cases of salmon per annum, and a
saw-mill which can cut 10,000 feet of lumber per day. They have built
a town hall which will seat 400 people, a schoolhouse large enough for
200 children, and a church capable of accommodating 800 people, the
largest church in Alaska. They have constructed a pipe line, two miles
in length, from a lake over 800 feet in elevation, which supplies good
drinking water for the village and abundance of power for the cannery
and the saw-mill. They have organized a local government, with rules
strict enough to satisfy the most rigid of our Puritan fathers. In short,
the Metlakahtlans are a sober, industrious, self-supporting Christian
community. They are no burden on the United States Government."
These are the Indians who fifty years ago were described
as "notorious on the whole coast for their cruel bloodthirsty
savagery — given up to dark superstition and atrocious habits
of cannibalism." (i) Apparently a saw-mill and a cannery
are efficient instruments for the building up and the preserva
tion of religion. (2)
(1) See Henry S. Wellcome: The story of Metlakahtla, published by Saxon &
Co., London and N?w York, 1887.
(2) The strong advocacy by Commissioner Leupp in his report for 1907 ©f
the carrying of industries on a large scale to the Indians will undoubtedly be very
effective in accomplishing some of the results here suggested.

MISSION WORK 107
An Indian settlement would have its religious work, its
social work, its medical work, and its educational work. But
all these should center around its industrial work. The latter
should ensure that diversification of industries which every
progressive community must have. By this means the nat
ural aptitudes of the individual Indians could be made ef
fective ; otherwise some will give up entirely and sink, drawing
others with them. Moreover, there are bound to be many
who will have insufficient lands for a complete competence,
or who will lose their lands through fraud or folly. To these
the settlement would offer a new chance for an honest and
independent livelihood.
Incidentally it would be well to consider whether the
Indian is adapted primarily to an agricultural life. The inita-
tive, and the farsighted planning which farming on a profitable
basis requires, are not his. Nevertheless, circumstances fix
the lot of the average Indian on the farm, and we should
encourage and urge him to stay there. But, at the same time,
let us provide another chance for the man whose capabilities
or follies divorce him from the land.
How shall the settlements be started? On many, if not
most reservations, there are unused lands which the govern
ment has the power to set apart for the use of societies and
churches carrying on educational and missionary work. Such
lands become thereby commercially profitable, and provide,
in part at least, for the support of those who are doing the
missionary and educational work. (i). In other words, a
settlement once started, would be in part self-supporting and
self-perpetuating, in so far as the products of the land, and of
the industries started thereon, exceed in value the cost of
equipping and running. Even though the lands were pur
chased or leased, there ought to be a profit on the transaction.
Besides the land waiting use, there are waterfalls in the
mountains, rarely seen, and absolutely unused, which suppli
cate the intelligence of the country, that they may be turned to
(1) It is apparent that Congress is prepared to aid such work by the granting
of lands to missionary societies. The Indian Appropriation Act of March 3, 1905,
^ant^ the usHf 1280 acres of land on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana,
rth^eeCa"holic societies. Forty acres are granted in fee simple, or outright owner-
^Th^ hill further provides: "The President is also authorized to reserve lands
fjhin this eservat'io^rupon the same condition and for similar purposes for any
other m^sonary or religious societies that may make application w. hm one year
after the passage of this act in such quantity as he may deem proper.

108 THE INDIAN
the uplifting of a people. Such falls are too far from railroads
and from centers of industry and population to attract the
capitalists eager for the profits of a large business. But they
can easily turn the wheels of a small industry, manned by the
local tribesmen and women ; they should almost surely return
the cost of operation, and probably give a small profit on the
capital invested. One of the most useful things the govern
ment could do, would be to turn over to missionary or settle
ment control natural resources, which otherwise are vain pro
digalities on the part of nature. If the needs of future capital
ists require, let the land and the resources be given for a
limited number of years, say twenty-five, only. That period
would be sufficient for the training of the Indians, and pro
bably would build up an industry, or a set of industries, which
the white man would be anxious to continue to exploit, with
the aid of Indian labor.
Natural resources alone, however, will not establish and
run a settlement. Two other things are needed: labor and
capital. The first requisite will be forthcoming when the
second is. The money must come in one of two ways: The
large benevolence of wealthy philanthropists have here an
opportunity which has not yet been used. The small gifts of
many not wealthy will accomplish great things through the
instrumentalities of various associations. A tendency of the
times is for colleges and universities to establish settlements
in the big cities, and mission stations in India and Japan.
But there remain many colleges and universities without
such ambitions, they could do much to solve the Indian
problem. If the Student Volunteers who cannot go to the
foreign mission fields could be sent even for one year each into
this home field, we would have a supply of skilled farmers,
engineers, and social workers, and those fields would be almost
overcrowded. If the Pennsylvania State College would send
such a farmer to the Cornplanter Reserve in Warren County
to supplement the fine work now being done by the teacher
there, a great transformation would be effected in a very short
time. So, all over the country, opportunity waits for response.
There seems, unfortunately, to be a working hypothesis

