The Indian and his problem

THE INDIAN
AND HIS PROBLEM

THE INDIAN
AND HIS PROBLEM

BY

FRANCIS E. LEUPP

Formerly United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1910

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BT
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published March, 1910

TO

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THE PRESIDENT WHOSE UNWAVERING CONFIDENCE AND SUPPORT EN
ABLED ME TO PUT INTO PRACTICAL OPERATION MOST OF THE
POLICIES ADVOCATED IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES, THIS
LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

206405

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE Indian problem has now reached a stage where
its solution is almost wholly a matter of administra
tion. Mere sentiment has spent its day; the moral
questions involved have pretty well settled themselves.
What is most needed from this time forth is the
guidance of affairs by an independent mind, active
sympathies free from mawkishness, an elastic patience
and a steady hand. The purpose of this book is to
present a bird's-eye view of the existing situation, and
a suggestion or two for the relief of some difficulties
which still confront our Government.

For twenty-five years I have mixed with Indians.
I was more or less intimately acquainted with all my
predecessors as Commissioner during that period, and
wish here to record my tribute of respect for as con
scientious and painstaking a series of officers as could
be found in their times in the public service. The fact
that I did not follow directly in their footsteps must
not be interpreted as any disparagement of their mo
tives or their wisdom, but as due to the different con
ditions obtaining when they and I respectively took
charge. For the Indian problem has assumed a wide
variety of phases since the Government began making
any serious attempt at its solution. In one era the
foremost need was to suppress violence; in divers

vii

viii PREFACE

others, to purify the personnel of the Indian Service,
to check the rapacity of contractors and traders and
frontier land-grabbers, to reform methods of business
at headquarters in Washington, to procure legislation
or judicial decisions of fundamental importance, to
awaken the conscience and educate the opinions of the
public, to urge increased appropriations for certain
exigencies of the work, to emphasize the demand for
schools for the children or devise means for the indus
trial advancement of the adult Indians. As for many
years the Government had no settled policy, but only
a vague sense of obligation to guide it, every Commis
sioner became an opportunist in spite of himself, and
was compelled to spend more of his time in keeping
the Service out of trouble than in constructive work
for converting a public burden into a contributor to
the common wealth.

The foregoing statement will, I trust, excuse the
somewhat frequent reference found in these pages to
matters which fell to me to handle officially. Of any
departures from my methods which may have been
made or are likely hereafter to be made by any suc
cessor in office, I cannot speak with the same authority.
On the other hand, as the solution of our problem has
been progressive, and as it had just entered a critical
stage when I was called to take charge of it, any ex
tended discussion now of questions which were settled
before that time would be a little like treating ancient
history as a current topic.

In my effort to reach the popular understanding by
the most direct route, I have avoided statistical and

PREFACE ix

other very precise details, and have employed gener
alizations which are liable to many exceptions. But if
the reader is prompted by this swift survey of a highly
complicated subject to go deeper into any of its phases,
he will find a mine of valuable information always
open to him in the Government reports and the publica
tions of the Smithsonian Institution. My little volume
is not offered as a contribution to the literature of
ethnology, of jurisprudence, or of political science in
the narrower sense of the term. It expresses no opin
ions but my own, and neither represents nor commits
any other person, in or out of public life. In short, it
is simply a message of friendly counsel from a white
citizen of the United States, proud of his country, and
anxious to see the members of our dominant race do
their full duty toward a weaker element in the popula
tion who were Americans long before we were.

F. E. L.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 1, 1910.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE INDIAN AS HE WAS ,

The White Man's Ignorance^oL the Indian — Some
Wide-spread Misconceptions— A Lively Sense of
Humor — Homeric Heroes and Ethics Reproduced
— Origin of the Sign Language — The Question of
Honesty — Position of Women in the Tribe and at
Home — Courtship, Marriage, Divorce and Children
— Youth and Old Age in the Indian View — How a
Tribal Council Proceeds — The Dance, Religious and
Social.

II. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN . . . . 23

Land Ownership and Home-Making — First Attempts
at a Government Policy — Beginnings of the Reser
vation System — Wild Game Displaced by Rations^
— How Graft Flourished on Communism — Mission
Work and Government Schools — Gratuities a^
Straight Path to Pauperism — The Dawes Severalty
Law — Evils of Compulsory Citizenship — Special
Legislation a Costly Boon — Leasing and Inheritance.

III. THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT .... 42

A Human, not a Mere Race Question — Following the
Course of Nature — Proof of the Indian's Stamina —
Starting Work with the Boys and Girls — Practical
Teaching Better than Ornamental — Dissolving the
Mass and Building the Man — Criticisms Passed on
the Policy of Shrinkage — A Picturesque and Artistic
People — Improvement, not Transformation, the
Right Ideal.

IV. WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 61

Need of Amending the Dawes Allotment Act —
Arguments Offered in Defence of Premature En
franchisement — The Burke Idea not Wholly Novel
— The Old Act and the Amendment Each Suited to
Its Day — Precautions Taken to Protect the Indian
Beneficiary — Attitude of the Government Toward
the Emancipated Allottee — Who Apply for Patents
in Fee — Congress Broadening Its Policy,
xi

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

V. DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 79

Who Owns the Reservations — Popular Misappre
hensions Corrected — The Lone Wolf Decision — Ind
ian Distaste for Allotment — Offering the Tribal
Remnant for Sale — The Government as a Wholesale
Purchaser — Price Contrasts Which Mean Nothing —
The Existing Practice — Sugar Beet and Horse Farm
Projects — Rapid Opening of Reservations — Objec
tions to this Policy Considered.

VI. THE INDIAN SERVICE 96

\ A Huge Human Machine and Its Personnel — Order

of Rank and Authority — Indian Agents and Super
intendents — What Political Patronage Brings in Its
Train — Story of the Seven Green Strings — Duties of
an Agent — Army Officers in Charge of Agencies —
The Board of Indian Commissioners — Public Em
ployment for Indians — Life at a Frontier Post —
Separation from the Service.

VII. THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION . . . . 115

Young Indians in the Learned Professions — How
Experience Modifies Expectation — Practical Needs
Too Commonly Overlooked — Importance of Indi
vidualizing and Specializing — The World as a
Human Mould — Value of the Outing System —
What Ten Years of Real Life Did for One Indian
Boy — Different Types of Government Schools —
Open-Air Teaching — Paternalism Run into an
Abuse.

VIII. TIME FOR A TURNING 132

Overhauling the Indian School System — Day
Schools and Their Influence — Mutual Needs of
Parent and Child — The Educational Almshouse and
the Harm It Does — Necessity for a Compulsory
School Law — Stunting Effect of the Institutional
Routine — A Big Boarding School as a Machine —
Perils of the Herding Process — A Benevolent Begin
ning and a Wasteful End— How to Get Back to
Common Sense.

IX. THE INDIAN AT WORK 151

When the Indian Will Labor and When He Will Not
— The Government's Mistaken Methods of Old —
'S, /Operations of the Employment Bureau — Training
r Adults in the Mechanical Trades— The Crow Fair-
Illiterate Indians Who Have Proved Their Mettle —
The Native Handicrafts — Young Indians in the
Army and Navy — Adventures of the Absentee Utes
— The Object-Lesson of the Hungry Stomach.

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER PAGE

X. THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 173

Tribal Trust Funds and Their Origin — Replacing
Fictitious with Real Capital — Sources of Indian In
come — Dead Letter Treaty Provisions — Absurdity
of Permanent Annuities — Turning Gratuities and
Land Payments into Wages — Leasing Allotments —
Improvidence of Indian Heirs — The Trader, His
Virtues and His Vices — Plan for the Incorporation
of Tribes — A Proposed Court of Indian Claims.

XL LEGISLATING FOR A DEPENDENT RACE . .

Unique Position of the Indians — How Congress Ap
proaches Its Task — Some Amusing Errors — Perils
Which Beset a Legislative Programme — The Chronic
Improver — How the Few Sometimes Overcome the
Many — Things Left Undone, and the Consequences
— Pruning Ancient Abuses — Insignificance of a Bill
without Backing — The Congressional Document —
Good Nature and Duty — Damage a Lobby Graft
May Do.

XII. LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 221

Origin of the Agency Pass — Some of Its Grim
Humors — Freedom of the Indian to Go and Come
— The Disciplinary Lessons of Cause and Effect —
Medicine Men and Their Pretensions — Methods of
Controlling Them— The Force of Ridicule — Tack
ling the Intemperance Problem — Warlike Threats
and Incendiarism — Courts of Indian Offences —
Putting Culprits upon Their Honor — An Historic
Incident in Point.

XIII. A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 248

Thoughtless Demands for Reform — Doom of the
Indian Dance — The Standing Bear Decision — How
It Was Ignored by Those Who Quote It Most-
Imprisonment of the Ute Pilgrims — Story of the
Geronimo Apaches — The Punishment of Porcupine
— By-a-lil-le and His Outlaw Following— An Inter
esting Test Case Which Stopped Too Soon— Situa
tion on the Sac and Fox Reservation in Iowa.

XIV. MISSIONARIES AND THEIR METHODS . . . 275

The Aboriginal Conception of Deity — Supplanting
Nature-Worship with Christianity — A Missionary's
Beginnings — Teaching the Converts Independence
— Status of the Mission Worker Under the Law —
Mistakes Which Can be Avoided— The Hospital as
a Faith-Bridge — Marital and Sex Problems — Eccle
siastical Controversies in the Schools — A Pagan
Indian's Regard for His Vow.

xiv . CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XV. PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 305

The Popular Notion of Philanthropic Societies — A
Too Sweeping Verdict — Their Several Fields of Effort
— Distinctions Worth Observing — Public Officers
and Criticism — Judging as We would be Judged —
How the Societies Are Organized and Managed —
Practical Benevolence and the Other Kind — Native
Testimony — The Chronic Complainers* Faction —
Indians in Shows — Pseudo Scientists and Real.

XVI. THE INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT . . 328

How the Indian Territory Came into Being — Setting
an Untrained Race to Found a Republic — The Gov
ernments of the Five Civilized Tribes — White Out
lawry and Native Graft — A Long Reign of Terror —
Interference of the Federal Government — Reducing
Chaos to Order — The Segregated Coal Lands — Ap
plicability of the Incorporation Plan — Birth of the
State of Oklahoma.

XVII. As THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON . . 343

What the Future Has in Store for the Indian — Ab
sorption and Merger — Intermarriage of the Races —
' - The Squaw-Man and His Mixed-Blood Progeny —

Some Prevalent Errors Challenged — Distinguishing
Mixed from Pure Blood — The Family Record Book
— Fighting Disease and the Liquor Evil — Could the
Indians Produce a Booker Washington? — A Part
ing Message of Appeal.

INDEX . 363

THE INDIAN
AND HIS PROBLEM

OF

THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

CHAPTER I
THE INDIAN AS HE WAS

The White Man's Ignorance of the Indian — Some Wide-spread
Misconceptions — A Lively Sense of Humor — Homeric
Heroes and Ethics Reproduced — Origin of the Sign
Language — The Question of Honesty — Position of Women
in the Tribe and at Home — Courtship, Marriage, Divorce
and Children — Youth and Old Age in the Indian View —
How a Tribal Council Proceeds — The Dance, Religious
and Social.

No one can understand the Indian problem without
first understanding the Indian. And herein lies an
essential difficulty, for the understanding of another
human being is not to be had by a study of formulas
as we identify a chemical combination, or worked out
in lines and angles as we master a geometrical propo
sition; but it is largely a matter of instinct, like the
appreciation of a religious or aesthetic ideal or the dis
covery of an unsuspected sympathetic sense. A prime
condition of our knowledge of any man is that we shall
see him against his own background, commune with
him in his varying moods, and breathe his atmosphere.
That gives us the intimate view. Then it is well to be

able to readjust our impressions by moving from time

i

2 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

to time to a point from which we can see him in per
spective, and thus form a just estimate of his relations
to things outside of himself.

Unfortunately for the Indian, his Caucasian fellow-
countrymen rarely enjoy this double opportunity for
studying him. Either they have been compelled by
circumstances to live close to him all the time, and so
have acquired an exaggerated conception of his faults-
meaning those traits and notions which do not coincide
with theirs — and only a condescending regard for his
virtues; or their occupations and tastes have kept them
afar off, so that they have got but an imperfect view of
him as an object on the horizon. It is hard to say
whether the development of the Indian has been re
tarded the more seriously by his close association with
neighbors who look upon him, even good-naturedly, as
a necessary nuisance, or by the often mistaken kindness
of friends thousands of miles removed, whose judgment
of him and of his needs has been warped by frequent
appeals to their emotions.

"Do you know anything, by actual contact and ex
perience, of the Indian country and the conditions
there?" I once asked a distinguished Attorney-
General of the United States whom I had been vainly
trying to induce to make a special inquiry into an
Indian case then before him.

"God forbid!" was his fervid response, as he raised
both hands and extended their palms toward me with
the gesture of pushing away an unwelcome suggestion.

This man was a highly bred product of the East. I
doubt whether he had ever travelled a thousand miles

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 3

inland, and, if so, whether he had seen anything of the
country except through the window of a director's car.
Yet if I mistake not he was a member of a philan
thropic society which made a specialty of Indians. We
all know the attitude of which his was a typical illustra
tion: Yes, the Indian is a much-abused creature; let us
help him by all means; accept this check as a modest
contribution to his cause; but excuse me, please, from
the hardships of pounding over rough roads in a
waterless country, living on salt pork and canned beans
and unbuttered saleratus biscuit, and sleeping on any
bed that happens to come to hand or on none at all,
for the sake of knowing him face to face in his own
home, amid all his untidy surroundings!

In discussing the Indian people one must always
bear in mind that there is as wide a diversity between
different groups as we find among Caucasians. Just
as we should never think of confusing the native traits
of the Scandinavian with those of the Sicilian, so we
must keep the Sioux distinct from the Mission Indian,
the Chippewa from the Navajo, the Makah from the
Hopi. The most we can do is to note what character
istics are common to a majority of our aborigines.

The historians who have recorded the achievements
of our race on the western hemisphere have as a rule
done scant justice to the people whom we supplanted.
Many of the school-books furnished to our children,
and the novels prepared for the entertainment of their
elders, have portrayed the Indian in colors which
would make him unrecognizable by his closest intimates.
Popular writers generally agree, for example, in repre-

4 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

senting him as haughty and taciturn. They simply
ignore human nature. An intruder who forces his way
into an occupied home, takes possession of it, and es
tablishes there a new language, new customs and new
proprietary relations, would naturally be regarded by
his unwilling host with some suspicion, which could
hardly fail to find expression in a certain reserve of
manner; and the most thoughtful races are least
garrulous. As a matter of fact, among the friends
whom he trusts, the Indian is a genial companion and
a lively story-teller, full of humor himself and appreci
ating heartily the humor of others.

I shall never forget the sally, or the roar of laughter
which greeted it, by way of concluding a discussion I
was holding with a band of Indians in Oregon a few
years ago. Having recently sent them a new Super
intendent — or Agent, as they preferred to call him — I
was telling them something of the qualities he had
shown in other positions, including his industrious
habits and his devotion to the interests of their people.
"Here," said I, in a tone of expostulation, "he has his
office open from eight o' clock till twelve every morning,
and from one till five every afternoon, for no other pur
pose than to attend to your affairs, and all of you are
welcome to visit him there and talk over your troubles;
yet I observe that you go to his house before he is out
of bed, or call him away from his meals, or rout him
out at night, to attend to things which could just as
well be attended to during the business day. Now,
I want you to remember that an Agent, like everybody
else, must have some time to rest!"

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 5

The last words I spoke very slowly and with marked
emphasis, and I had paused to let the idea sink into
their minds, when an old Indian in the corner, who
spoke English fairly well, broke the solemn silence by
calling out: "The last Agent rested all the time!"

Indeed, the ability of the Indians to see the funny side
of a serious matter, even when the point is against
themselves, sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths.
In the Sioux outbreak of 1890, not a few Indians
belonging to the usually peaceable element left their
homes and went to the arena of hostilities either out of
mere curiosity or with a notion that the trouble might
spread till all were drawn into it on one side or the
other. During the absence of a number of members of
one band, their local agency issued its annual call for
firewood. It was the custom of the Government to buy
from the Indians all the fuel they would cut, by way of
encouraging them in useful industry. A weak-minded
fellow who had always been treated as the clown of the
tribe, and who had stayed at home in spite of the ex
citement, saw here his golden opportunity. He had
never exerted himself before to earn his living, because
the timber expeditions involved too much hard work;
but what could be easier than a plan which had just
entered his mind?

So to the nearest cabins of absentees he repaired and
deliberately tore them down, sawed the logs into cord-
lengths, piled these into his wagon and hauled them to
the agency, where he received the standard price for
all the wood he brought, no questions being asked as
to where he got it. And how did the owners act on

6 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

their return? Their first sensation was one of amaze
ment to find their dwellings razed to the ground; the
next was eagerness to ascertain how this had hap
pened; possibly the next was indignation, but if they
manifested any I never heard of it. All I know is
that in telling me the story they have laughed over it
as if it were one of the most amusing things imagin
able — only a new item added to the clown's long list
of comical pranks; while the author of the mischief
would stand by, enjoying the recital as much as the
rest and evidently taking not a little pride in the
novelty of his practical joke. I suspect that this is
one of the cases where most of us will admit that the
Indian sense of humor is even keener than the Cau
casian.

We read and hear a good deal about the treacherous
nature of the Indian. The late Dr. William T. Harris,
while Commissioner of Education, answered that ac
cusation with a single phrase when he referred to the
Indian race as "Homeric children." They have an
oriental code of ethics which holds hospitality so sacred
that if an Indian takes you into his home as a guest you
are absolutely under his protection during your stay.
But the same code which rigidly recognizes the rights
and privileges of friendship, and even one's duty tow
ard the stranger who is temporarily sharing one's
camp, ignores every consideration in the treatment of
an enemy except the desire to inflict upon him any in
jury possible. The maxim, "all's fair in war," often
current among whites who carry honor to the extreme
of generosity in dealing with a foe, to an Indian means

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 7

what it says. His mind is of the simple type which in
a hostile atmosphere knows no sentimental restraints,
but despises all forms except such as may be needed
to mislead an intended victim. Remove the alluring
gloss which poesy has spread over the conduct of the
worthies who figured in the siege of Troy, and do we
find any larger element of virtuous motive there than
in the standards respected by our aboriginal race? Yet
Homer's people we do not denounce as innately vi
cious because the stage which human development had
reached in their era failed to foreshadow some of the
best features of our modern civilization.

The Indian of the books is always warlike, and this,
in the mind of the uninformed reader, is assumed to
mean that he is personally quarrelsome. The inference
does him great injustice. There is not a white com
munity whose members will go further out of their way
to avoid hard feeling with their neighbors than the
members of an Indian tribe or band. Factional differ
ences will often arise, as among similar groups of other
blood; a discredited leader may be stripped of power
with little ceremony, wives and husbands may disagree
and separate, and occasionally private vengeance may
be sought by one Indian for a very deep wrong in
flicted upon him by another; but for the most part
such troubles as do occur between individuals are
settled by a conference of the parties and their friends,
the conclusion reached is accepted and acted on in good
faith by the worsted antagonist, and, as the feelings of
the aggrieved Indian are usually salved over by the gift
of a pony or a blanket or a saddle from the aggressor,

8 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

even the scars of the recent conflict do not long remain
visible. War with outsiders, however, is quite a dif
ferent proposition. Here the Homeric age used often
to be called forcibly to mind, for, if one tribe had some
thing which another tribe coveted, its continuous pos
session became a mere question of strength.

In olden times the buffalo hunt served the double
purpose of uniting and dividing tribes. It undoubtedly
brought into existence the sign language common to the
tribes of the Plains; as each had its own tongue, one
hunting party meeting another was powerless to ask
or answer questions, and out of the need of some ade
quate medium of communication was evolved that use
of hands and elbows, eyes, ears and head which a master
of the art can make so eloquent without a spoken
word. On the other hand, these meetings offered
fine opportunities for beginning tribal feuds, if two
bands had started after one herd, and a few hot
heads in each, getting into close quarters, had come
to blows. Out of such an encounter might grow a
warfare continuing through several generations; for
the Indian, like other primitive men, if injured, took
his revenge not simply on the individual offender
but on the whole class to which the latter belonged.
A wrong done him by a member of another tribe
must be wiped out in the blood of that tribe, and any
member or members, whether personally guilty or in
nocent, would answer for the sacrifice. As a matter of
course, vengeance bred vengeance; till, after the ven
detta had been handed down from father to sons, and
from sons to grandsons, the relations of aggressor and

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 9

aggrieved became so hopelessly confused that the origin
of the broil was lost in the mists of oral tradition, and
one tribe hated the other for no better reason than that
it was the other.

As already suggested, the Indians resembled the
Homeric heroes, and, indeed, the great figures of our
own baronial era, in making their idea of property too
often interchangeable with the idea of the physical
force necessary to acquire and defend it. Descents of a
stronger tribe upon a weaker, to carry off their ponies or
other possessions of value, were of common occurrence.
Such raids were mostly made in the night, not from
cowardice or from any notion of criminality associated
with them, but apparently because work in the dark
demands more cunning and skill than work in the light.
At least, that is the way in which many old Indians have
explained the custom to me. We should call it stealing,
and so would these same men if it were done now; yet
in spite of their advancement in morality they still de
light in reminiscences of expeditions in which they once
took part, for emptying the corrals and driving off the
herds of tribes less powerful than theirs, thus showing
that they attach no sense of ignominy to their conduct.

All this leads by a side path to the consideration of a
charge often heard in the frontier West, that the Indian
is naturally dishonest. His friends can safely challenge
the accusation. What we conventionally call dishon
esty, except as associated in some way with hostilities,
was, in my judgment, introduced to the Indian with
the rest of the conventional civilization which we
brought into his country. Food, among the old-fash-

10 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

ioned Indians, was always regarded as common prop
erty: the rule being to let him who was hungry eat,
wherever he found that which would stay the cravings
of his stomach. The old practice underwent degenera
tion, just as a multitude of once honored practices have
suffered notorious abuse among ourselves. It is in
terpreted now by the lazy and thriftless element as
justifying their living on any member of their family or
band as long as that person has a crust of bread or a
mouthful of meat in his camp, regardless of whether or
not they are able-bodied and he is weak and helpless;
while the traditional respect generally entertained for it
deters the victim from resistance or resentment, how
ever much he may inwardly condemn the injustice of
having such burdens heaped upon him. The persis
tence of the old theory will explain, moreover, the
seeming paradox we meet with here and there on the
frontier, where a band of Indians among whom you
might safely trust your whole stock of household goods
overnight will commit depredations on your cattle and
sheep, killing them to eat whenever it is possible to do
so with reasonable security.

Some years ago a delegation of Osage Indians called
upon me in Washington to discuss a recent turn in the
affairs of their tribe. After we had gone over the whole
ground the sub-chief drew from under his blanket a
scroll of parchment and handed it to me with the re
mark: "I want my father to read this, and tell us
whether what we have said here to-day is the same as
the writing on the paper." The scroll proved to be a
sort of official letter of good will, engrossed in quill

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 11

script after the olden style, dated in 1804 and signed by
President Jefferson's Secretary of War. It expressed in
figurative language the satisfaction of the Government
at Washington with the friendly relations existing be
tween itself and the Osage nation, and concluded with a
paragraph to this effect: "The President sends you a
chain. It is made of pure gold, which will never rust.
And may the Great Spirit assist us in keeping the chain
of friendship, of which this golden chain is an emblem,
bright for a long succession of ages."

The imagery was poetic, but there was something
better than poetry in the upper left-hand corner of the
parchment; for there hung the chain, just where the
Secretary had fastened it one hundred years before.
During the interval three generations of Osage Indians
had come into being, or passed away, or both. The
tribe, though now well to do, had undergone all kinds
of vicissitudes. They had lived in the forest and on the
desert, in tepees and wigwams, in shanties and log
cabins. In all that time they had been without safe-
deposit vaults or treasure-houses, burglar alarms or de
tective bureaus; yet here was the chain, not a link
missing, not the scratch of a file on its surface. Are
there many white communities where it could have been
thus exposed for such a period and kept out of the
thief's crucible or the pawnshop?

Old, experienced traders among the Indians have?,
repeatedly informed me that they had lost less money
on long-standing Indian accounts, aggregating large
sums, than in their comparatively small dealings with
the white people in their neighborhoods. One success-

12 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

ful trader among the Sioux who, in the early nineties,
lent some $30,000 to the Indians near him in anticipa
tion of a payment they were soon to receive, said after
ward: "I did not lose more than $150 on the whole
transaction, and that I lost from a half-breed who did
not live on the reservation." The same testimony is
borne on all sides, and the universal comment is that,
until they were taught how to cheat in a trade, very
few of them ever thought of doing so. I have seen In
dians at a Government pay-table, after receiving their
annuities, walk up to the Agent or some employee with
so many dollars held out in their palms, to repay a loan
which the creditor had forgotten all about. These in
stances, I ought to add, were observed among Indians
of a pretty backward class, who were acting simply in
obedience to their natural impulses.

Because he does not open his heart to a stranger or
fly into a passion under abuse, we hear that the Indian
is without feeling. On the contrary, he is one of the
most sensitive of human beings. Stolid as stone under
his enemy's tortures, he may be broken in spirit by the
death of a child. He feels keenly any slight put upon
him, and, though he may not retort in kind, a harsh or
contemptuous word from a friend cuts him to the heart.
He is an artist by instinct, responsive to every form of
beauty in natural objects, and filled with awe in the
presence of whatever is massive or otherwise grand.
Crude as are the materials of which he composes them,
his war bonnet, his hunting shirt, his ceremonial cos
tume for great occasions, his home-made blankets and
saddle-cloths, baskets and pottery, his decorated weap-

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 13

ons, his shell chains and silver bracelets, all wear the
stamp of a genius which needs only encouragement to
win recognition far beyond the boundaries of a curio
cabinet. I have sat with a party of Indians of all ages
in a remote corner of our country and listened to a
musical programme ranging in variety from rag-time to
Bach, and noticed that the most emphatic manifesta
tions of approval from the red people were reserved for
classic or semi-classic selections which would have put
an uneducated white audience to sleep.

Enter an Indian camp, and you will probably see its
lord stretched prone in the most comfortable place,
where he can smoke and converse with his guests while
his wife, silent and self-effacing, busies herself with
menial tasks. Meet a married couple on the road, and
it is the wife who is bent under their homely burdens
while the husband stalks in advance with his head in
the air. Well, friends, it is merely a matter of diverse
conventions; for in our civilization, too, we divide the
daily activities between the sexes. Among us, the hus
band assumes the functions performed outside of the
home: he goes forth to battle with the world, to forge
the big products of his trade, to wring tribute from his
debtors, to provide the means of subsisting the family;
to the wife fall the duties pertaining to the household
proper — the care of the children, the preparation of the
food, the manifold interests which make for the comfort
of all. So among the Indians, from time immemorial,
it was the man who went forth to hunt the game which
supplied the family with meat and clothing and shelter,
made war upon the enemy and carried home his share

14 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

of the plunder, defended the camp when attacked,
fashioned with his own hands the weapons to be used
against man and beast, and took part in the internal
councils and outside negotiations of the tribe; while the
wife was mother and nurse, built and tended the fire,
prepared the beds, planted and harvested the little
patch of corn and beans if the family had one, skinned
and carved the game, brought water from the brook,
cooked the meals, and in the odd moments employed
her fingers at cutting and sewing garments, ornament
ing them with beadwork, weaving the blankets, plaiting
the mats and baskets, or moulding ropes of wet clay into
bowls and baking these to harden them for domestic use.
A glance backward over the history of our own race
would show that our present classification of duties on
sex lines is merely an outgrowth of the same simple
division which still continues among the aborigines,
the changes we have made being due to our more rapid
social progress and our greater natural faculty for adapt
ing old things to new conditions. With the Indians,
the settlement of the country and its advance in civili
zation having robbed the head of the family of his for
mer occupations, he is too conservative to hunt up new
ones and adjust himself to them; so, after the manner
of the simple life, he takes for ease all the hours not de
manded for toil, and seeks a comfortable spot where he
can lie and think. His wife's functions, however, have
not been altered in multitude or character by the new
order of things which has crept over their horizon. She
has just as many children as before, as much clothing
to make and wash, and as many meals to prepare. All

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 15

that the intrusions of civilization have effected in her
domain has been to furnish her with a few more con
venient implements for her work.

Moreover, as a proprietor and domestic magnate the
Indian woman may be of much more importance than
her lowly tasks and demeanor would indicate. Among
the Navajos the women own the sheep, among the Hopis
the house; among some tribes "My mother" or "My
grandmother" is the most reverential form of address
which can be offered to a visitor of either sex. All de
scent is traced through the female line. In the Sioux
households the women have often more to say than the
men about internal affairs, and everywhere it is usually
the women who have the last word in deciding how the
children shall be trained. Among the Utes I have seen
the annuity money received by stalwart husbands and
turned over at once to wives whom the same husbands
would load down with all the burdens for their home
ward trip. In informal conferences I have held with
the Navajos, women have been present and taking
no part in the open discussions; but in stage whispers
to their husbands they have suggested new arguments
or revamped old ones till they have upset more than
one basis of agreement the men had reached with me.
So we are bound to recognize the women's duties, treat
ment and bearing as matters of fashion rather than of
essence, no matter what race we are considering; and
the most we can say for the worshipful position of the
gentler sex among ourselves is that it is one of the graces
of life which have come in the train of our higher but
largely artificial culture.

16 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

There is another contrast between the Indians and
ourselves which is not wholly to the discredit of the
less civilized race. Marriages among them are unions
entered into with the distinct expectation of bringing
children into the world, and the little ones can never
come in such multitude as to wear out their welcome.
Prostitution for gain is so limited as to be almost ab
normal; though a counterpoise is found in the widely
prevalent practice of polygamy and in the great facility
for illicit relations between the unmarried on mere im
pulse. In some of the more notable tribes infidelity
on the part of wives is very rare because the penalties
are so severe, often including unsightly mutilations
of a woman's face; but on the other hand divorce is
not difficult, and if a woman is tired of her husband her
most convenient and least hazardous course is to cut
herself loose from him and become the wife of any
man for whom she has acquired a stronger liking. Il
legitimacy is as frequent as it must always be in com
munities where the sex instinct retains its primitive
force and the mode of living makes social barriers im
practicable. It is regarded, however, with mixed senti
ments. The parents of a girl who gives birth to a child
out of wedlock deplore the incident, but the babe is
never disowned and the mother suffers no disgrace
which cuts off her chance for regular matrimony
later. A child from any source, among the unspoiled
Indians, is a gift from the gods and a joy to the home,
and it is not uncommon to find an already large family
swelled by the adoption of several orphans.

Courtship and marriage take various forms among

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 17

the Indians. The tribes which of old were most warlike
doubtless still retain the tradition of marriage by capt
ure, though in the concrete that is no longer possible.
Within a tribe, however, marriage by purchase persists
to this day. Ponies are the most common medium of
exchange, and that maiden is the proudest belle whose
parents have received the largest offers in horse-flesh
for her hand. In communities where agriculture has
been the immemorial means of livelihood, and where the
habitation is in consequence the most fixed of all their
possessions, the woman is accustomed to make the
first advances, because she will bring the bridegroom to
her home instead of following him to his. A young man
there, living in his father's house, may wake one morn
ing to discover at his door a basket of cornmeal from
an unidentified giver. He must be very unobserving
if he is unable to guess who laid the meal at his thresh
old; for the women of the village grind the corn by
hand, and this has undoubtedly been ground, and
placed where he found it, by a certain maiden who has
been casting coy glances at him as he passed, and is in
tended for a hint that a chance to grind meal for him
always as her husband would not be unwelcome. The
courtship which follows is usually short and undra-
matic. The wedding day is celebrated by a gathering
of women who sit with the bride in her home, and, be
tween bits of gossip, instruct her in the duties of wedded
life. There are no newspaper notices or after-cards;
but a substantial advertisement of the marriage is the
building of a new room against her father's dwelling as
a place for the young pair to start their housekeeping.

18 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

The two extremities of earthly existence mean a great
deal among the Indians: their children they idolize,
their old people they revere. This distribution of senti
ment keeps the family life in equilibrium. A white
child brought up in the freedom which the little Indian
enjoys, and seeing its grandparents no oftener or more
intimately than the white child commonly does, might
easily become unbearable in their presence. But under
the patriarchal system which prevails among the In
dians, elders and children are thrown into the closest
and most constant companionship; the children grow
up in an atmosphere of respect for the old men and
women of their families, and, though not standing in
dread of them, are readily controlled by a word from
that source of gentle authority. In all my wanderings
among the Indians, I have never seen a parent strike a
child, and have very rarely heard an impatient exclama
tion from either side. The influence of this peaceful
environment is manifest when Indian children play to
gether; their laughter will ring out as freely as the
laughter of white children, but is almost never punctu
ated by angry cries or tears. The adults, indeed, carry
much the same spirit into their games: the competition
is not so fierce that winner and loser may not be equally
good-natured over the result. Again and again I have
watched the Southern Ute women play through a whole
afternoon a game somewhat resembling our hockey,
with a good-sized ball and bent sticks that weighed
more than a pound each, so that a blow from either in
strument projected by a muscular arm must have
caused considerable pain; but nothing of that sort

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 19

brought an instant's interruption to the fun. A player
too badly bruised to continue would drop out of the
game and nurse her wounds while watching the rest.
If two players ran into each other and banged their
heads together, there were no complaints and recrimi
nations, but only an exchange of humorous sallies.

The respect for age to which I have alluded gives a
certain air of dignity to a tribal council in spite of much
of the proceedings which could be omitted without dam
age. The session usually opens with a period of abso
lute silence, which is presently broken by a few mur
murs so low that the words are distinguishable only by
the alert ears of the Indians; these are suggestions
from one and another quarter as to who shall speak
and on what phases of the topic before the meeting.
Then one of the old men rises, and all becomes still
again. He speaks without interruption from any of
the others, although senile feebleness may cause him
to wander a little in his argument. Even those pres
ent who belong to an opposing faction, including per
haps a defeated rival for some tribal honor, pay him
the deference of silence and attention. The first
speaker is followed by another and another, all old
men; and before one of fewer years obtrudes his views
he looks along the line for nods or shakes of the head
from all the remaining ancients who have any standing
in the tribe. This way of transacting business has its
disadvantages, of course: it means that the old fellows
who know nothing of public affairs or modern methods
of presentation, and to whom time counts for naught,
absorb all or most of the remaining daylight and com-

20 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

pel an adjournment overnight; and this is liable to
indefinite repetition, so that one may spend five or six
days in council with a band of Indians before reaching
a conclusion which ought to have been reached in a
single hour. In sobriety and courtesy, however, an In
dian council is a standing rebuke to the noisy assem
blies in which at times our own people debate questions
of public importance.

No small place in the Indian's life has always been
filled by a class of ceremonials in which social and re
ligious elements are combined. They differ with the
tribes concerned, but of most of them everywhere dan
cing is an essential feature. In large measure the dances
are symbolical, and fulfil a prayer function, like the
dances of the classic period of our own racial history.
They serve as petitions for rain, or for good crops, or
for deliverance from impending peril, or something of
that sort. Their importance in the esteem of the In
dians may be judged by the fact that the Hopis have
thirteen in a year — the same number as the astronomi
cal months — and each continues for nine days. The
aggregate consumes a large amount of time which, ac
cording to our notion, could be put to much more profit
able use.

Not seldom the symbolism of the dances is quite
out of keeping with our accepted canons of propriety.
For example, the sun dance is a mythological drama
in which, among other features, a leading actor makes
a present of his wife to the chief priest of the
ceremony. In this, and in several other dances, male
performers appear clad only in a breech-clout. One

THE INDIAN AS HE WAS 21

dance is followed by secret rites from which every
person not of Indian blood is rigidly excluded, but
which, from revelations made by the initiated, appear
to embrace some of the constituents of Phallic worship.
In strict justice it ought to be said that many abo
riginal traditions, allegories, and eccentricities of cos
tume which, if introduced among us, would be promptly
banished as offensive, convey no prurient suggestion to
the Indian.

Such things, however, have given to Indian dancing
generally a bad name among the missionaries, and led
in part to the Government's discouragement of the
practice. Its critics urge against it also that the dan
cers often keep up their exercise till physical endurance
is exhausted and they lose control of their emotions;
their enthusiasm lapses into hysteria or catalepsy, so
that they are incapacitated for a good while in seasons
when they ought to be at work. And an incidental
complaint is that when Indians gather in a temporary
camp for one of their protracted festivals, a reign of
license usually marks the closing days of the meeting.
On the score of hysteria and social laxity, though, we
hear equally severe arraignments of certain gatherings,
for ostensibly religious purposes, in rude white com
munities. The fault lies, perhaps, more in weak hu
man nature than in any special racial tendency to bad
morals.

Besides the religious dances, there are those held
solely for social purposes, like the " give-away" dance
to which one Indian invites a number of others in order
to regale them with tales of his own prowess and re-

22 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

ceive in response their acclamations of his greatness.
This outburst of admiration is the signal for him to
shower gifts upon them of ponies, saddles, blankets,
clothing, pipes, ornaments — whatever is suggested by
their covetousness and his vanity as a lord of bounty.
A well-to-do Indian sometimes is reduced to utter
penury by a give-away dance, and must find all his
satisfaction in the memory of one glorious night, and
in the possibility that he may play the guest and re
ceiver at other entertainments given by prosperous
fellow-tribesmen who have been spurred to emulate his
example and try to excel him in largess.

CHAPTER II
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN

Land Ownership and Home-Making — First Attempts at a
Government Policy — Beginnings of the Reservation System
— Wild Game Displaced by Rations — How Graft Flour
ished on Communism — Mission Work and Government
Schools — Gratuities a Straight Path to Pauperism — The
Dawes Severalty Law — Evils of Compulsory Citizenship —
Special Legislation a Costly Boon — Leasing and Inherit
ance.

