it was not very long ago that the indian was the object of a great deal of discussion and alarm in the united states.
he had a habit of breaking out at unexpected times and in unexpected places. he might be quiet in winter when the snow was deep and the reservation warehouse was so full of stores there was no possibility of his getting hungry, and consequently angry. when, however, the spring sun melted away the snow and brought the grass to the surface, so that it was cheaper to let a pony fatten on the grass than to kill him while he was lean, the indian picked up his spirits and rifle—which always was a good one—and started on the warpath. he did not particularly care whom he might kill; but if there were no other indian tribes about, he was not going home without a scalp, even if he had to kill a white man. the development of some of our territories was arrested for months, and even years, by some indian wars which began upon very slight pretext, and which our army, contemptible in numbers,{386} was unable to suppress promptly; and the savages gained confidence from the knowledge, which they were not compelled to ignore, that we were not a fighting nation.
either through better soldiers or less dishonest agents, there has been a change in late years. the indian has not been on the warpath in a long time, and some of the exciting accounts of indian raids in the west amount only to this—that a body of men have left their reservation against the advice of their associates, and started on a stealing and murdering tour just far enough ahead of the military force to be able to do a great deal of harm in a short time.
at the same time, however, the idea has been creeping to the surface that the indian might possibly be regarded as a human being and as amenable to the ordinary laws and customs of civilization.
all of us have heard the old brutal remark, attributed to general sheridan and several other army officers, that the only good indian is a dead one. but this is a base and cruel slander. there are a great many good indians, and every honest indian agent as well as every military officer who has much to do with the savage tribes knows that in each reservation there are a number of men, rude though they may be, who are of considerable character and large self-control, and whose principal faults may be charged to{387} the negligence of the government, which has regarded the red man as its special ward.
the indian has brains. no one is quicker to admit this than the army officer who has had occasion to fight the indian. general custer was a good soldier and an experienced indian fighter, but chief gall was a better one. the defeat of custer is usually attributed to sitting bull, but that old ruffian simply did out-and-out fighting; the brains of the conflict—all the strategy and all the tactics—were supplied by an indian named gall, who still lives, and for whose military ability every officer in our army has a profound respect, not unmixed with fear.
the flowery and elaborate speeches which different representatives of savage tribes have made to the great father at washington, through their interpreters, may seem to have a good deal of nonsense in them, but the indian bureau knows that they also contain a great deal of admirable diplomacy. it may be because the indian has very little to think of and can give his whole mind to the subject under consideration; but whatever the reason, the fact is assured that in pow-wows between representatives of our indian bureau and some of the tribes in the far west the preponderance of brains has not always been on the side of the white man.
another unexpected development of the indian question is, that the indian will work.{388} this may seem a wild statement in view of what a number of travellers and military officers have seen on reservations in the far west and at railway stations on the slender line which connects the civilization of the west with that of the rocky mountains and the pacific slope. but fortunately there are a number of witnesses to substantiate it; for instance, the apaches are currently supposed to be the most irreclaimable tribe of wild men within our nation’s borders. it will not be hard to recall the difficulties which general crook experienced in following, defeating and recalling geronimo’s famous gang of apaches a few years ago, when they were followed to a mountain fastness in mexico. yet when some of the demons who had murdered, ravished and burned everything in their path were finally brought back to the reservation and taught that by tilling the soil they could earn some money, or at least the equivalent of money, they worked harder than any american farmer whose achievements had ever been recorded. these so-called lazy devils supplied a military post with hundreds of tons of hay, every particle of which was cut by hand with such knives as the savages happened to have: they had no other tools with which to work. they also supplied the post with vegetables of various kinds, beside keeping themselves well fed with products of the soil which were results{389} of their own labor. farms managed by indians are not at all uncommon in the west. it was the eviction, or the fear of eviction of an old indian woman from her farm, that led to the murder of indian agent meeker in colorado. an indian named ouray was for a long time one of the most successful and respected farmers in colorado. ouray not only managed his own business well, but kept in order all the indians in his vicinity. his methods were somewhat rude to be sure, but they always were effective, and no army officer of his acquaintance hesitated to trust him as implicitly as he would trust the secretary of war for the time being. an indian at present is one of the land barons of the west, and has held his little estate near the centre of a large and flourishing town in spite of all temptations and machinations of rum-sellers, traders, lawyers and other scoundrels that have endeavored to swindle him out of his own.
but it isn’t necessary to go west to find out whether the indian will work. one needs only to go down to hampton, virginia, where the government is supporting a lot of young indians in the normal school conducted by general armstrong. i had heard so much about the unwonted spectacle of indians, clothed and in their right minds, with clean faces and hands, studying books and using tools and behaving{390} themselves like human beings—that a little while ago i went down to hampton myself and went through the schools. first, i asked general armstrong whether the indian would work.