MISSION WORK 109
widely spread (i) that the missionary is a man who has
devoted himself to a life of sacrifice, and that it would not be
either wise or consistent to provide him with the means and
conditions of a comfortable existence or with the instruments
of efficient service. In particular it is unwise to give the new
man in the mission field too great a command of money and
supplies ; let him begin at the bottom and dig for himself, and
then he will appreciate the doles that are coming to him, and
will know how to use them to the glory of God, without
squandering any upon himself or the heathen. But these are
not the methods of success in the business world. The man
who succeeds is the one who is able to use the most efficient
machinery. The missionary who has to spend a great share
of his time writing thousands of letters each year to gather
the meager resources of his work has both his time and his
energy stolen from his legitimate work. A man might go on
a reservation with a salary of $600 a year, and by sheer will
power and energy in the course of ten or fifteen or twenty
years build up a fine industrial settlement. Could he, however,
have had his thousand or ten thousand dollar plant to start
with he might have accomplished double or triple or ten
times the social work, and repaid the cost from the profits of
that period. In other words, greater returns could have been
secured without cost. .We can not hold that a man has
sacrificed much who receives back his money with interest.
Nor should we in any effort sigh over a deficit, if the results
are greater than the outlay. The conditions of highest ef
ficiency are the conditions of costless expenditure. Let the
missionary and the capitalist jointly go forth to work, not
conscious of great sacrifices made, but exultant in the great
opportunity before them to win great profits in the harvest
fields of the world's progress.
(1) J. B. Harrison: "So far as I have been able to observe, none of the people
engaged in such a. work have adequate means or instruments for it, or adequate sup
port in any way. In many cases their efforts are distressingly hampered and limited,
the value of their work greatly reduced * • ? chiefly by the lack of sufficient
pecuniary means and support. * * * In some cases the theory that a man can do
better work if he is half starved in every way seems to have been distinctly accepted
and acted upon."

CHAPTER X.

THE INDIAN PROBLEM.

In the preceding chapters the word transformation has
been used advisedly, and with a full understanding of the
prejudice which it will arouse in the reader. Commissioner
Leupp has authoritatively stated that "the Indian is a natural
warrior, a natural logician, a natural artist. We have room
for all three in our highly organized social system. Let us not
make the mistake, in the process of absorbing them, of washing
out of them whatever is distinctly Indian. Our aboriginal
brother brings, as his contribution to the common store of
character, a great deal which is admirable, and which needs
only to be developed along the right line. Our proper work
with him is improvement, not transformation." Not to juggle
with words, what is the difference between the two? Is it
not simply a matter of degree and of rapidity of change?
The government is engaged in changing the Indian's system
of land holding from tribal and communal to individual and
private ownership, and fixes twenty-five years as the maximum
period for the change, which in the end merges into individual
istic control for a whole tribe in the twinkling of an eye.
Is this improvement or transformation? The government is
abolishing every vestige of tribal organization as fast as

THE PROBLEM 111
possible ; it fixes dates on which historic systems are suddenly
to be annihilated. It takes a local tribesman and makes him a
voting partner in our vast republic. Is this improvement or
transformation? It takes a man under status and puts
him under contract. It turns a socialist into an individualist.
It takes the illiterate tribe and forces literacy upon it. It sub
stitutes European civilization for ancient tradition. It takes
a primitive people and says, "Cease to be primitive. Be
modern or you die." It surrounds the natural warrior with
better and more numerous warriors, and says, "Live in peace."
Is not this transformation? It kills off his game, and turns
the hunter into a farmer. It teaches the wielder of the war-
club and the stone-ax the use of tools and machinery, ana
exhausts its efforts in transferring the man of the forest and
plain to the marts of trade and the fields of modern industry.
It scatters the workers over the continent regardless of
ancient tribal and family ties. It puts a ban upon the canoe
and the pony, and whisks the wondering native across the
country behind the iron horse. It substitutes the almanac
for the stars, the newspaper for tradition, coat for blanket (or
clothes for paint), short hair for long hair, shoe for moccasin,
house for wigwam, foreign rule for home rule, prayer-meeting
for sun-dance, physician for medicine man, Christianity for
heathenism. If this be mere improvement, how shall we de
fine transformation?
History, experience and theory seem to prove that the
primitive man can not live by the side of the modern man. If
the Indian is to survive, he must become modern. Why not
confess our object, instead of trying to hide it under a more
euphemistic term? Candor begets consistency and constancy
in any policy.
This is not said merely to be captious, but in a serious
mood. For the one great fault in all our endeavors for the
Indians has been the vacillations and inconsistencies, delays
and backward movements, which have sprung from a lack of
definition. In other words we have not been honest with our
selves or with the Indian in the statement of our purposes
and objects. This has been due partly to a desire not to offend
by bluntness of expression, partly to ignorance or indifference,
and largely to radical differences of opinion, which have en-