LAND ownership, in the sense in which we use the term,
was unknown to the Indians till the whites came among
them. By a sort of tacit understanding, the district
held and inhabited from time immemorial by a cer
tain tribe was recognized as its country by other tribes.
Where a group of Indians had so far emerged from
barbarism as to have ceased to depend for their vege
table food exclusively on the berries and nuts and wild
grains which nature could be trusted to provide without
human assistance, any little patch planted and tilled by
a family was regarded by their neighbors as belonging
to them in the same degree as their camp: that is, no
one questioned their right of occupancy. This principle
was carried somewhat further by the pueblo or village
tribes of the Southwest, who had absorbed enough of
the Aztec civilization to build rude houses of stone and
adobe in secluded clusters and to cultivate elementary

23

24 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

farms near their homes. Each pueblo assumed the
ownership of the tracts in which its village and farming
lands lay; and periodically its governor, elected by pop
ular vote, would distribute or redistribute the arable
acres among his constituents who were able to care for
them.

But these socialistic or communistic dreams were
dispelled when the Caucasian invader pushed his way
across the frontier; for fixed in the minds of the states
men who first attempted to formulate an Indian policy
for our Government lay the philosophic premise that
civilization has always gone hand in hand with individ
ual landholding. The popular argument never went so
far back for a starting-point, but contented itself with
an eminently practical syllogism: Originally, the In
dians owned all the land; later, we needed most of it
for ourselves; therefore, it is but just that the Indians
should have what is left. Where the idea of using in
dividual land-ownership for a lever in civilization en
tered into consideration at all, it took some such shape
as this: The Indians' land lies in the open country;
civilized people utilize their country land for farming;
therefore, every Indian should be a farmer. It is but
a short step from such a conclusion to its corollary,
that what it is an Indian's duty to be, it is the Govern
ment's duty to make him. Hence, before the enact
ment of any general legislation regarding the allotment
of Indian lands, there had been spasmodic movements
here and there in the way of furnishing farm imple
ments and machinery, seed and live-stock, and teach
ers of agriculture and its cognate arts, to sundry tribes,

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 25

with the optimistic notion that thenceforward the bene
ficiaries would be able to shift for themselves as white
men were doing on all sides.

' In the early days of European immigration on the
Atlantic seaboard, the Indians, with their incompre
hensible languages, their alien customs, and what was
regarded as their freakishness in matters of friendship
and hostility, were not looked upon by the newcomers
as desirable neighbors, so they were gradually pushed
westward, till in time the Mississippi River came to be
recognized as the frontier line of civilization .Vine War
of Secession was followed by an era of development for
the West which soon evolved the great transconti
nental transportation lines. The Indians had objected
strongly to the penetration of their country by the
whites ;Jthe surveyors, bridge-builders, track-layers and
other heralds of the railway were for a good deal of the
time in peril of their lives, and tourists and settlers who
took advantage of the improved facilities for visiting
the undeveloped regions did so at first with more or less
apprehension. Not a few tribes and parts of tribes had
already been assigned to reservations, either as places of
confinement after unsuccessful wars or in peaceful ex
change for lands they had been occupying further east,
and supplied with an Agent to look after their material
interests. But a number of isolated bands were still left
to wander where they would, and renegade parties were
continually slipping away from their reservations and
turning up unexpectedly on the main routes of travel.
The usual pretext was that they were out for a buffalo
hunt; so the troops stationed at the remoter army posts

26 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

and the pioneers whose efforts at home-making were
impeded by frequent " red-skin scares" united in a
systematic campaign for the extermination of the wild
game of the plains * This drastic measure, though it
stripped the roving bands of their excuse for getting
into the way of the whites, robbed the whole Indian
race, substantially, of their main source of food supply,
as well as of the hides which they used for shelter,
clothing, defence, and to some extent in transportation.
Of course, an enlightened and humane Government
would not deliberately starve a dependent people.
Having deprived them of most that made existence
possible, it took great satisfaction in furnishing a sub
stitute, in the form of a ration system under which all
Indians who were good — in other words, who stayed on
their reservations and abstained from violence — would
receive at stated intervals so many pounds of meat, of
beans, of flour, of sugar and of other edibles. Blankets
and clothing, also, were to be had for the asking, and
the Government was willing to build houses for those
who would live in them. Nothing was demanded of
the Indians in return except that they obey their Agents
and keep quiet,"} It is true that salaried farmers were
sent to the reservations to instruct them in agriculture,
and that tools and fencing were offered them as rewards
of industry;^ but what was to be gained by being in
dustrious if one could live on the fat of the land without
stirring a muscle in labor? Satan's proverbial gift for
rinding mischief for idle hands to do came promptly
into play, and the idle hands of the Indians soon learned
to reach for the whiskey bottle. Hence came it tha; a

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 27

people once vigorous, strong-willed, untiring on the
trail of anything they wanted, became debauched by a
compulsory life of sloth, and within a single generation
acquired among the whites a reputation for laziness,
incompetence and general degradation.

This was the phase of the situation which a quarter-
century ago commanded most attention from that part
of the public who paid any at all to the Indian question.
There was another phase, however, which, though more
obscure, deserved quite as much consideration. The
system of communal property was fatal to all legitimate
enterprise on the part of any individual Indian. I use
the word " legitimate" because even under the most
discouraging conditions there were in almost every
tribe certain persons with more initiative than the rest,
who, if their wits had been sharpened by contact with
the whites, took unlawful advantage of their fellows in
various ways. For example, one of these clever opera
tors living on a reservation where the Government had
furnished the Indians with a herd of cattle as an aid to
their civilization, would make a secret contract with
some white cattleman outside to bring a bunch of the
white man's cattle surreptitiously into the reservation
and pasture them, pocketing whatever the owner was
willing to pay. If there were danger that the outsider's
stock might get mixed with that of the tribe and its
increase be wrongly branded, the speculative Indian
might even make a show of special thriftiness, pretend
to set up a separate herd and pasture of his own,
wheedle the Government into issuing to him the fencing
material needed to enclose a goodly acreage, and go

28 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

regularly into the business of illicit leasing of grazing
privileges. Sometimes the trick was worked with such
nice attention to appearances that the Indian would
hold formally executed bills of sale for all his white
lessee's cattle, so as to elude the vigilance of any sus
picious inspecting officer who might happen to visit the
reservation.

Again, there were tribes in which certain of the
women had married white men, who promptly found
ways of turning their wives' communal rights to their
own profit. In one case, valuable coal mines were
fenced in by a " squaw-man" and worked for years
with what was supposed by their ignorant neighbors to
be his wife's hired labor, but was actually an Eastern
corporation which leased the mining privileges and paid
into his private purse a royalty on every ton of coal it
took out and shipped away. In other instances almost
without number, tribes having valuable grazing and
hay lands would agree to lease these to white cattle
companies, the middleman in every transaction being a
chief whose pocket would be well lined in consideration
of his diplomacy in keeping his followers contented,
preventing their stealing the lessees' cattle for food,
and quieting any agitators who might be disposed to
clamor against making this disposition of their tribal
assets.

Not many such illustrations are necessary to show
how the communal property system came to be satu
rated with graft in spite of the Government's watchful
ness. The abuses were double-edged: on the one side
they kept the mass of a tribe out of something which

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 29

belonged to them, in order to enrich particular individ
uals; on the other they tended to demoralize the bene
ficiaries themselves, and through them the generation
growing up with a better education, who were bound
ere long to scent the ill-gotten gains and demand their
share of them, or to shape their own conduct thereafter
by false standards in the presence of like opportunities.
Side by side with the changes it undertook in the
matter of land tenure among the Indians, the Govern
ment set up a general educational policy. The task of
teaching was at first left in the main to the religious so
cieties which maintained missions on the frontier; but
the support of a large number of boarding-schools laid
a heavy burden on some of these organizations, and
there were many parts of the field which they were not
strong enough to penetrate. Besides, the Government
presently had its conscience stirred as to its own obli
gation toward a race over which it had assumed an un
solicited guardianship. Hence the paltry ten thousand
dollars a year which it had appropriated for Indian edu
cation since 1830 swelled to one hundred thousand in
1870, and the school budget has increased steadily ever
since till now it amounts to about four million dollars.
In the meantime, owing chiefly to the great "A. P. A."
wave which swept over the country in the early nine
ties, all public appropriations for contracts with the
mission schools were cut off, and thereafter forbidden
by law. Several of the schools closed their doors be
cause, without aid of some sort from the Government,
they could not meet expenses; others were taken off
the hands of the mission authorities by gift or purchase,

30 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

transformed into Government schools and added to the
already long list of institutions founded and kept up
by popular taxation; still others — very few and far
between — stripped themselves of every feature which
increased the cost of their maintenance by an un
necessary dollar, and struggled on.

In dimensions, in scholastic scope, and in material
equipment the Government school system as it stands
to-day is an enormous advance on the old mission
school system; but in real accomplishment as propor
tioned to outlay it does not begin to equal the latter, and
in vital energy it must always be lacking. The reason
for these differences is not far to seek. At the base of
everything lies the fact that, except in magnificence,
no governmental enterprise can compare with the same
thing in private hands. The Government's methods are
ponderous, as must always be the movements of so
gigantic a machine. Its expenditures are from money
belonging to the public, and therefore demand a more
elaborate arrangement of checks and balances and final
accounting than expenditures made from the funds of
voluntary contributors. In spite of the now universal
application of civil service rules, the whole business is
under political control in the sense that the appropria
tions and the laws governing their use must be obtained
from Congress, and that the school system is only a
branch of one of the executive departments. This cir
cumstance, while not necessitating the intrusion of
partisan considerations into the settlement of any
vexed question, does militate against the highest effi
ciency, because it requires that a great deal of ground

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 31

shall be traversed two, three or a dozen times on the
way to a clearly visible conclusion, involves harassing
delays and temporary discouragements, calls for tedious
consultations over petty details which one mind could
dispose of more satisfactorily, and keeps the adminis
trative staff always in a state of preparation to repel
gratuitous interference.

I would not be understood, in commenting thus on
the Government schools, as intending any wholesale
denunciation of them. Some are better than others,
and several are as nearly ideal as they could be made
under the adverse conditions inseparable from public
undertakings which have a strictly human side; but in
a general way it must be confessed that they lack a cer
tain all-pervading spirit which distinguishes so many
schools supported by private benevolence. A teacher
employed by a huge impersonality like the Government
may be a good man and true patriot; he may feel a
wholesome pride in keeping up his school attendance
and discipline; he may be sincerely interested in the
Indians. But there is something in such a position as
his, with the deadly letter of the law ever staring him
in the face, with the formalism and routine, and the
statistical comparisons, and the rule of level and plum
met, which is bound to have its effect, in course of time,
on the noblest man alive ; and it is hardly to be expected
that a teacher so compassed about can put as much of
his best self into his work as one who takes his orders
from a small group of men and women whom he knows
well at least by name, and of whose sympathetic en
thusiasm he is always conscious. Also, it follows from

32 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the circumstances of the case that in a big school run as
part of a vast public machine, all the " institutional"
features must be especially emphasized. Life there ac
quires a more constrained and dependent character than
life outside; its very regularity saps the initiative of the
young person subjected to it, and is liable to leave him
impotent in the presence of any emergency arising later
in his career, which cannot be met by obedience to a
bugle-call or the tap of a bell.

On the parents the influence of the Government's edu
cational bounty has been nothing short of deplorable.
The free gift to the Indian race of educational facilities
which other races prize so much as to be ready to pay
well for them, might perhaps pass muster in view of the
unique status of our aborigines in so many particulars;
but what about the free gift to them also of board,
lodging, clothing, medical attendance and amuse
ments during all the time they can be induced to stay
in school? And when the Government, after offering
all this, hunts up the parents and begs for the children
as a favor, the blunder is complete, and another road
: to pauperism is opened before a once proud race.
This last misstep has been due in large measure to the
individual zeal of the Superintendents and Principals
in charge of the schools, who, in their desire to make a
good showing, have been disposed to drive a bargain on
almost any terms with the head of a large family or
some leader in a tribe who could influence many par
ents. Partly, too, the responsibility rests on the laws
of the United States which substantially hold the Com
missioner of Indian Affairs accountable for seeing that

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 33

all the Indian children of school age obtain suitable in
struction somewhere, without furnishing any compul
sory process to be used with unwilling parents or any
means for dealing with habitual truancy.

The result is what might be expected : a parent who
does not wish to send his child to school need not do so;
and if the Government authorities are timid, or if he
can hire some cheap attorney to stand between him and
their attempts at coercion, he may hold his ground in
definitely. So, as it is easier and safer to use a lure than
a weapon, a custom once grew up among the Govern
ment's servants of actually paying Indians, on one or
another outwardly respectable pretext, to send their
children to a boarding-school ; and when once the elders
had learned that they could thus not only propitiate
the mysterious dispenser of gifts who lived in far-off
Washington but at the same time be saved further ex
pense for coats and shoes and food for their offspring,
the descent from independence to mendicancy was
made doubly straight and smooth for their feet. And
thus has it come about that whereas the Southern
Negro, after a hard day's labor, will sit up half the
night to study under a teacher whom he pays from his
slender wages, and the Chinese coolie in the far West
heaps presents upon the missionary who opens a school
where he can pick up his A-B-C, the Indian — the only
inhabitant of the United States for whom the Govern
ment furnishes an education, with support thrown in,
free of all expense or future obligation — sets a price
upon his acceptance of the favor, and gets it!

Before all the instincts of manhood Could be deadened

34 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

in the aboriginal race by their law-imposed pauperism,
and the last hope of any individual incentive crushed
out of them, the late Senator Henry L. Dawes came to
the rescue with his act of February 8, 1887, for the
allotment of lands in severalty. Omitting unnecessary
detail, this law authorized the President, whenever
in his judgment the time was ripe, to carve up a reser
vation, allotting to each member of the resident tribe
a certain number of acres — the area depending on the
character of the land and the family relations of the al
lottee, but the tract to be of the allottee's own selection
— and to issue to him a patent containing a clause under
which the Government should hold the allotted land in
trust for the allottee for twenty-five years and then
give him a patent in fee in exchange for the trust patent.
The trust patent itself invested the patentee with all the
privileges of American citizenship unaccompanied by
any of its responsibilities, and he was expected to util
ize the twenty-five years' trust period in preparing him
self for his new status by learning how to earn a liveli
hood and take care of his property. This law has been
widely acclaimed as the Emancipation Proclamation of
the red man.

It was certainly a valuable measure for its day; for
the first essential then was to arouse the public mind
and conscience to the importance of weakening the
tribal bond and dissolving the system of common own
ership. To add that the test of several years' experi
ment developed in it a few shortcomings, and that some
of its most commendable features did not meet all the
requirements of a later" era, is in no sense disparaging

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 35

to its general worth. As is always the case with a piece
of radically progressive legislation, many of its most
enthusiastic champions expected too much of it. One
assertion, for example, which was heard on every side
when the act first appeared, was that its provision for
giving every Indian a home meant his speedy assimi
lation to the white man, because the home is the basis
of Caucasian civilization. The fallacy here lies in the
fact that among our race the home is not a means but
an end: we do not treat it as an instrument of civiliza
tion except in a sense by reflex influence, but as a prize
to be sought, a crown which rewards successful effort.
So in this instance, as in that of the rations, what the
white man struggles to obtain was forced upon the In
dian without his asking, if not indeed against his will.
This reverses the natural order of evolution.

The same was true of the citizenship feature. The
old-fashioned Indian has never aspired to citizenship:
his foremost thought has always been to escape it if he
could. All he desired was to be let alone and allowed
to live in the way of his ancestors. Though that might
be out of the question, it seemed scarcely reasonable,
in bringing him into closer touch with our social order,
to raise him above the white man. Yet this is what
happened when the Government trust relieved his land
of taxation and protected it against property reprisals
by any one he had wronged; and the same Dawes Act
which pronounced him incompetent to take care of his
own affairs for the next twenty-five years, nevertheless
endowed him with a ballot which enabled him, in all pub
lic concerns, to share in regulating your affairs and mine !

36 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Two consequences were bound to flow from the pre
mature citizenship of the Indian. One was the degra
dation of the elective franchise at his hands. This was
not confined to his voting for the wrong men or the
wrong measures now and then, for such errors occur
among uneducated citizens of all races; the trouble
was that he did not even know what he was doing. I
have seen petty local bosses "round up" Indians as
they would round up cattle, "herd" them to the polls,
and "vote them" — to use their own boastful phrase
ology — for whomever and whatever they chose, the
poor victims wondering in a sodden way what it all
meant, and feeling no interest in the ceremony beyond
the prospect of a free feast of dried beef, crackers and
soda-water promised them for the following afternoon.

The other result was the exposure of the Indian to
easy debauchment by the dramseller. For nearly eight
een years after the passage of the Dawes Act, persons
indicted for selling intoxicants to allottees and running
the gauntlet of the local courts in the frontier country
invariably pleaded that there was no constitutional
limitation on the right of any citizen to buy, or of any
licensed dealer to sell him, as much liquor as he wished.
The decisions were almost as varied as the complaints;
and as the authorities were often cowardly and willing
to "let things drift" instead of fighting out a case to
the last extremity, no final adjudication of the funda
mental question was obtained. In a certain sense,
therefore, it was a positive comfort to those of us whose
optimism would bear the strain, when the case of a
liquor-dealer named Heff, convicted in Kansas, was car-

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 37

ried up to the Supreme Court of the United States and
there decided, in 1905, in favor of the defendant. After
that, we at least knew where we stood before the law,
and could do something intelligently for the relief of
the situation.

The Dawes Act, moreover, omitted any provision for
anticipating the natural end of the trust period and
issuing a patent in fee to an allottee who might be dis
covered, at any time, to be no longer in need of the
Government's guardianship. A limitation fixed by law
can be set aside only by the same authority that im
posed it. Hence the brightest, most ambitious and pro
gressive member of a tribe, even though the blood in
his veins were seven-eighths Caucasian, was compelled
to procure an act of Congress to enable him to sell or
mortgage his land; and this meant that from the mo
ment his inclination was suspected he was exposed to
the importunities of the second-rate lawyers, petty pol
iticians and professional lobbyists who swarm in the
small towns on the edges of most reservations. As the
allottee was presumed to be unknown to the Repre
sentative in Congress who would have to engineer his
bill through that body, the politician enlarged upon the
necessity of such a "pull" at Washington as he pos
sessed and which he was willing to exert for fifty or
one hundred dollars. The attorney quietly pooh-
poohed the necessity for a pull, but assured the allottee
that the process of obtaining a patent was very com
plicated and that a mistake made at any stage would
vitiate everything, but that he could practically guar
antee success for a fee of about the same amount as the

38 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

politician had suggested. The lobbyist had little re
spect for either the legal or the political phases of the
case, and whispered that what was really needed was
to "reach" the right men in Washington, and the
winks and gestures with which he emphasized his re
marks were intended to convey an impression that a
few dollars might be well invested in buying the in
terest of certain statesmen. So the poor fellow was
liable to be not only robbed of so much money, but
corrupted in his mental attitude toward all the high
privileges represented by his citizenship.

Presuming the inability of the Indians to make a ben
eficial use of their landed property till they had got
along considerably further in civilization, Congress pro
vided by law for a leasing system whereby it could be
made to bear an income for them in the interval. A
tribe may lease all its lands or as large a part of them as
it likes, the Agent or Superintendent in charge of the
reservation, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the
Secretary of the Interior arranging the details and col
lecting the rents. In this line of business the negotia
tions are usually with owners of herds of livestock or
with mining companies. A council of the tribe is called
to pass on all leasing questions, the Government offi
cers acting as its clerical and fiduciary representatives.
If a tribe, however, insists on standing in its own light
by refusing to entertain obviously profitable proposals
for pasture leasing, and thus is letting a valuable grass
range go to waste, the Commissioner sometimes brings
into play a permit system under which outside owners
of livestock may graze their herds on the reservation for

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 39

a year at a time, on payment of a fixed annual fee for
each head admitted, the number of head being always
limited to the reasonable capacity of the range. The
money received for permits may be given to the Indians,
and in not a few instances is their sole source of cash
revenue; or it may be spent for the benefit of the tribe
in some way. The Indians know this fund as " grass
money."

Allottees, if able-bodied men, have always been ex
pected to cultivate their farms, but this was for many
years largely an amiable fiction. Aged Indians, those
of unsound mind, invalids, cripples, women and children
were exempt from the requirement, and as a conse
quence there was a constant temptation for the able-
bodied who were not industriously inclined, to practise
deception for the purpose of having themselves included
in one of the excepted classes. If that proved impracti
cable, they would lie by and take their chances of
squeezing a living out of the rentals of their wives7 and
children's allotments. On not a few reservations the
Agent was too busy or his official staff too short-
handed, or the hired white farmers were too easy-going
to keep a proper watch for such cases, so that the al
lotment-leasing system became at one time more note
worthy for its abuses than for its benefits. Now and
then a spasm of severity would seize an Agent or some
visiting Inspector, and an overhauling would follow,
with the result that for a while only the farms of really
helpless Indians would come into the market in this
way, and life would be made sufficiently uncomfortable
for the shiftless to force them into doing some work on

40 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

their allotments; but when it is remembered that on an
agricultural reservation of a half-million acres the ap
propriations available for salaries sufficed for hiring
only three or four farmers to look after the industrial
instruction and discipline of the whole tribe scattered
over it, the comparative hopelessness of the situation
will be appreciated.

If an allottee dies while the trust still covers his
land, his allotment passes to his natural heirs. He is
not at liberty to dispose of it by will till it is relieved of
the trust. Apart from all technical considerations, the
logic of this restriction will appear on a moment's
thought. The reason for imposing the trust was the pre
sumed incompetency of the Indian, and to allow him to
bequeath his allotment to whom he pleased while still
denying him the privilege of alienating or encumbering
it would be a self-contradiction; for what he could not
be trusted to dispose of during his full strength and
vigor, he might on his deathbed throw away upon any
covetous trickster who took advantage of his weakness.
The system was liberalized somewhat by a law enacted
in 1902, which gives the heirs the right to have the prop
erty sold for their benefit in case they do not care to keep
it; and it is hardly necessary to say that the glamour
of a prospective payment in visible and spendable dol
lars usually overcomes any ambition on their part to
become larger landed proprietors. On their petition,
the Government advertises the allotment, and calls for
sealed proposals for its purchase, to be filed on or before
a certain date at the local agency. Meanwhile the
Superintendent of the reservation has made a careful

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INDIAN 41

inspection of the property and deposited in his safe a
secret memorandum of his estimate of its value, which
is not opened till the bids are, and serves then as a fixed
minimum, no bid for a less amount being considered.

The opening of the proposals is a public function,
anybody who wishes to be present being welcome, and
the attendance always including representatives of the
several bidders and usually some real estate operators
and other more remotely interested parties; and for the
protection of all concerned it is required that every bid
shall be accompanied by cash or a certified check for
twenty-five per cent, of the bid, which is forfeited if a
successful bidder fails to carry out the rest of his obli
gation. The land having been sold for the highest price
obtainable, the proceeds are divided between the heirs,
and each one's share is deposited to his credit by the
Superintendent of his agency in a neighboring national
bank, which has previously bonded itself for the safe
keeping of individual Indian moneys.

CHAPTER III
THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT

A Human, not a Mere Race Question — Following the Course
of Nature — Proof of the Indian's Stamina — Starting Work
with the Boys and Girls — 'Practical Teaching Better than
Ornamental — Dissolving the Mass and Building the Man
— Criticisms Passed on the Policy of Shrinkage — A Pict
uresque and Artistic People — Improvement, not Trans
formation, the Right Ideal.

THE more we study the Indian as he was before he be
came subject to our laws and conventions, the more we
are impressed with the strong family likeness between
most of his traits and those of our own remote ancestors.
The manifest inference is that what we call the Indian
problem is a human rather than a race question, and
that its solution must be sought on common-sense
rather than .theoretical lines — in other words, by fol
lowing the course of nature instead of concocting arti
ficial devices to meet the demands of every special situ
ation. In pursuance of this idea I have always, in
handling the Indian myself or influencing the activities
of others, kept steadily in view the necessity of making
him into a citizen of the United States in the broadest
and best sense of the term; but, while realizing fully the
importance of his conforming his mode of life generally
with that of his fellow countrymen of other races, never

42

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 43

forcing him into such conformity in advance of his
natural movement in that direction. Hence I have
ignored mere externals as far as I could, and concen
trated my thought upon the essence of things. I have
done nothing to interfere with his preferences as to the
clothing he shall wear, or the sort of dwelling he shall
live in, or what and how he shall eat and drink, beyond
laying down a few fundamental rules, equally applica
ble to mankind all over the civilized world, by observ
ing which the individual is spared needless friction with
the prevailing social order: for example, he must re
spect the common decencies and the obvious rights of
his neighbors. Beyond that I would leave him to him
self, on the principle that any group of men are gov
erned best when governed least.

Next to the well-nigh universal error of assuming
that the Indian is only a white man with a red skin, the
most frequent mistake made even by sympathetic
friends is to take it for granted that because he is a non-
Caucasian he is to be classed indiscriminately with
other non-Caucasians, like the Negro, let us say. The
truth is that, in spite of the analogy traceable between
the customs of all races in their primitive stage, the
Indian has a distinct individuality; and nothing shows
it more convincingly than the way he has survived his
experiences as a victim of conquest.

Suppose, a century or so ago, an absolutely alien peo
ple like the Chinese had invaded our shores and driven
the white colonists before them to districts more and
more isolated, destroyed the industries on which they
had always subsisted, and crowned all by disarming

44 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

them and penning them into various tracts of land
where they could be fed and clothed and cared for at
no cost to themselves: to what condition would the
white Americans of to-day have been reduced? In
spite of their vigorous ancestry they would surely have
lapsed into weakness of mind, body and will, and be
come pauperized. No race on earth could overcome, by
forces evolved from within themselves, the effect of such
treatment. That the Indians have not been wholly ru
ined by it, is the best proof we could ask of the sturdy
traits of character inherent in them. But, though not
ruined, they have suffered serious deterioration, and
the chief task now before us is to prevent its going
any further. To that end we must reckon with several
facts.

First, little can be done to change the Indian who
has already passed middle life. By virtue of that very
quality of steadfastness which we so admire in him
when well applied, he is likely to remain an Indian of
the old school to the last. With the younger adults we
can do something here and there, where we find one
who is not too conservative; but our main hope lies
with the youthful generation, who are still measurably
plastic. The picture which rises in the minds of most
Eastern persons when they read petitions in which In
dians pathetically describe themselves as " ignorant"
and "poor," is that of a multitude of red men hungry
for knowledge and eager for a chance to work and earn
their living as we do. In actual life and in his natural
state, however, the Indian wants nothing to do with
us or our civilization; he clings to the ways of his an-

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 45

cestors, insisting that they are better than ours; and
he resents the Government's efforts to show him how
he can turn an honest dollar for himself by other means
than his grandfathers used — or an appropriation from
the Treasury. That is the plain English of the caset J
strive as we may to gloss it with poetic fancies or hide
it under statistical reports of progress. What we have
to do is to win over the Indian children by sympathetic
interest and unobtrusive guidance. It is a great mis-N
take to try, as many good persons of bad judgment •
have tried, to start the little ones in the path of civiliza
tion by snapping all the ties of affection between them
and their parents and teaching them to despise the
aged and non-progressive members of their families.
The sensible as well as the humane plan is to nourish
their love of father and mother and home, which is a
wholesome instinct planted in them for a wise end, and
then to utilize this affection as a means of reaching,
through them, the hearts of the elders.

Again, in dealing with these boys and girls it is of the
utmost importance not only that we shall start them
aright, but that our efforts be directed to educating
rather than merely instructing them. The foundation
of everything must be the development of character.
Learning is a secondary consideration. When we get to
that, our duty is to adapt it to the Indian's immediate
and practical needs. Of the thirty or forty thousand
Indian children of school age in the United States,
probably at least three-fourths will settle down in that
part of the West which we still style the frontier. Most
of these will try to draw a living out of the soil ; a less —

46 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

though, let us hope, an ever increasing — part will enter
the general labor market as lumbermen, ditchers,
miners, railroad hands or what not. In simple terms,
the great mass of Indians have yet to go through the
era, common to the history of all races, when they must
be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. Now,
if any one can show me what advantage will come to
this large body of manual workers from being able to
reel off the names of the mountains in Asia or extract
the cube root of 123456789, 1 shall be deeply grateful.
To my notion, the ordinary Indian boy is better
equipped for his life struggle on a frontier ranch when
he can read the local newspaper, can write a short letter
which is intelligible though maybe ill expressed and
crudely spelled, and knows enough of figures to discover
whether the storekeeper is cheating him. Beyond these
scholastic acquirements his time could be put to its best
use by learning how to repair a broken harness, or
straighten a sprung tire on his wagon wheel, or fasten a
loose horseshoe without breaking the hoof, or any of the
hundred other bits of tinkering which are so necessary
to the farmer who lives thirty miles from a town. The
girl who has learned only the rudiments of reading,
writing and ciphering, but knows also how to make and
mend her clothing, to wash and iron, and to cook her
husband's dinner, will be worth vastly more as mistress
of a log cabin than one who has given her best study to
the ornamental branches.

Moreover, as soon as an Indian of either mixed or full
blood becomes capable of taking care of himself, we
should set him upon his feet and sever forever the ties

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 47

which bind him either to his tribe, in the communal
sense, or to the Government./ This principle is im
perative as to both land and money. We must end
the un-American absurdity of keeping one class of our
people in a common lump. Each Indian must be recog
nized as an individual and so treated, just as each
white man is. Thanks to a few statesmen of advanced
ideas, we have for nearly a quarter-century been in
dividualizing the Indian by breaking up, one at a time,
the reservations set apart for whole tribes, and es
tablishing each member as a separate landholder on his
own account; and more recently we have begun mak
ing the same sort of division of the tribal funds. At
first, of course, the Government must keep its protect
ing hand on every Indian's property after it has been
assigned to him by book and deed; then, as one or
another shows himself fit to pass out from under this
tutelage, he must be set fully free and given the white
man's chance, with the white man's obligations to
balance it.

We must strive, too, in every way possible to make
the Indian an active factor in the upbuilding of the
community in which he is going to live. The theory
too commonly cherished on the frontier, that he is a
useless survival from a remote period, like the sage
brush and the giant cactus, must be dispelled, and the
way to dispel it is to turn him into a positive benefit.
Let him be taught to transact all his financial business,
or as much of it as practicable, in his nearest market
town, instead of looking to the United States Treasury
as the only source of material blessings. Any of his

48 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

money which he cannot use or is not using for his own
current profit should be deposited for him, in reasona
bly small parcels, in local banks bonded for its safe
keeping, so that the industries of the neighborhood will
have the use of it and everybody will be better off for
such prosperity as has come to the Indian. On like
grounds encouragement should be given to all proper
measures which point toward absolving the Indian from
his obsolete relation to the licensed trader, and teach
ing him to deal with those merchants whose prices are
fairest, whether near his agency or at a distance. In
short, our endeavor ought to be to keep him moving
steadily down the path which leads from his close do
main of artificial restraints and protection toward the
broad area of individual liberty enjoyed by the ordi
nary citizen.

Incidentally to this programme, let us seek to make
of the Indian an independent laborer as distinguished
from one for whom the Government is continually
straining to invent occupations. He can penetrate a
humbug, even a benevolent humbug, as promptly as
the next man; and when he sees the Government creat
ing purely fictitious needs in order to find a pretext for
giving him something to do, he despises the whole thing
as a fraud, like the poor white whom some misguided
philanthropist hires to carry a pile of bricks from one
side of the road to the other and then back again. The
employment bureau which I organized experimentally
in the Southwest in 1905, and afterward extended to
cover the whole Western country, is designed to gather
up all the able-bodied Indians who, through the pinch

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 49

of hunger it may be, have been moved to think that
they would like to earn some money, and plant them
upon private ranches, upon railroads, in mines, or
wherever else in the outer world a dollar can be fairly
earned by days' labor. The Supervisor in charge of
the bureau at first scrutinizes their contracts with their
employers, sees that their wages are paid them when
due, and looks out for them if they fall ill; but as soon
as any of them show that they are able to attend to
these things for themselves, he takes his hands off, and
all who have been thus set upon their feet are given to
understand that for whatever comes to them thereafter
they will have themselves to thank.

Some one has styled this a policy of shrinkage, be
cause every Indian whose name is stricken from a tribal
roll reduces, by virtue of such emancipation, the dimen
sions of our red-race problem by a fraction — small,
perhaps, but by no means negligible. If we can watch
our body of dependent Indians shrink even by one
member at a time, we may congratulate ourselves that
the complete solution is only a question of patience.
The process of general readjustment, though necessarily
gradual, should be carried forward as fast as it can be
with presumptive security for the Indian's little pos
sessions, and I should not let its educative value be ob
scured for a moment. The leading-strings which have
tied the Indian to the Treasury ever since he began to
own anything worth owning have been a curse to him.
They have kept him an economic nursling long past the
day when he ought to have been able to take a few
steps without assistance, and left him an easy victim

50 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

to such waves of civic heresy as sweep over the sparsely
settled West from time to time.

In this chapter I am, of course, presenting only the
bare outlines of a policy which, throughout my term
as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, I devoted my best
strength to establishing in practice. The subject is too
vast for more particularized treatment at the moment,
or for exhaustive consideration in any single volume;
though I shall take up later, one by one, the topics here
suggested, and do what I can to clarify them by concrete
applications of the principles involved. It seems to
me, however, that this is the suitable place for meeting
a few objections which I know from experience will be

f~~ raised. " Would you," one critic will ask, "tie the
young Indian down in his schooling to the 'three RV
and then turn him loose to compete with the white
youth who has had so much larger scholastic oppor
tunity?" I answer that I am discussing the Govern
ment's obligations rather than the Indian's possibilities.
I would give the young Indian all the chance for in
tellectual training that the young Caucasian enjoys; he
has it already, between Governmental aid and private
benevolence ; and in a population teeming with generous
men and women of means, no lad of any race with the
talents to deserve and the ambition to work for an ed-

• ucation need go without it. All that I would assert is
what anybody familiar with the field can see for him
self, that the great mass of Indian children are no more
prepared than the great mass of white children for
profitable conveyance beyond the elementary studies.
By force of both ancestry and environment they are

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 51

not in a condition to absorb and assimilate, much less
to utilize effectively, the higher learning of the books,
and it is unwise to promote an unpractical at the
expense of an obviously practical course of instruc
tion.

A second critic will doubtless air his fears as to what
will become of the Indian's land and money under such
a "wide open" policy. Well, my friend, what will
become of the land and the money that you leave to
your children, or I to mine? Will the young people be
any better able to take care of it for having been
always kept without experience in handling property?
Swindlers will unquestionably lay snares for the weakest
and most ignorant Indians, just as they do for the cor
responding class of whites. We are guarding the Indian
temporarily against his own follies in land transactions
by holding his allotment in trust for him for twenty-
five years unless he sooner satisfies us of his business
capacity. Something of the same sort will be done with
respect to his cash capital. In spite of all our care,
however, after we have set him free he may fall a vic
tim to sharp practices; but the man never lived — red,
white or of any other color — who did not learn a more
valuable lesson from one hard blow than from twenty
warnings.

Much has been said and written about the " racial
tendency" of the Indian to squander whatever comes
into his hands. This is no more racial than his ten
dency to eat and drink to excess, or to prefer pleasure
to work: it is simply the assertion of a primitive in
stinct common to all mankind. What we call thrift

52 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

is nothing but the forecasting sense which recognizes
the probability of a to-morrow. Indeed, the concept of
a to-morrow is the boundary between barbarism and
civilization, and the only way the Indian can be carried
across that line is by learning from experience that the
stomach must go empty to-morrow unless to-day's sur
plus is saved overnight to meet to-morrow's deficit.
Another sense lacking in primitive man is that of
property unseen. You will never implant in the Indian
an idea of values by showing him a column of figures.
He must see and handle the dollars themselves in order
to learn their worth, and he must actually squander
some and pay the penalty before his mind will compass
the notion that what he spends for foolishness he will
not have still at hand for the satisfaction of his
needs.

A further objection to my programme may be that it
is premature. Whoever raises that plaint is taking
counsel of his timidity rather than of his observation.
If we do not begin now, when shall we? The whole
trend of modern events shows that one day a great
change must come over the Indian's status, for an
omalies in the social system are as odious as abnormali
ties in nature. Either our generation or a later must
remove him from his perch of adventitious superiority
to the common relations of citizenship, and reduce him
to the same level with other Americans. It would be
cowardice in us to shirk the responsibility for starting
the undertaking and guiding it into the right groove;
for we do not know who may have the direction of it
at some later period — whether a friend of our red

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 53

brother, or an enemy, or one who regards him and his
fate with indifference.

But in the course of all we are doing to make the In
dian into a citizen like the rest of us, we must avoid
confusing civic with natural conditions. Nature has
drawn her lines of race, which it is folly for us to try to
obliterate along with the artificial barriers we throw
down in the cause of civil equality. (The man whom
she has made an Indian, let us try to make a better
Indian, instead of struggling vainly to convert him into
a Caucasian. Every attempt made by the Govern
ment, the politicians, or short-sighted educators, to
blot out a distinction stamped upon him by a hand
more powerful than ours, has accomplished nothing
beyond making a strong man a hopeless and pathetic
nondescript. Are we then to let him alone? No, for
that is to fly to the other extreme. We do not let the
soil in our gardens alone because we cannot turn clay
into sand or the reverse : we simply sow melon seed in
the one and plant plum trees in the other. It is not
necessary that we shall metamorphose whatever we
wish to improve. Our purpose should be to get out of
everything the best it is capable of producing, and in
enhancing the value of the product the last thing we
should do is to destroy the source. What would be
thought of a horticulturist who should uproot a tree
which offers an excellent stock, merely because its
natural fruit is not of the highest grade? A graft or two
will correct this shortcoming, while the strength of
the parent trunk will make the improved product all
the finer, besides insuring a longer period of bearing.

54 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Follow this analogy in the case of an aboriginal race
which possesses vigorous traits of character at the start,
and see where it leads.

Even by persons who do not trust to books for all
their information, but make a feint of seeking it at
first hand, the character of the Indian is often mis
judged because studied from poor specimens. If we are
to treat him with justice, we must not accept as his
dominant type the hanger-on about the edges of an
agency or the lazy fellow who lounges all day in the
gambling saloon of a frontier town. To find the real
Indian we must go back into the wilder country where
white ways have not penetrated. Here we find him a
man of fine physique, a model of hospitality, a kind
parent, a genial companion, a stanch friend and a
faithful pledge-keeper. Is not this a pretty good foun
dation on which to build?