“will he work?” said the general, with a merry twinkle of his eye. “well now, you roam about here yourself all day; i presume you know a red man from a black one when you see him; and you will have the question answered to your entire satisfaction.”
i did, and was convinced. i saw indians out-of-doors working the soil, and indians indoors, in the shops, handling tools as skilfully as the average white man. i saw houses inhabited by picked indian families—young people with children, and the “housekeeping”—one of the most comprehensive words in the world—was so thorough in all visible respects that either family seemed fit to teach domestic economy and neatness in many northern villages i have seen. i saw four indians in a class-room, at four separate blackboards, draw, inside of three minutes by the clock, four quite accurate maps of north america, putting the principal lakes and rivers in their proper places. several prominent americans (white) were with me at the time, and each admitted, for himself, that he could not have done as well to save his life; yet one was one of those railroad monopolists who want to own the{391} earth, and are supposed to carry at least their own section of it in their mind’s eye.
from general armstrong himself i got the following brief statement of the indian situation, and i have been unable to find any one in authority who is able to contradict any part of it.
“there are now in this country (exclusive of the alaskans) some 246,000 indians, of whom 64,000 belong to the so-called civilized tribes, the choctaws, cherokees, creeks and chickasaws. these, including their 16,000 ex-slaves, a rapidly increasing negro element, live, in the main, like white men. they, however, pay no taxes, receiving ample revenues from their interest in the sales of land to the government, but, while they have schools and churches and an organized government of their own, are held back by their adherence to the old tribal idea. this is thoroughly anti-progressive, and the savage indian of to-day, who, taking his land in severalty, comes under the same law as his white neighbor, will probably in twenty years be well in advance of his indian territory brother, who, under existing conditions, can be neither one thing nor the other.
“the principal uncivilized tribes are the 20,000 navajos in the southwest, and the 30,000 sioux in the northwest. the first of these have nearly doubled in ten years, own 1,000,000 sheep and 40,000 ponies, are wholly independent and{392} self-supporting, but wild and nomadic; while the sioux, who are but just holding their own, are still victims to the ration system. in spite, however, of this demoralizing influence, they have improved remarkably of late, chiefly because they have been fortunate in their agents. it is upon the agents that everything depends, and those in charge of the sioux have gradually decreased the food supply, thus forcing self-support and inducing the younger men to scatter along the river bottoms where there is wood and water, instead of huddling in hopeless dependence about the agencies. along the banks of the upper missouri and its tributaries, and on the rose-bud and pine ridge agencies, the sioux have generally broken from the heathenish village life and taken farms up of from one to thirty acres. as i drove last fall down the west bank of the missouri river i saw hundreds of these farms, with their wire fences, log huts with the supplementary ti-pi, stacks of grain and hay, and everywhere men working in the fields, nineteen out of twenty in citizen’s clothing. as a better class of white settlers comes in, a better feeling comes with them, and the indian can get in no other way such education as he receives from contact with these people.
“the best of these sioux, 3,500 of whom are now self-supporting, illustrate what we mean by ‘progressive indians,’ and what has been done{393} for them can be done for all indians. it is only a question of time and work. between the sierra nevada and the rocky mountain ranges, and in montana, there are many thousand indians whose condition is not encouraging, chiefly for lack of adequate effort in their behalf; while on the other hand, there are many on the pacific coast who, under the influence of good agents and good conditions, are doing well. on farming lands indians improve much faster than in a grazing country.
“government paid last year $1,050,000 for beef for reservation indians, and $1,200,000 for their education, and only twelve thousand children are at school out of the total of forty thousand who are of an age to receive education. more education and less beef is the need.
“an experience of eleven years with indian students at hampton, together with careful study of reservation life, has convinced me that indians are alive to progressive influences. they are intelligent and clear thinkers, quick at technical work in trades shops, unused to steady application but willing to take hold. they do not learn english easily, and are shy of speaking it, while they have no appreciation of the value of time, and cannot endure prolonged effort; this last being a result of their lack of physical vigor, which i believe to be their chief disadvantage. in my dealings with them i have{394} treated them as men and have found them manly, frank, resentful, but not revengeful; with a keen sense of justice, ready to take punishment for wrong doing, and to speak the truth to their own hurt.
“of 247 sent home from the hampton school, three-fourths have done from fairly to very well. at least one-third are doing excellently. there must always be a certain percentage of poor material, and there is a curious fickleness in the average indian; but our students are always surprising us by doing better than we expect, and this is especially the case with the girls, for whom often we hardly dare to hope. over one-half of our returned indians have had temporary relapses, but there are few who do not recover themselves. a majority are working for their living as teachers, mechanics, farmers, teamsters, clerks, etc.