112 THE INDIAN
deavored to attain ends under ambiguous phraseology in
legislation, (i)
The history of our relations with the Pima Indians affords
as good an example as any of the inconsistencies, vacillations
and inefficiencies of the several branches of our government in
dealing with the aborigines. Ah examination of the proceed
ings of the Mohonk Conference will from year to year show
tne accuracy of this statement. In 1904, Miss Cook summed
up the facts very concisely in these words :
"As is well known the Pimas of recent years have been reduced
from self-supporting farmers to hungry paupers through the appropri
ation ot tneir oia-time water supply by white settlements along the
Gila River above the reservation. As far back as 1886 the Indian
Office undertook through the Department of Justice to protect the
prior water rights of the Pima Indians. Year after year the matter
was taken up without any effect until by 1895 the diminishing Pima
grain fields had become barren deserts. Last June the District Attor
ney finally decided that although a decree in favor of the Pima water
rights would doubtless be rendered by the courts, yet the suit would
cost from $20,000 to $30,000, and in the end the court would be unable
to enforce its decree because of the varied interests involved 
The Indian Office, therefore, after eighteen years of fruitless effort,
abandoned the hope of bettering the condition of the Pima Indians
through judicial proceedings. All sorts of other methods have been
proposed and investigated, and have thus far failed owing to impracti
cability or expense, notably the $1,000,000 San Carlos dam and reser
voir. Wells and pumps are now to be tried so far and so fast as
funds will permit."
Mr. Brosius had made a vigorous presentation of the case in 1900,
and maintained that "here we have a typical instance of the need of
citizenship for the Indian. The Government, as guardian, has failed to
enforce the rights of the Indians by enjoining subsequent appropria-
tors of the water of the Gila; a proceeding that would have been avail
able to any individual as a citizen, but being in a state of tutelage the
Pimas have no status in court to enforce their rights. . . . The present
agent over the Pimas owns land and water rights under the Florence
canal, and this canal has absorbed most, if not all, the water hitherto
available for the Pimas; so we here find the anomalous condition of
an Indian agent in control of wards, whose interests are antagonistic
to his own, with no immediate probability of recommendation from
that source to secure water by injunction."
Twenty years is altogether too long a time to spend in
securing simple justice. By the time water is obtained the
Pimas are degraded, if not permanently ruined.
The situation in New York state furnishes another and
(1) Note the appropriation for buying lands for the Indians of California made
in such general terms, to secure its passage, that the courts did not allow tne money
to be expended.

THE PROBLEM 113
most important illustration of the fact and the harm of an
inefficient policy and of delay. This is most evident, perhaps,
in the case of the Seneca Indians. In 1886 the State Assembly
appointed a special committee to investigate the Indian prob
lem of the state. The report of that committee, known from
its chairman as the Whipple Report, is a statement of the
conditions then existing with a series of recommendations for
the future. Of the Onondaga Indians and their reservation
it is stated :
"In this productive region, with every advantage that nature could
bestow, with no taxes to pay or other burdens to bear, these people
have lived from hand to mouth for more than a hundred years. They
seem to be wholly without ambition to work, and the present policy
of the state does much to encourage them in doing nothing." "The
state yearly makes large appropriations for the repair of their roads
and bridges, for the care of indigent members of the nation, for the
school-house, furniture, books, fuels, teachers, superintendent and
agent; and yet we find them growing poorer every day." "Their pres
ent condition is infamously vile and detestable, and just so long as
they are permitted to remain in this condition, just so long will there
remain upon the fair name of the Empire State a stain of no small
magnitude." The few Oneidas "have no tribal relations, and are without chiefs
or other officers; they, as a tribe, receive no money from any source,
but receive a small annuity from the general government, amounting
to about eleven yards of cotton cloth to each person per year." "These
Indians not only manage and cultivate all of this land (which they
own in severalty and fee) themselves, but in many instances have pur
chased quantities of land from the whites and paid for them. They
have observed the habits and practices of the white farmers among
them, and have so profited by their example that the committee in
going over the territory was unable to distinguish, in point of cultiva
tion, the Indian farms from those of the whites." (1)
"If the government by chiefs among the (Tuscarora) Indians
could be destroyed, and they could hold their lands in severalty and
be citizens, there is not a doubt but in a very few years they would
be thoroughly respectable and enterprising people, and an honor to
that part of the country where they live." "The Onondagas being
the recognized head of the Six Nations, and having control of all the
important matters of legislation, with power to install and depose
chiefs at will, it makes but little difference how well civilized the Tus
caroras may become, so long as they have a tribal government, con
trolled by chiefs, which chiefs, in turn, are controlled and governed
by the pagan chiefs of the Onondagas."
(1) Hon. Charles R. Skinner, Superintendent of Education, in his report for
1902: "The fate ol the Oneidas should be a lesson. Not one of those of that tribe
who took their lands in severalty a few years ago now owns an acre. Their fertile
farms all belong to the white man, and the former owners are simply^ guests, welcome
or unwelcome, of those Indians who retain their tnoal ownership."