Yet I have no absurd idea of painting the Indian as
perfect, or even well on the road toward perfection.
Against his generosity as a host, for instance, must be
balanced his expectation that the guest of to-day will
return his entertainment when next they meet; his
daring in battle is offset by his conviction that an en
emy is fair game for any trickery. It is for our civili
zation not forcibly to uproot his strong traits as an
Indian, but to lead them into better channels — to
teach him the nobility of giving without expectation of
return, and of proving his courage by good faith
toward an active foe and mercy for a fallen one. The
pugnacity and grit which command our admiration
for him in war, his readiness to endure hunger and

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 55

fatigue and exposure for the sake of making a martial
movement effective, are the very qualities which, ad
dressed to some better accomplishment than blood
shed, would compel success.

The thoughtless make sport of the Indian's love of
adornment, forgetting that nature has given him an
artistic impulse of which this is but the spontaneous
expression. What harm does it do that he likes a red
kerchief about his neck or a silver buckle on his belt?
Does not the banker in the midst of our civilization
wear a scarf-pin and a watch-chain, and fasten his linen
cuffs with links of gold? A white visitor to the Hopi
mesas in Arizona, looking at some of the earthenware,
rude in quality but ornamented with symbolic figures
of serpents and lightning and clouds and dropping rain,
remarked on the symmetrical grace of outline of a cer
tain vase. A friend rebuked him with the comment that
the Indian who made that vase would have been better
employed at hoeing corn for the next year's use. The
criticism was ill-founded. Here was a piece of work
showing real artistic feeling. Hoeing corn is good in
its place, but not all of us can hoe corn: some must
teach and some write for the press, some sell goods and
some build houses. All are equally producers, and if
it were not for diversity of occupation and production
the world would be a cheerless and uncomfortable
place indeed. Corn will feed us, but it will not clothe
or shelter us or furnish us with exercise for the intellect.
On the other hand, we can live without beauty, but
life is certainly fuller for having it. The vase has its
use in the world as well as the ear of corn.

56 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

At a gathering of Eastern philanthropists where
several Navajo blankets of different weaves and pat
terns were exhibited, I heard a well-meaning person
propose that a fund be raised for supplying the Navajo
weavers with power looms so as to build up their
special industry. My objection that the wool raised
by the Indians was not of the quality required for finer
work was promptly met by the assurance that it would
be a simple matter to send Connecticut-made yarns to
Arizona with the looms. I ventured to suggest that
this programme be completed by sending also some
New England mill-hands to weave the blankets, since
that was all that would be necessary to eliminate the
Indian altogether from the proposition. The argument
was not carried further.

Our friend had probably never paused to think that
the Navajo blanket derives its chief value not from
being a blanket but from being Navajo. The Indian
woman who wove it cut the little trees which framed
her home-made loom, and fastened the parts in place.
She strung her warp with her own hands. She sheared
and carded and spun and dyed the many-colored
threads of her woof. She thought out her own design
as she worked, and carried it so distinctly in her mind
that she needed no pattern. At what point can we
break into this chain and substitute a foreign link with
out changing the character of the whole? A connois
seur in Navajo blankets who loves them for the hu
manity that has been woven into them, balks when he
discovers in a design one figure which is not Indian or
which bears the aniline taint; the charm begins to fade

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 57

with the intrusion of the Caucasian hand into the work.
So, if we first waive the questions of Indian wool and
native dyes, and then set up a loom of modern device,
why not make a clean sweep of the whole business and
get rid of the Navajo woman too?

The Indian made over into an imitation white man
is bound to be like the Navajo blanket from which all
the Navajo has been expurgated — neither one thing
nor the other. I like the Indian for what is Indian in
him. I want to see his splendid inherited physique
kept up, and himself glorying like his ancestors in fresh
air, in freedom, in activity, in feats of endurance. I
want him to retain his old contempt for hunger and
thirst, heat and cold, and all forms of danger, when he
has anything to do. I love the spirit of manly inde
pendence which moved an aged chief once to beg that I
would throttle a proposal to send rations to his tribe,
who had never received such gratuities before, because
he did not wish their young men to be ruined by learn
ing to eat free bread out of the Government's hand!
I have no sympathy with the sentiment which would
throw the squaw's bead-bag into the rubbish heap as a
preliminary to teaching her how to make lace. Teach
her lace-making by all means, just as you would teach
her bread-making, as an addition to her stock of profit
able accomplishments; but don't set down her beaded
moccasins as purely barbarous, while holding up her
lace handkerchief as a symbol of her advanced civiliza
tion. Our aborigines bring as their contribution to the
common store of American character a great deal which
is admirable, and which needs only to be developed

58 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

aright. Our proper work with them is improvement,
not transformation.

The changes which are bound to come over the In
dian's life come best, and are most soundly fixed, by
the use of gentle and deliberate methods. The Indian
who wishes to do right is far easier led than driven. I
have been struck by that fact in watching for many
years the difference between the degrees of success
achieved by various Superintendents in handling the
tribes in their charge. The severe disciplinarian makes
an impression, but it is purely external, and, like the
print of one's hand on a piece of soft rubber, is effaced
as soon as the pressure is removed. The tactful leader,
on the contrary, sees his followers adopt his ideas, not
because they are his, but for the much better reason
that they appeal to the Indian understanding.

Deliberation is of the essence of tact in dealing with
Indians. Short steps are best, for their minds do not
take long and quick leaps ahead with respect to new
things. The two Superintendents whose work stands
out in my memory most clearly as exemplifying the
slower but surer method deserve a few paragraphs by
themselves. One of these men, in establishing a new
agency plant, built the cottages of the employees of
adobe brick, made of clay dug out of the adjacent
desert and baked on the premises. Their architecture
was of a simple style, just one or two degrees above
the quality of work he had observed that the Indians
could do unassisted; and all the bricklaying and car
pentry he had done by Indian labor under white di
rection. The effect of this was that the Indians, in-

THE PROBLEM, AND A WAY OUT 59

stead of being discouraged by the sight of workman
ship far beyond anything they could hope to attain,
were inspired to try something of the same sort for their
own dwellings. They were thus aided to lift themselves,
instead of being pulled or pushed or prodded into an
upward step.

The other Superintendent was in need of three In
dians for assistant farmers at his agency. He found the
right men, but when he opened negotiations they all
declined his offer, and for a single reason — they were
unwilling to live apart from their families.

"That's all right," he answered; "bring your fam
ilies with you."

"But," argued the men, "our families do not know
how to live as the agency people do. They have al
ways lived in the old Indian way, and do not want to
change."

"Then tell them that they need not change. I have
three old houses at the agency, still comfortable, which
you may use for your homes, and you may live there
in any way you choose."

They took him at his word and came. I saw them
the next year. They were eating their food from tables
instead of from the floor. They were sleeping in beds
instead of on the ground. Their houses were a good
way above the tribal average for cleanliness. All this
was the result of absorption, not of artificial education
or forcing. They had mixed with white people, noticed
white ways which were superior to theirs in convenience,
and adopted them for that reason and not because any
one had ordered them to do so. That meant that the

60 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

improvement would be permanent, and that it would
gradually spread to other Indians.

Finally, we must not expect that the solution of the
Indian problem will be easy because it is so plain. In
the course of merging this hardly-used race into our
body politic, many individuals, unable to keep up the
pace, will fall by the wayside and be trodden underfoot.
Deeply as we deplore this possibility, we must not let it
blind us to our obligation to the race as a whole. It is
one of the cruel incidents of all civilization in large
masses that a multitude of its subjects must be lost in
the process. But the unseen hand which has helped
the white man through his evolutionary stages to the
present will, let us trust, be held out to the red pilgrim
in his stumbling progress over the same rough path.

CHAPTER IV
WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW

Need of Amending the Dawes Allotment Act — Arguments
Offered in Defence of Premature Enfranchisement — The
Burke Idea Not Wholly Novel— The Old Act and the
Amendment Each Suited to Its Day — Precautions Taken
to Protect the Indian Beneficiary — Attitude of the Govern
ment Toward the Emancipated Allottee — Who Apply for
Patents in Fee — Congress Broadening its Policy.

IN discussing the general allotment act, more commonly
known as the Dawes Severalty Law, I commented on
some of its provisions which in course of time called for
amendment. It is not probable that Senator Dawes,
with his large experience and his philosophic mind, was
blind to the significance of these features, or to the
probability that a later generation would regard them
as defects. It was his duty and desire to hew a path
for the people of his own day to travel, which posterity
could improve without abandoning. For instance, it is
to be presumed that he recognized the dubious possibili
ties lurking in the immediate citizenship of the allottee,
but believed that the good effects of the provision
would in the long run more than counterbalance its
perils. As to the ballot, I do not question that he pro
posed to give it to the allottee at once as a weapon and
an educator. As long as Indians remained a negligible

61

62 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

quantity in politics, he reasoned, so long would their
rights be ignored by the men who made politics a pro
fession; give them a means of making their pleasure
or resentment felt, and the party managers would be
gin to take an interest in their welfare.

And his judgment was sound, as far as that view of
the matter went. The changed attitude of a number
of public men whose continuance in power depended on
the popular vote, was marked in a very short time
after President Cleveland signed the Dawes bill, albeit
the new influence did not always work in a way to cheer
the hearts of discriminating patriots, for those who were
most moved by it often curried favor with the freshly
made citizens by meretricious rather than worthy ap
peals. Still, the suffrage idea had much to commend it
on tactical grounds. It was of the highest importance
that public approval should be marshalled in full
strength behind the champions of the allotment scheme
when it was brought forward in legislative shape, and
at that time there were a great many well-meaning per
sons all over the country who instantly became sus
picious whenever the powers in Washington threatened
to lay a finger upon the Indian and his land even with
the kindest ends in view. This was the class on whose
sentimental horizon the ballot, bearing with it both a
sword and a shield for the oppressed, loomed large.
"Make the Indian a voter," they argued, "and he can
protect himself." So the promise of Indian enfranchise
ment drew them to enlist under Senator Dawes's leader
ship instead of obstructing his efforts; those members
of Congress who in ordinary circumstances would have

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 63

resisted any plan which seemed likely to interfere with
keeping the Indian in subjection through the tribal
tradition, found themselves suddenly confronted by a
force which they must reckon with; and the day was
won.

Mr. Dawes realized, I doubt not, that his Indian
ballot-bearers would for a while fall an easy prey to the
local bosses and "be -voted" instead of voting; but he
was a stanch believer in the theory that ignorant
voters learn best how to use the ballot by using it in
some way, right or wrong, till they have fairly got their
bearings as citizens. As to the freedom of the allottee
to procure all the intoxicating drink he wished, I have
the best reasons for saying that the Senator foresaw
precisely what would come to pass, but that he re
garded exposure to such temptation as essential to the
cultivation of a well-rounded character. On all the
points in the general allotment act which have been
specified in these pages as needing revision, indeed, there
was ample room for honest differences of opinion be
tween intelligent and high-minded men, if not always
as to the moral principles involved, at least as to ex
pediency or timeliness. It was therefore no unfriendly
spirit toward those with whom I could not agree, and
no disrespect for their motives, which impelled me to
co-operate heartily with Representative Charles H.
Burke of South Dakota in promoting the passage of
his act of May 8, 1906, amending the Dawes Law in
some vital particulars.

The chief changes wrought by the Burke Act were,
first, the postponement of citizenship for the Indian

64 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

allottee till he had exchanged his trust patent for a
patent in fee — that is, till the Government had decided
that he was, or ought to be, competent to care for his
own affairs; and, second, the provision of a means
whereby any competent Indian could obtain such a
patent without going to Congress for special legislation.
The effects of endowing the Indian with citizenship be
fore he even knew what it meant, and of confining that
endowment to the privileges without any of the com
pensating obligations which attach to such civic status
when conferred upon a member of any other race, we
, have already considered. The new law put an ex
tinguisher upon these for the future. It could not be
made retroactive, for, once conferred, there was no re
calling the right of citizenship; so all Indian allottees
who had received patents before President Roosevelt
appended his signature to Mr. Burke's bill, were and
have remained citizens of the United States and of the
States in which they respectively resided. But every
Indian who has received a trust patent since that date
has received it as a ward of the Government; his land
is not taxable, neither can he alienate or encumber it,
but on the other hand no ballot or other like privilege
goes along with it. Every one is forbidden by law,
under severe penalties, to sell or give him intoxicating
drink, and that prohibition persists till the President
issues to him a patent in fee and thus raises him to full
citizenship.

Most persons who criticise the Burke amendment
speak of it as if it involved an idea of startling and per
ilous novelty. As a matter of fact, every one who really

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 65

keeps in touch with Indian affairs had at least ten years
in which to think the subject over; for as long ago as
the autumn of 1895 Secretary Hoke Smith, in his annual
report, made the following suggestions:

According to the present law, an Indian becomes a
citizen of the United States upon receiving his allot
ment; he is frequently ready to receive land before he
is prepared for the consequences of citizenship. . . .
Upon each reservation a part of the Indians will be
ready for citizenship long before others, and all of
them will be ready to own land individually, and to
work it, before they are ready for citizenship. ... A
roll should be prepared each year, upon each reserva~
tion, of those ready to receive patents to their lands,
and later on yet another roll should be made each year
of those on each reservation who are fitted to be ad
vanced to citizenship. I am aware of the fact that
such legislation would confer upon the Bureau and the
Department a broad discretion, but the condition of
individual Indians upon the same reservation varies
to such an extent that legislation cannot handle the
problem for a reservation and fix the same rules for
all the Indians upon it.

Secretary Smith, having in his Southern home wit
nessed the evils of leaving intoxicating liquor free to be
dealt out to ignorant and irresponsible citizens who,
owing to a sharply drawn blood-line, did not mix on
equal terms with the members of the governing race,
doubtless had some of his observations in mind when
he penned this recommendation. He would not have
agreed, any more than the Western people living in
States with a large but segregated Indian population,

66 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

with Senator Dawes's theory, that the chance for char
acter-building was worth the risk taken. Personally —
and I believe I echo the judgment of the supporters of
the Burke Act generally — I do not see on what logical
ground we can retain on the statute-book the existing
prohibition of the liquor traffic among the Indians, and
the requirement that for a certain period these people
shall continue subject to the Government's guardian
ship, without making the two provisions co-operative,
and giving the Government at least this measure of con
trol over the conduct of an Indian for the period that
it remains responsible for him in any sense. That is
what we do in the case of trusteeships other than gov
ernmental, and we do it quite as much for the moral
welfare of the incompetent as for the protection of the
competent party in interest.

To the objection often raised by unthinking critics,
that the Burke Act strips the Indian of the manhood in
which it was the purpose of the Dawes Law to establish
him, the answer is obvious, that each piece of legis
lation was suited to its own era. The Burke Act, to the
same degree that it makes citizenship more difficult for
the unfit Indian to obtain, also makes it easier for the
Indian who is fit. No allottee who aspires to own his
land outright and to cast his ballot in the same box
with other Americans need now go through the per
nicious mill of special legislation: all he has to do is to
satisfy the Secretary of the Interior that he is compe
tent to handle his own affairs and the patent in fee is
granted without question. Admirable as this modifica
tion is, however, I fear that it would have been more of

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 67

a fault than of a virtue if Mr. Dawes had put it into
his original allotment law; for, in the generation which
witnessed the enactment of that measure, any broader
opening to the removal of restrictions on the sale of an
Indian farm would have made its owner at once a target
for the merciless army of rogues who for so many years
despoiled even our well-armed Government of its pub
lic lands. By the time Mr. Burke came along with his
amendatory bill, the gentlemen in power at Washington
had waked up to what was going on and were taking
vigorous action to stop it.

Under the Departmental regulations framed for the
administration of the Burke Act, any Indian who con
siders himself competent may file his application freely
for a patent in fee. If he is distrustful of his own powers
of expression in drawing up a paper of such consequence,
he can have a blank printed application filled out and
prepared for his signature by the Superintendent in
charge of his agency. Notice of it is posted in the
agency office and at other places on the reservation
where it will be likely to attract the attention of the
members of his tribe who are best acquainted with him.
If any of these are aware of reasons why the patent in
fee should not be granted him — as, for example, that he
is an irresponsible drunkard and spendthrift, or that he
has always been the easy dupe of grafters — they are in
vited to bring their information to head-quarters; and
in the majority of instances they are only too ready to
do so, because the Indian who has wasted his substance
invariably falls back for food and clothes upon his
thriftier friends or the members of his family who still
have something.

68 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

In due course the Superintendent forwards the ap
plication to Washington, with a favorable or unfavora
ble indorsement from himself, founded on his knowledge
of the applicant's character and antecedents. He must
be prepared to answer a long series of questions pro
pounded by the Indian Office, including these:

What is the estimated value of the land covered by
the application?

Are you personally acquainted with the applicant ?

Have you had a personal talk with him, and what
reasons does he give for applying to have the restric
tions removed from his land?

Is the application in the handwriting of the appli
cant?

Age of applicant?

Degree of blood?

Married or single ?

Number in family?

Did applicant attend school? If so, where and how
long?

Is he a person of good character and reputation ?

Is he industrious?

Is he self-supporting? If so, how is the support
obtained ?

Is he addicted to the use of intoxicants?
. Is he in good physical condition?

Has he had any practical business experience? If
so, give the facts briefly.

Is he in debt? If so, what is the extent of his in
debtedness, whom does he owe, and for what? What
security has he given, if any, for his debt? Has he
ever been in debt before ? If so, what security did he
give, how promptly did he settle his indebtedness, and
on what terms ?

Has he other lands that would continue to be held

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 69

in trust after the lands described in his application had
been released ? If so, give their acreage and character.

Does he cultivate his land ? If so, has he made any
advancement or accumulated any property? To what
extent is the land improved ? And what is the character,
with possibility of improvement, of the part he wishes
to have released, and the part, if any, he wishes to have
retained under trust ?

Has he been given the privilege of leasing his own
land ? Is it leased, and, if so, what rent does he receive ?

Has he been importuned by speculators or any other
prospective purchasers, directly or through agents, to
procure a patent in fee and then dispose of his land ?
Has he made a contract to sell? If so, to whom, and
is the price adequate ?

Has the applicant or his wife any inherited land?
Has either sold any, and, if so, what use was made of
the proceeds?

If the applicant has inherited land, would it not be
for his interest to sell the inherited land and retain his
own allotment under the trust patent ?

Have other members of the family allotments of
their own?

If the applicant is a married woman, what is the
reputation of her husband ? Is he a man who would
be likely to get possession of his wife's property and
then desert her?

After carefully weighing the applicant's qualifica
tions, taking into consideration his past record, his
associations, the advancement he has made and the
opportunities he has had, do you believe that he has
the necessary business qualifications to enable him to
manage his own affairs successfully?

Perhaps it is on this question of giving the Indian his
individual parcel of land to do with what he will, and

70 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

on the kindred question of giving him his individual
share of the money standing to the credit of his tribe
on the books of the Government, that the widest
diversity of judgment is found among educated and
f~ philanthropic whites. I have had men of the highest
character and standing labor for hours at a time to con
vince me that I was harming the Indian by not giving
him at once whatever belongs to him and throwing
him upon his own resources; on the other hand, equally
good and thoughtful men have protested against
what they regarded as my too radical bent in the op
posite direction. "He will never learn to stand alone/'
argued the first group, "till the Government has taken
its hand off him." "He is only a child with a man's
physical growth/' insisted the second, "and to take
your hand off now means that he will fall and be de
stroyed." Undoubtedly the truth lies somewhere be
tween these extremes of opinion. My own policy was
to set up the entire independence of the Indian as a
near-by goal, and work toward it as fast as possible.
It is true that the only way we can teach a child to
walk is to let him walk; but this does riot mean that
during his first feeble efforts we may not keep an adult
finger within reach, where he can clutch it if he feels
that he is losing his balance. So with the Indian, our
aim should always be to give him all the liberty he can
be trusted with at any stage, but to keep a Superin
tendent within easy call, who, though no longer trans
acting all his business for him, stands ready at any mo-
v ment to advise him if he asks for such help.

In other words, the Superintendent, who with the

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 71

tribal Indians laid down rules for their guidance and
compelled obedience thereto, fought off outsiders who
attempted to cheat or otherwise wrong them; con
ducted litigation in their behalf, and acted as the chan
nel for all their communications with the Government,
became with the emancipated Indians merely an older
friend and neighbor. Under my instructions, he would
no longer forbid them to do this and that, but would
warn them, as a father may warn even his grown-up
and independent sons, of the consequences of a cer
tain line of conduct. If, in spite of his counsels, they
persisted in doing a bad or foolish thing, they were at
liberty to do it and bring the consequences down upon
themselves. Usually, having sown the wind, at the
first sound of the approaching whirlwind they hie to
the Superintendent and try to take shelter behind him
as they used to while still in a lower stage of develop
ment. It then becomes his duty to say: "No, I can
not protect you, for you are now on the same footing
with all the other people in our country; but your rights
in the premises are so-and-so, and, if you need the ser
vices of an attorney to assert them, I will help you to
find one who knows the law and who will not rob you."
Moreover, in judging of an Indian's fitness to be cut
loose from the Government's leading-strings, a broad
distinction has always to be recognized between ca
pacity and wisdom or moral excellence, and this has
suggested some rather perplexing queries. Final pa
pers have been issued to more than one Indian as to
whom the chances were even whether they would pull
through the crucial period with credit or plunge into

72 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

follies which would wreck them. The one question the
Department has had to hold steadily before its mind
is: "If these were white men, should we have any
right, because of the faults we see in them now, to keep
them out of their own?" For example, a very in
telligent Indian belonging to one of the Dakota tribes
was making a living by tending bar when he applied
for his patent in fee. It was not a calling which any
one with his best interests at heart would have chosen
for him, but it was not technically unlawful where he
practised it, he was not a drinking man himself, and it
could not be discovered that he had ever been respon
sible for another Indian's drinking. It was plain that
he had a legal right to take his land and sever connec
tion with the Government as his guardian.

Another applicant was a progressive full-blood who
had a hand in pretty nearly every activity which went
on among the whites of his neighborhood. He was a
restless spirit, a natural agitator, and he frankly ad
mitted that he wished his land for the purpose of specu
lating with it. His prayer was granted, and he was
given some good advice, which he regarded and disre
garded in about equal parts. When last heard from
he had run through a good deal of his property, not by
dissipation or evil-doing of any sort, but in getting
his practical education in the ways of the world. Still,
nobody who knows him feels any doubt that he will
make a living in one way or another, and not a poor
one, by the exercise of his native shrewdness.

A third applicant received his patent after his
characteristics had been thoroughly investigated and

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 73

he had been found to be the most precocious money-
getter in his tribe, though his cleverness had found its
chief expression in swindling two trust companies into
lending him snug sums on the security of property
which he did not own! Had purely moral considera
tions been uppermost here, he would have been cast out
as unworthy; but in the judgment of the Department
such ideals had no place in the scale by which his
mere ability to take care of himself was to be weighed.
What the law gave him was a right to his land if he
was capable of managing his affairs, and the persons
he had swindled were only too ready to testify that he
had more of that sort of capacity than they had. In
deed, it seemed in every way better, wholly aside from
his unquestionable legal rights, that he should be
turned loose, cut off from further protection by the
Government in his iniquities, and left to learn by bit
ter experience how hard is the way of the transgressor.

The oddest petition I recall was that of a murderer
under sentence to be hanged, who wished to sell his
land in order to pay the expenses of carrying his case
to a higher court. If I remember aright, he did not even
plead that he was innocent, but based his argument
wholly on his right to exhaust his resources of appeal
under the law. As it was a matter of life and death,
the Department gave him the benefit of the doubt, and
yielded what it recognized as fairly belonging to him.

In most instances, as the reader has doubtless in
ferred, applications for patents in fee are made with
a view to the early sale of the land to outsiders. The
services of the Government are always at the com-

74 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

mand of any Indian who entertains such a plan if,
in spite of his general competency, he would prefer to
consult a disinterested adviser. Such aid is of course
a pure gratuity, is never urged upon the late ward by
his guardian, and in actual practice is rarely asked.
Nearly every Indian who is cut loose, absolutely on his
own initiative, before the expiration of the trust period,
is too full of the pride of his new-found freedom to care
for any assistance which recalls his former condition.
The great mass of Indians, however, strange as it may
appear to most white citizens who do not come into
personal contact with them, have no desire to be re
lieved of their restrictions, but look forward with dread
to the day when, by the time limitation in their trust
patents, relief is to come to them automatically. Pro
vision has accordingly been made, by law and in De
partment regulations, for permitting such timid ones to
petition the President for an extension of the trust pe
riod in their cases. The President acts only on the
recommendation of the Department, and the Depart
ment scrutinizes the petitions with a view to sifting
those which, because of the hopeless incompetency of
the petitioners, are really deserving of consideration,
from those which have their source in mere indolence.
In a case coming within the former category, it is usual
to recommend an extension of the trust for the rest of
the petitioner's natural life. In the other class of cases
it is deemed for the best interest of every one concerned
to cut the tie, and leave the Indian who has recklessly
wasted his tutelary period to make the best shift he can
for a living.

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 75

Now and then I have come across an Indian who has
sought a patent in fee for some other reason than his
desire to turn his land into cash. One of my acquain
tance has made use of his goodly acreage for a stock
farm, where he is doing well and winning the whole
some respect of his white neighbors. Another, who
came of a very frivolous family but had married a
widow of intelligence and thrifty habits, wished to be
able to will his farm to his wife's children by her for
mer marriage, because they gave promise of doing some
thing for themselves, while his own relatives and heirs-
at-law would probably waste any estate which came
to them through him. The prize exhibit in my gallery,
though, is a Hoopa Indian who begged me to get his
restrictions removed because he wished to pay taxes.
When I expressed my astonishment at this aspiration,
he explained it thus: " Every time I go to town with
a Joad of farm produce and meet a white man on the
way, the white man stands still in the middle of the
road and I have to drive up on the bank to get past
him, just because I am an Indian and pay no taxes."
Then, after a slight pause and with intense emphasis,
he added: "I want my half of the road!"

The good accomplished by the Burke Law has not
been limited to the direct operation of its own pro
visions. It has had a wider influence in helping to
procure other legislation in pursuance of the general
policy of which it was the first fruit : I refer to the idea
of concentrating, as regards matters of detail, more
authority in the executive branch of the Government.
Even under the system which it superseded, every bit

76 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

of legislation which came before Congress in behalf of
an allottee seeking a patent in fee was, if presented and
pressed in good faith, submitted to our Department
for a report, and it was for the officers of the Depart
ment to inquire into the character and antecedents of
the applicant and pass upon his fitness for emancipa
tion. The Burke Law did away with this useless and
wasteful circumlocution, and reached the same con
clusion by authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to
do himself what Congress would in any event have
done on his recommendation.

As soon as the good results of this saving of time and
labor came to be appreciated by the lawmakers, they
began to apply the same principle to other exigencies.
During the summer of 1906, while on my annual round
of the reservations, I discovered two distressing cases.
One was that of a young man, bedridden and given
up by the physicians, his body literally covered with
sores, and nearly every penny spent which could have
been drawn on for supplying him with ordinary com
forts. Yet lying idle, because he was physically unable
to work it himself or hunt up a satisfactory tenant,
was his allotment of good agricultural land, situated
where it would be worth easily between two and three
thousand dollars. He could not sell it because it was
covered by the Government trust, and it was growing
up to brush and cockle-burrs. Further west I met a
penniless Indian, his body decrepit and his mental
faculties impaired by old age, with no kith or kin to
care for him, yet disqualified by some technicality of
law for admission to the neighboring public alms-

WORKING OF THE BURKE LAW 77

house. He, too, was a landed proprietor with his
hands tied.

On my return to Washington I set the machinery
in motion at once for the relief of the young invalid,
procuring an interpretation of the Burke Law which
would recognize him as competent because his mind
was clear and active although his bodily condition pre
cluded all possibility of self-support. His land was
freed promptly and he was assisted to sell it for a price
which would at least serve to smooth his path to the
grave. The old man's case, however, could not be
brought within reach of any then existing law, and as
Congress would not meet again till December there was
no way even of getting special legislation in his behalf.
As soon as the session convened I used his plight as a
typical illustration of a need still unfilled; Chairmen
Clapp and Sherman, of the two Committees on Indian
Affairs, responded at once; and in a few weeks we
had a section written into the statutes permitting the
sale of the whole or a part of any non-competent Ind
ian's allotment on terms and under regulations pre
scribed by the Secretary of the Interior, and authoriz
ing the use of the proceeds for the benefit of the allottee
under the supervision of the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs.

If white men of fair business education are so often
caught napping when the tax-gatherer comes around,
it is scarcely wonderful that here and there an Indian,
though he may be generally capable of looking out for
himself, makes a like slip. The attention of the Indian
Office having been drawn to a few cases where allottees

78 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

who had received their patents in fee, but were still
holding fast to their land, had had their farms adver
tised for sale for unpaid taxes, it procured the passage
of a law authorizing the Commissioner to draw if nec
essary upon any tribal trust fund in which an Indian
taxpayer was interested, pay his taxes for him and
charge the amount so expended against his distributive
share of the fund.

Other important legislation in the same line, but de
signed to simplify processes for the relief of trouble
some situations in regard to Indian moneys, will be
described in their proper place. All these were long
forward strides for Congress to take in the face of the
clamor so rife during the last few years about the dan
gerous encroachments of the executive upon the legis
lative powers defined by the Constitution; and they
have made the era memorable as a period of real ad
vance toward the solution of the Indian problem.

CHAPTER V
DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS

Who Owns the Reservations — Popular Misapprehensions Cor
rected — The Lone Wolf Decision — Indian Distaste for
Allotment— Offering the Tribal Remnant for Sale— The
Government as a Wholesale Purchaser — Price Contrasts
Which Mean Nothing — The Existing Practice — Sugar
Beet and Horse Farm Projects — Rapid Opening of Reser
vations — Objections to this Policy Considered.

ALTHOUGH, for the purposes of this outline sketch of the
system of individualizing Indian landholdings, I have
confined my comments pretty closely to the general
allotment law, as a matter of fact the larger number of
allotments are made under special laws, and for two
reasons. The first is that the general allotment act
prescribes an inelastic scale of areas which may or may
not suit the particular conditions surrounding any
given tribe. Adults, for example, may take their
choice between eighty acres of agricultural land and
one hundred and sixty acres of grazing land. In any
of the northern Atlantic States or the Middle West,
such an acreage for the head of a non-Indian family
would be deemed a very good farm, and if supplemented
by an equal tract owned by his wife and smaller tracts
owned by his three or four minor children, would be
liable to reach proportions too large for him to handle.

79

80 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

But in the West it is different. Anywhere in the arid
country a thousand acres of agricultural land would
be worse than valueless if its owner were required to
till it without water, whereas with irrigation there
are parts where five acres are an abundance. In a
region with a large rainfall and a strong grass soil, an
average of five, six or seven acres to each head of cattle
will suffice for the raiser of live-stock, whereas on the
northern Montana ranges the herdsmen commonly
estimate their needs at thirty acres to the head. I
may add in passing that for years I have striven to
procure a general law vesting in the President a broad
discretion to allot to any Indian on any reservation not
less than five or more than forty acres of irrigable land,
or more than six hundred and forty acres of grazing
land. Such a provision would relieve Congress of a
vast burden of work on local cases, and enable the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs to provide every Ind
ian, within a very few years, with the farm which
the Government has decided he must have for his
own.

The second limitation on the general law which
renders special legislation so often necessary, is the
impracticability of turning over wholly to an executive
officer the authority to sell the surplus tribal lands
wherever and whenever he chooses, at such prices and
under such conditions as he deems best. It is true that
a special act for opening a reservation almost always
provides that the Secretary of the Interior may make
rules and regulations for the sale of the unallotted
remnant of land; but Congress keeps its own hand,

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 81

very properly, on the lever, even though it may en
trust the steering-wheel to another for the time being.

Until 1903 the prevalent assumption among our
people at large was the same as among the Indians
themselves, that the reservations belonged absolutely
to the tribes which inhabited them in pursuance of
so-called " treaties" or by authority of Presidential
proclamations. Although not a few of the treaties
contained figurative language designed to convey to
the tribes concerned the idea of perpetuity of physical
possession, every allotment law, and every moral argu
ment made in behalf of allotment as a remedy for some
of the more crying evils of the reservation system,
plainly recognized that system as but a passing phase
of the history of Indian development, and to such ex
tent discredited the notion of a permanent tribal title.
It has often been said to me by ultra-conservative old
Indians that if they had ever conceived of the changes
in store for their people as the result of accepting res
ervations, they would have died fighting the Govern
ment rather than submit to being placed there.

It is declarations like this which form the basis of
much of what we hear and read about the deceptions
practised on the Indians by the Government. I have
had a part in the negotiation of one Indian treaty
and in the interpretation and explanation of several
others, and I am confident that most of the sins of the
Government in this respect went to no greater depth
than its omission to volunteer to the Indians sugges
tions which it would never have thought of volun
teering in a similar transaction with people of any

82 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

other race, of some of the less obvious consequences
which might flow from the business then in hand;
that the rest of the trouble has resulted from the limited
range of the Indian's mind, due equally to his inherited
peculiarities and his narrow environment but rarely
appreciated by the members of treaty-making com
missions; and that what has been so sweepingly de
nounced as a Century of Dishonor might better be
described, as far as the Government's operations are
concerned, as an era of mutual misunderstandings.

Every treaty had to be ratified by an act of Con
gress before it became of force, and again and again
the lawmaking body took what looked to the general
public like unwarrantable liberties with vital pro
visions which had received the approval of the Ind
ians. A notable instance in point occurred in 1901,
in an act ratifying an agreement with the Kiowa,
Comanche and Apache tribes who occupied a large
reservation in Oklahoma. To the ratification was
attached an item providing for the allotment of lands
in severalty to the members of the occupant tribes,
and the opening of the unallotted surplus of the reser
vation to public sale and settlement. Some of the
features of this legislation differed so radically from
the terms of the original agreement with the Indians
that the Indian Rights Association resolved to make
a test case of the question of the authority of Congress
in the premises. It brought suit, therefore, in the
name of Lone Wolf, a prominent Kiowa, to enjoin
the Secretary of the Interior from carrying the law
into execution. The case finally reached the Supreme

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 83

Court of the United States, which not only affirmed the
right of Congress to do what it had done, but laid
down the general principle that the fee in Indian reser
vations is vested in the Government; that the Indians
have nothing more than a right of occupancy; and
that the power of Congress to work its will with such
reservations is practically limited only by its own
sense of justice in dealing with a weaker and dependent
people.

This broad pronouncement carried dismay to the
hearts of many excellent persons whose benevolent in
terest in the Indians had led them to share the Indian
view of unqualified ownership, and who could hardly
reconcile themselves to the discovery that their long-
cherished notion was a delusion. But to one who had
been studying the subject in a quite unemotional way
it brought no great surprise. Nay, it furnished a key
to a problem which had given mpst of us anxious
thought; for it had been intolerable to believe that
the highest legislative body in this republic would go
on, year after year, cutting out essential features of
agreements with the Indians entered into with the
utmost solemnity of form, substituting therefor pro
visions never contemplated by the immediate parties
to these instruments, and forcing the unrecognizable
resultant down the throats of the weaker party
merely because the latter was too feeble to resent the
affront. When the Supreme Court gave to the appar
ent aggressions of Congress the sanction of legal right
eousness, it at any rate cleared the air and simplified
the future duty of the friends of the Indians.

84 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

From the 5th of January, 1903, the date of the Lone
Wolf decision, to the present day, no more agreements
have been made or sought with the Indians prelimi
nary to the opening of a reservation. But during
my administration as Commissioner, when a bill look
ing to such an opening was introduced in Congress and
submitted to our Department for comment, I always
urged the insertion of a clause to provide for sending
a Special Agent to the tribe concerned, to explain the
situation; to interpret the pending bill so that the
Indians could comprehend its purport; to assure them
in my name that under the ruling of our " highest
council of judges" it would be worse than useless for
them to try to prevent the opening of their reservation
if Congress had decided that it should be opened; and
to ask them to discuss the matter soberly among them
selves and send me word what they would like omitted
from, or modified in, or added to the bill as it stood.
The message was accompanied with a promise that I
would carefully consider their requests, transmit to
Congress those which seemed sensible and wise, and
use my utmost influence to procure such changes in the
measure before it became a law.

Once in a while this invitation drew forth a childish
or inconsequent response; but as a rule the Special
Agent would bring back a few very reasonable recom
mendations. The plan, which worked on the whole
successfully, had a triple purpose: it did away abso
lutely with the complaint once so rife in the Indian
country, that the Government was continually making
laws in which the Indians were deeply concerned, with-

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 85

out letting them know anything about it till too late
for the correction of palpable errors; it gave the Ind
ians the opportunity of airing to their hearts' con
tent sundry distorted ideas which they had perhaps
long nursed in secret, and having their misapprehen
sions set right; and, finally, it gave the poor fellows,
who were in a most trying stage of their passage from
the old social order to the new, a chance to share in
the discussion of their own affairs, and to learn some
thing of the processes by which the Government trans
acts one branch of its business.

For a number of years after the allotment system had
become well established, most of the Indians used to re
sist stubbornly the efforts of the Government to give
them lands in severalty. They would run away when
the Allotting Agent with his crew of assistants came
into their neighborhood, and conceal themselves in
the thicket, or ride back over the hills, leaving only a
cloud of dust to mark their pathless course. If they
had long enough warning of his coming, they would
disappear in the night so that he would find nothing
but an empty camp. The allotment statutes, how
ever, had anticipated such a contingency by provid
ing that, should any Indian refuse or neglect to make
his own selection of land, it should be officially made
for him after a specified interval of waiting. A patent
was recognized by law, also, as having been issued to
an allottee as soon as it was duly signed and recorded,
no matter whether or not he accepted it. By the pe
culiar freemasonry which seems to permeate the Ind
ian country, it presently came to be understood

86 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

among substantially all the tribes that mere obstinacy
in such a matter produced no effect, and the resistance
then shifted to the next step in the proceedings, the
disposal of the surplus land.