“the need of the indian is good agents, teachers, and farm instructors. they are born stock-raisers and their lands are the best cattle ranges in the country. with the right men in charge they could in ten years raise such a proportion of their own beef as to reduce the beef issue by one-half.
“in their way stands a short-sighted economy, and a service so organized that it changes with every change of party. the lines of work for the indian are indicated with sufficient clearness;{395} the one thing now essential is intelligent co-operation of his friends.
“the saying that ‘there is no good indian but a dead one’ is a cruel falsehood and has done great harm. they are a good deal like other people, and with a fair chance do well.”
that the indian will work and that he also will learn was first demonstrated—officially—by captain pratt, of the regular army, who now is busily engaged in solving individual indian problems at his noble school at carlisle, pa. the change in the government’s policy toward the redskins is attributed, with good reason, to captain pratt’s endeavors. says senator dawes, who labored so hard for the bill enabling indians to take farms instead of living in barbarous communism on reservations:
“the division line between the present policy and the past is drawn here; in the past the government tried, by fair means or foul, to rid itself of the indian. the present policy is to make something of him. that policy had its origin almost in an accident. eight or nine years ago the government sent captain pratt with warriors, covered with the blood of a merciless war, from the indian territory down to florida; and captain pratt, in the discharge of his duty, undertook to relieve himself of the labor of keeping these warriors in idleness, no matter if the work was of no service to anybody if it would keep{396} them out of idleness. with this end in view he got permission to let them pick stones out of the streets. then he enlisted ladies to teach them to read. out of that experiment of captain pratt’s has come all the rest. behold what a great fire a little matter has kindled!”
senator dawes further says the following pertinent words on the indian question; no american can fail to realize the force of his remarks:
“if st. paul was here and had 250,000 indians on his hands, whom the united states had sought for one hundred years to rob of every means of obtaining a livelihood, and had helped bring up in ignorance, he never would have said to them, ‘he that will not work, shall not eat.’ you did not say that to the poor black man; you did not say that to the little children whom you sent by contribution out into the country for fresh air, and you ought not to say it to this poor, helpless race, helpless in their ignorance, and ignorant because we have fostered their ignorance. we have appropriated more money to keep them in absolute darkness, and heathenism, and idleness, than would have been required to send every one of them to college, and now we propose to turn them out. we did not relieve ourselves of the responsibility by that indifference; we have got to take them by the hand like little children and bring them up out of this ignorance, for they multiply upon our hands,{397} and their heritage is being wrenched away from them, and good men as well as bad are devising means to take it away.
“what is to become of them then? have we done our duty to this people when we have said to them: ‘we will scatter you and let you become isolated and vagabonds on the earth, and then we will apply to you the philosophic command, “go, take care of yourselves; we have every dollar of your possessions, every acre of your heritage; we have killed more of your fellows than there are of you left; we have burnt your little homes, and now we have arrived at the conclusion that it is time to take away from you the last foot of ground upon which you can rest, and we shall have done our duty when we command you to take care of yourselves?” ’ that is not the way i read it; i know how sincere and honest, and probably as near right everybody else is, but i am only telling how i feel. i feel just this: that every dollar of money, and every hour of effort that can be applied to each individual indian, day and night, in season and out of season, with patience and perseverance, with kindness and with charity, is not only due him in atonement for what we have inflicted upon him in the past, but is our own obligation towards him in order that we may not have him a vagabond and a pauper, without home or occupation among us in this land.{398} one or the other is the alternative; he is to be a vagabond about our streets, begging from door to door, and plundering our citizens, or he is to be taken up and made a man among us; a citizen of this great republic, absorbed into the body politic and made a useful and influential citizen.”
president cleveland voiced the opinion of all thoughtful and intelligent citizens when he wrote that “the conscience of the people demands that the indians within our boundaries be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the government, and their education and civilization promoted with view to ultimate citizenship.”
with a chance to work, the indian needs also the chance to learn, and this he is getting more and more. whether he will learn is a question no longer open to doubt. general armstrong’s testimony is given above. captain pratt says “scarcely a student but is able to take care of himself or herself among civilized people at the end of their five years’ course.” bishop hare, of the episcopal church, who has been doing splendid work among the indians for many years, gives unwearying attention to schools on the reservations, but says, “i cannot shut my eyes to the incalculable service which well-conducted eastern boarding-schools have done the indians.”
when we shall have for a few years treated the indian like a human being, there will be no “indian question” to discuss.