114 THE INDIAN
In 1870 the state erected a manual labor school for the
Tonawandas, but it has never provided the money necessary to
run it, so that the building "stands there today, a monument
to the mismanagement or neglect on the part of the state or
its representatives, as well as to the manifest indifference on
the part of the Indians." These Indians cultivated only three-
eighths of their land, and secured only half a crop. Not so
degraded as the Onondagas, their ignorance is deep, and mar
riage ceremonies few.
The St. Regis Indians have escaped from some of the
enervating influences of special privileges, and under the in
fluence of the Jesuit priests maintain a relatively high stand
ard of morals. But out of 305 children of school age, the
average daily attendance in school was 62.
The Seneca Nation of Indians is a corporate body by act
of Legislature. "The improvement of the Senecas in morals and education has
been slow; so slow, in fact, as to be almost imperceptible." "It may
not be too often to again assert that the Indian himself is not so much
to blame for this unfortunate condition as are the policy and the laws
which have allowed it to exist and develop. The aid from state and
nation, and from public charity is not enough to support the Indian
in comfort and decency and health, but it is just enough to discourage
and often destroy effort on his part to assist himself."
"Here are in the state 5,000 people, the descendants of a hardy and
intellectual race, with scarcely an artisan or person following or
learning a trade among them, excepting a very few unskillful carpen
ters or cobblers, with an abundance of fertile land, and at least a con
siderable number of them lacking food and shelter. No similar con
dition exists elsewhere in the country, and something is at fault. A
careful and conscientious examination of the whole question must
result in charging such fault to the laws, which respect and tolerate
communistic ideas, Indian customs, and tribal relations among these
people." The Committee recommended (i) a compulsory school
law; (2) a request by the Legislature to the national govern
ment to take action to extinguish the claims of the Ogden
company ; (3) the allotment of land in severalty ; (4) the repeal
of all existing laws relating to the Indians excepting those
prohibiting the sale of liquors to them and intrusion upon
their lands.
That practically none of the aims of the Whipple Com
mittee have been attained, now twenty years after the report
was made, is largely due to what is known as the Ogden Claim.

THE PROBLEM 115
At the outset of our national history New York and Massa
chusetts had a dispute as to the lands in what is now western
New York. The outcome was a compromise in 1786 by which
New York secured sovereignty over the territory, while
Massachusetts retained the pre-emption right to the soil —
in other words, the right to purchase when the Inaian occupant
chose to sell. It is this pre-emption right which the Ogden
Company now claims over the Seneca reservation by indirect
purchase from Massachusetts. It amounts to $200,000. The
validity of the claim has never been determined. Until it is
determined, title to the lands can never be clear enough to
allow of their division in severalty ownership among the In
dians. The continued slow progress, if not actual degradation,
of these New York redmen is definitely laid to the door of
this $200,000 dispute. Finally the Vreeland Bill was intro
duced into Congress in the year 1902. It provided that $200,-
000 should be retained of Seneca Funds until the final deter
mination of the action then pending in the Supreme Court of
the State of New York. Naturally the Indians oppose even
the possibility of such a settlement adverse to their own in
terests. Apparently, however, the present generation need not
worry over the situation. For the case was finally submitted
to Mr. Justice Kenefich in May, 1904. After two years of
silence a decision was handed down in October, 1906. The
case will come up on appeal by the Senecas in the United
States Circuit Court of Appeals in January, 1908. Sometime
we shall know what the law on this particular point is. But
such delays are incomprehensible to the lay mind, and to some
legal minds. They are inexcusable from the standpoint of
efficiency. They are ruinous to the subject race. It is to be
hoped that the young Seneca who has by special action of the
Legislature been made a citizen that he might practice law
will devote his talents to the simplification and the hastening
of judicial procedure in the Empire State.
If any state had a favorable opportunity to elevate the
Indian, that state was New York. Her record is valuable as
a source of information on how not to do it. Communal land,
tribal government, and annuities will not solve the problem,
even in the presence of a large white population and under
the inspiration of devoted missionaries. I was told that one