At first the position commonly taken had been that
made memorable by Lone Wolfs Kiowas: that the
land belonged absolutely to the tribe, and that the
Government had no right to do anything with it with
out the tribe's consent. After the Supreme Court had
cut away that objection, the Indians began to invent
plans for the disposal of their surplus, based on what
they had heard of the action taken in other cases.
Usually they had no conception of what constituted
value in land, their own traditional use for it being
confined to the pursuit of wild game; so precedent,
or what in their ignorance they considered precedent,
governed their judgment of what it ought to bring.
If an especially fertile tract somewhere had sold for
five dollars an acre, they would insist on receiving the
same price for a barren and unpromising tract not
worth fifty cents. If mining developments in one quar
ter had sent valuations soaring there, they would
clamor for equally fictitious figures on a gravel bank.
Often they were egged on by outsiders to make trouble.
In one instance a group of white cattlemen who had
been leasing grazing privileges from the Indians to
their own great profit were chagrined at the prospect
of the cutting up of their range into farms for settlers,
and united in a publication that nothing but grass could
possibly be raised in such a soil and climate. The ex
treme of absurdity into which their greed led them,

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 87

and which was reflected in the Indian councils held
under their influence, may be judged by the fact that
a few years later corn and cotton, wheat, fruits and
vegetables of both Northern and Southern varieties
were growing there side by side in the utmost abun
dance.

Sales of surplus reservation lands have to be con
ducted by various processes, according to the local con
ditions of supply and demand. In one part of the
Southwest, where native American farmers from all
sections were fairly falling over each other in their
efforts to get land, I arranged a sale under sealed bids.
This enabled all the eager multitude to compete on
equal terms, and procured for the Indians the very
highest price for every acre which any one was willing
to pay. On the other hand, in a bleak part of the
Northwest, where winter lasts between seven and
eight months and summer droughts are not infrequent,
and where as a consequence only certain exceptionally
hardy crops can be raised, I was obliged, in order to
attract buyers of a class who could and would face
the conditions, to set a flat price on the land. But
even in this instance I was able to bring in the element
of competition to the extent that the circumstances
would warrant any, by offering at one fixed price the
first choice of farms for a given number of months;
after that interval, another and somewhat lower fixed
price was placed on the first choice of what remained;
some months later the price for first choice of what
was still left was lowered; and so on till all the land
that any one was willing to buy was exhausted. This

88 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

was the business view of the way to handle the case,
concurred in by the best expert advisers I could gather
about me; yet an ineffectual attempt was made to
defeat the plan, on the assumption that because the
sealed bid system had worked well in one instance, it
must always thereafter be applied to the sale of all
surplus reservation lands, regardless of the period, the
place, the market demand, or other non-sentimental
considerations. I cite these typical illustrations merely
to show how much of a basis in fact there often is for
the criticism heaped upon public officers when they are
doing the best they can to handle a difficult situation,
where business judgment counts for everything.

In former times the Government made a practice of
buying outright the surplus reservation lands, and
taking its chances of selling them later at retail to
settlers. The Indians naturally preferred this method,
because the payment was then directly in sight and
the sum payable was definitely known, so that the
transaction involved no margin of uncertainties; for,
strange as it may seem in view of the primitive man's
innate love of games of chance, an Indian would rather
take one dollar now on the table than wait till next
week for five times the amount. But the Government
went out of that sort of business toward the close of
the last century, and for good. Congress was begin
ning to grow restless under the financial burden of the
Indian problem; so a general declaration went forth
that no more appropriations would be made for buying
lands from Indians, but that thenceforward the Gov
ernment would act merely as the medium between

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 89

seller and buyer. The change has been, in one way
at least, distinctly advantageous to both Indians and
Government; for in the old times the Government
would pay perhaps one dollar and a quarter an acre
for land which it would sell to settlers again at the same
price, shouldering all the expenses of the sale, besides
losing for some time the interest on its investment,
while the Indians would get only about one-third as
much as the upset price now placed upon some of
their less desirable lands.

Here again it is proper to put in a parenthetic word
of justice to the Government. Because in the old
times it bought land at a very much lower price than
similar land in the same neighborhoods brings now,
there is no ground for an assumption of bad faith on
its part. As long as the land remained in huge areas
in possession of the Indians, it enjoyed no improve
ment. Cattle and ponies ran wild over the prairies
where now stand flourishing towns and crop-covered
farms. There was little or nothing to encourage trans
portation companies to enter such a country with their
facilities for carrying its products to market; so for
ests were permitted to decay or burn, and water-powers
were left idle which have since been put to profitable
use. Naturally, lands in a region not only unde
veloped, but incapable of development as long as it
continued in possession of its then tenants, offered no
attractions and were reckoned at no values worth
mentioning. One dollar and a quarter, under such
conditions, was as fair a price as four or five dollars
became after part of the country roundabout had

90 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

acquired even a sparse population of thrifty white
farmers. In estimating values on the frontier, the
times and the environment are indispensable factors.

Whether the old process of direct purchase were
followed, or the newer one under which the Govern
ment takes their land from the Indians and sells it for
them to the settlers, a large sum of money has always
been forthcoming, regarded as belonging to the Indians
and to be disposed of in some way for their benefit.

It has always seemed to me a pity that, where a
reservation has a soil and climate particularly adapted
to some special industry at which the resident Indians
could make a success, a part of the surplus land should
not be reserved for their use in this way, and they
encouraged to turn it to account as white people would
in a similar situation. I tried to test this plan with
the Crow reservation in Montana. All the conditions
there, according to the best experts I could engage to
go over the ground and report on it, are highly favorable
to the culture of the sugar beet, and wherever Indians
have been initiated into that industry as field hands
they have made such a record that their employers
have applied for more of them. It is a line of agricult
ure, too, which they enjoy, because a whole family
— father, mother and children — can work at it side by
side; hence the Indian laborers employed in the beet
fields have always been contented and happy, and have
returned year after year of their own accord if not pre-
[ vented by some change of circumstances at home. I
found private parties who were ready to put up the
capital for a sugar-manufacturing plant accessible to

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 91

the reservation, and to furnish the white farmers
necessary to oversee the plantation and direct the
labor on it; but the project, though generally favored
by those members of Congress who looked into it, was
staved off by a small element who always oppose any
thing which looks like prolonging the hold of the Ind
ians on their land. They carried the day as far as
the Crow reservation was concerned; but I managed
to switch my plan from there to the Fort Belknap
reservation in the same State, where the Indians wel
comed it gladly and were at last accounts making
commendable headway on their own farms, instead
of making yearly pilgrimages for long distances to
work on the farms of white beet-growers.

As some of the opponents of the Crow project were
hostile to the whole beet-sugar industry, and others
disliked it because of its possible rivalry with interests
of their constituents, I thought that they might be
won over to my general aim by another plan which I
brought forward a year or two later, for turning a large
tract of surplus Crow land into a horse farm. Here
again I had the best expert advice from practical stock
breeders as to the adaptability of the region, and the
tribe is noted for its horsemanship. A strong inspira
tion came also from the War Department, whose pro
gressive spirits have long maintained the desirableness
of a remount station for the cavalry and artillery
branches of their service, such as armies in other parts
of the world possess. The plan, however, presented a
few technical difficulties which, though by no means
serious, furnished a pretext for procrastination; I

92 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

assume, therefore, that by this time it has died of the
inanition so uniformly fatal to Indian enterprises which
have not a big profit for some white man directly
behind them.

With the allotment of their respective shares of the
land in a reservation and the opening of the remnant
to public sale and settlement, the Indians concerned
are placed on the same footing as persons of other
races within the jurisdiction of the United States, or
started on the way to acquire civic equality by the
automatic operation of law. Those who have taken out
their patents in fee have become full citizens; the rest
will attain full citizenship at the close of the twenty-five
years' trust period, or sooner if they can convince the
Secretary of the Interior of their competency. This
will explain why the recent policy of the Department
has been to open the reservations as rapidly as that
could be done with proper protection to the interests
of the Indians. In the judgment of a number of our
white friends whose devotion to humane ends entitles
their opinions to respectful consideration at least, the
work of opening has been pushed too far and too fast;
so, before leaving the general subject, it may be well
to comment briefly on this complaint.

There is always something pathetic and appealing
in the lament of an old Indian over the passage of the
land of his ancestors into the hands of an alien people.
But if we pause to analyze it in the colorless light of
reason, what do we find? Except in the rare and
scattered instances of tribes with a pastoral or agri
cultural bent, the only use the Indians of an earlier

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 93

generation had for land was as a breeding ground for
the animals which they hunted for a livelihood. All
primitive peoples are, from our economic point of
view, grossly wasteful of their natural resources. As
nomads they require a vast field to roam over; and
where they have reached the stage of stationary habi
tations and crude tillage of the soil, they still cover a
great deal more space, with poorer visible results, than
a like community of civilized people. Were the in
crease of population in the world at large to come sud
denly to a stand-still, it might be practicable to leave
the primitive races undisturbed, to work out their own
destiny in their own way; but as the civilized element
of mankind is growing and spreading faster than the
uncivilized, such a suggestion would have to be dis
missed as futile unless some yet unconceived means
were devised for taking care of the civilized overflow.
Hence the most we can ask of the advanced race is to
deal justly with the backward races, and give always
a fair equivalent for the land it invades.

This, I believe, the Government of the United States
has uniformly striven to do, in spite of the cupidity
of many of its citizens individually. Had our country,
when the whites first came here, been peopled with a
race of like intelligence, resourcefulness and initia
tive with ours, and lacking only our physical means,
American history would have been written in a very
different strain. As fast as the newcomers in the East
had crowded the prior tenants westward, the latter
would have tackled the changed conditions with fresh
energy and courage, and wrested a good living out of

94 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

them by hook or by crook. But the Indian is dazed
and bewildered by difficulties which only fire the spirit
of the white man. To-day, therefore, we find him no
longer lord of a proud domain, but a petty landholder;
subject to laws not only not of his own making, but
utterly incomprehensible to him because founded on
principles which his mind cannot grasp; and, in spite
of all his ignorance and childishness, expected to hold
his own in a region where, with its demand for irriga
tion, and drainage, and skilful rotation of crops, agri
culture has become for the white man almost an exact
science!

And yet, how could he have been helped to better
things? Had he and his fellows been kept herded on
reservations, with a wall raised constructively around
them which they must not cross to go out and which
no whites except the sworn servants of the Government
might cross to come in, would he have been any more fit
to carry on his struggle with the world fifty years hence
than now? No sane man who has studied the Indians
and conditions in the Indian country at close range,
and from both the Government's and the citizen's
points of view, would venture an affirmative answer.
In short, the situation we are obliged to reckon with
is not what ought to be or what might have been but
what is. And in discussing the question whether the
rapid opening of the reservations is on the whole the
wisest course, we do well to ask ourselves, What is the
alternative? Shall we pass this abnormality, this maze
of incongruities which we call the Indian problem, on
to our posterity as our fathers passed it on to us? Shall

DISPOSING OF THE SURPLUS 95

we blink the fact that we know our own motives to be
honest and just, but that we cannot forecast the in
fluences which will sway those who come after us?
Are we willing to take perilous chances on the advent
of a day when another class of men may be in the places
of power, who, wearying of a long-borne national en
cumbrance, will with one sweep hurl the Indian and
his separate interests into the abyss?

Is it not better that we lay hold now of the means
which are nearest our hands, save all we can for the
Indian and nail it fast, while the times are still favorable
for such an undertaking?

CHAPTER VI
THE INDIAN SERVICE

A Huge Human Machine and Its Personnel — Order of Rank
and Authority — Indian Agents and Superintendents —
What Political Patronage Brings in its Train — Story of
the Seven Green Strings — Duties of an Agent — Army
Officers in Charge of Agencies — The Board of Indian
Commissioners — Public Employment for Indians — Life
at a Frontier Post — Separation from the Service.

THE human machinery employed by our Government
in working out the Indian problem is known as the
Indian Service. Its personnel consists of between
five and six thousand souls. At its head stands the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who is responsible di
rectly to the Secretary of the Interior. Next to him,
and taking his place in his absence from the post of
duty, stands the Assistant Commissioner. Their head
quarters are in Washington. Both are appointed by
the President, to serve not for any fixed term but at
his pleasure, by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate.

In their Washington office they have under them a
force of nearly two hundred employees, subject to the
supervision of a Chief Clerk. The rest of the Service
is grouped under the general designation, the Field.
The functionary who is charged with the immediate

96

THE INDIAN SERVICE 97

oversight of the Indian in his own home, and who
represents there the authority which emanates from
the Office of Indian Affairs, is the Agent or Superin
tendent. In the original scheme of things the Agent
was appointed by the President, with confirmation by
the Senate. By degrees, however, as the Government )
school system in the reservations expanded, and as it/
became increasingly difficult to induce Indians to send !
their children to the schools unless the heads of those 1
institutions were clothed with powers which the parents X
could appreciate, the law was amended so as to permit/
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to " devolve the;
duties of any Indian agency or part thereof upon the!
Superintendent of the Indian school located at such)
agency or part thereof." At first every attempt to
take advantage of this provision met with strong op
position from Senators and Representatives who had
been in the habit of recommending constituents for
appointment as Agents, and who were loath to re
linquish such a pretty bit of patronage. But their
alarm was in a measure appeased by the promulgation
of a civil service rule under which, although school
superintendencies were among the competitive classi
fied positions, an Agent whom the Commissioner could
certify to possess the necessaiy qualifications might
be appointed a Superintendent without going through
the usual ordeal of examination for admission to the
classified service.

This simplified matters a good deal; for in the or
dinary course of things an Agent thus transferred to
the Superintendents7 list could not last forever, and

98 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

on his death or resignation his place would be filled
by some one who had entered the Government em
ploy by the merit system route. My immediate prede
cessor, Commissioner Jones, turned a large number of
Agents into Superintendents, and during my adminis
tration I gradually disposed of the rest. The popular
presumption as to the respective fidelity of political
and non-political appointees was well reflected in the
readiness of the indemnity companies to charge the
latter about forty per cent, less than the former for
their official bonds. It is but just to say that although
a great improvement has been effected by these
changes, in the direction of unifying the Service and of
associating the schools in the minds of the Indians
more closely with the exercise of the broad authority
of the Government among them, not all the Agents
were so bad as one might imagine from reading the
wholesale denunciations heaped upon their class.
Those who were faithful to their trust used sometimes
to be very sensitive to such attacks. One of the most
efficient told me that when he first received his com
mission he felt vastly important, and took great pride
in handing his card, with his title printed on it, to any
fellow traveller with whom he scraped acquaintance on
a railway train; but after he learned from the public
prints what wicked men all Indian Agents were, he
used to evade questions from strangers as to his occu
pation, and conceal his Government transportation
vouchers as he might have concealed a ticket-of-leave.
The old method of appointment was, like all pat
ronage methods, open to gross abuses. No President

THE INDIAN SERVICE 99

had so wide an acquaintance throughout the country
that he could make his choice of Agents directly, so he
was compelled to depend on local advice. This natu
rally came from the Senators of the State in which an
agency was situated, who in their turn had to call upon
some of their friends at home, almost always their politi
cal managers. Thus the responsibility for an appointee's
character and capacity, which ought to have been con
centrated somewhere, was so subdivided and scattered
that it could not be definitely fixed on any one person.
The vicious results of the practice, unfortunately, did
not stop with the appointment itself. In such a lottery
the Government might draw a prize or it might draw
a blank, as chance favored. An Agent might not be
bad but simply negative, which of course meant that
there would be no progress on his reservation as long
as he stayed there. Or one might be selected merely
because he happened to be a popular favorite at home
and temporarily out of employment, but afterward
become thoroughly interested in his work and accom
plish something with it. The man whose case pre
sented the greatest difficulties was he who stood high
in his own community because he had never been ade
quately tested, yet, after being firmly seated in his pub
lic position, gave way under the first strain put upon
his character; for then the trouble was to get him out.
All the pressure his Senatorial patron could bring to
bear would be exerted for his protection as a wronged
man. At first, probably, the Senator would be really
unconvinced that so good a man had gone astray; later
a false pride would impel him to keep on standing

100 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

back of his client through thick and thin; and all the
while his neighbors and friends at home would be urg
ing upon him every sort of social and political consid
eration calculated to force him into at least a show of
fighting. In the cases which fell to my lot to handle, I
rarely wasted time in analyzing a patron's motives, but
confined my attention to the obvious facts. And
that reminds me of a story.

A certain Agent came into the Service with an unusual
number and variety of testimonials to his excellence
as a man and a citizen. He was well educated, a
member of the vestry in his home church, and the
head of an interesting family. One day the Com
missioner received from some "underground" source
a copy of a letter which had come to the Agent's desk
during his absence on an official trip. It was from the
contractor who supplied the agency with flour, and
ran substantially as follows:

DEAR SIR:

I have shipped to you to-day 40,000 pounds of flour,
as per recent order, which ought to reach destination
on the railroad in about ten days. In selecting samples
for submission to the Inspector, I should esteem it a
favor if you would take them from seven sacks which
you will find tied with green string.

By registered mail I am sending you a box of fine
Havana cigars, which, as they are of a brand I par
ticularly like, I hope you will enjoy smoking.

With kind regard, I am, etc.

The Commissioner lost no time in putting a watch
upon the Agent's operations in selecting his samples

THE INDIAN SERVICE 101

for the Inspector, and simultaneously sent a private
representative to the spot to seize all the papers in the
agency office so as to prevent the destruction or mutila
tion of any. The move was entirely successful. The
seven sacks indicated were the only ones disturbed; the
green strings were quietly picked up where the Agent
dropped them, and marked as exhibits with the attes
tation of two witnesses; and the Agent's response to
the contractor's letter, which was among the papers
seized, was something like this:

DEAR SIR:

On my return from a short business trip, I find on
my table your favor of the 9th, which arrived during
my absence, or would have been acknowledged sooner.
I have noted its contents and shall govern myself
accordingly.

The registered package arrived by due course of
mail, and your thoughtfulness is highly appreciated.

Truly yours, etc.

It is hardly necessary to add that when the Agent
was confronted with the documents in the case he
realized that he was caught, identified his own hand
writing, and made no attempt to escape responsibility.
But the ink was not dry on the papers with which he
was to be dropped from the Service, before his Sena
torial patron stalked into the Indian Office. Was it
possible, the great man demanded, that so excellent
a public servant was to be thrown out on mere cir
cumstantial evidence? The Commissioner produced
the written confession of the excellent public servant,

102 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

but it did not mollify the Senator's indignation. There
must be some mistake, he argued, for it was incon
ceivable that a man of the high standing of this Agent
could have been willing to sell himself and hazard his
whole future for a paltry box of cigars. The Com
missioner answered that he, too, thought it very strange
that any intelligent person should do so foolish a thing,
though of course nobody knew what the box might
have contained besides cigars. But, putting aside
that question, he added, it was quite impossible to
overlook such an incident and let the whole Service
understand that they could with impunity accept in
structions from contractors as to the inspection of
purchased goods.

The Senator refused to see anything so serious in
the matter, and continued to declaim about injustice.
His protest was treated with the politeness to which
the dignity of his office might be assumed to entitle it,
and further action was suspended at his request till he
could write to his proteg£ and receive an answer. Then
the Agent's children fell so ill that their physician
forbade their travelling through the wintry weather;
and thus by one device and another, founded now on
courtesy and now on humanity, the fatal day was
staved off for several weeks. When the Commissioner
refused to entertain any more appeals for postpone
ment, the Senator was still clinging to his first position.

"Very well," said the Commissioner, "let us now get
this business down into black and white. Write me
a letter stating in full your reasons for standing by your
friend and condemning my course. I pledge myself

THE INDIAN SERVICE 103

to go over it carefully, and with as little prejudice
as possible; and if I am convinced that I am wrong
I will say so unhesitatingly and drop the matter forth
with."

The Senator wrote the letter. The Commissioner
was as good as his word, and gave two days to ponder
ing its sophistries. Then he announced his intention
of going ahead with his original programme. News of
his decision no sooner reached the Capitol than the
Senator hurried down with a fresh protest.

"It is too late," answered the Commissioner. "But
this I am willing to do: I will put the man out to-day;
to-morrow you may offer in the Senate a resolution
of inquiry as to my reasons; and when the resolution
comes over here I will simply publish the documents
of record, winding up with your letter in palliation of
the Agent's misdemeanor. That will put our con
troversy squarely before Congress and the country,
and we can let them judge who has the right of it."

The challenge was not accepted. The Agent went
out. But the whole incident furnished so admirable
an illustration of the workings of the patronage system
that its details have remained fresh in my memory
through an interval of several years.

Still, not all Agents must be judged by this one. If
the majority, indeed, had not been of a mind and
character high enough to warrant our astonishment
that men of such calibre can be hired for the modest
pay attaching to their office, the Service would not have
been able to go on with its work for a good while past;
for agency duties are, from at least one point of view,

104 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

much more difficult now than in the old times. For
example, the legal questions growing out of the new
status of such a multitude of the Indians are greater
in number and more complicated in nature. As I once
described the life of an Agent, in a report of an investi
gation I had been conducting on a South-western res
ervation, he had "sat in a swivel chair, for four con
secutive years, practically every day from eight in the
morning till five in the evening, hearing complaints,
issuing orders, writing letters, opening bids, signing
leases, supervising accounts, drawing checks, settling
domestic disputes, exercising the functions of a guard
ian for orphan children, unravelling the intricacies of
heirship in families where nobody knows certainly his
blood relationship to anybody else, adjusting debts
and credits between individual Indians, preparing
cases for the prosecution of dramsellers or the ejection
of intruders, and devising forms for legal instruments
which will save some remnant for the Indian after the
white man gets through stripping him. In all these
four years he has had less than twenty days' vacation.
His immediate recreations have been an occasional
visit to an outlying pay-station; an appearance in
court as witness against some one who is trying to rob
the poor people in his care; or a personal inspection
of an Indian's property at a distance, when a white
contractor or a railroad company wants to make a
doubtful use of it." If I were to attempt an enumera
tion of the duties of a latter-day Superintendent, I
should have to deduct a few items from the foregoing
list, and add a few by way of recognizing changed con-

THE INDIAN SERVICE 105

ditions; but in the main the description as it stands
will suffice for the activities of a class.

Often in former years an officer of the regular army
would be detailed by the President to take charge of a
reservation as Acting Agent. He was not required to
give bond like a civilian Agent or Superintendent, his
commission being accepted by the Government as its
insurance against his misconduct; neither did he re
ceive the Agent's salary. As a relief from a certain
class of political Agents who used to be the curse of
the Service, a military officer was a godsend; but his
best influence upon the Indians themselves was found
among tribes still in a very backward state. There
his independence, his promptness to shoulder responsi
bility, his exercise of arbitrary power in any emergency
which called for such a demonstration, made a strong
impression on the wayward spirits whose only con
ception of authority was the ability to strike effectively
and without delay, and to compel good order by force
when admonition had ceased to avail; but after any
body of Indians had developed beyond this point,
their subjection to military rule was usually a mistake,
in view of the necessity of inducting them soon into a
civil or non-military status. For the strictness of
discipline which was part of the officer's training made
his civilian successor's practices seem lax and indiffer
ent by comparison; while his habitual pity for the
hungry was liable to extend to deserving and unde
serving alike, and thus distort the Indians' premises of
judgment on the eve of the crucial change of condition
which awaited them. There were, of course, notable

106 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

instances of officers who appreciated the importance
of a golden mean; but these were philosophers along
with their other accomplishments, and had made a
study of the subtle springs of human action as a basis
for their treatment of any eccentricities of conduct on
the part of the Indians in their charge.

Under the Agent or Superintendent we find a group
of assistants, usually led by a financial clerk, who takes
the helm when the head of the office is absent. Then
come ordinary clerks, principals and teachers of schools,
physicians, herdsmen, farmers, engineers, carpenters,
cooks, matrons, seamstresses, laundresses, instructors
in various special lines of industry, watchmen, inter
preters, police, etc., their number depending on the
area and population of the reservation. The work of
these stationary employees is inspected from time to
time by a corps of travelling field officers consisting
of five Inspectors who report directly to the Secretary
of the Interior and receive their orders from him, and
a small group of Special Agents and Supervisors respon
sible to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. An Irri
gation Engineer and five Superintendents of Irrigation
are charged, under the direction of a Chief Engineer,
with the work of reclaiming arid lands; and between
twenty and thirty Allotting Agents are engaged in
parcelling out farms to individual Indians. The sup
pression of the liquor traffic in the Indian country is
committed to a staff of Special Officers and Deputies
with a widely ramified secret service, under the orders
of a Chief Special Officer. Purchases of supplies for
the schools and the Service generally are made through

THE INDIAN SERVICE 107

warehouses situated in New York City, Chicago, St.
Louis, Omaha and San Francisco, each of which is in
care of a Superintendent of Warehouse, aided by a
number of clerks and porters and experts in the several
classes of merchandise which pass through his building.

Besides all these there are a handful of field agents
with particular duties or exclusive jurisdiction who
do not call for enumeration here; and in a place apart
from the Indian Service proper, though in constant
touch with it, stands the Board of Indian Commission
ers, an honorary body required by law to be com
posed of not more than ten "men eminent for intelli
gence and philanthropy."

This Board was created during President Grant 's
term, after the discovery of gross frauds in handling
Indian supplies, its original purpose being to assist the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs in correcting such
abuses and to serve as a sort of protective medium be
tween the Indian Office and outside criticism. To
this end it was accustomed to send a committee to each
warehouse at the season of contract letting, who would
examine the samples offered, pass judgment on the
prices bid, and help the Commissioner to reach satis
factory decisions in cases where he felt any uncer
tainty. From time to time a member of the Board
would go into the Indian field, inspect certain reserva
tions and schools and report on conditions there.

As the contract supply system gradually worked
out of its vicious rut and was put upon a sound footing
with proper safeguards, the Board of Indian Com
missioners devoted more of its attention to educational

108 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

matters, and its personnel came to be composed in less
measure of business men and to include a larger per
centage of clergymen and scholars. Its members are
appointed by the President without reference to the
Senate; they receive no compensation, but have their
travelling expenses paid when actually engaged in the
performance of their duties. They elect a salaried sec
retary, who acts as their disbursing officer, employs a
clerk, and keeps an office open for their head-quarters
in Washington, from which he conducts their corre
spondence. The title of the Board was always unfortu
nate, as it ought to have been more distinctive. As it
is, we find in the popular mind a constant confusion of
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs with the Chairman
of the Board of Indian Commissioners and the other
Commissioners or members of commissions designated
by Congress to do some single piece of work, like
negotiating an agreement or settling a particular class
of claims.

Substantially all the officers and employees of the
Indian Service except those appointed by the Presi
dent are in the classified civil service, and as a conse
quence are not permitted to take any active part in
politics. Indeed, few of them even enjoy the privilege
of voting; for those in the Indian Office in Washington
cannot vote except by going back to the State from
which they were appointed, while only a few of those
in the field are attending to their official business in
the States of which they are citizens. This does not
mean that the patronage idea is wholly rooted out of
the Service, for it has the persistency of other noxious

THE INDIAN SERVICE 109

growths; and in spite of the fact that employees who
have come in through a supposed merit test are not
technically beholden as vassals to a lord, it is a com
mon thing for very ambitious ones to drum up their
" influence" whenever they see a chance to advance
their interests by promotion or otherwise. The Com
missioner may resist successfully the deluge of im
portunities from political managers and eminent states
men if a $400 cook discovers an opening at $450 which
she would like, but he has to waste on such trifles a
good deal of time which might be put to better use.
The public men who descend upon him despise their
errand as much as he does, but it is a part of what they
are expected to do under the rules of the political
game, and they do it as cheerfully as they can. If he
is wise, he keeps a sort of waiting list of subordinates
who are deserving of promotion, and, as soon as he
gets wind of a vacancy, selects an employee in a posi
tion further down the scale to fill it. Then, when the
political patron of some other employee calls to press
his client's claims, it is too late, and visitor and host
can divert their conversation to a more edifying topic.
It is a pretty safe presumption that the functionary,
important or petty, who beats the bushes for outside
influence, is conscious of his lack of sufficient unassisted
deserts. Looking up the statistics once, I found that
of all the promotions I had made personally, more
than eighty-five per cent, were of men and women
whose efficiency had made them known to me, though
they not only had not applied for an advance, but
were not even aware that they had been under con-

110 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

sideration; whereas, of the two men who had pulled
wires most persistently and brought to their aid the
biggest figures in Washington life, but failed to get
what they wanted, one is at the present writing a fugi
tive from justice in parts unknown, and the other
is awaiting trial on a criminal indictment of many
counts.

The question is often asked, why more Indians are
not employed in the Indian Service, which at a first
glance seems as if it were the place above all others
adapted to them. The answer is that a great many
are so employed, and that the policy of all the admin
istrations since Commissioner Morgan took office has
been to give educated Indians every practicable chance
to serve their people; but that the experiment of put
ting them into the places of highest responsibility has,
except in rare instances, not worked so successfully
as had been hoped. Their ideas of discipline, as applied
either to themselves or to others under them, are not
ours. It must be borne in mind that the Indian is
passing through a critical era in his evolution. Lifted
suddenly out of the darkness of barbarism into the light
of our civilization, it is not wonderful that he is some
what bewildered by the change, and has more or less
trouble in adjusting his mental vision to it. If a young
tribesman is called upon as a cashier to handle large
sums of money, or as a clerk to take care of a storehouse
full of property, with only such theoretical training
as he has acquired from the study of school text-books,
can we blame him if his accounts become badly con
fused at the start? Or is it to stand against an Indian

THE INDIAN SERVICE 111

girl that, reared in the lax life of the camps and learn
ing only as an alien our code of social proprieties, she
makes an occasional misstep before she fairly gets
her new bearings?

Again, the traditional freedom of the Indians from
those forms of artificial obligation which are second
nature to people of our Caucasian heritage, makes
them impatient of the restraints of office when con
tinued for any great length of time. They get tired,
and are liable for no other cause to throw up their
positions and go home for an interval of leisure. It is,
in fact, the only serious objection a private employer
has ever raised against Indian help, that they cannot
be depended on to stick to one job for a long term, as
white persons will. If such whimsical changefulness is
inconvenient in private business, it may be positively
ruinous in public employ in the Indian West, where
the Government stations are far apart, and usually so
remote from centres of population that other help is
not to be had without great delays, yet where certain
kinds of work are absolutely vital to the maintenance
of a school or agency plant. These conditions will
account for the fact that, though a few Indians here
and there have risen to places of prominence in the
Indian Service, for the most part they are still acting
as assistants to white employees.

Life in the Indian field is not a career of unmixed
enjoyment. The isolation of the posts makes the cost
of living high as compared with neighborhoods where
not everything has to be brought in by thirty, fifty
or one hundred miles of teaming from the railroad.

112 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Cooks who can prepare a digestible meal command so
much better wages in the towns that they are seldom
willing to live far from civilization for long at a time.
The quarters furnished by the Government may or
may not be comfortable; at one point there may be
no vacant place for a man with a family of four or
five except a couple of rather cheerless rooms, whereas
at another there may be no children and every married
couple can have a pleasant cottage to itself. Of so
ciety as a rule there is none outside of the little group
of employees, who may prove agreeable, disagreeable
or indifferent, according as accident has thrown the
right or the wrong persons together. In most respects
an Indian post resembles a frontier fort of the old times,
save that the army officers and their families had
commonly enjoyed similar antecedents, whereas the
Indian Service employees are drawn at random from
every quarter of the country and from all social strata.
These facts will account for the frequency with which
the Commissioner is besieged by his field subordinates
for transfers. An employee finds his present situation
wearing on his nerves, perhaps because of his physical
surroundings, perhaps because of friction with his
companions, perhaps because he has "gone stale"
through the endless monotony of his work; and though
he has little idea what kind of a place he may be sent
to next, he is full of faith that any change will prove a
relief. Those persons who have seen the Indian estab
lishment only from the outside criticise the transfer
practice most severely, and more than one Commis
sioner has entered upon his duties with a firm resolve

THE INDIAN SERVICE 113

that he will break it up. Closer acquaintance with the
subject tends to a more charitable judgment. It is
well to consider each application as an individual propo
sition, and to scrutinize it carefully in the interests of
both Service and servant; for cast-iron general rules
are out of the question unless we would wring all the
human quality out of the business and reduce it to the
dead level of a machine.

Separation from the Service may occur by any of
five processes: limitation of law, if the person con
cerned has been appointed to a position or assigned to
duties for which the appropriation expires on a fixed
date; resignation; death; honorable discharge for
mental disability, or dismissal for cause. Resignation
leaves the retiring civil servant eligible for reappoint-
ment, in the discretion of his superiors, at any time
within a period prescribed by the Civil Service Com
mission; the same is true of his mental disability if it
be satisfactorily relieved; dismissal for cause, however,
debars him not only from reinstatement in the Indian
Service, but from appointment to any other position
in the civil service unless the officer who removed him
is willing to certify that the evidence on which such
action was taken has been discovered to be false and
misleading, and the dismissal therefore undeserved.

As to the publicity attending dismissals, forced resig
nations or refusals to reappoint, every Commissioner
has his own methods. During an administration of
four years and six months, I had occasion to get rid of
nearly forty persons holding positions of responsibility
under me; but in only five or six instances did I feel

114 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

that any good end was to be gained by publishing the
details. A man dropped out of sight, and the people
who had been doing business with him knew it; pros
pective employers who might write to the Indian Office
for an explanation of his retirement were welcome to
it; and the demands of justice had been satisfied by
putting him where he could do no further mischief and
neglect no more public duties; what, then, was the use
of carrying the matter further? It would add nothing
to the good repute of the Service; and in view of the
uncertainties of evidence and the fallibility of hu
man judgment, there usually remained at least a re
mote possibility that a wrong had been done, which
it would be easier to repair later if no unnecessary noise
were made over the event. The few exceptions to
this rule were in the cases of officers who had robbed
the Indians or the Government, got their bondsmen
into trouble and rendered themselves liable to prose
cution, or whose offences in other lines had become
subjects of public scandal.

CHAPTER VII
THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION

Young Indians in the Learned Professions — How Experience
Modifies Expectation — Practical Needs Too Commonly
Overlooked — Importance of Individualizing and Special
izing — The World as a Human Mould — Value of the Out
ing System— What Ten Years of Real Life Did for One
Indian Boy — Different Types of Government Schools —
Open-Air Teaching — Paternalism Run into an Abuse.

I HAVE never made any secret of my somewhat radical
views as to the general limitations which it was ad
visable to set upon the education of young Indians
by the Government; and wherever they have been
published they seemed to strike a responsive chord
among readers who really knew the red race and had
no private interests to serve. But a few well»meaning
friends who have not had an opportunity to study the
field at close range, and have let theory usurp the place
of practical acquaintance, are still full of faith in the
" higher education" as a panacea for most of the ills
of a backward people. If it is so desirable a thing
for white youth, they ask in all sincerity, why not for
the Indian?

The analogy fails at a good many points. The
Indian boy, brought from the camp in early childhood,
and passed from one institution to another till he re-

115

116 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

ceives his final diploma as a graduate in theology, or
a bachelor of arts, or a doctor of medicine, goes to be
gin his life work — where? To New York, or Boston,
or Philadelphia, where philanthropy flourishes? If
so, the chances are that he will die of homesickness, or
starve. As a speaker at church or society meetings,
for a while he may prove an attraction for persons to
whom an educated Indian is a novelty, but such occa
sional appearances do not constitute a livelihood; even
the white altruists will go on employing white lawyers
and white physicians, and will probably prefer the
religious ministrations of a white clergyman. More
over, in an Eastern city the Indian is at the same dis
advantage socially as professionally: though no racial
antagonism raises a barrier against him, neither does
any natural bond attach him sympathetically to his
environment. I am speaking now not as a theorist,
but from personal observation of a number of cases.

Possibly, then, he had better settle in Chicago or St.
Louis, Minneapolis or Omaha — cities so recently in the
frontier zone that they still retain some of its more
liberal atmosphere. I have seen it tried. One ex
perimenter is to-day subsisting by his wits, borrowing
from every chance acquaintance upon whose kindness
he can impose, and never paying; another is pretend
ing to practise his profession in an obscure way, but
actually living on philanthropic subsidies; a third, who
has attempted a series of other callings since failing
at the one for which he was especially educated, ran up
a debt of $400 with a trustful landlady, and took some
three years to pay an instalment of $100 on it, though

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 117

spurred by persistent appeals and threatened with
legal proceedings. These illustrations are typical. I
can at this moment think of only four successes, each
outweighed by a score of conspicuous failures.

Is there nothing left for the Indian professional man
to do? He can go back to his own country. What
awaits him if he does? A little better welcome, per
haps, than he found in the East, but not enough to
satisfy his aspirations for leadership. If he is a physi- '
cian, he has to meet deadly competition with white
physicians in any white community, while among his
own people the old medicine men fight him with a
venom they hardly dare display toward a Caucasian,
for they can hold him up to scorn as a renegade. If
he is a lawyer he stands a larger chance, but the per
sons who bring him cases usually do so because they
hope to use him as a lure for other Indians in some
scheme they are working; and all his surroundings,
including the local standards in professional ethics,
combine to put his probity to a cruel test. As a min
ister he may find employment for his talents in mis
sionary work, but in this field he labors, as a rule, under
white superiors and subject to their discipline.

Even where he has made a failure, we ought not to
blame the Indian. It is his unbalanced white friends
who are accountable. He was in no position to get a
perspective view of his own situation, and to discover
that, however much good raw material there was in
his race, the time was not yet ripe for its utilization in
certain fields. The doctrinaires with whom he has been
thrown have sounded in his ears "the benefits of an

118 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

education" till the phrase has taken on a wholly ficti
tious meaning in his mind. What is this " education/'
he asks himself, which white people crave so much be
cause of the advantage it gives its possessor over his
fellows? It must be something which, once acquired,
will absolve him from further need of hard work, so
that he has only to sit still and spread his lap and let
fortune fill it with prizes.

Indeed, where his instruction is carried no further
than the graduating course at a huge non-reservation
school, the chances are that he has no real conception
of its practical side till the truth is driven into him by
the hard knocks of experience. I asked a group of
Indian school graduates once, soon after their com
mencement exercises, what each expected to do on
entering the outer world. Three-fourths of them, em
bracing both boys and girls, had no definite expecta
tions or ambitions. A few thought they would like to
be missionaries. A rather dull-appearing boy believed
that "the Government ought to give him a job." An
other lad had made up his mind to be a musician and
play in a band. Only one in the entire class had de
cided to go back home at once, take off his coat and
help his father cultivate their farm. Not one had
perfected himself in any skilled trade. I venture a
guess that if these young persons, instead of receiving
a routine mental cramming with material foreign to
their normal element, had been taught merely the
essential rudiments of book-learning, but also how
to do something with their hands well enough to earn
a living with it, every one would have had a better

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 119

start in life. As it is, I doubt whether any except the
farmer and the musician will ever amount to anything.
One of the brighter members of the party, whom I
have met since, has certainly not improved in the ;
interval.

We hear a great deal about the way the " educated"
Indian degenerates after he returns to his reservation.
There are, unhappily, too many illustrations of this
to justify denial or permit evasion. But what can
you expect? Take a boy away from the free open-air
life of an Indian camp, house him for years in a steam-
heated boarding-school in a different climate, change
all his habits as to food, clothing, occupation and rest,
and you risk — what? Either undermining his physique
so that he sickens at the school, or softening it so that
when he returns to the rougher life he cannot keep up
the pac& Morally, too, he has a hard struggle to sus
tain himself, for he has no social background at home
against which to project his new acquirements. The
old people laugh at his un-Indian ways; most of the
young people, even those who have had some teaching
near home, feel estranged from him; his diploma finds
him nothing to do; and he despises the old life while
in no condition to get away from it. Can a less happy
fate be conceived than such suspension between heaven
and earth? Is it wonderful if a lad not over-strong lets
go his hold, and slips back to a last state which seems
vastly worse than the first? With a girl, the chances of
evil are yet greater, for reasons which must be obvious.

But there is another side to this picture, which saves
the courage of those of us who are toiling at the Ind-

120 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

ian problem: the returned student never does, as a
positive fact, fall back quite so far as the point where
he began. His outward condition may be worse, but
he has learned a lesson. He will start his children, if
any come to him, on a much better plane than he
started on; and he will try to see that they receive a
training more practical than that which proved a broken
staff in his own case. He realizes that if he had not
been carried so far up, he would not have had so far to
fall; that if he had devoted the energies of youth to
learning how to shoe a horse, or build a house, or re
pair wagons, or manage a stable or a dairy, or some
thing else which he could have continued to do after
his return home, he might have remained of humbler
mind, but he would have grown richer in character and
in purse. He would have done more for his race, also;
for every time we miseducate an Indian, and the poor
fellow pays the penalty of our philanthropic blunder by
going to pieces, a lot of shallow sophists shout : " What
did we tell you? Anything done for an Indian is
thrown away!" It is another shot for the adversary's
locker.

How are the Indians to live, inquires some one, unless
we educate them to compete with the whites? That
is exactly what I wish to see done; but let us study
fitness in all things. You would not think of teaching
a young man to dye wool in order to prepare him for
work in a cotton factory? You would not train a boy
as a glass-blower and then put him into an iron-foundry
to practise his trade? Yet what you are doing with the
Indian every day is not less inconsequent. Now sup-

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 121

pose, instead of persisting in this folly, you inquire what
there is for a young man to do after he has finished his
schooling, and adapt your teaching to that? You
may not make so brave a show in your paper statistics
of the Indian's "educational progress," but you will
make a big difference for the better with the Indian
himself, and that is of more importance.

Individualize and specialize: there is your funda
mental motto. If a boy is to be a farmer, train him
in those things which are absolutely essential to the
equipment of a farmer at the outset, and then put him
at farming as a hired laborer. His work under such
conditions will teach him what life really means, as well
as how to reduce his theory to practice. If he is to be
a mechanic, train his fingers at school, and then send
him into an outside shop to get his bearings in his trade.
What he needs is practical rather than showy instruc
tion; for the gospel of Indian salvation, if I read it
aright, puts industry at the top of the list of human
virtues. Wherever we find the Indian idle, we find
him a pauper and unruly; wherever we find him busy,
we find him comfortable and docile. He is not slothful
by nature; hence his adjustment to the changed order
of things under our sway means simply a diversion of
the old energy into new channels. And in this process
environment plays a far larger part than lectures or
recitations, the reading of printed pages or the memo
rizing of rules and precepts; for it is a shaping process,
and the real world makes a better mould than any
artificially organized institution.

When Captain Pratt started the Indian school at

122 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Carlisle, Pa., he hit upon one idea which in my judg
ment will remain as the great monument of his life
work when all the rest of the school's notable features
have passed into oblivion: this is the " outing sys
tem/7 which consists of placing the boys and girls, for
a part of each year, in white families where they can
learn to work and earn money. I have had occasion
to differ in opinion with him on so many points that it
gives me all the more pleasure to add here my small
tribute to his fame. His establishment of the outing
system was an inspiration. It brought the young
Indian into contact with the big white world outside
of the walls of a seminary of learning. The boy who
spent his summer in the hay-field, the girl who helped a
good wife in the kitchen or the poultry-yard, got more
that was of value from such little excursions into real
life than if they had mastered the contents of the whole
school library.

Keep always in mind the truth that whatever brings
the Indian into closer touch with whites who are earn
ing their living by hard work, is of prime importance as
an educating influence. I am not blind to the fact that
in rubbing up against his white neighbor the Indian is
liable to acquire a few bad Caucasian traits along with
the good ones. That is a rule of life generally where
the weaker individual is thrown into contact with the
stronger multitude. But how much better off is the
unsophisticated boy for being shut up in a hot closet
instead of being sent out to seek his fortune? As the
remoter corners of the country fill up, the Indian will
have to mix with the whites, whether for good or ill;

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 123

would he be any better fitted for this a hundred years
hence than now, if we kept him socially isolated till
then?

While on this phase of the subject I am reminded
of the case of a young Sioux, one of the most interest
ing Indians I have ever met, who for some years spent
his winters following the usual routine at a Gov
ernment school, and his summers working on a white
man's farm. This latter experience wore off much of
his natural shyness, and taught him that there were
some white people and white ways worth knowing — a
fact which he had always heard denied on the reserva
tion. When he finished his schooling he had a little
money saved from his wages as a farm laborer, and he
thought he would like to see what sort of a place New
York was. A trip to the great city was no trifling
venture for an Indian lad from the far West, but he
made it. At one of the wharves he found an ocean
ship just about to weigh anchor. Stepping aboard to
look around, the fancy seized him to try his luck as a
sailor before the mast, Though he had never seen even
a catboat till he came east, and no larger body of water
than a good-sized creek, he took kindly to his calling
and continued to follow the sea for five years, visiting
every quarter of the globe. His last voyage landed
him at Manila, where he saw a regiment of United
States troops recruiting, and decided to enlist. He re
mained a soldier for five years more, and was then sent
back to the United States. There seemed only one place
to go — to his reservation. Four days later he stood in
the Agent's office, applying for something to do.

124 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

"I have nothing for you," said the Agent, "unless
you are willing to take the place of a man who is just
leaving my personal employ. He takes care of my
horses and milks my cow, and I give him twenty dol
lars a month. If you think you can live on that, you
may have the job."

A bargain was struck on the spot, and the young
Indian went to work. He succeeded very well, and in
course of time wooed and won a girl of his own race
who had learned at school how to cook and wash and
iron and take care of a home. His father-in-law, who
was pretty well to do, gave the young couple a feast
to celebrate their wedding. In the midst of it the
clock struck five. That was the hour at which my
young friend was accustomed to milk the Agent's cow.
So away from the guests he slipped, drew on his over
alls, and started for the barn as usual. He had milked
the cow, and was carrying the pail into the house, when
he met the Agent coming out.

"Why!" exclaimed the Agent in surprise. "I had
just engaged another man to take your place for the
afternoon. I had no idea of asking you to leave your
wedding feast."

"It was milking time," answered the young man,
simply, "so I came over. That is what you hired me
for. I am going back after I put away the milk."

Any one who knows an Indian reservation will agree
with me that this was an extraordinary incident —
not because the Indian boys wantonly neglect their
duty, but because very few have had the instinct of
responsibility so cultivated in them that they would

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 125

think of a task in the presence of pleasure. Never in
a hundred years would that young Sioux have learned
to do such a thing if he had pursued the ordinary life
of his people at home. Never would he have learned
it from the admonitions of his teachers at school. It
was his intimate mingling with the whites — falling into
their ways on the farm, under the stern discipline of
the ship, and in the military ranks — that had made
a man of him, with a man's sense of obligation. Such
instances could be multiplied; but I shall leave the
reader to say what will happen in our educational work
if we persist in trying to " educate" the Indian from
above downward, instead of starting with him on the
ground from which he must be raised.

And how has the Government begun? It has es
tablished three classes of schools: the day-schools,
planted in the centres of Indian population, wher
ever the juvenile contingent in the neighboring families
is large enough to assure an attendance of twenty or
thirty pupils; the reservation boarding-schools, situ
ated, as their title implies, within reservations, but
furnishing their pupils with a home as well as instruc
tion; and the non-reservation boarding-schools, placed
in the heart of white civilization, and purposely so
equipped and environed as to wean the pupils away
from all associations of their former life among their
own people.

For reasons plain to any one familiar with the dis
parity of local conditions, the Indian day-school in the
most primitive part of the frontier differs widely from
the white day-school anywhere; and, in spite of my

126 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

desire to assimilate the races as far as practicable in all
their activities, I have tried to accentuate this con
trast in one or two respects. To me the most pathetic
sight in the world is a score of little red children of
nature corralled in a close room, and required to re
cite lessons in concert and go through the conventional
daily programme of one of our graded common schools.
The white child, born into a home that has a perma
nent building for its axis, passing most of its time
within four solid walls, and breathing from its cradle
days the atmosphere of wholesale discipline, is in a
way prepared for the confinement and the mechanical
processes of our system of juvenile instruction. The
little Indian, on the other hand, is descended from a
long line of ancestors who have always lived in the
open and have never done anything in mass routine;
and what sort of antecedents are these to fit him for
the bodily restraints and the cut-and-dried mental
exercises of his period of pupilage? Our ways are
hard enough for him when he is pretty well grown; but
in his comparative babyhood — usually his condition
when first captured for school purposes — I can con
ceive of nothing more trying.

My heart warmed toward an eminent educator who
once told me that if he could have the training of our
Indian children he would make his teachers spend the
first two years lying on the ground in the midst of the
little ones, and, making a play of study, convey to them
from the natural objects right at hand certain funda
mental principles of all knowledge. I dare say that
this plan, just as stated, would be impracticable under

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 127

the auspices of a Government whose purse-strings are
slow to respond to the pull of any innovation. But I
should like to see the younger classes in all the schools
hold their exercises in the open air whenever the
weather permits. Indeed, during the last year of my
administration I established a few experimental school-
houses, in regions where the climate did not present too
serious obstacles, which had no side-walls except fly-
screen nailed to studding, with flaps to let down on the
windward sides in stormy weather.

I do not mean that I regard the difference between
in-door and out-door instruction as vital in the scheme
of Indian schools; but this item serves as well as any
other to exemplify the general principle that we shall
succeed best by beginning the new life as nearly as
possible where the old life left off. We should not
make the separation any more violent than necessary;
and it is pleasant to note that the more intelligent
teachers in the Indian Service are ignoring books as
far as they can in the earlier stages of their work. They
are teaching elementary mathematics with feathers, or
pebbles, or grains of corn; then the relations of num
bers to certain symbols on the blackboard are made
clear, and thus the pupils are led along almost uncon
sciously from point to point. Had a system like this
been in vogue twenty years ago, an Indian who after
ward became a bank teller would have been spared a
confession he once made to me, that he had reached
full man's estate before he understood why he multi
plied four by five in order to find out how much four
pounds of sugar would cost at five cents a pound!

128 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Throughout his school life he had been an expert
mathematician, yet figures meant nothing to him but
so many pure abstractions which could be put through
sundry operations mechanically; they bore no relation
in his mind to any concrete object in nature.

An Indian day-school plant consists ordinarily of a
school-house of rather simple construction, a teacher's
quarters built either against it as an ell or as a de
tached cottage, possibly a barn and storehouse, and a
tract of land large enough for a kitchen-garden. This
general plan is subject to such modifications as special
considerations may demand; its broad aim is to make
the Government day-school perform for the young
Indians all the functions that the district school in ru
ral white communities performs for the children tribu
tary to it, but with some marked additions. It teaches
them to read and write English and to cipher a little;
the boys learn also how to raise vegetables, and per
haps to harness a horse and milk a cow, to build and
mend a fence, and the like; the girls learn sewing,
cooking, washing and ironing, how to set a table and
make a bed, and in some cases the care of poultry and
the rudiments of dairy work. This variety of instruc
tion presupposes the presence of instructors of both
sexes, so provision is always made at such schools for a
man and wife, one acting as teacher and the other as
housekeeper or farmer as the case may be. A simple
luncheon is spread at noon, consisting of bread,
molasses and beans, with an occasional diversion if
the children have succeeded well enough with their
gardening to raise a few melons or a little corn or fruit.

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 129

The boarding-schools are supposed to take children
of a somewhat more advanced age and intelligence
than those who are gathered into the day-schools,
and to give them a more extended course of study.
They also supply a definite need on reservations where
it is impracticable to extend the day-school system
beyond its present dimensions; as for example, where
the Indian families are so thinly scattered over a
large area that it would be out of the question for any
considerable number of children to walk daily to one
school, or where the parents are engaged at an occu
pation like sheep-herding, which requires them to shift
camp from season to season. The design kept in view
by the advocates of the non-reservation boarding-
schools, in carrying the children hundreds of miles
away from home and trying to teach them to sever all
their domestic ties and forget or despise everything
Indian, is to surround them with white people and in
stitutions for the whole formative period of their lives,
and thus induce them to settle down among the whites
and carve out careers for themselves as the young
people of other races do.

This theory has always had its attractions for a cer
tain class of minds, but in practice it has not worked
out as expected. Its most ambitious exponent is the
Carlisle Indian School, set in the midst of a thrifty
farming country. If any experiment in that line could
hope to succeed, this one ought to have succeeded. It
has been followed by more than a score of similar
ventures in the West. A few of these schools were un
doubtedly established, as Carlisle was, in response to

130 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

what their authors believed to be a real demand of the
cause of Indian civilization; but in course of time the
establishment of new non-reservation schools became a
mere meaningless habit. Some Senator or Representa
tive in Congress would take a fancy to adorn his home
town with a Government institution, and, if the supply
of custom-houses and pension agencies and agricultural
experiment stations happened for the moment to be
running short, he would stir about to secure votes for
an Indian school. Any educational project can count
on a certain amount of legislative support on the
strength of its name; and, once established, of course
a school has to be kept up with goodly annual appro
priations. What matter if the Indians do not care to
send their children to it? Then the thing to do is to
coax, urge, beg, till they give way. If opportunity to
obtain an education free of cost does not offer enough
attractions in itself, organize a brass band and a foot
ball eleven for the boys, and a mandolin club and a
basket-ball team for the girls, circulate pictorial pam
phlets showing the young players in all their brave
regalia, and trust the stay-at-home children to wheedle
their parents into consenting!

Nay, until a year or two ago it was the custom, when
all mere material devices failed, to give one of the most
wide-awake school employees a long leave of absence
on full pay, in consideration of his going to this or that
reservation and bringing back twenty children. Never
mind how he got them — the one point was to get them,
good or bad, sound or weakly, anything that would pass
a very perfunctory scrutiny and add one name to the

THEORY AND FACT IN EDUCATION 131

school roll. And when two or three such canvassers,
representing rival schools, came into collision on the
same reservation, resorted to every trick to outwit
each other, and competed with bigger and bigger bids
for the favor of parents of eligible children, what was
the Indian to think? Is it wonderful that a certain
old-fashioned Sioux asked a missionary teacher: "How
much will you give me if I let my boy go to your school?
That other teacher says he will give me an overcoat!"

CHAPTER VIII

TIME FOR A TURNING

Overhauling the Indian School System — Day-Schools and
Their Influence — Mutual Needs of Parent and Child —
The Educational Almshouse and the Harm It Does —
Necessity for a Compulsory School Law — Stunting Effect
of the Institutional Routine — A Big Boarding-School as a
Machine — Perils of the Herding Process — A Benevolent
Beginning and a Wasteful End — How to Get Back to
Common Sense.

THE Government's educational programme in behalf of
the Indian race calls for a thorough overhauling.
Our schools are run too much on machine methods,
yet each school is so far a law unto itself that the Ser
vice as a whole lacks singleness of aim and harmony
of action. The schools need to be unified, vitalized,
and brought not only into consistency with each other
but also into active relation with the objects outside
of themselves for whose advancement they exist. In
the instruction of their pupil body, standardization
should give way to individualization. As will be seen,
some of the disorders are systemic, some affect only
the surface. To undertake the consideration of all
would require more space than can be spared for one
subject in a volume like this. The most I can do is to
point out a few fundamental mistakes which have

132

TIME FOR A TURNING 133

their origin in the fact that we began at the wrong
end of the educational process. Unpleasant as such a
confession may be, good conscience demands that we
frankly make it, call a halt, and work back as best we
may till we reach normal conditions again.

About a dozen years ago I passed some time as an
inmate of a Hopi dwelling in Arizona. Our party oc
cupied the large room of the house, and the woman of
the family took care of it for us, made our beds, cooked
our meals, set our table and washed our dishes, all
with the assistance of her two little daughters, aged
eleven and thirteen years respectively. Moreover,
she performed these housewifely duties as well as they
would have been performed in most of the white set
tlers7 cabins in the Southwestern desert. In response
to inquiries, she told me that all she knew in this line
she had learned from her daughters, who attended the
day-school at the foot of the mesa, and who brought
home every evening something of what they had ab
sorbed, thus giving their mother, in a manner so unob
trusive that she was scarcely conscious of it, a share in
the benefits of their daily training. The children were
happy as well as useful; from other examples I had
studied, I felt sure that they would continue to take
part in the ordinary life of the pueblo, but with a good
equipment in primary instruction and a few fixed civ
ilized habits which would raise them one step above
their environment without taking them completely out
of touch with it. What their mother had learned, she
was already turning to practical account in her regu
lar round of work, and by degrees other women who

134 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

associated with her would be drawn into doing the
same things in the same way. I describe this case
not because it is unique, but merely as one of a hun
dred possible illustrations showing through how wide a
circle the influence of one small school in the Indian
country may radiate, if planted in the right place and
managed in the right fashion.

Suppose, instead of having her girls continually
under her eye, and picking up through them her scraps
of knowledge of a cleaner, more orderly, and vastly
more healthful mode of housekeeping than that which
had been handed down to her, she had seen them sent
away to a distant boarding-school, to be absolutely
separated from her for five years, to be taught to look
upon their home as an odious place and upon their
parents as degraded and unworthy of their respect,
and to be returned at last aliens in speech, in dress,
in manners, and, alas! probably also in affections? No
white mother need be told that her children are as
necessary to her development as she is to theirs, or
reminded what it would be to her to be robbed of their
companionship during a long period while they were in
process of transformation into foreigners. And if a
woman in the midst of civilization, surrounded with
everything which makes life interesting and attractive,
mourns when she misses from her home the little folk
for whom she must make daily sacrifices, fancy what
a like experience must be for the poor, starved soul
whose lot is cast in a pitiless wilderness, with no intel
lectual resources to divert her thoughts. For the In
dian mother, ignorant, coarse, uncouth though she

TIME FOR A TURNING 135

may be, loves her babies with the same fervor as if she
were cultured, and graceful, and white.

Passing from the consideration of the home to that
of the community, we saw in the last preceding chapter
what is liable to happen to the Indian youth who has
spent all his plastic years in civilization and returns to
his former barbarous surroundings. Instead of forging
to the front among his own people through their ready
homage to a trained intellect, as the white youth does
when he returns to his native village with university
honors, he exerts no influence whatever upon them be
yond inflaming their distaste for everything civilized.
Had he enjoyed fewer advantages but shared these
with the Indians about him as he went along, the con
sequences would have been far more satisfactory for
every one concerned.

So the whole subject pivots on the question whether
we shall carry civilization to the Indian or carry the
Indian to civilization, and the former seems to me in
finitely the wiser plan. To plant our schools among
the Indians means to bring the older members of the
race within the sphere of influence of which every
school is a centre. This certainly must be the basis
of any practical effort to uplift a whole people. For
its demonstration we do not have to look beyond our
experience with Caucasian communities, where it is
obvious that the effect produced upon the character
as well as the intelligence of any neighborhood by hav
ing abundant school facilities close at hand, is by no
means confined to the generation actually under the
teacher's daily ministrations.

136 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Although we cannot afford to dispense wholly with
boarding-schools among certain tribes still nomadic in
their habits or whose homes are very widely scattered,
yet we could reduce the difficulties of the situation to
a minimum by confining such schools to the reserva
tions, where the children may be within easy enough
reach of their parents to enable the latter to see them at
frequent intervals. Indeed, an improvement which
I had started to work out while in office, and which I
hope may be developed, involves the rearrangement
of the school year in this class of institutions. The
present practice of keeping all pupils for a ten-months
term I consider a mistake, especially in those places
where the adult Indians are already well along on the
road to civilization and self-support. Children between
the ages of five and twelve ought not to be separated
for the larger part of a year from their homes and par
ents; it would be wiser to let them attend three months
in the fall and three months in the spring, choosing
those seasons in which they would need least coddling
and when they could spend all except a few study
hours daily out of doors. Well-grown boys and girls
from fifteen to twenty years old, whose help is neces
sary to their parents on the family farm and in the
household, could be taken only for the winter months,
when there is least of their kind of work to do at home
and they can most easily be spared. The intermediate
group, say, thirteen and fourteen years of age, are
at a stage in life when their strength is most liable to
be overtaxed, and when mind, body, and moral nat
ure are most in danger of suffering an incurable warp;

TIME FOR A TURNING 137

I should therefore take special care to surround them
with a normal and wholesome environment, encourag
ing them to work in the home gardens in the spring,
and in the neighboring orchards, if there are any, in
the fall, and take such time as is left to do their
studying. This is a plan which has become opera
tive in rural communities of white people of modest
means, having grown naturally out of their own neces
sities.

Albeit boarding-schools on reservations are far pref
erable to those at a distance, all boarding-schools con
ducted on the lines laid down by the Government for the
civilization of the Indians are an anomaly in our Amer
ican scheme of popular instruction. They furnish gratu
itously not only tuition, but food, clothing, lodging, and
medical supervision during the whole period for which
a pupil is enrolled. In other words, they are simply
educational almshouses. Nay, though ostensibly de
signed to stimulate a manly spirit of independence in
their beneficiaries, their charitable phase is obtrusively
pushed forward as an attraction, instead of wearing the
brand which makes the almshouse so repugnant to
Caucasian sentiment. Thus is fostered in the Indian
an ignoble willingness to accept unearned privileges;
from learning to accept them he gradually comes to
demand them as a right* with the result that in cer
tain parts of the West the only conception his white
neighbors entertain of him is that of a beggar as ag
gressive as he is shameless. Was ever a worse wrong
perpetrated upon a weaker by a stronger race?

Unhappily, our generation cannot go back and make

138 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

over from the start conditions which have come down
to us by inheritance. We can, however, do the next
best thing, and avoid extending and perpetuating
errors for which we are not responsible, and we can
improve every available opportunity for reducing their
burden. Just as we have undertaken to free the In
dian from the shackles which the reservation system
has imposed upon his manhood, so we should recognize
it as a duty to free him from the un-American and
pauperizing influences which still invest his path to
civilization through the schools. The rudiments of
an education, such as can be given his children in the
little day-school, should remain within their reach,
precisely as they are within the reach of the white
children who must be neighbors and competitors of
the Indian children in their joint struggle for a live
lihood. This being a reciprocal obligation — the right
of the child, red or white, to enough instruction to en
able him to hold his own as a citizen, and the right of
the Government to demand thus much of every person
entrusted with a ballot — I believe in compelling the
Indian parent, whether he wishes to or not, and by
physical duress if necessary, to give his offspring such
advantages. The $2,000,000 a year which we have
been spending on the non-reservation schools, if spent
in expanding and strengthening the Indians' home
schools, would have accomplished a hundredfold more
good, unaccompanied by the most harmful effects upon
the character of the race.

But how shall we get rid of the non-reservation
schools? Close them to-morrow, hang out the auction-

TIME FOR A TURNING 139

eer's flag, and appoint a receiver? That is not neces
sary. If we have reached a turning in our long lane
of well-meant folly, we can drop these schools one by
one, or two by two, so as to produce the least practica
ble disturbance of conditions; and even in those which
we retain for a limited time we can make salutary
changes. First of all, the distinctively Indian ele
ment in their composition should be wiped out com
pletely. Where else does the United States Govern
ment maintain similar race bars in education? It is
our business to strive everywhere to erase those lines
which still rule off the Indian as a separate civic en
tity. Ethnically, he will always remain an Indian, with
Indian color, Indian traits of mind, Indian ancestral
traditions, and the like; and there is nothing to deplore
in that, for he has abundant reason for all his pride of
race. But as a citizen of our republic and an equal
sharer with his fellows of every blood in their common
privileges and responsibilities, I shall be glad to see the
last mark expunged which tends to keep alive in his
mind any civil distinctions and confuse his sense of
allegiance,

The proposed obliteration of the exclusively Indian
character of the schools can be accomplished by throw
ing them open to pupils of all races alike. But the
maintenance of institutions of the higher learning,
looking to no special and direct end for the national
profit, does not seem to me a legitimate function of the
United States Government. I should prefer, there
fore, that if the Government has no administrative use
to which to put one of these institutions, it should say

140 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

to the State in which the premises are situated: "Here
is a school plant of some value, in good order. It has
industrial shops, a small farm, school-rooms, dormi
tories. We will make you a gift outright of the whole
establishment if you will agree to continue it as an in
dustrial school, and to put a proviso into its charter
that for the next ensuing ninety-nine years any Indian
who wishes an education there may have his tuition
free." Such an arrangement, which has already been
made in a few cases since I proposed it officially, gives
the ambitious young Indian enough of an advantage
to satisfy the sentimental demands of the situation,
without, on the one hand, continuing his present
subjection to the degrading influence of gratuities,
or, on the other, putting such burdens upon the
State.

The only argument with even a color of merit that
I have ever heard advanced in favor of the perpetua
tion of the non-reservation school system came from
a missionary who, after descanting on the demerits
of such schools, added: "Still, they offer the only
chance the children on my reservation get for seeing
the outside world." When I inquired how much of the
real world a child saw while mewed up within the com
pound of a school conducted under the strictest in
stitutional discipline, she admitted that it was little.
"But," she persisted, "they do see a good deal when
they are sent away to the homes and farms of the
neighborhood under the outing system." I was obliged
to remind her that this was actually an argument
against the schools, as the outing system was so styled

TIME FOR A TURNING 141

because it took children out of a school in order to
teach them something they could never learn inside
of it. Besides, I was then engaged in building up an
outing system on a vastly broader and more practical
basis than had ever been known before, to include the
schools on the reservations; and its fundamental idea
was that the active employment of the young people,
at wages measured by the hard market value of their
labor instead of by the artificial standards of philan
thropy, gives them much clearer and more useful
views of life than any outing system devised as part
of a school curriculum. It has also the virtue of
serving as a test of character under the very conditions
which will confront them after they leave school to
seek a living.

An objection to all Indian boarding-schools, whether \
on or off a reservation, is that a pupil grows up amid
surroundings which he will never see duplicated in his
own home. Steam-heating, electric lighting, mechani~;
cal apparatus for doing everything — these cultivate \
in him a contempt for the primitive contrivances >
which must make up his environment as a poor settler [
in a frontier country. His notions of the relations of
things are distorted; for his mind is not developed
enough to sift and assort his observations and distin
guish between essentials and non-essentials, between
the comforts which are within his reach and the
luxuries which are beyond his legitimate aspiration.
The cost of keeping up one of these establishments
with its army of employees will hardly be appreciated
till the inquirer runs his eye over the roster of a

142 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

large non-reservation school and finds there under
regular salary:

1 superintendent
1 assistant superintendent
1 financial clerk
4 ordinary clerks
1 assistant clerk
1 principal teacher
1 senior teacher
1 normal teacher
14 ordinary teachers
1 drawing teacher
1 sloyd teacher
1 physician
1 outing agent
1 girls' field agent

1 librarian

2 matrons

3 assistant matrons
1 nurse

1 seamstress

3 assistant seamstresses

1 laundry manager

2 assistant laundresses
1 farmer

1 assistant farmer

1 band conductor

1 instructor in tailoring

1 instructor in harness-making

1 instructor in shoemaking

1 instructor in tinsniithing

1 instructor in painting

1 instructor in blacksmithing

1 assistant blacksmith

1 instructor in carpentry

1 assistant carpenter

1 superintendent of industries

1 disciplinarian

1 quartermaster

1 housekeeper

1 school cook

1 hospital cook

1 baker

1 dairyman

1 printer

1 florist

1 engineer

1 fireman

1 teamster.

To maintain the long pay-roll of the school, and to
buy the food and the clothes and the fuel and the man
ifold other necessaries of its wholesale housekeeping,
the Government pays $167 a year for each pupil taken
care of. Besides that, it pays by separate appropria
tions the Superintendent's salary, which, let us say,
is $2,500; for the cost of transporting the pupils from
and to their homes; for sundry additions to the plant
like a larger well, or a new boiler-house, or a more
modern steam-engine; $4;000 to $10,000 for "general

TIME FOR A TURNING 143

repairs and improvements/' and the like, bringing the
total charge up to $200 or more per pupil. Yet these
figures are what remain after the Indian Office has
trimmed down, with what looks like a merciless hand,
the estimates turned in by the Superintendent in his
zeal.

Contrast such an exhibit with that presented by
the day-school, where we find a simple building and a
simple equipment, with only a teacher and housekeeper
in charge; or, if the school outgrows the dimensions
within which these two persons can do all the necessary
work, one or two more teachers are employed. The cost
per pupil ranges from about $36 a year to $67, according
to the number enrolled in a single school. A safe aver
age for the whole day-school system would be $50 per
pupil, or, say, one-fourth of what we are spending on
each pupil in the non-reservation boarding-schools.
In other words, we are spending to-day on a part of our
Indian school population at least twice as much as
could be profitably spent in giving to the whole of it
the facilities it needs. No taxpayer would begrudge
the expense, in itself considered, if it really accom
plished any substantial good; but when the benefits of
our school system in one direction are nullified, or
worse, by its influence in another, the resultant shows
that what started as a benevolent extravagance has
degenerated into a pernicious waste.

Again, we must not overlook the fact that the young
people gathered in the big schools are of both sexes,
and drawn from a socially undeveloped race. They
are in the adolescent period of their lives when even

144 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

among white boys and girls, with a long line of con
vention-bred ancestors behind them, it is not generally
deemed advisable to permit very close and constant
intercourse. No one who has not sat in such a con
fessional as the office of the head of the Indian Service
can appreciate fully what this means. Some of the
leading mission organizations understand it, though,
and have taken warning from the Government's ex
perience and established separate schools for the two
sexes.

So much for the economic and moral phases of the
question; but it presents another phase which appeals
to the humane mind as equally important. The un
informed reader would be startled if he could travel
through the frontier country as I have travelled for so
many years, and hear from their own lips the opinions
of physicians, missionaries and others familiar with
the subject through living long among the Indians,
that the big boarding-schools, with their herding
practice and their institutional routine, their steam-
heated buildings and their physical confinement, fur
nish ideal conditions for the development of germ dis
eases among the race put through the forcing process
there. To these may be added the testimony of old
experienced members of the Indian Field Service, that
the greatest percentage of cases of tuberculosis on
their reservations is to be found among the pupils re
turned from the non-reservation schools before grad
uation.

The whole method of conducting these schools is
conducive of unwholesome conditions for young peo-

TIME FOR A TURNING 145

pie who have been always accustomed themselves,
and are descended from an ancestry always accus
tomed, to the freest open-air life. It may be asked
why it would not be better to change a method than
to break up a school; but the fact is that the method
is practically the only one which can be pursued in an
institution where several hundred undisciplined chil
dren are crowded together continuously for a series of
years, and nearly everything has to be done on a whole
sale scale if it is to be done at all. As long as the ap
propriations for such schools continue to be voted by
the legislative branch of the Government, it will be the
duty of the executive branch to make as effective use of
the money as possible; hence the Indian Office has been
obliged to apply palliatives rather than remedies to
existing evils. As a first measure of relief I issued in
1908 two circulars, designed to insure more faithful en
forcement of our regulations against taking from the
reservations children who were too young, or mentally
deficient, or of weak constitution, or actually diseased,
removing them recklessly from a rare to a heavy cli
mate or from a cold to a hot one, or vice versa, and
mixing them with a horde of other children gathered
with equally little discrimination. For out of the cus
tom of sending irresponsible canvassers into the field to
collect children, had grown up a regular traffic in these
helpless little red people. The appropriations for the
support of the schools being based upon the number
of children who could be gathered into them at the
rate of $167 a head, the canvasser occupied to all intents
the position of a supply agent who received his com-

146 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

pensation, in favors from his Superintendent, accord
ing to the success of his foray. How many grades
higher in moral quality was such commerce in human
flesh and blood than that once conducted on the
Guinea Coast?

The competition between the schools had become so
intense that sometimes two canvassers would lay hold
of one child and each would devise schemes to steal
I it away from the other. The parents, in many cases,
had to be entrapped into consenting, as they had had
so sad experiences in the past with children whom
they had been lured into letting go, only to have them
sent home in the last stages of consumption. So the
circulars, one of which was addressed to the Superin
tendents of reservations and the other to the Super
intendents of non-reservation schools, forbade the
sending of any more canvassers for children; gave
the parents the same freedom of choice between schools
that white parents have; and required that pains
should be taken to have every parent informed of the
distance his children would have to travel if they went
to any given school, the climatic and other conditions
they would face there, the courses of study, the in
dustries taught, and so forth. Pressure of any sort
was rigidly forbidden, and the Superintendent of a
reservation, whom the Indian Office holds responsible
for the welfare of the Indians under his care, was
made the party accountable for seeing that the chil
dren's interests were properly protected and that the
whole business of recruiting the schools was carried on
in a seemly and honorable manner.

TIME FOR A TURNING 147

Independent of the broader reasons I have already
cited for issuing these circulars, I had two administra
tive ends in view. Discoveries of various forms of
petty graft growing out of the old canvassing system
showed that it was undermining the morale of the
Service; and it seemed to me that there was especial
need of a sound moral basis for the conduct of persons
who were to serve as exemplars as well as instructors
of children. Also, I believed that the proposed de
parture would prove whether any of the schools were
really so firmly grounded in popular favor among the
Indians, or in their own records for honest manage
ment and effective work, as represented by their re
spective champions, and hence worthy of exception
ally liberal treatment thereafter for such time as it
might be deemed desirable to retain them.

Meanwhile, as it was fair to assume that certain of
the best-known schools would continue to receive sup
port for some years longer, and as I have always felt
that whatever was done with Government institutions
ought to be well done, I undertook to modify their
courses of study so as to strengthen particular features
in each with the purpose of letting it gradually special
ize in the lines which its location, climate and other
circumstances particularly fitted it to follow. For ex
ample, the school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is the only
one of its kind planted in the East. Hence I tried to
emphasize there those applied arts whose products
find their largest market in the East, and to encourage
the attendance only of those Indian youth who enter
tained a notion of settling in the East, or who needed

148 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

familiarity with Eastern conditions in order to succeed
somewhere else, and who in any event were strong
enough physically, and well enough trained in taking
care of themselves, to be safely sent so far from home
and into a wholly unaccustomed climate. Haskell In
stitute, in Lawrence, Kansas, being situated in the
Middle West, is near the best market for Indian cleri
cal labor, and hence I felt that special stress ought to
be laid there on the business course, with its drill in
stenography, typewriting, bookkeeping and the like.
Sherman Institute is in the heart of the California or
ange country, so that fruit culture ought to, and does,
fill a large place in its curriculum. These examples
will suffice to convey the idea of what I had in view
in the development of non-reservation schools along
the lines which nature, rather than human whim or
artifice, had marked out for them.

For obvious reasons this chapter has been largely a
record of, or a deduction from, personal experience and
observation, and I cannot expect that every one who
feels an interest in the Indian question will agree with
my philosophy, at least at the outset. But I realize
pretty well from what quarters the opposition will come,
even setting aside those critics who are afraid of losing
supply-contracts, or salaries, or reputations as educa
tors built up on sentiment. For instance, the Govern
ment's original fixed investment in lands and build
ings at the non-reservation schools would, if footed up,
represent some $3,000,000, and there are not a few
prudent economists who would put this forward as an
argument for continuing to spend an equal sum every

TIME FOR A TURNING 149

two years on current expense account for something
not needed.

Again, there will come to the front the public men
and prominent private citizens who have procured the
establishment of Indian boarding-schools in or near
their home towns, expecting these institutions to stand
forever as monuments to the authors of their being and
as show-places to attract visitors. " Abandon all the
rest," they will plead, "but spare ours." Yet again,
there will come opposition from an element in the com
munity who are public-spirited in a general way but
uninformed as to details and not much interested in
them; who believe, as a fundamental tenet in the creed
of good citizenship, in " education," without having
considered the real meaning of the term; who, visiting
a public institution, found their judgment of its merits
on the cleanliness of the buildings and the neatness of
the lawns, the orderly way in which the inmates march
to and from their meals or recite formulas in concert in
the assembly hall. They regard the well-fed and well-
dressed Indian child who can reel off the list of Presi
dents, or draw a map in colors, as " civilized," without
looking beneath the surface or asking what is to be
come of him after quitting school for good.

Though Congress has already heeded the admonition
that the time has come for a turning, it is feeling its
way with a good deal of caution. But in spite of the
fact that it is not reducing the number of non-reserva
tion schools at the rate which circumstances would
well warrant, it is furnishing a more and more gener
ous budget for the extension of the day-school system.