116 THE INDIAN
of the latter, however, doubted the wisdom, even as a first step,
of the allotment of lands without accompanying citizenship,
because of his observation of the Seneca Indians of the Corn-
planter Reserve in Pennsylvania.
/ The solution of the Indian problem, so far as the national
government is concerned, lies in the abolition of the reserva
tion, the complete and final allotment of lands, the genuine
and early allotment of trust funds, the granting of full citizen
ship, the withdrawal of special privileges, the enforcement of
the Indian's equal rights in the courts of the land, the cessa
tion of the practice of giving rations, the control of the criminal
white, whether saloonkeeper or land shark, the improvement
of the school system, the raising of the standard of the teach
ers, the extension of the outing system, the providing of in
dustrial opportunities, particularly on the reservations, the
complete severance of financial relations with «g£±aiiEr insti
tutions. , sectarian
/ / The great bar to success in the past has been a false or a
double philosophy. Bad theory cannot give good practice.
There are two opposing theories concerning the Indian, with
no middle ground of compromise between, upon both of which
we have attempted to build. It is not strange that we have
largely failed. If the Indian be essentially inferior to the white
man, it is foolish, if not criminal, to force him into the stream
of white civilization; schooling and civic rights are a curse,
not a blessing. If, however, the distinction of civilization is
chiefly one of experience and tradition, if the Indian is poten
tially on a substantial par with the white man, then the "van
ishing policy" is the only policy, and any man or any policy
which proceeds upon the other basic idea should be shoved
to one side as rapidly as possible. The two ideas can no more
be mixed than oil and water. This is the reason why honest
men have seen exactly opposite facts in a single situation. The
official and the philanthropist have often come to blows, and
neither could realize the sincerity of the other. An Indian
reservation might be run on either basis, but it could not be
run on both., ,
The function of the church is not less definite than that
of the state. It, too, must avoid a false philosophy. It must
realize that ideas should precede words, that life must precede
its expression, that religion is not only spiritual, but social.
The church, through the settlement and the industrial mission.

THE PROBLEM 117
must teach the Indian how to live in competition with the
white man. Otherwise he will go to heaven sooner than
he ought. The lesson is plain and the call is imperative.
Finally let it be said that seven words will sum up the
conclusions here reached as to the needs of the future :
Candor is both communicative and receptive. It will
spread broadcast the facts in the case. It will recognize and
discriminate the parts which the state and the church have to
perform. It will require things to be what they seem, and
seem what they are. It will take the public into its confidence,
and it will consider whatever the public may have to suggest.
Candor is the character of democracy.
Consistency is the guarantor of results. Frequent eras
ures do not solve the problem on the slate. The political, the
economic, the educational, the religious, and the social policies
affecting the Indians must remain of the same type, or harm
and not good, will be done.
Constancy will not allow our energies to flag. The
strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link. The
chain which is to bind the Indians to civilization may be meas
ured at the point and moment where we grow weary in well
doing. Efficiency is the man behind the gun. A school house
and a school system are of little avail, unless there be a genuine
teacher within. A missionary is of little power unless he
have both the correct point of view and the proper instru
ments to aid him in his work. Life and not form are guar
antors of progress, the substance of achievement. An Indian
Department is measured by its personnel and chiefiy by its
head. At present we probably have the most efficient Com
missioner in our history. It is important that every sub
ordinate and every policy be equally efficient.
Dissatisfaction with present conditions and accomplish
ments, faith in the bright possibilities of intelligent policies,
and fidelity to the task confided to each is the duty of the
worker in the field or office, of the Congressman, of the
churchman, and of society. The fate of the Indian in the
United States, rests with the present generation of American
citizens. Candor, consistency, constancy, efficiency, dissat
isfaction, faith, and fidelity are the seven stars which shall
lead the Indian to the door of hope.

3 9002 00947 9503

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