150 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

The buildings erected with this money are by no means
so elaborate as those built in former times for day-
school accommodation, for it seems absurd to spend
from $5,000 to $8,000 for a house which can be fur
nished, abundant in size and equipment, for $1,500.
The Indian Office is now keeping steadily in view its
ultimate plan with regard to these day-schools, of
turning them over to the States in which they lie, as
soon as white settlers and taxpayers have come thither
in sufficient multitude to justify the establishment of
a local system of common schools.

And finally, every Indian parent who lives near
enough to a common school to send his children there,
is encouraged to do so instead of sending them to a
Government school. In such cases the Government
pays to the county authorities monthly whatever fee
per pupil may lawfully be charged. All this is in the
line of mixing the races socially, and mixing them in
a natural and rational way.

CHAPTER IX
THE INDIAN AT WORK

When the Indian Will Labor and When He Will Not— The
Government's Mistaken Methods of Old — Operations of
the Employment Bureau — Training Adults in the Mechan
ical Trades— The Crow Fair— Illiterate Indians Who Have
Proved Their Mettle — The Native Handicrafts — Young
Indians in the Army and Navy — Adventures of the Absen
tee Utes — The Object-Lesson of the Hungry Stomach.

WILL the Indian work? This is the question put to me
oftener perhaps than any other by persons who are un
familiar with the recent policies and operations of the
Office of Indian Affairs. The notion that the Indian
is by nature indolent and by habit an idler has been so
impressed upon the minds of the American people that
it is hard to shake loose. As a matter of fact, the Indian
is just like you and me and all the rest of humankind:
he will work when he has to; and he will continue to
work as long as the pressure of necessity is strong
enough to keep alive his consciousness that this is all
that lies between him and starvation. When the
pressure is relieved, he ceases to work. Where he
differs from the Caucasian is in the use he makes of
the fruits of his labor; for he applies literally to his
own conduct the old saw which the white man only
quotes now and then as a figurative argument, that

151

152 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

"enough is as good as a feast." When he has satisfied
the needs of the moment, therefore, he desists from
further toil as a useless waste of energy. His wants
are few and simple; his mode of living, inherited from
his ancestors, is itself a bar to accumulation; so he
lays nothing by, trusting to-morrow to supply its own
requirements just as to-day did.

We have come, in our highly organized society, to
treat unthrift and idleness as synonymous terms, and
it is through this confusion that the Indian has ac
quired his undeserved reputation of being lazy by
nature. Among our own people we see men who have
been compelled by domestic exigencies to delve night
and day for all the earlier part of their lives, and have
thus become, by force of habit, mere working ma
chines. It is doubtful, however, whether more than
one in every hundred is aware how much of an autom
aton he has grown to be; the ninety-and-nine will
tell you that they are laying up fortunes now for the
purpose of enjoying life later. The Indian, too, works
now in order that he may enjoy life later, but his
" later" means a different thing: he takes his recrea
tion at frequent intervals, instead of putting off all this
till he is old and incapable of a full measure of enjoy
ment. Thus, even when he is most industrious, he
escapes conversion into a mechanical drudge. Modern
neurologists recommend his methods to their patients
as a precaution against premature senility; yet no
one thinks of charging chronic laziness upon the white
man who, in pursuance of his physician's advice,
stops his engine and banks his fires from time to time.

THE INDIAN AT WORK 153

Not a few of the Indian's critics will be found among
the men who in past days have had charge of the indus
trial interests of tribes on reservations. "We did our
best/' they complain, "but the Indian has no work in
him!" In my judgment, the trouble with all the Gov
ernment's efforts which came to grief for so many years
lay in one of two facts: the Department was either
attempting artificially to invent work for the Indians
to do, or else trying to make every Indian a farmer,
regardless whether his inclination lay in the direction
of agriculture or in some other. In short, the Govern
ment has striven to thwart nature instead of co-operat
ing with her. Great areas of farming land all over
the West lay waiting to be tilled but lacking the nec
essary human labor at seed-time and harvest; there
were deserts to be reclaimed when picks and shovels
enough could be commanded to dig the ditches; there
were forests to be cut or thinned, railroad embank
ments to be built, mines to be opened. Yet nobody
seemed to think of laying out a systematic scheme for
making use of the Indian as an active factor in develop
ing his own country. Why? Because he must be
kept on a reservation and away from his white neigh
bors, lest he should learn to drink and gamble and use
bad language. As if he could not learn all the vices on
a reservation just as readily as off, with the additional
disadvantage of being always subject to the temptations
which encompass those who have not enough to do!

Or might he not be cheated by a white employer and
lose some of his hard-earned wages? Another argu
ment worth about as much as the first. Suppose he

154 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

did lose a few dollars through trickery: is not that a
part of every man's education in life? What is to be
come of the Indian after the Government ceases to
watch over him as a ward, if he is not allowed to learn
a few of the lessons of experience while he is still under
his kindly guardian?

Then, too, he must be a farmer, even though all his
tastes and talents point toward other forms of labor.
So the poor fellow was kept digging away at the soil
in the enclosed space the Government had set apart
for his tribe. If there were no neighboring market for
his farm products, the Government would buy of him
what it could at prices bearing no particular relation
to the prices prevailing in the outside world; or else
it would take the shorter cut, pat him on the head as
a good little boy, and feed him with rations for the
rest of the year.

Although one or two spasmodic efforts had been
made by contractors, for their personal profit, to
gather up gangs of Indian laborers from the reserva
tions and set them at work outside, the Government
for years turned a cold shoulder toward these enter
prises and they amounted to very little. It is true
that they savored rather unpleasantly of the padrone
and coolie systems long in vogue among our more
ignorant immigrants; but the amazing circumstance
is that the Government, though discouraging such
undertakings by private parties, missed entirely the
suggestions they conveyed for a new channel for its
own benevolent activities. It was not till the spring
of 1905 that any steps were taken toward supplying

THE INDIAN AT WORK 155

from inside of the Indian Service a substitute for what
held forth so fair a promise outside. At that time an
Indian employment bureau was established under
Government auspices, an energetic young man — him
self part Indian — put at the head of it with the rank
of Supervisor, and his future career in the Service made
dependent on his carrying the experiment to success.
His Indian blood enabled him to sympathize with
the shortcomings of the people of the weaker race, and
to be patient when their ignorance of the world led
them into absurdities; while his white blood insured
his appreciation of what the employers demanded of
their Indian help. The combination proved a very
happy one for setting his undertaking firmly upon its
feet. His method was to go wherever he heard that
a railroad company was purposing to lay a new spur
of track, or where preparations were making for an
irrigation project, or where a special venture in agri
culture was clamoring for labor which could not be
attracted by ordinary means, and to drive the best
bargain he could for furnishing so many Indian
workmen. Then he would notify every Superintendent
in charge of a reservation convenient to the job, indi
cating the number of able-bodied Indians he could pro
vide for, the kind of work that was to be done, and the
wages he could promise. The Superintendent would
send word of the opportunity to the Indians all over
the reservation, at the same time drawing the lines
a little tighter on the ration distribution if any were
in use there, so that able-bodied Indians who were not
disposed to take advantage of the offer might thus

156 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

be admonished of what to expect later as the result of
their indifference. Those Indians who responded were
taken by the Supervisor to their destination and started
at work.

How successful this device was may be judged from
the fact that, the first season in which it was tried, we
placed 600 Indians, including both adults and well-
grown schoolboys, at profitable employment. The
next year, owing chiefly to the excessive inflow of the
Colorado River to the Salton Sea and the necessity of
controlling this by dike-building, the number swelled
greatly; and by the summer of 1906 we had not less
than 1,100 at work at the Salton Sea, more than 100
on the Laguna dam near Yuma, more than 200 on the
St. Mary's Canal, more than 200 engaged at ballasting
parts of the Santa Fe Railroad, and 600 in the Rocky
Ford beet fields, besides perhaps 3,000 working out
at sheep-herding, lumbering, cantaloupe culture, road-
making, and other occupations where good muscles
and good temper were the prime requisites.

At each point where a regular gang of Indians were
employed, there was placed with them a competent
white overseer who acted as the medium between em
ployer and men. He not only arranged the work of
the Indians and kept their time, but acted as their
confidential adviser and friend. They came to him with
all their troubles. If an Indian were dissatisfied with
the wages he received on pay-day, the overseer looked
into the matter and straightened it out; if one fell ill,
the overseer took pains to furnish him with proper
medical attendance and drugs, and, if he became unfit

THE INDIAN AT WORK 157

for work, arranged for his transportation back to the
reservation. The overseer also looked after the com
missary, from which the Indians could purchase the
necessaries of life at reasonable prices, instead of hav
ing to depend upon any grasping trader who happened
to be in the neighborhood. To show that this was a
genuine dollars-and-cents proposition and not a mere
essay in altruism, I may add that in the season of 1906
the Indians employed on the Santa Fe Railroad re
ceived $25,101, those in the beet fields $28,000, and
those at the Salton Sea $115,784. The pleasantest
fact of all to record is that, although they had to pay
for their food and clothing and other supplies out of
these proceeds, they saved and carried home from 60
to 93 per cent, of all they earned. And these Indians
were recruited from groups who, if left on their reser
vations with nothing to do but the work contrived for
them by the Government, would not have had a penny
to show for it after their first fall dance.

In some instances, Indians have been set to work on
purely Indian enterprises, like the Zuni dam, for in
stance. Congress made generous appropriations for
this piece of engineering, which was designed to create
a reservoir for storing the flood waters of the Zuni
River and irrigating about 8,000 acres of arable land
on the reservation below. The Zunis, like other pueblo
tribes, are industrious enough at home, but show little
disposition to leave their own farms, however poor, in
search of employment elsewhere. They are, more
over, owing to generations of meagre nourishment and
a tendency to confine their marriages within their own

158 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

small circle, seriously reduced in physical stature;
hence a work calling for so much brawn and vitality
as the building of the great stone dam did not offer the
same attractions to them as to some other Indians in
their part of the country, especially the Navajos.
Sundry peculiar local conditions, the fact that the
proposed reservoir was to be for the benefit of the In
dians exclusively, and the liberal disposition manifested
by Congress toward the enterprise, combined to lead
the engineer in charge to treat it more as a training-
school for Indian labor than as an ordinary business
proposition. The result was of course an expensive
job from the point of view of the drafts made upon the
Treasury, but a most interesting one as a means of
testing the mettle of Indian workers, and seeing how
far it would be possible to train certain members of
the race, otherwise wholly untutored, in an industry
absolutely foreign to their experience and traditions.

A few illustrations may not be amiss. One Indian,
originally employed as a common laborer on the rock
fill, early developed such skill that he was set at laying
stone, and two-thirds of the up-stream face of the
stonework was laid by him. Another showed so much
intelligence at his first individual work that he was
presently put in charge of small gangs of Indian
laborers, with whom, in one instance, he succeeded in
the most difficult task of stopping trouble from quick
sands in the tunnel. A third was employed at the outset
as helper on a steam drill. He became much interested
in the machine, and studied it whenever it was taken
apart; the white drill boss took pains to explain to

THE INDIAN AT WORK 159

him by signs how the mechanism worked, and a little
later he was allowed as an experiment to run the drill
himself under the eye of the boss. He grew so expert
that when another drill was installed he was placed in
full charge of it, and took the greatest pride in keeping
it in order. The white men under whom he worked
pronounced him a good mechanic, not only for an
Indian, but measured by the white standard as well.
For those Indians who are disposed to be farmers
encouragement is not wanting, but all that amounts
to anything comes from other sources than the Gov
ernment's gratuity trough. One of the best is the
Indian agricultural fair. Such shows, conducted on
the old conventional lines where public funds were
used to pay expenses and stimulate interest, have been
known for a number of years. It remained, however,
for the Agent in charge of the Crows to carry to a
successful conclusion the first annual agricultural fair
entirely financed, managed and participated in by
Indians, and for the most part attended by them.
This man knows Indians, and was therefore too shrewd
to start with arrangements so far beyond the pale of
their ordinary interests as to be practically incom
prehensible to them. He canvassed their reservation,
which for purposes of administration is divided into
several farming districts, and soon found that they felt
only a listless regard for any part of the fair programme
except the horse-racing and a few other features of
mere popular entertainment. Instead of trying to
force them into compliance with his plans, he per
mitted them to emphasize the racing and dancing for

160 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the first year's show, but insisted on a rule that no
betting or other gambling, and no drinking, should be
tolerated. In consideration of the week of sports
promised for the fair, the Indians pledged themselves
to desist from dancing and similar distractions till the
farming season was over.

When the fair was held in October they had their
races and their dances as agreed, and the gate-money
was used to pay for the prizes and to defray the ex
pense of putting the grounds in order. They lived up,
in good faith, to their prohibition of gambling; and
the meetings they had held, the official dignities ac
corded various particularly efficient members of the
tribe, and the stimulus of an overflowing till at the
box-office, had meanwhile aroused their interest in the
enterprise so that they entered very willingly into
arrangements for a more extensive performance the
following year. This was the Agent's opportunity,
which he improved by inducing them to put into the
next programme some agricultural features which were
really worth while. He kept his own hands out of the
business except by way of a little friendly steering here
and there; but when it came to advertising the show,
he devised a huge colored poster which caught the fancy
of the Indians and stirred their enthusiasm to still
greater activity. The several districts soon entered
into a vigorous competition, and began to send humor
ous messages of defiance to each other.

The old Indians were warmed to the project by being
invited to come in their ceremonial regalia and take
part in a picturesque grand parade. Prizes were offered

THE INDIAN AT WORK 161

for the best displays of farm products, the finest chick
ens and pigs, milch cows and bulls, stallions and work
ing teams, etc. ; and the women were incited to rivalry
in the domestic arts by an offer of $15 for the best
meal cooked and table set for four persons, $10 for the
best-kept tepee on the grounds, $5 for the best display
of breads, cakes and pies, $5 for the best specimens of
sewing, and the like. The judges were themselves
Indians, and took the most serious interest in their
work, making their awards solely on merit, and ruling
out everybody whose exhibit was not strictly of his
own production or earning. They refused to one par
ticipant a prize for an exceptionally fine team, because
it was purchased with money derived from the sale of
his father's land; and set aside two or three others
because it was discovered that their outfits had not
been fully paid for. It is no insignificant commentary
on this show to add that the best prizes were won by
full-blood Indians who had had no schooling and knew
no English, over competitors belonging in the " edu
cated" category, and that the whole thing goes to the
credit of a tribe who began the twentieth century as
camp Indians living on Government rations!

The fair I have just described was held in the fall of
1905. Each year since has witnessed another; and
when the news of the success of the Crow fair spread
through the Indian country, nearly every tribe in the
Northwest wished to try something of the sort itself.
I discouraged all applications made on the old lines —
the Government to put up the money and the Indians
to have the sport. The imitations have therefore been

162 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

few : not that other tribes than the Crows are incapable
of doing as well, for the Northern Cheyennes fairly
startled the Chicago livestock market in the season of
1908 with the splendid bunch of steers they sent there
for sale; but it is not always that a Superintendent
understands and can lead his Indians well enough to
make a success of such a venture.

Although the Crows and the Klamaths do pretty
creditable general farming when they wake up to it,
and they and certain Sioux bands breed some good
Corses; though the Assinaboines make hay well, and
the Chippewas are lumbermen by instinct, and the
Apaches at Fort Sill are rather clever at vegetable
gardening; though the Navajos have a natural gift
for sheep-herding, and the Blackfeet make fair progress
with cattle when they are taught how; though the
Mission Indians furnish much of the labor on the
fruit ranches of southern California, and the pueblo
Indians of various names raise a little corn and a few
peaches under conditions which the white farmer would
regard as hopeless : still, every one who knows Indians
will agree that as a race they do not take to husbandry
by preference. There is as wide a differentiation of
tastes and talents among them as among other peoples.
Mechanical employments attract the larger multitude.
In Oregon and Nevada I have seen excellent dwellings
built entirely by young Indian carpenters. The furni
ture for my official head-quarters in Washington I had
made in the school shops at Carlisle, Haskell, Chilocco
and Hampton. Many Indians are fine blacksmiths,
and one of the best of these is stone-blind. The round-

THE INDIAN AT WORK 163

houses and machine-shops of the leading railroads in
the Southwest show a thick sprinkling of young Indians
among their skilled laborers. On the North Pacific
coast some of the best pilots are drafted from what the
old treaties called the " fish-eating tribes." The Chip-
pewas take to road and bridge construction so readily
that it was proposed to organize among them a corps of
sappers and miners for the Cuban campaign of 1898.
The steam saw-mills of the northern forest belt from
Minnesota to Oregon are Indian-manned in part; and
on a little independent railway on which I once trav
elled in the frontier West, an Indian was the engineer
and stoker, handled a part of the baggage, jumped off
at a way-station here and there to sell tickets, and
occasionally lent a hand to relieve an overworked
conductor, showing that the mechanical bent does not
necessarily unfit one for other and more ordinary duties
than running an engine.

When you reflect that in the primitive life of our
aborigines everything in daily use — clothing, weapons,
implements of labor and play — was hand-made, it is
not hard to understand why nimble fingers should be a
natural heritage among all young Indians. Where the
ancestor shaped the spear and grooved the arrow, the
scion carves furniture or sets type. Where the squaw
of fifty years ago embroidered scalp-shirts, the Indian
girl of to-day trims hats. Other hereditary traits
crop out, pointing the way to profitable occupations.
The mistress of the tepee always shouldered certain
domestic burdens which meant indifference to fatigue,
submission to severe discipline, and special duties at

164 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

fixed intervals; her daughters and granddaughters we
are training to care for the sick. Physicians of ex
perience commend highly the Indian graduate nurse,
with her implicit obedience of orders, her soft voice
and noiseless movements, her unemotional exterior,
her steadiness in the presence of pain and blood. A
few Indians will always find a respectable livelihood in
clerical positions. Some become expert accountants,
or pursue other callings in which accuracy with figures
weighs more than ability to formulate policies. In
stenography and typewriting, or counting money, they
can be trained to a high degree of skill.

The limitations of the Indian in business are what
we might naturally look for in an elemental man only
lately brought into relations with our composite world.
One of our chief weaknesses in trying to promote
his advancement lies in expecting too much of him
right away: we have demanded that he hold his own
with perfect poise when plunged suddenly into the vor
tex of industrial rivalry with no such inherited instinct
for competition as the average Caucasian has in his
blood. This is foolish in us, and unjust to him. Put
him upon his own ground and he is the equal of any
of us; put him upon ours, and is it wonderful that he
falls short? I knew a full-blood Indian on the edge of
the Rocky Mountains who cultivated his farm with
his own hands; lived in a house as well built and as
sensibly furnished as any white neighbor's; sent his
children to school, and taught them to work afterward;
kept a bank account and scrawled his name on his own
checks. Yet he could not write anything except that

THE INDIAN AT WORK 165

name, or read anything except figures, or speak a word
of English. His white acquaintances respected him,
and he died well off in a worldly sense, even in the
midst of a population which is supposed to have no
use for an Indian except to turn his pockets inside
out. I know another on the Pacific slope who began
life as a bound boy, does not know one letter from
another, yet counts his fortune in five figures, and
made it all as a cattle-dealer and freight contractor.

Here and there an Indian knows better than we do
what is good for him. Once our benevolent Govern
ment sent a white scientific farmer to teach the Hopis
a more advanced system of agriculture. He explained
to them that they must plant their corn in hills, cover
ing in the seed close to the surface of the ground. Their
custom, which had descended to them from remote
antiquity, was to run a long etick down into the soil
as far as it would go, and drop the seed into the hole.
The next growing season put the two plans to a very
satisfying test: the corn planted by the Indians sent up
stalks which reached the usual height and bore the
usual crop; the corn planted by the professor of ad
vanced agriculture did not even sprout.

This brings us to the consideration of the native
Indian arts and crafts. Some admirers of aboriginal
handiwork subordinate their judgment to their enthu
siasm so far as to urge that all Indian children be
trained to keep up the industries of their ancestors, and
argue that because we cannot tamper with an aesthetic
ideal without impairing it we must not even set up a
signpost to guide the artisan to a broader path of sue-

166 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

cess. In truth, we can do a great deal to help the In
dian make a good thing better without interfering in
the least with his art. For example, the Navajo silver
smiths, whose work is beautiful as it stands, ought to
be encouraged to preserve and expand it. But whereas
now it is occupied almost wholly with jewelry and gew
gaws, a shrewd teacher might start the young peo
ple of the tribe to making the sort of things which
command a market in white communities — butter-
knives and napkin-rings, salt-cellars and trays. The
essential features properly explained to them, the
artificers might best be left to invent their own designs,
which give the products the native touch required to
make them valuable. The old weaver leaves the di
mensions of her blanket largely to accident; her
children should be taught that more study of adapta
tion would add to its attractions for the purchasing
public. A similar principle would apply in various
lines of Indian basketry and pottery arid beadwork.

Of course, the market for such wares is necessarily
limited. As general merchandise they can never com
pete with machine-made goods of corresponding classes,
but there will always be an artificial value attaching
to anything genuinely Indian, just as there is to any
thing Chinese or Japanese or Turkish. Therefore the
Indian children who show the keenest aesthetic sense
should be singled out and specially trained for keeping
their native arts alive, just as nowadays we single out a
few white children of extraordinary talents to educate
thoroughly in music or painting, sculpture or draughts
manship, instead of perpetuating the practice of an

THE INDIAN AT WORK 167

earlier generation and expecting every girl to thrum the
piano, warble ballads, and dabble in water-colors. A
beginning has been made in several of the Govern
ment schools with what I call the common-sense con
servation policy, and native teachers of the native arts
have been installed, with proper facilities for conduct
ing the lessons. The idea behind the movement is not
to enlarge the output of the old crafts, but to keep
them free from adulteration and insure them against
the extinction which would otherwise follow the death
of the old men and women who now practise them.

One often hears an expression of wonder why mem
bers of a race as warlike as the Indians do not enlist
in the armed service of the United States. The num
ber who do would surprise the inquirers. Doubtless
what has misled them is the absence of Indian regiments
like those composed exclusively of Negroes or Filipinos.
The Indian, when he enters the army, enters it on the
same footing as any other citizen of the United States.
He takes his place between two white soldiers, is amal
gamated at once with the organization he has joined,
and, barring the fact that he is usually the most popular
man in the ranks, becomes indistinguishable from the
rest of the soldiers. Several years ago a few prominent
military officers conceived the idea of establishing
in our army something akin to the Sepoy troops in the
British army in India and the native contingent in the
French army in Algeria. An experiment was made
on a small scale, but it failed for two reasons: first,
the Indians found the rigid discipline too irksome; and
second, they could not be happy under long separa-

168 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

tion from their families. As about all the men then
enlisted had reached middle life, neither of these ob
jections could be overcome; and obviously it was
impracticable to change the disciplinary regulations
for one small part of a large establishment, or to have
a camp of women and children following the Indian
troops about from place to place. How the experi
ment might have turned out if the recruiting officers
had accepted only very young men without family
ties, it is of course impossible to say.

As scouts, and for various forms of irregular military
service, Indians have long been employed in the West
ern country, and I succeeded a few years ago in pro
curing for an intelligent young Indian, who had gone
through the conventional Government school course,
an appointment to the West Point Academy; but
several enlist every year in the rank and file of the
army, sometimes as members of the fighting force and
sometimes to play in the band. A handful enter the
navy. They are uniformly favorites on shipboard,
and the life there seems to have a tonic effect on their
characters. The officers under whom the Indian lads
come in either service appear to take a special interest
in them. On every ground, their absorption into the
common regiment or crew, rather than their segrega
tion on race lines, is for their advantage. It is in keep
ing with the more modern policy of obliterating every
thing which marks the Indian as different from other
Americans, and then holding him, as we hold other
Americans, to account for the use he makes of his
privileges.

THE INDIAN AT WORK 169

What I have aimed to bring home to the reader's
mind in this and preceding chapters is the fruitlessness
of the efforts long made to improve the Indian by
artificial devices, and the wisdom of introducing him
as soon as possible into the world in which he has got
to live. The Indian who has gone away from home
and worked a few months as a ditcher at $1.75 a day
may not have acquired any special culture or laid up a
fortune in the process, but he has come into contact
with the conditions in the face of which all of us must
make our way, and to that extent he is ahead of the
Indian who has always stayed on the reservation. A
half-dozen years ago ended the last and best-fostered
experiment ever made by the Government in training
Indians by the hot-house method. A position was
created in the Service especially for the purpose, and
a young man of tireless energy and unselfish enthusiasm
in the cause of Indian civilization was installed in it,
with full control of the industrial interests of the reser
vations, and authority to issue orders directly to the
Superintendents and demand periodical reports from
them. He had entire freedom to go and come at will,
and his recommendations were respected at the Indian
Office. The politicians were not allowed to interfere
with him, and the field staff everywhere were ad
monished to carry out his programme.

This arrangement continued for two years. It died a
lingering death, partly for lack of the sustenance
which flows from results, but chiefly because it at
tempted to reverse the spirit of the age, and was so
wholly out of touch with the basic realities of life.

170 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

The Indians were as responsive as they knew how to
be, and the Superintendents as a rule tried to do their
duty in the premises; but as no artilleryman ever
learned to handle a gun in action by confining his
studies to a table of logarithms, so no Indian put
through the protected industrial routine of a reserva
tion was ever thereby made capable of going out and
compelling the world to yield him a living. Better
than all the most conscientious teachings of a corps
of salaried instructors is the immutable law of the
hungry stomach, well exemplified in a bit of experience
which befell one group of Indians more recently.

During the autumn of 1906 some two hundred men,
women and children of the Ute tribe deserted their
fertile reservation in Utah because they did not like
the prospect of having to work for their living, and
started to march in a body across the country to South
Dakota, where they had been misled into believing
that the Sioux Indians occupied all the land and would
welcome them as guests and settlers. In vain their
Agent, an army officer who had taken the heartiest
interest in their advancement, tried to reason them
out of their crazy project. His words passed over
them like so much wind; they persisted in their in
tention, and only after many vicissitudes, not neces
sary to rehearse here, discovered that he had spoken
the truth. Their money was fast giving out, and it
was plain that ere long they must either induce the
Government to give them free rations or face a winter
of hardship. Twice already, through our Supervisor
of Indian Employment, they had been offered oppor-

THE INDIAN AT WORK 171

tunities to earn good wages at unskilled labor, but they
had repulsed all overtures, trusting to the Govern
ment's traditional willingness to feed idle Indians for
the sake of keeping them peaceful.

Another job was now found for them — simple work
with pick and shovel on a railroad embankment with
in a day's journey of their camp, and close to one of
our schools in which their children could be cared for
and where the parents could visit them as often as de
sired. Any similar group of whites would have leaped
at such a chance. Not so these Utes. "Work," they
declared, with a lofty shake of the head, "may be all
right for Indians like the Sioux, but we are different.
We are ' Government people/ Our Great Father in
Washington will not let us go hungry." And all the
verbal logic which could be marshalled against that
fantasy was powerless to dislodge it from their minds.
So I gave them my last word on the subject. They
had before them now, I said, the same alternative
which confronted every person of every race or color
in the United States, and I was going to leave them
absolutely free to make their own choice. They could
take the work offered them, or they could let it alone;
they could earn their bread as others did, or they
could go without it. While it was for them, and not
for me, to decide what they would do, they might ab
solutely depend on one fixed fact: they would get no
free rations from the Government to maintain them
in idleness.

This was the signal for a loud outcry from a few sen
timentalists in various parts of the East against the

172 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

hard-heartedness of the policy laid down. But the
great mass of the press and the people refused to be
stampeded by such talk, insisting that the plan should
be given a chance to prove itself either a success or a
failure. Plain reason and firmness finally carried the
day. When these Indians became convinced that I
meant precisely what I said, they not only yielded
without conditions, but were so eager to accept the
work offered that we could hardly find vehicles enough
to transport them and their belongings to the railroad.
The result was not a mere settlement of one isolated
issue: it was a broad moral victory, as was shown by
the action of the whole party the next spring in con
fessing their folly and asking to be taken back to
Utah.

CHAPTER X
THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST

Tribal Trust Funds and Their Origin — Replacing Fictitious
with Real Capital — Sources of Indian Income — Dead
Letter Treaty Provisions — Absurdity of Permanent An
nuities — Turning Gratuities and Land Payments into
Wages — Leasing Allotments — Improvidence of Indian
Heirs — The Trader, His Virtues and His Vices — Plan for
the Incorporation of Tribes — A Proposed Court of Indian
Claims.

IT is a mistake to infer, from the disposition shown by
Indians generally to accept gratuities from the Govern-
ment? that poverty is the universal rule among them.
On the contrary, barring any massive private accumu
lations, their fortunes are as varied as those of other
races. Some of the tribes are very well to do. The
Osages, indeed, are the richest people per capita on
earth; if everything they possess could be turned into
cash to-morrow at full value and the proceeds distrib
uted, every man, woman and child in the tribe would
probably receive between $35,000 and $40,000. At
the opposite end of the scale stand Indians like the
Diggers of California, many of the Piutes or the immi
grant Crees, who have not a penny to bless themselves
with.

The books of the United States Treasury show trust
funds deposited there, actually or constructively, to

173

174 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the credit of a number of tribes, aggregating about
$38,500,000, and yielding an annual income, from in
terest at four and five per cent, of more than $1,800,000.
The capital sums due individual tribes range from
$8,000,000 for the Osages down to $3,000 for the Sho-
shones and Bannocks. They are the fruits of all sorts
of negotiations with the Government from 1837 to the
present day. Sometimes the Government has induced
a body of Indians to remove from lands which they
have been occupying, and take up their residence on
others selected for them, obligating itself for a specific
sum in consideration of their compliance. Some
times it has bought part of their lands outright, and
deposited the purchase price in the Treasury for their
benefit. Sometimes it has taken over lands, and sold
them for the account of the Indians lately occupying
4 them, and deposited the proceeds in like manner.

One is struck, in running through the list of big
land grants and generous money provisions made for
so many of the tribes, with the fact that the largest
favors seem to have gone to the Indians who formerly
manifested most hostility toward the Government,
and the smallest, as a rule, to those who were complai
sant and good-natured in circumstances which would
have justified a display of indignation. In short,
the Government appears to have been more strongly
moved by its fears than by its gratitude. This is not
entirely creditable to the nation, but it is hard to con
centrate the responsibility for it anywhere in particu
lar. While we may deplore the fact that a tribe which
was notorious for its bloody outbreaks and kept its

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 175

white neighbors always in terror, was better treated
than one which received the settlers hospitably and
even stood between them and other Indians, we are
bound to ask, what was the alternative? To have
guarded the frontier adequately would have required
a standing army large enough to bankrupt the young
republic, and a ruthless war of extermination whenever
a fresh enemy arose. The whole matter finally resolved
itself into a choice between buying out and getting
out; the Government decided to buy out; and the
price demanded by the other party was whatever it
could frighten the Washington authorities into paying.
These considerations may not increase our respect for
the course taken by our fathers, but they may inspire
a little more charity for it.

I spoke of some of the funds as being "constructively"
in the Treasury, because in several instances they
have been named in the statutes but never formally
appropriated. They are pure "paper funds," existing
only in a verbal fiction, but serving as a capital on
which Congress appropriates in each annual budget
a given sum "in lieu of interest." Of course, the ob
ligation of the Government is not at all affected by
this formality. One day Congress will be faced with
the necessity of either appropriating the nominal funds
so that they can be distributed in cash, or else repudi
ating a just debt. During my term as Commissioner
I made an earnest effort to procure appropriations
of the capital sums necessary to wind up the whole
fictitious business and put the Indians upon the
same footing with other creditors of the Government.

176 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

The most progressive members of both houses of Con
gress approved the policy, and a few of the paper funds
were wiped out; but an undertaking of that sort must
always be slow of accomplishment, as it is hard to
make some of the lawmakers understand why so large
a sum should figure in a budget bill to finance a trans
action in which there is no physical transfer of money.
Now that the movement has been started, only pa
tience and persistence are required to see it through.

Besides the funds really and nominally in the Treas
ury and bearing interest, some tribes derive income from
special provisions in their treaties. These present all
sorts of petty items, many of them regarded as im
portant when the treaties were signed but now out
grown and absurd, and all of them annoying, because
the handling of five dollars involves about as much
administrative red tape as the handling of ten thou
sand. For example, the Pawnees receive annually $500
"for iron and steel and other necessary articles for
shops." The clause of the treaty of 1857 which con
tains this provision calls also for "pay of two black
smiths, one of whom is to be a tin and gunsmith, and
compensation for two strikers and apprentices." As
all the employees needed by the agency to meet the
demands of more modern conditions are furnished, the
strict letter of this requirement has been ignored for
a number of years, and the same money diverted to
other uses at the executive discretion; but it may one
day rise to vex the Government with a technical issue.

Again, the Pottawatomies have a promise, dating
back to 1829, of a permanent provision for furnishing

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 177

salt; and another, made at various dates between 1828
and 1846, of a periodical payment of money in lieu of
tobacco, iron and steel. The Six Nations of New York
have been receiving for 115 years what is called a per
manent annuity of $4,500 in clothing; but the fulfil
ment of the stipulation, in spite of its good faith, has
been a pitiful farce. The Oneidas of Wisconsin are a
branch of the Six Nations who went off a good many
years ago and established a separate community; and
they take $1,000 a year, in cash in lieu of clothing, as
their share of the permanent annuity. Their tribe
having increased till it now numbers more than two
thousand souls, the amount due annually to each man,
woman and child has dwindled to 43 cents. The Super
intendent and his clerical help spend several days of
each year drawing checks, revising pay-rolls and
balancing accounts, in order to make this paltry pay
ment; and some of the Indians drive or walk long dis
tances and spend considerable periods away from home
in order to collect it. Meanwhile, for the rest of the
Six Nations the Government goes to the trouble and
administrative expense of buying $3,500 worth of
calico and sheeting every year, each Indian receiving
three or four yards, and often incurring an outlay which
would have bought him the same things several times
multiplied. It would cost only $90,000 to capitalize
the whole annuity of $4,500 and thus get rid of a
perennial nuisance.

In behalf of better business methods, I attacked this
anachronism also, and procured permission from Con
gress to treat with the several tribes involved, with a

178 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

view to obtaining their consent to capitalize their per
petual annuities at a fair percentage and either paying
them the capital or spending it for their benefit. The re
sult of one season's negotiations justified the effort, and
indicates that we shall ere long see this class of anoma
lous debits blotted out of the Government's ledger.

Two sources of tribal income have yet to be men
tioned. They are styled respectively, for bookkeeping
and statistical purposes, "gratuities" and " proceeds
of labor and miscellaneous." Into the first group
enter the sums annually voted by Congress for the
support of tribes who have no treaty funds, or whose
funds are deemed inadequate to their needs. Here we
come again upon one of those cases in which the hu
mane and the moral forces seem to war against each
other. Rather than see him go hungry, the Govern
ment is willing to license the Indian as a perpetual
pauper. There is not a part of the agricultural West
where the demand for field labor does not exceed the
supply, and no class of men are better adapted by
nature for supplying the demand than the Indians;
but instead of voting funds for transporting Indians
to places where they can find something to do, and
then resolutely requiring the able-bodied men to take
the work offered or submit peaceably to the conse
quences of refusal, our lawmaking body puts off from
year to year the inevitable day of reckoning, and thus
keeps alive a problem which ought to pass into history
with the present generation.

The second group has more to commend it than the
first, because it has at least an ostensible business

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 179

basis. " Proceeds of labor" may be a rather mis
leading term, as it covers rents from leased tribal lands,
and proceeds of sales of cattle from tribal herds which,
on most reservations, have been cared for largely by
white employees of the Government. Into the mis
cellaneous category also enter such items as money
from the sale of lots in townsites laid off on tribal lands,
and of stone and timber and rights-of-way; besides
bonus and royalty collections on leases of ore and
coal mines, asphalt beds, oil well privileges, and so
forth. Still, though in such instances the members of a
tribe may not have so much as turned over their hands
for productive purposes, the tribe at least possesses
something which somebody else wants and is willing
to pay for, and that furnishes a legitimate economic
condition untainted by the gratuity abomination.
Of course, as the tribal lands are gradually opened to
settlement and sold, this well-spring of communal in
come steadily recedes, and in a few years it will have
dried up altogether.

The gratuities for support have in most cases been
turned into rations and distributed in that form, on
the assumption that the Government could buy food
stuffs on better terms than the Indians, and that much
of the money would be wasted on frivolities or gam
bling or drink if given directly to the beneficiaries. The
same is true also of some of the funds coming to Ind
ians in payment for their lands, where it has not been
thought best to put these away in the Treasury. Dur
ing the administration of Commissioner Jones, how
ever, a series of cuts were made into the ration list

180 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

everywhere, and the able-bodied Indians who formerly
came begging for food and clothes were offered instead
an opportunity to work on public improvements on
their reservation at day's wages. This caused great
dissatisfaction among the lazy element, and the strug
gles some of them made to change the Government's
plan showed considerable ingenuity.

Soon after the new rule went into effect, I was visit
ing one of the Northwestern reservations and was in
vited by the Indians to address them in council. We
discussed a number of subjects, and then came up the
ever fresh question of rations. The chief spokesman
for the Indians reminded me that the Government,
several years before, had induced his tribe to cede a
certain strip of mineral-bearing land on the western
side of the reservation, and as part of the purchase price
had agreed to send a fixed sum annually for a certain
term of years. This money, instead of being paid to
them in cash, had been expended for rations, which
had been distributed in the usual manner. "Now," he
continued, " Washington has changed its face, and no
longer gives us either the money or the rations, but
sets work for us to do, and pays us the same money in
wages. Is that right — to make us work for our own
money?"

"You receive the money, do you not?" I asked,
somewhat disconcerted, and sparring for time while I
cast about me for some explanatory parallel.

"Yes, we receive it, but we have to work for it, and
that was not in the bargain." A loud chorus of "Ugh's"
from the listening circle showed that the orator's argu-

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 181

ment was approved by his clientele. At that moment
a bright idea flashed upon my mind.

"I am sorry for my friend/ ' said I, "if he thinks that
Washington is not keeping its promises. But Wash
ington has made one big promise to all the Indians:
to do for them whatever it knows is best for their civili
zation. In this case, Washington believes that your
tribe will be better for learning to work and support
themselves instead of remaining idle. Now, my friend
does not deny that his people are learning to work and
earn wages, or charge that the Government is holding
back any of the money it promised to distribute among
them. He only complains that before they can get
the money due them they have to perform some labor.
Let me show you how that is.

"Yesterday I was at the place where you are working
on your irrigating canal. At one point the land is
high; then it suddenly drops off to a much lower level.
The man in charge of the work tells me you are going
to have a fall there. Is that true?"

The whole party assented, and I went on:

"Suppose, instead of letting the water run idly
down that fallway, you were to build a mill with a big
wheel dipping into the canal so that the falling water
would turn it, and it would move the mill machinery,
and you could carry your grain to the mill to be ground
and your logs to be sawed: would that hurt the water?
Would there be any less water in the canal after it had
made the wheel go around? Would it not be just the
same water, and could it not still be carried through
ditches to your farms and spread over them? And

182 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

would not your crops grow just as well then as if the
water had not been used for any other purpose on the
way?

"Your money comes to you, as the Government
promised it should. On the way to your pockets it
makes your bodies do some work, and the work is as
good for you as the money; so what Washington is
doing is not taking away any of your dollars, but giv
ing them to you with a benefit added."

I heard no more of that complaint, but I am not sure
that it was not raised again with the next visiting
representative of the Government.

The financial resources of individual Indians vary
with the history and condition of their tribes, the
neighborhoods in which they live, and their own ad
vancement in civilization. Under the communal sys
tem, the interest derived from a tribal fund is dis
tributed per capita among the members living on a cer
tain date. If the births in a tribe exceed the deaths,
the distributive unit in money becomes proportionally
smaller, because there are more Indians to divide it
between; for the child just born, and the veteran tot
tering on the verge of the grave, come in for the same
share as the tribesman in the prime of life and strength.
The communal system, with money as with land, has
a stupefying effect upon the individual Indian, whose
only concern with regard to his tribal fund is that once
in so often he shall be summoned to a pay station to
receive a handful of money, which as long as it lasts
will feed him without labor. The way his property is
providentially handled for him not only teaches him

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 183

nothing about business, but tends rather to abet his
disposition to lie by and let things drift.

For these reasons it has long been the desire of the
most advanced students of the Indian problem to have
the tribal funds distributed, if not actually in cash, at
least by a process of bookkeeping. Representative
John F. Lacey of Iowa succeeded in 1906 in arousing
Congress from its lethargy with respect to the reform,
and framed a bill which, but for one belated and purely
technical obstruction, would have found its way into
the statute book at once. It provided that the Presi
dent might designate any tribe whose advancement
in civilization seemed to warrant such a step, to have its
trust fund distributed between the members living on
a certain date. The Secretary of the Treasury was then
to divide the total amount of the fund by the number
of Indians entitled to participate, open a ledger account
with each of these and place to his credit his distribu
tive share. Thenceforward the money represented by
that credit would belong to him individually, though,
if he were still incompetent to make a proper use of it
himself, the Government could take care of it for him
until he became competent or for the rest of his natu
ral life. At his death, whatever balance stood to his
credit would pass to his heirs-at-law. This plan would
have assured the gradual, but perfectly protected, dis
integration of the trust funds, and thus, in the course of
a generation or two at most, disposed of another of the
anomalies in our Government's business with Indians.

Blocked in his effort to carry his sensible measure to
enactment, Mr. Lacey accepted under protest a com-

184 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

promise bill which became law. It provided a means
whereby any individual member of a tribe who can
prove his competency to care for his property may
have his distributive share of the tribal fund set aside
and given to him; the rest of the fund to remain un
disturbed till the next member comes forward to claim
his own, and so on. Although this law is better than
nothing, it throws a much more elaborate and trouble
some task upon the executive officers of the Govern
ment every time a demand is made for an individual
share of a tribal fund. It also works to the disadvan
tage of the incompetent members of a tribe, in reduc
ing their respective shares by a certain percentage
every time a competent member's share is taken out;
for the birth of more children will continue to bring
new distributees into the group who will have event
ually to divide the balance.

In dealing with Indian land matters I sketched
briefly the process of leasing individual allotments.
The rent is always paid by the lessee to the Superin
tendent of the agency, who in his turn sees that it gets
to the allottee. Over the money due from this source
to an adult, nobody but the Indian who owns the land
has any control; a wife's lease money goes to her, in
dependent of her husband. The rent of a child's allot
ment is deposited in bank to its credit, and drawn
upon from time to time for its support by the parents
or other persons charged with its custody.

Another resource is the sale of inherited allotments,
also described in an earlier chapter. The proceeds of
such a sale are divided as there shown, and deposited

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 185

in bank to the credit of the beneficiaries. In the early
days of the law authorizing the sale of inherited lands
the money was handed over at once, and without re
strictions, to the heirs, but this practice was checked
because of the abuses which cropped up under it. A
trader on a reservation, hearing that a certain Indian
was dangerously ill, would go to his heirs-at-law and
offer to let them have anything they wished at his
store on credit. Childlike, the heirs would covet every
thing in sight, and after a week or so would be down in
his books for hundreds of dollars, representing little
more substantial than sweetmeats, soda water and a
few silly trinkets. When there was nothing left in his
stock that they cared for at the moment, he would
perhaps propose to lend them money, which would be
charged to their account like goods.

Or, the heirs might not spend very much with the
trader, but rush into other follies. One old woman,
whose inherited allotment brought her $2,500, gave
$1,000 on the spot for a second-hand buggy and a
miserable team of horses, and drove twenty miles to her
home, throwing a handful of money to every one she
met on the way, so that by nightfall she had not a
dollar left. A man who received $2,000 for his inheri
tance proceeded at once to buy twenty horses, which
he presented singly to whoever asked for one, and
nearly all who asked were persons he had never seen
before. These were not isolated cases or wild freaks;
they were typical of the average use made of money
which came in this easy way, and were merely expres
sions of a characteristic shared by most Indians still

Of r«€

UNIVERSITY

186 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

in a backward stage of development — an inordinate
craving to advertise their generosity. It is the same
trait of which " give-away" dances and similar festivi
ties are manifestations.

Between the trader's avarice and the Indian's osten
tatious free-handedness, it became apparent to Com
missioner Jones that a halt must be called. He ac
cordingly fixed a date after which the Indian Office
would recognize no bills against Indians handed in by
a trader, except for absolute necessaries; and ordered
that no Indian heir should be permitted to draw more
than ten dollars a month from his bank deposit on
his own initiative, every expenditure beyond that
limit requiring formal approval from Washington.
""It was the strong antidote needed just at that time;
and the fact that we had to modify it some years later
for the purpose of putting the Indian more upon his
independent good behavior, was no reflection on its
original salutary influence. The rule now is that an
able-bodied Indian, capable of supporting himself and
his family by his own efforts, will not be permitted to
draw any of his money from the bank for the purchase
of food and clothing, but may draw for the purpose of
making permanent substantial improvements on his
allotment; and that Indians not capable of self-support
will be allowed to use as much of their money as may be
required to relieve their necessities, though no periodi
cal stipend is fixed any longer.

The philosophy underlying this plan is plain enough.
If an Indian lives where labor is in demand, there is no
excuse for his not earning his living; and to allow him

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 187

to draw upon his reserves merely for the purpose of
continuing a career of idleness, is to throw vicious
temptations in his way, besides increasing his power
to injure his fellows by his bad example. The same ob
jection would not apply to his drawing what may be
needed for the improvement of his landed estate,
since that would be only transmuting movable into
fixed capital. On the other hand, if he is doing the
best he can, but is limited by circumstances which he
cannot control — as, for instance, if he is farming for
himself and has put in a crop which requires present
attention but will bring no harvest for months — he is
deemed to be in the class legitimately worthy of en
couragement, and the general inhibition is waived in his
case to the extent needed to support him frugally
through the non-productive season.

An Indian who, owing to physical or mental weak
ness or otherwise, is unable to do anything for him
self, is of course a proper object of pity, and if he has
money in bank ought to be allowed to draw enough
to keep him from suffering. In such a case an arbi
trary limit of ten dollars a month might be only a re
finement of cruelty. So no bounds are fixed for the
drafts of an Indian actually in need, but his Superin
tendent is instructed to look carefully into his condi
tion and see that he gets what he requires. In short, a
great deal more responsibility is thrown upon the field
agents than ever before, and they have to become well
acquainted with every Indian family in their respective
jurisdictions in order to answer 'promptly any inquiry
sent them from head-quarters at Washington. All this

188 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

makes not only for the safer and better handling of
Indian moneys, but for more satisfactory local ad
ministration generally.

The excitement over the severely critical attitude
assumed by the Indian Office toward the traders who
allowed. their Indian customers to run up unconscion
able debts, has in a great measure died out. Most of
the traders concerned admitted, when brought frankly
to book, that the custom was a bad one. A few made
a long, hard fight, and summoned to their aid every
variety of private and political influence; others
threatened lawsuits, and were astonished to discover
that the Department welcomed any move on their
part which would put the righteousness of its course
to a judicial test. One of them wrote me a letter, half
hostile and half appealing, about the case of an Indian
whom he had trusted all through the last preceding
winter because the poor fellow's wife was helplessly ill,
and, but for this means of getting goods on indefinite
credit, she might have died for lack of the foods and
medicines prescribed by her physician. His story so
worked on my sympathies that I sent for the account
to go over it myself. There were several items cover
ing food, medicines, clothes and bedding, it is true;
but these were interlarded with dozens of charges for
candy and similar trifles, and one for a box of six
pocket-knives. I knew at once what that meant —
a give-away feast of some sort; but I could not for
bear asking my correspondent whether the doctor had
ordered the invalid to take the knives internally or
apply them as a poultice.

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 189

This is perhaps as good a place as any in which to
interject a word or two about the Indian trader, who
is by no means universally the black sheep one might
suspect from reading of such incidents as I have just
related. The trader is usually the only person about
an agency who keeps any considerable amount of
ready cash in hand, or has close connections with the
outside world of business. He not only sells goods,
but he is liable to be at various times a banker, pawn
broker, postmaster, tailor, butcher, advertising agent,
undertaker, liveryman or hotel-keeper. There are
few parts in the drama of reservation life which a trader
of the older generation has not been called upon to
play, and the stock character in his repertory is that of
Everybody's Friend. In the past days when the upper
most thought in the Government's mind was to keep
the Indians quiet, the trader was often a mighty power
for peace. The wilder tribesmen had little conception
of his business methods; but they knew that some
how, and from somewhere, he contrived always to be
supplied with bacon and flour, beans and canned foods,
and that as long as they kept in his good graces they
would not be allowed to starve. If the Government
paid their annuities by check, they carried their
mysterious slips of paper to him and received money or
merchandise in exchange. If the women made bas
kets or mats or bead trinkets, the trader always had
calico or flannel to barter for these. If one of the
children fell ill, and there were no physician at hand,
the trader would manage to concoct a dose to hold the
trouble in control till better advice could be procured.

190 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

I knew one trader who made his store more of a
practical missionary head-quarters than the profes
sional missionary's house was. He stocked his shelves
and show-cases with goods which in character and
arrangement would have done credit to a similar
establishment in a white village. He lived in an ell
of the store building, and used to leave the door
of his living quarters ajar, so that the Indians could
peep in and see what uses he made of his simple
appliances of toilet and table. After he had suf
ficiently piqued them to emulation, he refused to sell
them a set of cups and saucers unless they would
buy a table to set them on. He kept bright mattresses
and comforters for sale, but he would not sell one to
an Indian who did not buy also a cot to hold them.
Thus by degrees he lifted his customers off the ground
and got them into an approach, at least, to decent
household habits. Pretty soon he set up a sewing
machine; and any squaw who would buy sensible
goods for her own clothing and that of her children, he
would teach how to use the machine, so that she could
come there and make up her dress patterns. The
boys who usually make themselves a nuisance around
a trader's store he rendered harmless by keeping on his
counter a few checker-boards, and showing them how
to play games which gave them just as much amuse
ment as their gambling sports. But he was a rare
bird.

Most of what the traders did for the Indian could
have been done by the Agents, but he knew that an
Agent would be more inclined to hold him to a strict

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 191

account than a trader, and he did not fancy that. Be
sides, Agents were changed from time to time, whereas
a trader might stay on for a whole generation, and
Indians have a great preference for what is permanent
over what is transitory. Thus grew up their practice
of running into a trader's debt as deep as he would let
them. The effect of this sort of thing was their loss of
all sense of direct responsibility and all appreciation of
relative values. Moreover, when they had learned
that they could not only supply themselves on credit
with whatever their fancy suggested, but afterward
hide behind the Government to avoid paying their
bills in spite of having money in bank, they came per
ilously close to deliberate dishonesty. This was not
instinctive with them, but the fruit of the Govern
ment's protective policy. Yet what could the guardian
do when it saw its wards in process of being stripped of
their all?

As long as the Indians are kept apart from the rest
of our population, governed by different laws, hold
ing different relations to the Government and to the
persons with whom they do business, so long are such
conditions possible. One plan I have always had in
mind for easing their progress from this abnormal to a
normal status, is the incorporation of tribes. The
tribe is an amorphous body unknown to our civilization.
It is a relic of the patriarchism which represented all
there was of a social system in the early days of man
kind, and is bound to give way before the spirit of our
age, like other survivals from eras when life was much
less complex. The Government, in its effort to break

192 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the tribal bond, release the members from the dwarf
ing influence of communism and individualize them, is
confronted by a serious difficulty in the domain of
property rights. As far as tribal funds are concerned,
it could be solved promptly by such a distributing
process as was provided by the Lacey bill. Most of
the tribes, however, have property interests entirely
aside from their fund. In one instance it is timber
land, in another mines, in others oil and asphalt de
posits, in others water powers, etc. Often, also, there
are odds and ends of land left over after the bulk of a
reservation has been allotted and the surplus sold to
settlers. Sometimes a tribe reserves a small tract to
be used for a grazing common, which loses its character
when the tribe ceases to raise cattle; or a few acres are
kept for agency and school purposes, and when the
country fills up and the agency is abolished, and the
Indian children attend the public schools, there is no
reason for keeping this remnant out of the market.

What happens in such cases is that the Government
steps in and disposes of the mines and wells and their
products, or sells the timber to the highest bidder, or
leases the water powers, or puts up the lands at auction,
and the proceeds of each transaction are divided be
tween the Indians in driblets which, being too small to
do anything with, go about as easily as they came. My
plan would be to organize the tribe into a joint stock
company in which every member should be an equal
shareholder; to insure the Government's continuing
for the present in actual control of the business, but
with the Indians themselves having an advisory voice

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 193

in the management; to gather and classify all the mis
cellaneous assets and sell or administer them as would
be done in any similar private undertaking, and to pay
the combined returns to the shareholders at periodic
intervals, in the form of corporate dividends instead
of tribal annuities or benefits. Further outlines of the
scheme, as reduced to legislative form to meet the
existing needs of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians of
Oklahoma, will be found in the chapter on "The Ind
ian Territory Experiment." I shall ask any one who is
sufficiently interested after reading that account, to
consider the practicability of applying the same princi
ple to the treatment of the miscellaneous property
interests of other bodies of Indians.

With the aid of competent legal advisers I drafted a
few years ago a general incorporation prospectus for
Indian tribes, and submitted it to a few of the leading
jurists in Congress. All but one gave it their approval,
though fearing that so radical a departure would re
quire a campaign of education to bring Congress to
decisive action on it. The sole dissenter based his ob
jection on the fact that I had not fixed any definite sum,
in dollars, for the capital of such a corporation. I
answered that that would be out of the question, as the
assets in each case would constitute the capital, and few
of the assets would be capable of specific valuation till
they had been submitted to the commercial world to
ascertain how much purchasers or lessees were willing
to pay for them. He declared this an insuperable ob
stacle; but when the plan and the exception were laid
before a lawyer who by general consent is regarded as

194 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

a leading American authority on corporations, he
promptly dismissed the criticism with the remark that
the identity of capital with assets was the surest safe
guard of the honesty of a joint stock enterprise.

Among the unappraisable assets would undoubtedly
figure the " claims" which Indian tribes are continually
urging upon Congress. Not a few of .these have a
substantial foundation, like the comparatively recent
demand of the Klamath Indians to be paid for a strip
of land taken from them by a Supreme Court decision
in favor of a private highway company. Congress
acted with some speed on that claim; but there are
others, probably just as sound, which have been pend
ing so long that they have grown stale, and on which
the best evidence is likely soon to be lost through the
deaths of aged witnesses. On the other hand, many
are as wildly absurd as the claim of one tribe to all the
land now constituting the State of Nebraska, because
their ancestors had once marched around it without
encountering any successful opposition .from other
tribes — a proceeding which, by an aboriginal tradition
respected in those ancient days, settled the title in the
tribe making such a circuit. Still others have inde
cent lobby jobs behind them, like one which reached a
successful conclusion not very long since, where a tribe
which had accepted and been paid seventy-five cents
an acre for land that afterward changed hands at a
dollar and a quarter, came in with a demand for the
difference.

Whether good, bad or indifferent when judged on
their merits, all Indian claims stand on the same footing

THE INDIAN AS A CAPITALIST 195

as regards the harm they do the Indians themselves.
Morally, it would be a happy day for the dependent race
if Congress were to obligate itself irrevocably never
to entertain any more of them. They only serve to
keep a multitude of Indians in a state of feverish ex
pectancy of getting something for nothing, which is
fatal to their steady industry and peace of mind. That
scarcely any of the claims now pending arose during
the active life of the present generation, is quite beside
the mark for them: the fact that a claim has been
handed down from some remote period only gives it an
additional sacredness in the eyes of the Indians now
living and clamoring for the money. Moreover, a
swarm of attorneys who make a specialty of Indian
business, which is usually one-fourth legitimate prac
tice to three-fourths lobby work, do all they can to
inflame the excitement, doubtless in the hope that the
claimant Indians may make demonstrations which
will frighten Congress into favorable action. So the
unwholesome condition feeds upon itself, and will
continue to do so as long as nothing positive and final
is done to check it.

The truth is — and nobody knows it better than the
attorneys who have the claims in charge — that Congress
is not the proper body to settle such cases. They
involve judicial, not mere legislative questions; and
even where the law is plain enough and only an issue
of fact needs to be tried, the place to present that
issue is before a jury or a board of skilled examiners
who will follow the rules of evidence in digging out the
details. The higher-minded men in Congress feel as

196 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

strongly as any one on this subject. They hate to sit in
judgment on claims; and they know too well what ills
grow out of the practice of substituting brilliant but
irresponsible forensic oratory for simple, painstaking
argument on established data, in presenting a case to
a tribunal whose judgment is to carry with it hun
dreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of the people's
money.

So for the abatement of these evils also I recom
mended the creation of a special court, or the addition
of a branch to the present United States Court of Claims,
to be charged with the adjudication of Indian claims
exclusively. The life of this court or branch was to be
limited to five or six years. Notice was to be served
on every Indian tribe to prepare to file every claim,
big or little, clear or shadowy, which it believed it
had against the Government, with a warning that no
claim filed later than three years after a certain date
would be considered by the court. Such an arrange
ment would clear the atmosphere, while working no
substantial injustice to any one. For valid claims, it
would allow time enough; on those which were so
vague that they could not be wrought into shape for
filing within the period stated, it would have the same
effect as a statute of limitations on ordinary business
litigation.

This is another idea which may take a good while
to expand and bear fruit. That resort must eventually
be had to something of the sort is my firm belief, un
less Congress is willing to leave open indefinitely a
fertile mine of scandals and other unpleasantness.

CHAPTER XI
LEGISLATING FOR A DEPENDENT RACE

Unique Position of the Indians — How Congress Approaches
Its Task — Some Amusing Errors — Perils Which Beset a
Legislative Programme — The Chronic Improver — How the
Few Sometimes Overcome the Many — Things Left Un
done, and the Consequences — Pruning Ancient Abuses — •
Insignificance of a Bill without Backing— The Congres
sional Document — Good Nature and Duty — Damage a
Lobby Graft May Do.

THE Indians are the only race of people distinctively
mentioned in the Constitution of the United States.
They are the only race living on this continent who
have a body of statutes all to themselves, and appro
priations for their benefit voted by Congress in a sep
arate annual budget. These facts differentiate them
from other non-Caucasians, like the Negroes, for in
stance, whose existence is but vaguely recognized in
the organic law; or the Chinese, who are excluded as
immigrants and made ineligible for citizenship; and
from all the stranger peoples taken over as human
prize after the war with Spain, none of whom inhabit
our continent. Two committees of Congress handle
the Indian budget, and consider and report upon bills
affecting the administration of Indian affairs at large.
There are other committees whose jurisdiction covers
special interests, like Indian Depredations and the

197

198 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Five Civilized Tribes; but these never encroach upon
the domain of general Indian legislation.

Making laws exclusively for one race, wholly helpless
and dependent, is no light task. For its proper per
formance, every man who takes a conspicuous part in
it ought to have gone through a preliminary training
in the Indian field itself, meeting the people, both red
and white, face to face, looking into their local diffi
culties, tracing out the sources of their frequent mis
understandings, studying social conditions among the
tribes, and trying to ascertain and understand the Ind
ians' point of view on all the larger questions liable
to arise in the course of solving their problem. He also
ought to master the main features of the Government's
policy, to know pretty thoroughly the machinery which
the Department is using in its effort to carry this out,
and to have at least a speaking acquaintance with the
statutes and judicial decisions with which the path of
progress thus far has been posted and lined.

To say that such an equipment for the work is still
an unrealized ideal is no derogation of the intelligence
or the earnestness of the leaders in Indian legislation.
Let the public disabuse its mind of the fallacy that
Congress is simply contemptuous of the Indian's rights
and of the agencies which make for his. civilization.
True, it is tired of the Indian problem, and the self
ishness of a single Senator or Representative ob
trudes itself unpleasantly now and then; but speaking
broadly, no body of men responds with more alacrity to
those demands of benevolence which are within their
comprehension than the federal lawmakers. Their

LEGISLATION 199

worst fault is the negative one of lack of information
and indisposition to delve into the deeper meanings of
things. Busy men, drawn from various civil walks
in which they have had to struggle so constantly for a
livelihood that they have had scant time to investigate
subjects which bear no promise of profit, they are
gathered at Washington and assigned to committee
work by a sort of rule-of-thumb. Reports from the
heads of executive Departments and Bureaus are laid
before them with every message from the President;
but these are usually long, and too heavily laden with
statistics to be stimulating reading; and unless some
member is directly spurred by his constituents to con
cern himself with a particular measure, or unless a
Secretary or a Commissioner, after launching his new
ideas, pushes them with diplomatic persistence, years
are liable to go by without showing any improvement
of old conditions.

This is not because the will to accomplish something
is wanting, but because every member of either chamber
is so burdened with work of a hundred different kinds
that he cannot of his own initiative concentrate his
thought upon one topic. It is pleasant to be able to
say, however, that since the policy of shrinkage was
set in motion, and the Indian Office undertook in
earnest to put itself gradually out of existence, it has
found, in the main, a willing assistant in Congress.
More care has been exercised there in the choice of
men for the House and Senate committees, whose or
ganization is at the present writing far stronger in pro
gressive material than it has been at any previous

200 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

period. How much needed to be done may be guessed
from two incidents which occurred early in my official
term, apparently trifling in themselves but significant.

One of the committees summoned me before them,
to announce that they had just voted to insert in the
next annual appropriation bill a provision — as nearly
as I can now recall the wording — "that on and after
June 30, 1907, the United States Indian School at
Hampton, Virginia, shall cease to exist, and the Secre
tary of the Interior shall proceed at once thereafter to
wind up its affairs, and deposit the balance, if any, in
the Treasury of the United States." Asked for my
criticism, I followed the lines of Commodore Vander-
bilt's advice to young speculators: " Don't sell what
you haven't got." The whole committee sat back
in their chairs and stared in surprise. " Gentlemen/'
I explained, " there is no such thing as a United States
Indian School at Hampton, Virginia, and the Govern
ment has no more right to wind up the affairs of Hamp
ton Institute than to wind up yours or mine."

"The Government does not own Hampton Institute?"
ejaculated one member. "When, pray, did we dispose
of it, and to whom?"

"The Government never owned it."

"Who does, then?"

"A private benevolent organization."

"But we support it?"

"We do not. It is supported by individual con
tributions."

The astonished member reached for a copy of the
Indian budget.

LEGISLATION 201

"I can show you by this," he said, with great con
fidence, "that we vote a fund, every year, for the sup
port of Hampton."

"On the contrary," I answered, "you will see that
you vote a certain sum to pay for the care and educa
tion, under contract, of one hundred and twenty
Indian pupils. The Government does not have to
enter into contract with schools which it owns."

There was not a man in the room who did not ex
press equal surprise at my statement; yet this com
mittee had been voting, year after year, the same grant
for the same purpose, and standing sponsor for it in a
formal report, without grasping its real purport.

The other incident was quite as serious on its tell
tale side. I met at dinner socially one evening a prom
inent member of a sub-committee on appropriations,
who, after manifesting a lively interest in certain
features of my work, suddenly inquired: "In your
opinion, is the educated young Indian worth more than
the educated young white man?" Adding, in response
to my puzzled look: "He costs a good deal more."

"I suppose you mean," I answered, "that as the
young Indian receives food and clothing and housing
and medical care along with his tuition, the total draft
on the tax-payers is heavier than for the mere tuition
which they give gratuitously to white students."

"No," said the Congressman, "I mean that, balanc
ing item against item, it costs more to educate an
Indian than to educate a white boy. I know of many
a young man who has supported himself and gone
through school and college on $250 or $300 a year,

202 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

whereas it costs you $1,700 a year to put an Indian
through. Now, how long is your school course?"

"Five years is commonly the unit, but the pupil is
not always limited to that period."

"Well, there is $8,500 for giving one of those young
fellows his start; and what have you to show for it?"

I did what I could to convince him of his error,
but he rebuked me with a reminder that he had been
studying Indian appropriations regularly for all the
years that they had passed under his official scrutiny.
He added that one or two of his committee colleagues
had been going over with him the figures in my latest
report, footing up the expenditures for Indian board
ing-schools in one year and dividing the total sum by
the number of pupils in these schools, which gave a
quotient of $1,700 a year as the cost per pupil. We
were interrupted at this point, but the next morning
I renewed the conversation by telephone, reading from
the current appropriation act the standing clause
which required me to keep the yearly cost of education
and maintenance of our Indian pupils down to $167
apiece, except when some vital emergency necessitated
a somewhat larger expenditure. Repairs and improve
ments on a high-priced school plant here or there,
I explained, might cause a fractional addition to the
cost, but, even on a generous estimate, that would
hardly swell the net per capita rate above $200. He
greeted this exposition with a low whistle of incredulity,
and presently excused himself to lay my statement
before his two associates. The same afternoon he sent
me a half humorous apology, saying that the trio had

LEGISLATION 203

discovered their error, which consisted in accidentally
placing their decimal point one figure too far to the
right!

When it is remembered that all laws and appropria
tions are passed by the votes, or the silent consent,
of more than five hundred members of the two houses
of Congress, that probably not one-fifth of these know
anything at all about Indians, and that, of this small
group, it is doubtful whether a dozen know anything
of tribes outside of the borders of their own States re
spectively, it argues pretty well for the industry and
interest of a few men that we obtain any Indian leg
islation of real value. To the credit of a majority of
those who vote on such measures it should be said that
they make no pretensions to understand the subject,
but are ready to accept the best information they can
get from persons who are intimate with it. The ablest
men in Congress I have always found frankest in ad
mitting their unfamiliarity with the details of Indian
business. The bane of every executive officer's ex
istence is the lawmaker who knows nothing, does not
attend his committee meetings with any regularity or
pay much attention when there, but waits till a crisis
when every hour saved is of the utmost importance,
and then blockades a piece of legislation — only to
confess, a few days later, that if he had known at first
what he has since learned he would not have opposed
it. I have heard one man of this stamp, with such a
reputation among his colleagues for bad temper that
they would always yield a point rather than make
themselves targets for his abuse, object every year to

204 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

some permanent item in the budget, and become angry
when shown that the same item had passed Congress
after Congress, with his approval, ever since he had
been a member.

Another trouble-maker is the gentleman with a
mania for " improving" everything. The Depart
ment, let us say, has prepared a bill with the utmost
care, procuring expert advice from the best lawyers in
the Government as to the wording which will convey
the exact shade of meaning required, and making
diligent comparison with all prior legislation on the
subject so that there may be no inconsistencies on the
one hand or perilous redundancies on the other. It
sends this thoroughly matured product to Congress,
where it is introduced and referred to the appropriate
committees. Then the chronic improver sharpens
his little gouge and goes to work. He would prefer
"will" to "shall" in one place, "but" to "and" in
another, "not" and "or" to "either" and "neither"
in a third. The other members, anxious to waste the
least possible time in controversy, agree informally to
adopt his suggestions, and on his motion the matter
goes over for further consideration. At the next
meeting he does not appear, and in its amended form
the measure is tentatively adopted by the members
present. A week later, after it has passed out of every
body's mind except his, he calls it up for reconsidera
tion, and, himself forgetting what amendments he
recommended, proposes to change most of his phrase
ology back to the original form or some other, with
the addition of a few fresh "improvements." This

LEGISLATION 205

sort of thing goes on until, after weeks of fruitless de
lay, the patchwork bill is reported out of committee.
When it comes up for passage in the open chamber,
perhaps some member who has been primed for the
purpose by the Department offers a number of amend
ments which bring it back into something near the
shape in which it first was sent to the Capitol, and in
this form it is passed.

The wanton improver becomes especially obnoxious
when a bill has passed one house and entered the other
before falling under his observation; for any change
made in it then means its return to the house in which
it originated and its repassage there in its amended
form, or else its submission to a joint committee of
conference, where, if business happens to be congested
and the members are tired out, it is liable to some un
toward accident or may fail altogether. No one who
sets a bill afloat objects to its amendment if the amend
ing clauses make its purport any plainer or clear the
path for its attainment of the end it is seeking; but
the chances are against this. Indeed, it is with a pre
vision of what the improving genius may attempt to
do, that sometimes a bill is introduced in a very differ
ent form from that in which its author wishes it enacted
into law. Then one or two members who are in secret
league with the author, seeing that the meddler is be
coming restless, suggest to him privately that he offer
such and such amendments. This satisfies his crav
ing, and insures the passage of the bill in proper shape
to meet the needs which called it into being. More
than one executive officer has resorted to this process

206 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

as a means of saving an important measure from fatal
distortion at the hands of the habitual busybody.

Not seldom a really conscientious effort to improve
a bill causes a bad blunder through mere unfamiliarity
with its subject. Such a mishap befell the Burke act
in its progress through the House of Representatives.
It had been skilfully drawn, well considered in commit
tee and ably handled on the floor; but a member who
feared lest it might contain something which would
conflict with the existing laws affecting the Five
Civilized Tribes, proposed an amendment excepting
from its operation "the Indians of the Indian Terri
tory." Although the House had been legislating on
Indian Territory affairs for so many years, neither the
proposer of the amendment nor any other member
present seems to have been aware that there were any
Indians in the Territory besides the Five Civilized
Tribes; so the amendment went through without
opposition. Yet in the Territory as then constituted
was the Quapaw agency, under which are assembled
fragments of several minor tribes, including some of
the most intelligent and progressive of our Indians.
And all those men and women were thereafter ex
cluded from a highly beneficent law, and kept in the
status of the most backward allotted tribes, because
no Representative in the room when the amendment
was passed knew that it ought to read "Five Civilized
Tribes" instead of "Indian Territory."

One standing curse of Indian legislation is the post
ponement of final action on the annual budget till the
closing days of a session. The better men in both

LEGISLATION 207

chambers would willingly change this custom, which
had its origin in the era when the Indian appropriation
bill was treated as a dumping-ground for every un
worthy job which could not be worked anywhere else.
If a political henchman was to be rewarded, and none
of the other budget bills afforded a means of taking
care of him, he was permitted to become an " attor
ney" for some Indian tribe, and his fees were appro
priated in the Indian bill ; or if there had been a dead
lock between the two houses on any question, and only
a few votes were needed in one or the other to break
it, those votes could occasionally be procured by
wedging something into the Indian bill at the last
moment for the gratification of wavering members
who had Indians in their bailiwicks. In order to ac
complish such ends it was necessary to hold back the
omnium-gatherum measure till there remained bare
time to jam it through and rush it to the President's
desk before the final fall of the gavel. In the uni
versal hurry, a bill thus held back might be signed
with slight examination if it did not bear too gross a
label on its face.

A case which brought the evils of this practice forci
bly to public notice occurred on the 4th of March,
1897, when President Cleveland was warned that a
tricky paragraph had got into the pending Indian
appropriation bill, favoring a certain private mining
scheme on a remote reservation. He refused therefore
to sign the bill, and it died with the Congress and the
administration. President McKinley was equally im
pressed with the viciousness of the job, and the bill

208 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

passed at the special session omitted all mention of it.
Another illustrative instance came to light in 1905,
when a clause crept into the Indian budget in the
middle of the night preceding the close of the short
session, and the bill was signed without discovering it.
It involved so outrageous a wrong to a small group
of Indian allottees that I felt certain that the honest
men in Congress had not known what they were doing
when they suffered it to be enacted, so I resolved to
disregard the law and take the consequences.

Having done this, I seized my first opportunity after
Congress met the next winter to make a clean breast
of my recusancy. Only one member who heard my
statements was willing to undertake the official cham
pionship of the clause; and he read me a snarling
lecture on my duty to go ahead and execute the laws
which Congress passed without proffering my unso
licited opinions as to whether they were wise or unwise,
right or wrong. As no one else was familiar enough
with the situation to face his notorious mud batteries,
there was no movement to repeal the vicious clause;
but I am informed that up to this day its authors have
not yet realized their full expected profits from the
job.

As I have said in another place, every Indian measure
introduced in Congress, if it will bear exposure to the
full light of day, is referred to the Department for re
port and recommendation before it is acted upon.
If one is crowded through without such reference, you
cannot go amiss in looking for a bad or a weak spot in
it somewhere. So safe a maxim is this, that members

LEGISLATION 209

who make no pretence of familiarity with Indian af
fairs rarely fail, before voting for the consideration of
a bill, to inquire whether the Department has recom
mended it. These men are trying to do as nearly right
as they can. Without conceding omniscience to the
Department, they understand that it has better facili
ties for looking into the merits of a measure affecting
Indians than are possessed by any other body in the
Government, not excepting Congress; that it also has
time to move carefully in such cases; and that its
conclusions are bound to be conservative, because it
is directly responsible to the President, to Congress
and to the people for safeguarding the interests con
fided to its keeping. Congress is not compelled, of
course, to do what the Department recommends. It
is as free an agent after such recommendation as be
fore; the only difference is that, if it prefers to ignore
the advice of the Department, it must shoulder the
consequences, and nine times out of ten the conse
quences are bad.

By way of illustration, take the case of the Kicka-
poos whose restrictions as to alienating their lands
were removed at one sweeping stroke in the spring of
1906. The amendment to the Indian budget which
provided for the removal was never submitted to the
Department, but, on learning what was afoot, I put
in personally as strong a protest as I knew how to
make, pointing out the dangers to be apprehended
from the proposed legislation. As the enemy was in
the saddle, this warning was contemptuously disre
garded. Only a few months elapsed, however, before

210 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the evils I had apprehended came to pass, and in such
a flood that an investigation was ordered by a special
committee of the Senate; and at its close no voice
was raised more loudly in horror at the developments,
than that of the very man who had opened the way
for the whole catastrophe by pushing through his
objectionable legislation.

A serious shortcoming in the work of Congress is its
omission to supply means for accomplishing some of
the ends sought by its legislation. For example, it
clothes the Commissioner of Indian Affairs with gen
eral authority to preserve good order on the reserva
tions, but with no specific powers for enforcing that
authority. If a group of unruly Indians prey upon the
peaceful members of their tribe or otherwise habitually
live in outlawry, his only distinctly sanctioned resort
is to the courts, which in the frontier country take
little interest in offences which do not affect white
persons. He is required to see that all Indian children
receive the rudiments of an education; but when he
lays down rules to supply the lack of a more definite
compulsory school law, the Indians can disobey them
with impunity. All this is the old story of demand
ing a tale of bricks without straw. What is the result?
If the Commissioner pauses to hunt up page and line
of a statutory warrant for his every action, he abstains
from action altogether, because the affirmative sanc
tion is not there; and then Congress joins with the pub
lic in censuring his inactivity. If, on the other hand,
he attempts to carry out his broad instructions, the
first case in which any one is made to suffer in body,

LEGISLATION 211

mind or estate, becomes the subject of violent con
demnation from the uninformed but tender-hearted
multitude; and Congress, ignoring its own accounta
bility for such conditions, encourages the outcry by its
silence, at least. This is both unjust and demoraliz
ing.

In times now happily long agone, there were in
dividual members of Congress who used to trade upon
their power to injure a Commissioner, and try to bully
him into compliance with their wishes. I witnessed
one such scene during the administration of Com
missioner Morgan. An item of appropriation was
pending, increasing the Commissioner's salary by one
thousand dollars; and what I saw was the descent
upon the Indian Office of a burly Senator from one of
the prairie States, who pulled up his sleeves in pugilistic
fashion, shook his fist in the Commissioner's face, and
declared amid a volley of oaths that unless a certain
thing were done for him the increase of salary should
never pass the Senate. No one who knew General
Morgan need be told that he met this assault with
dignity and composure, and that it produced no
change in his plans; but the fact that the Senate could
have tolerated as a member a creature who would re
sort to such methods, was significant of the spirit of
that period.

We hear, even yet, "the courtesy of the Senate"
cited to excuse things which might better not exist.
For example, it is the unwritten law that any Senator
who is a member of the Indian Affairs committee may
have practically whatever he asks for in his own State,

212 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

if within the power of the committee to grant. Thus
it sometimes happens that a dubious item finds its
way into an Indian bill while it is in committee, and is
reported to the Senate with the rest. Even the mem
bers of the committee who have consented to the in
clusion of the item may have nothing to say in its de
fence beyond the unadorned explanation that " Senator
Blank wished that amendment added, and of course we
put it on." It does not follow, by any means, that the
amendment will ever become law: for, after the com
mittee has reported favorably on it, it must still pass
the Senate; and if it succeeds there it must go, with
the other Senate amendments, to the joint conference
committee, and be reported thence and passed by the
House of Representatives. So if it contains anything
extraordinarily vicious it is liable to be halted some
where while running the gauntlet of repeated considera
tion, and the blame or praise for its ultimate fate
must be shared by a good many persons.

A peril encountered by all proposed legislation, but
by Indian measures conspicuously because of the wide
spread lack of information on the questions involved,
lies in the constitutional privilege of irresponsible
speech on the floor of both chambers of Congress. No
Senator or Representative may be called to account
in any other place for words he has uttered in debate.
The result is that, again and again, important legis
lation has been defeated, or undesirable legislation ad
vanced, on the strength of statements made with all
the outward assurance of inspired prophecy by some
speaker who had not the remotest idea of what he was

LEGISLATION 213

talking about. If an orator is forceful in his way of
putting an argument, and no other member present
at the time feels competent to lead the opposition, in
calculable harm may be done through laying over
a pressing matter till another session; for when this
has occurred, even the member who afterward discovers
that he has misled his colleagues rarely carries his re
pentance so far as to move a reconsideration and make
belated amends.

At one time it was customary to load down the
annual Indian appropriation bill with all sorts of ad
ministrative and constructive legislation, in contempt
of the rules of procedure in both houses. In the House
of Representatives there was a perennial antidote for
this in the readiness of members to invoke a point of
order against any undesired item while the bill was
under consideration on the floor. The same matters
were subject to a point of order also in the Senate,
but the immemorial tradition of " courtesy" there
made every one reluctant to use such a weapon. As
a consequence, the bill as passed by the House of Rep
resentatives would be laden with whatever general leg
islation could survive the sifting process, leaving the
Senate to pile the particularly noxious "riders" on
top of the heap. The bad effect of all this will appear
when it is remembered that the Indian establishment
could not carry on its work without its appropriations,
and hence that it lay in the power of any handful of
bold parliamentarians, by conspiring to inject their
pet schemes into the bill, to wreck the whole adminis
tration of Indian business if their opponents refused

214 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

compliance. To Senator Clapp of Minnesota, who
became chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian
Affairs in 1905, belongs the credit of making a success
ful stand against this abuse. One of his early acts was
to undertake to strip the Indian budget of everything
which did not legitimately belong there, and he worked
unremittingly till it was possible to point to the Indian
appropriation act of March 3, 1909, as substantially a
model measure in that regard.

It is most unfortunate that the Constitution of the
United States does not contain a provision similar to
that contained in the constitution of the State of New
York, authorizing the chief executive to veto parts of
bills while approving the rest. In spite of all the energy
put forth during the last few years to remedy faults of
procedure and bring about other reforms in Congress,
it still remains possible to force the hand of the Presi
dent by compelling him to choose between vetoing an
entire bill in order to get rid of one offensive feature,
and approving the whole thing, to that extent becom
ing a partner in the iniquity. It is all very well for
critics who have never themselves been confronted with
such a crisis to say that he must, in good conscience,
veto the bill and throw the responsibility where it be
longs. Unhappily, the trouble does not end with this
one decision. The chances are that the bill to be vetoed
carries appropriations vital to the success of a highly
meritorious or even essential programme in public af
fairs. To throw away the work of a whole year is itself
no light matter; to convene Congress in extra session to
pass legislation thus made necessary, not only causes

LEGISLATION 215

enormous expense and much trouble, but may result
in getting nothing more desirable after all. So, if the
moral questions involved are not too grave, and the
money called for by the unwelcome provision comes
out of the Treasury and not out of some helpless body
like an Indian tribe, it is not to be charged against a
President's high-mindedness that he weighs the good
in one scale against the evil in the other, and lets his
course be determined by the way the balance tips.

Congress puts most of its transactions, in embryo or
accomplished, into print; but it is well not to be de
ceived by the important look of a paper from that source
containing a proposal to perform miracles, or an as
sault upon the good name of a public servant. Thou
sands of worthy people have been hoodwinked into
supposing that a bill introduced in Congress necessarily
means a movement behind it. Bills are the cheapest
things imaginable: the most insignificant citizen can
get one introduced, regardless of its merits; and every
bill, in the normal course of procedure, is printed and
referred to a committee. In the committee-room,
however, unless it can command some powerful in
fluence to pry it out and carry it along the succeeding
stages, it dies of inanition in a pigeonhole.

A bill proposing to do something which every well-
informed person knows will never be done, is bad
enough as an instrument for misleading the popular
mind, but a yet more vicious trick may be played by a
Senate or House "document," so styled because it has
no legislative standing. Such a " document" may be
an official answer to a resolution of inquiry, or a memo-

216 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

rial from this or that body of citizens, or a reprint from
a magazine or newspaper which some interested party
thinks ought to be more widely disseminated. To
the modest reader at home, who looks upon everything
governmental with more or less reverence, the name
"Senate document" or "House document" carries
with it an impression that the thing itself is of some
consequence. Yet its history disposes promptly of any
such conceit. A member presents it without reading,
nobody pays any attention, and in the absence of ob
jection it is sent to the Public Printer. The subject-
matter may be worthless, or, worse still, vicious in
intent. The person who initiates the publication may
be the most untrustworthy of men. If so, the chances
are that he has taken this course for the purpose of
making the ignorant suppose that his paper has a
Congressional endorsement, and in order to be able to
send it through the mails without postage, under a
member's frank. A Representative or Senator can
always be found to introduce it, because under his
Constitutional privilege he is irresponsible.

If no respectable member can be induced, on groimds
of political favor or personal courtesy, to handle the
business, some one of the opposite character may be
willing to father it for other motives. If the paper has
to do with Indians, particularly if it is a grandiloquent
harangue about the protection of their rights against
the tyranny of the executive, the reader will do well
to inquire into the antecedents of the member who in
troduced it. He may turn out to be one who has been
lining his own pockets by taking advantage of the ig-

LEGISLATION 217

norance of his red brethren, and who has sought this
means of covering up his tracks, like the professional
pickpocket who shouts "Stop thief !" louder than any
of the honest men around him. Perhaps his motive
is revenge against an honorable officer who has been
trying to bring him to punishment for his nefarious
practices. Perhaps he is one of the sort who can point
to some Indian blood in his ancestry, and has been
using that as a lure for his poor victims and for the de
ception of the public as to his interest in the Indian race.
Sometimes the recklessness with which unscrupulous
or indifferent men will play with reputations in public
life has more serious consequences than any one could
foresee. A few years ago there appeared in a Seriate
document a mass of slanders aimed at one of the most
excellent servants the Government has ever had. He
was a retired officer of the regular army who, because
a life full of dangers, exposure and hard work for his
country had left him with an ailing body and a lean
purse, had been glad to accept for a short term an
Indian agency. He carried into his duties there the
same fidelity, courage and energy which of old he had
carried into battle; yet this document charged him
with conspiracy to rob the Indians under him of lands
and money, with cruelty to them in individual cases,
and with several particularly contemptible frauds upon
the Government. The President ordered a special in
vestigation with the design, if the charges proved true,
not only of disgracing him publicly by removal from
his civil office, but of bringing him before a court-
martial which would drum him out of the army.

218 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

The inquiry, which consumed some months, ended in
a complete triumph for the accused officer. The false
hood and malignity of the charges were proved from
the mouths of the witnesses for the prosecution and
from public records accessible to everybody, without
calling a single witness for the defence. In the mean
time a good man's heart was nearly broken, and he
suffered a stroke of paralysis from the sheer suffering
he had undergone at the thought that all his long
career of upright living and devoted service had not
shielded him against such an indignity at its close.
Nevertheless, the authors of the criminal assault upon
an honored name, the introducer of the document
containing it, and the inattentive lawmakers who let
it go forth with the hallmark of their chamber on it,
have undergone no punishment.

It was not so very long ago that the newspapers
were ringing with the name of Crazy Snake, a Creek
agitator, and printing columns of despatches describing
an " outbreak" among the most besotted Indian and
Negro elements in Oklahoma. Fortunately the up
heaval was soon suppressed, and the dire predictions
of the sensational writers failed of fulfilment beyond
a little skirmishing and the destruction of a com
paratively small amount of property. But what the
trouble, once well started, might have run into, was
obvious from what did occur; and all this was made
possible by the willingness of certain members of Con
gress — probably out of good nature — to let them
selves be used by a professional mischief-maker as
nominal sponsors for legislative bills which he fur-

LEGISLATION 219

nished. An investigation by the Secretary of the In
terior showed that by this means a group of recalci
trants in the old Indian Territory, led by Crazy Snake,
had for years been deluded with the expectation that
Congress would presently repeal all the statutes it had
enacted during our generation for the reorganization
of the Territory, throwing back into communal owner
ship the lands already allotted, forbidding all further
interference in the affairs of the Indians by the Gov
ernment of the United States, and leaving the local
tribes to return to the way their fathers had lived
before the white men came among them. Under this
hallucination, the poor dupes had contributed from
their scanty means to raise the sum necessary to pay
for supposed lobby work in Washington. Measured
in dollars and cents, the fraud might take a secondary
rank in the scale of crime; but what a price to pay,
what a hazard to invite, in order that some Congress
man might "do a good turn" for a friend!

In what has been said in this chapter I would not be
understood as making any sweeping criticism of Con
gress at large. Every such body is hampered in its
work by customs and precedents from whose thraldom
it is hard to escape ; every one, no matter how creditable
its average of character, has individual members whose
presence in it adds nothing to the glory of the rest; and
all legislation is, and must be, largely the fruit of com
promise. During my own period of constant contact
with the Indian committees of the two houses I was
more and more impressed with the intelligence and right
feeling prevailing among them. It is wholly in kind-

220 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

ness, therefore, that I have tried to point out some of
the reasons why a greater advance has not been made
in legislation to assure the complete and early solution
of the Indian problem. Indeed, in view of the complex
nature of the subject, of the extreme sparseness of popu
lar information on it, of the lack of interest taken by
most of our lawmakers in social philosophy as dis
tinguished from politics and economic science, and of
sundry deeply intrenched traditions and unfortunate
methods of legislation, the real wonder is not that we
have got along no further, but that we have made as
much progress as we have.

CHAPTER XII
LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE

Origin of the Agency Pass — Some of Its Grim Humors — Free
dom of the Indian to Go and Come — The Disciplinary
Lessons of Cause and Effect — Medicine Men and Their
Pretensions — Methods of Controlling Them — The Force
of Ridicule — Tackling the Intemperance Problem — War
like Threats and Incendiarism — Courts of Indian Offences
— Putting Culprits upon Their Honor — An Historic Inci
dent in Point.

IN the early days of the reservation system, the Agent
was for all practical purposes an unqualified despot.
Like the captain of a ship on the high seas, he was in
command of a company of human beings mostly ig
norant and irresponsible; in charge of a large quantity
of his employer's property; isolated from the rest of
mankind, and remote from any place where justice could
be regularly administered. Such white persons as had
penetrated the wild Western country, though of the
venturesome pioneer class and contemptuous of ordi
nary hardships, were always apprehensive of trouble
from Indian treachery and cruelty; so that, whenever
a roving band of red men appeared anywhere near them,
they would gather up their few portable belongings
and start for some prearranged assembling point,
usually an army post if one were within reach. Even

221

222 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

a solitary Indian at large was regarded as more or less
of a menace; and as little hamlets sprang up here and
there, it was customary to demand of any Indian who
entered them some proof that he had a right to be
wandering about thus freely.

From this universal precautionary practice, as well
as from the use the officers of a fort would some
times make of Indian messengers, grew up the custom
of issuing a pass or permit to an Indian who was about
to travel on any lawful errand. The paper would
describe the bearer; state his destination, his reason
for making the journey, and the dates between which
he was expected to go and return; assure every one
that he was worthy of confidence; bespeak for him
kind treatment and assistance from any white per
sons he might meet on the way, and perhaps conclude
with a warning against giving him any intoxicating
drink.

Besides the Indians to whom passes could properly
be issued, a great many who had no conceivable claim
to consideration would regularly put in their applica
tions. Being illiterate, but holding in awe any paper
with a white man's handwriting on it, these fellows
were content with whatever they received; and oc
casionally a Government officer would indulge a grim
humor in the document which he prepared for the pur
pose of getting rid of a nuisance. As a result, every
Inspector in the Indian Service who has made tours of
the reservations has been approached by some Indian,
unattractive in appearance but wearing a self-satisfied
smirk, who has handed him, with abundant ceremoni-

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 223

ousness, an ancient and well-soiled sheet of paper
containing some such inscription as this:

BALLYHO INDIAN AGENCY, NEVADA, June 31, 1869.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

The bearer of this paper is a Ballyho Indian named
Ah-wo-ke or High Feather, commonly known as Lazy
Jake. He is without exception the worst fraud and
petty scoundrel it has ever been my misfortune to
meet. He is a chronic liar, a persistent beggar, and
will carry off anything he can lay his hands on. Every
one who does not wish to be saddled with an incorri
gible humbug is hereby admonished to give Jake the
widest possible berth.

SMITH ROBINSON,
2d Lieutenant, 75th Cavalry,
Acting U. S. Indian Agent.

Or it might take this shorter form:

NOTICE

Lazy Jake, to whom this paper has been issued, is a
thoroughly worthless and unreliable Ballyho Indian.

R. VAN WINKLE,

U. S. Indian Agent.

As the peaceable and trusty Indians, for their own
protection, used always to ask for passes, and as the
assumed necessity for such credentials served to deter
the wanderings of an element who were merely rest
less without evil intent, the custom gradually crystal
lized till a majority of the frontier whites, both in and

224 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

out of the Government service, came to have a hazy
notion that the law required the issue of a permit
before an Indian might leave his reservation. Such
a requirement was, indeed, a matter of Departmental
regulation up to a pretty recent date, for when I be
came Commissioner I found in the Indian Office code,
edition of 1904, a passage to this effect:

Agents are instructed to notify all nomadic Indians
under their supervision that they will not be allowed
to roam away from their reservations without any
specific object in view, nor will they be allowed to
trespass upon the public domain; but that they will
be expected to remain within the limits of their reser
vation, and not to leave it except as hereinafter pro
vided.

The practice of bands of Indians making or returning
visits to other reservations is deemed injurious to the
Indians, and must not be allowed; but where a few
Indians, who have by meritorious conduct and atten
tion to labor earned the extension of certain privileges
or for satisfactory reasons desire to make short visits
at seasons when it will not interfere with the necessary
work at the agencies, Agents may allow them to make
such visits, in their discretion, as a reward for their
good conduct, provided the consent of the Agent of
the tribe to be visited has previously been obtained,
and that it will in no event be likely to prove disadvan
tageous to the Indian Service, and provided further
that the consent of the Indian Office has been asked for
and obtained. . . .

Whenever it shall be deemed either necessary or
judicious to grant to Indians a permit of the character
above mentioned, an escort of police should accom
pany them if desirable.

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 225

Agents will endeavor by every means in their power
to impress upon the minds of their Indians the urgent
necessity for a strict compliance with these instructions,
and warn them that without this protection they are
liable to be looked upon and treated as hostile Indians,
subject to arrest and punishment.

At the first opportunity I made it known that this
rule was to be ignored, as I should insist upon an Ind
ian's right to go and come as freely as a white man,
provided only that his conduct were inoffensive; but
so firmly fixed in the mind of the Service was the permit
idea that it took me at least two years to pry it out,
and I am not sure that a remnant of it does not lurk
there still.

•

At one time the tribes had got into a habit of send
ing large delegations to Washington to visit the Com
missioner and talk with him about their affairs. As a
rule, the subjects of these interviews were such as had
been, or could be, thoroughly threshed out in corre
spondence, with the added advantage that what went
into writing became part of the public record, and
gave both Indians and Commissioner something definite
to proceed upon later. As the interviews were oral,
the accuracy of statement and understanding on both
sides depended largely on the quality of the temporary
interpreter; whereas, with a written document in their
possession, the Indians could go to any one on their
reservation who knew both tongues, and have as many
assurances as they wished of what promises had actu
ally been made to them. The visits had degenerated
into junkets, which cost the tribal fund a sum of

226 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

money always well up in the hundreds and occasionally
running over a thousand dollars, to say nothing of the
temptations to misconduct to which the delegations
would be exposed in even so well-ordered a city as
Washington. Again, as the members of the party
had usually obtained their appointments by an elec
tioneering campaign in which they had boasted of
what they could accomplish, they were apt on their
return to take large liberties with the truth in describ
ing the success of their interviews and pretending to
recite the fine things the Commissioner had said to
them; and then, when the facts came out, the bulk of
the ignorant stay-at-homes would believe the stories
of their travelled representatives, and set down the
official contradiction as a fresh proof of the duplicity
of the white man's government.

Scores of times under former administrations I had
seen this comedy repeated, so I established a rule that
when a tribe wished to send a delegation to Washing
ton it must first submit by mail a schedule of the sub
jects to be discussed and the questions to be asked.
If these were all obsolete or unimportant, or could be
disposed of in a letter, the tribe was so informed, and
told that the Department would not authorize a draft
upon the tribal fund for the expenses of a delegation;
that if it insisted upon sending one, the cost of the
journey must be provided from other than public
sources; and that the Agent would be held responsible
for seeing that the delegates took with them ready
cash enough to pay for their transportation both
ways and for their board and lodging while in the

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 227

city. Now and then an application would come at
a most inopportune season, as, for example, during
the closing days of a session of Congress, when the
officers of the Department were hardly finding time
to eat and sleep; in that event the tribe would be
notified that it had better postpone its request for the
present, since it would be impossible for the Commis
sioner to hold "long talks" till the congestion of public
business was over.

As a rule the Indians, though disappointed at the
attitude of the authorities, accepted it very kindly.
Almost invariably, however, when a party of delegates
came to- Washington at private cost, the oriental strain
in their composition would reveal itself before they
had finished their visit, in a petition that the Depart
ment would, after all, authorize them to draw upon
the tribal fund for their expenses. Sometimes, too, a
few Indians, thinking to escape a rebuff which they
were conscious they deserved, would slip into Washing
ton without warning to anybody, and turn up at the
Indian Office with a request to be allowed to shake
hands with the Commissioner. This request was always
granted to reputable Indians, as it would be to reputa
ble persons of any other race ; but I could not do busi
ness with them as representatives of their tribe unless
they brought satisfactory proofs that they had been
regularly elected and commissioned to act as such.
Without exception, I believe, Indians who came in this
way have hung about the city in the vain hope that I
would relent and pay their expenses; but the main
tenance of one unvarying course in such matters has

228 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

borne fruit not only in a wonderful decrease in the
number of foolish applications, but in a great improve
ment in the character of the delegates who do come
to Washington, in the shortening of their sojourn, in
more businesslike methods at their interviews, and in
the better understanding of the results by the tribes
men who remain at home.

A tendency to abuse a worthy privilege became ob
vious at one time in the habit into which the Indians
on certain reservations fell with their large religious
gatherings. Several of the Christian denominations
which sustained Indian missions in the Mississippi
Valley had been accustomed to hold convocations or
conferences somewhere in that region every year.
These meetings were greatly enjoyed by the Indians
who attended them, including not only the converts
but the non-members who went simply to look on, and
for whom the life of the big camp, the singing and the
speaking, had strong attractions irrespective of any
spiritual benefit. The only fault which could be found
with such concourses was with their being held at
various dates strung through a season when particular
kinds of work were needed on the Indian farms to pre
pare them for the winter. A good many of the Indians
would leave home for a week or ten days to attend a
meeting, and then for another like period to attend
one called by a different church, and so on, to the seri
ous neglect of their industrial and domestic duties. I
therefore took up this matter with the mission authori
ties, inquiring whether they could not agree among
themselves upon a mutually convenient date for hold-

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 229

ing their Indian gatherings simultaneously, so that
every Indian who had business at a convocation of his
own denomination, or was attracted to one for any
other reason, would have a chance to go, with the
least practicable disturbance of his regular work on the
reservation. I found the missionaries generally well
disposed toward the idea; but even here I had to exer
cise the greatest caution in the phraseology of our
correspondence with Agents and Superintendents, and
lay uncommon stress upon such words as "advice"
and " persuasion," lest some of our field men should
gain an impression that I was requiring Indians to
obtain permits before leaving their reservations to
attend a meeting.

The dislike I have always entertained for compulsion,
or arbitrary methods of any sort, except for the en
forcement of order when other means have proved
futile, has been fortified by my observation that the
bulk of the Indians, however ignorant, or unsyste
matic, or indifferent to things which seem to us im
portant, are well-meaning underneath it all. Like
children, they can be managed most satisfactorily by
following the line of least resistance and exercising
plenty of patience and tact. A good general rule is to
treat an Indian, as nearly as conditions permit, as
you would treat a white man of the corresponding
class. Unfortunately the machinery of justice is de
ficient in some important particulars on reservations
under the jurisdiction of the United States Govern
ment; but it is possible sometimes to make adapta
tions which, though they may leave more or less to be

230 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

desired in the matter of technical regularity, suffice
for the simple needs of the situation. For example, if
an Indian who owns live stock idles away the growing
season and fails to put up hay enough for winter feed
ing, the best punishment you can visit upon him is to
buy hay from some of his thriftier neighbors, feed his
stock so that they will not suffer, and hold the animals
in pawn till he has redeemed them by paying costs.
The densest Indian mind is quite capable of recogniz
ing the relation of cause and effect here.

The same principle holds good in dealing with the
practice of dancing in season and out, as explained in
another place. So also with the medicine men, who
among the Indians, as among other primitive peoples,
combine the offices of religion and the healing art.
The religion they represent is, of course, fetishism pure
and simple. Obey them implicitly, keep them well
supplied with ponies, saddles, blankets, ornaments,
foods, or whatever else they demand, and their sor
ceries will bring you good luck; incur their ill-will by
refusal, and they may condemn you to death or to some
awful torment. Rise in active revolt against them,
and it becomes a tug of war, the result depending on
whether the original rebel can inspire more Indians to
join him in his fight than the medicine men can frighten
into subjection by threats of bewitchment.

Some of them are pretty fair jugglers. They can
work over a patient who is suffering merely from in
digestion, and draw out through his mouth the long,
hideous snake which has been in his stomach all the
time and caused his pain! To force the evil spirits out

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 231

of a woman delirious with fever, they will prod her
body and beat the tomtom in her ears. They will blow
pipe-smoke into the lungs of a moribund consumptive,
lash him to the bare back of a pony, and drive the
pony twelve times around a marked circle to the chant
ing of a select party of singers. If the sufferer survives
the ordeal, they find in it one sign from the gods; if he
dies under it, they find another; but in neither event
does the divine message contain any reflection on the
conscienceless fakirs who perpetrated the outrage.

So firm a hold have these fellows on the mass of a
tribe that they become the most dangerous agitators
when they find it to their interest to preach a religious
and race war. Few effective ways of dislodging them
have been discovered. One, to be used only in emer
gencies, is to beat them at their own game and put
them out of commission by one blow, so sudden and so
stunning that they are unable to gather themselves to
gether for a renewal of the attack. Every adminis
tration has had to resort to this at one time or another.
There is also a means which, though it involves no
physical violence, invades that middle ground between
technical law and primitive justice on which many
good people are reluctant to tread. This is to arrest a
medicine man wherever he can be caught, arraign him
before a Court of Indian Offences so organized that at
least two of the judges are courageous men pretty free
from the sorcery superstition, convict him of practis
ing medicine without a license, and impose upon him
whatever fine the State laws prescribe — usually not
less than $100 or $150. Demand that he pay cash,

232 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

which as a rule he is unable to do, or that he disgorge
enough of his ill-gotten gains in ponies and blankets
and the like to aggregate the amount of his fine. Or,
better still, let him go to jail, and be taken out every
day to work on the roads till he has earned the amount.
All this should be done with enough ceremoniousness
and publicity to convince the other Indians that the
medicine man has none of the mystic powers to which
he pretends, else he would free himself and strike his
oppressors helpless with an incantation.

Turning an Indian mischief-maker's pretensions to
ridicule is, indeed, a happy resort in a good many exi
gencies where no other device would work. Once
when we were about to pay to a tribe in South Dakota
the first instalment of money for some land they had
sold, a few turbulent spirits among them tried to stir
up trouble because we had established rules for the
protection of the minor children of spendthrift parents.
It was impossible to discover positively how far the
disaffection had spread, but word was brought us that
an agitator named Turning Bear had publicly declared
that he would knock in the head the first Indian who
accepted a dollar of the money till the Government
had retreated from its position.

The morning for the payment arrived, and the stock
ade was crowded with red men, women and children.
The pay table, in a ground-floor room with an outside
door and two or three windows, was half covered with
silver dollars, counted and stacked in advance to save
time, and guarded by a few policemen. Door and
windows were open, but fringed by tier above tier of

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 233

eager faces, for eveiy one in the camp had heard of
Turning Bear's threat and was anxious to be present
at the crisis. Those of us who were in charge of the
payment had just taken our seats at the table, when
the crowd in front of the door parted, and into the
room strode the insurgent leader clad in full regalia of
feathered head-dress and brilliant blue blanket. His
face was painted with yellow, red and black stripes,
and under his blanket, which was drawn in tight at the
waist, could be discerned the outlines of the hatchet
stuck in his belt. He halted a moment, evidently in
expectation that he would be ordered out, which would
doubtless have furnished him a text for an impassioned
speech to the multitude in denunciation of the white
man's tyranny. His face betrayed his disappointment
when, instead of being insulted, he was invited to have
a seat. Glowering about him, his eye rested on a pile
of dry-goods boxes a little to the rear of the pay table,
and he climbed to the top of this, whence he could sur
vey the curious crowd outside and be seen by them.

If he had been surprised before, imagine his state of
mind when, instead of calling the names of the Indians
in their regular order on the tribal roll, we skipped
to the middle and called Turning Bear's first. It was
a crucial moment, and he hesitated. Every eye at the
door and windows was fixed on him. Ostensibly on the
assumption that he had not heard the first summons,
his name was called again. The crowd, quick as a
flash to grasp his embarrassment, began to titter
audibly. That half-minute of indecision had been
fatal. He realized that the spell of his fulmination was

234 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

already broken, and, with a look of deadly hate but
an air of complete humiliation, he slowly descended
from his perch and slouched up to the table. Clutch
ing with one hand the twenty dollars counted into his
palm, he touched with the other the pen held out to
him by the clerk who had just written his name around
his cross-mark. His exit was side wise, with his body
on a slant, and the dense mass of Indians who had
meekly made way for his strutting entrance now yielded
barely enough to enable him to worm his way out. A
wave of jests and gibes followed him, and he disap
peared through an aperture in the stockade, his in
fluence utterly crushed.

The two varieties of evil-doers among the rank and
file of the Indians who give the Government the most
trouble are the habitual drunkards and those who re
sist every effort to educate their children. It would
be entirely practicable to deal with the opponents of
the schools by direct legislation, in the form of com
pulsory education and truancy laws; for we can put the
children into schools and keep them there by mere
physical coercion, and the punishment of the parents
might come in as a secondary but salutary aid to en
forcement. But with the liquor evil it is different. We
can heap prohibitory law upon prohibitory law till
we have a pile as high as the tree-tops, and still every
Indian will continue free to drink as often as he pleases,
and to become as drunk as circumstances will permit.
The most we can do in the case of sots is to make the
laws for the punishment of their offences drastic and
disagreeable, and then execute every law to the letter.

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 235

There is one course, however, which can be applied
to Indian allottees without further federal legislation,
provided the State or Territorial statutes furnish the
necessary machinery, and the local authorities are will
ing to co-operate in an undertaking which will cost the
taxpayers nothing.

If an Indian who is an habitual drunkard has an
allotment still under the Government trust, it would be
within the province of the Department to bring him
before the proper county officers and have him com
mitted to an asylum, or a reformatory, or whatever in
stitution is used for the confinement of habitual drunk
ards of other races, with the understanding that the
Government should lease his land for his account, but
over his head, and apply the proceeds to pay for his
care and treatment. Or, after he has been adjudged
unfit to remain at large, it might sell his land for him
under the non-competent act, place the money at
interest, and use the income from it for his support
while in durance. In the last years of my administra
tion I opened negotiations with county officers in various
parts of the West, with a view to making a few experi
ments in the line indicated. I found a general willing
ness to assist; but the plan was blocked by techni
calities in the local laws, which in one case so limited
the period of confinement for a drunkard as to put it
out of the question to do anything toward his perma
nent reformation, in another defined habitual drunk
enness so loosely that no well-balanced court would
commit an Indian under it, and so on. In some of
the States containing allotted Indians there was no re-

236 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

formatory or other place for locking up dipsomaniacs
except the common penitentiary. Not a few public
men took a marked interest in the project, and I doubt
not that, if it were pressed through the right channel,
means would be found for an experimental test.

Also I threw into the legislative hopper at one time
a bill to authorize the issue of a patent in fee to an
Indian allottee who persisted, after due warning, in
habitual law-breaking. As drafted for introduction,
it was purposely left in somewhat crude shape with a
view to provoking comment and inviting amendment
in certain particulars. The object of the measure
was twofold: first, to take the persistent lawbreaker
out of a protected class and place him where he would
be dealt with just like other persons who had acquired
the same habit. As long as the Indian remains a ward
even to the extent of having a trustee to look after
his property interests, he depends on the Govern
ment to interpose its big shield between him and the
consequences of his deliberate misconduct; and I
am sorry to say that the Government has yielded to
this unwholesome appeal for so many years that it is
now like moving mountains to make a change in its
settled practice. Withdraw his adventitious protec
tion, and the Indian is put upon precisely the same
footing before the law as everybody else.

Again, it is useless to look to the authorities of the
vicinage to do anything with an Indian allottee, or
for him, in the way of discipline, if, though a land
owner, he is not a taxpayer and thus a sharer of the
community's burdens. Take away this unique distinc-

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 237

tion, make the Indian's land pay its tribute with the
rest, and its owner becomes not only entitled to the
rights and privileges of full citizenship, but amenable
to the laws, with no technical or sentimental excuses
to intervene.

The bill was widely circulated, and some of the
criticisms it drew forth were amusing to any one who
knows Indians and has no ends to serve except the
welfare of their race. It was assumed, for instance,
that such legislation would drive the allottees generally
into crime, because, forsooth, they are all so eager for
patents in fee! The truth is the precise opposite of
this. There is nothing from which Indians as a rule
flee so incontinently as the prospect of being " turned
loose." For one thing, the idea of having to pay taxes
appals them; they realize that from the moment of
their emancipation they will have to stand on their
own feet and fight their own battles with the world,
and of that change most of them live in positive dread.
From a very careful consideration of the whole ques
tion, including frank and confidential talks with some of
the wisest leaders of their race, I long ago reached the
conclusion that such a plan as I have suggested would
have to be put into force only once or twice in any
tribe in order to bring the rest of the lawbreakers to a
full stop. So far from operating as a premium on mis
conduct, it would prove the most powerful sort of a
deterrent as soon as the Indians generally saw what
was bound to happen.

It is unfortunate that, owing to the absence of any
special facilities for handling crises in Indian affairs,

238 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

it is so often necessary to resort to a mere contest of
threats in order to control a situation. Yet this is
sometimes all that is left to the officers responsible.
In the later nineties a certain band of Indians in the
Northwest, discovering that they had been made the
victims of political trickery and badly robbed, revolted.
Troops were called out, shots were exchanged, and,
though the matter was settled by negotiation before
much blood had been spilled, it looked very serious
for a while. Public sentiment was aroused on behalf
of the ill-treated Indians, who thus found themselves
suddenly converted from lawless rioters into heroes.
The discovery had a bad effect upon them, since they
were not advanced enough in civilization to draw
nice distinctions between violence as a last resort
against unbearable oppression and violence as a mere
means of getting what they wanted.

Some years later, having been furnished by the
Government with seed for their farms, and eaten it to
avoid the labor of planting, they found themselves
facing the prospect of a hard winter with very little
food in their huts. In vain their Agent reminded them
that they had played false with the Government and
forfeited its generosity; they insisted that Washington
must now feed them, and some of their most tempest
uous leaders went to the point of sending me a message
that, unless I provided them with rations, they would
go upon the warpath again. My answer was imme
diate, and, though calm in tone, just as candid in terms
as their message. I warned them that they would not
have the satisfaction of going to war with the Govern-

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 239

ment, because the Government would not recogiize
them as warriors or send soldiers into their country
except for the purpose of supporting the sheriff and his
posse; but that every Indian who killed an innocent
person would be taken in hand by the civil author ties,
tried in a court like any common criminal, and, if con
victed, marched to an ordinary scaffold in the seclusion
of a jail yard and hanged. I reminded them that there
was no glory to be gained in that sort of thing; that
there would be no riding amuck, no firing of rifles, no
tortures, no dances, no paint and feathers, no death-
chants, no picturesque ceremonial or publicity of
any kind, but a sordid and commonplace process of
putting to death a man who had shown himself, like a
mad dog or a wolf, unsafe to leave alive. It was not
a pleasant response to prepare, but it worked like a
charm: from that day no more was heard about war
paths, and the restless band managed to get through
the next winter as other Indians did, without reach
ing for their guns.

Another disorder to which I had to apply a dramatic
remedy was that of incendiarism in the schools, which
had become intolerable in its frequency. A few
unruly children, angry perhaps at a scolding they had
received, would seek revenge by setting something
afire. In one case where the pupils wished to attend
a festivity at home but were denied the privilege be
cause it occurred in term time, they undertook to bring
on a vacation prematurely by burning the school.
Remonstrances, explanations of the perils as well as
the wickedness of such actions, and even the ordinary

240 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

penalties which lay within the power of the teachers to
impose, were alike powerless to break up this wanton
fancy for the firebrand as a panacea. So I watched for
an opportunity to try a larger disciplinary measure.
It came when three of the oldest girls in one of our
schools, smarting under some restriction, plotted to
burn down the principal dormitory. They succeeded,
and by rare good fortune there was no loss of life.
It did not take us long to find out who were the cul
prits, and the principal one confessed, under close
examination, the whole dreadful story.

Accordingly, as the offender had attained years of
discretion, the Superintendent was instructed to bring
the matter to the attention of the United States Dis
trict Attorney and press for an indictment for arson.
At the same time I took counsel with the President,
to make sure that the prosecuting machinery would
not be allowed to rest. An indictment was found,
the girl was convicted on her own testimony and
condemned to imprisonment for life, narrowly escap
ing the death sentence. The whole incident occurred
in one of the States of the Middle West, the home of
active newspapers, and was therefore extensively ad
vertised; but to make assurance double sure I took
pains to circulate the news with great detail through
out the School Service, so that no one could repeat
the offence without fully appreciating its possible con
sequences. When we had given the girl a fair taste of
what the law meant, the President, as originally agreed
between us, commuted her sentence to a term in a re
formatory. The lesson evidently sank into the hearts

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 241

of our pupils all over the Indian country, for the riot
of incendiarism ceased from that day.

With the purpose of giving the local Agents some
sort of judicial machinery through which to punish
misconduct of trifling importance, the Department
in 1883 established a system of petty tribunals called
Courts of Indian Offences. No clear definition of their
jurisdiction exists anywhere, as far as I know, nor any
complete list of the penalties applicable to various
forms of misdemeanor. In a word, they are the kind
of courts we find sometimes maintained among whites
by the tacit consent of a popular majority in a mining
camp or a logging district far removed from civiliza
tion, where nobody knows just what the law is on any
subject, but where every one recognizes the necessity
for some fixed centre of authority as a refuge from
anarchy. The three judges who constitute a Court
of Indian Offences are chosen usually from among the
older and more staid men of the tribe, given a trifling
compensation and a badge of office, and expected to
hold their open sessions at stated intervals in a room
provided at the agency. For the most part they dis
pense a crude quality of justice in cases of drunken
ness and theft, conjugal quarrels, and the like. Their
judgments are of course always subject to review by
the Agent, and any aggrieved party can, by finding an
attorney versed in technical devices, carry his case be
fore an outside court with a legal standing and ignore
the reservation court.

In my travels through the Indian country in earlier
years, I had heard so much said both for and against

242 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the Courts of Indian Offences that on taking charge of
the Service I issued a circular asking all Agents and
Superintendents to express their opinions whether it
was worth while to keep up such judicial forms
which covered no enforceable powers. The majority
favorable to the continuance of the courts was so
overwhelming that I did not disturb them. The
general verdict seemed to be that among a people as
impressionable as the Indians, even the empty in
signia of authority exercised a salutary moral influ
ence.

Doubtless the judges who preside over the Courts of
Indian Offences are liable to be biased sometimes by
considerations not properly entering into the merits
of the cases before them; but they are not nearly so
susceptible to money temptations as to those which
flow from ties of kindred or tribal politics. It is there
fore wise to select judges from opposing factions and
rival families. If the internal dissensions happen to be
on lines of three, this feature of the business is simple,
but when there are only two hostile camps it occasion
ally leads to odd results. A certain judge who had been
particularly severe in his treatment of drunkards was
one day himself led astray by convivial companions.
As the other two judges belonged to a rival faction,
they were keen to purge their bench of disgrace; so
they ordered their colleague before them, heard the
evidence, found him guilty and sentenced him to a
whipping, as that was the penalty he had always in
sisted on imposing upon other drinkers. But as ordi
nary Indians received ten lashes, they felt that he,

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 243

being a judge, deserved more, and accordingly con
demned him to twenty!

A Superintendent on the Pacific Coast told me once
of a judge at his agency whose favoritism had become
notorious. He was widely related in his tribe, and,
though he would be very vigorous in punishing any
offending member of another family, he was deplorably
lenient toward his own. One day the Superintendent
called the court together and narrated with much
solemnity the story of a magistrate who lived, many
years before the Indians ever saw white people, in a
place across the big waters called Rome. This judge
was so uncompromisingly just that when his own son,
whom he loved dearly, committed a grievous wrong,
he sentenced the young man to death, just as he would
have sentenced a stranger. That proof of his fidelity
to truth and fairness impressed all the world who heard
of it; and although the incident happened so long ago
and so far away, even we Americans tell our children
about it to this day, and teach them to revere the name
of Brutus.

All three judges listened to the story with profound
attention, but it seemed to strike with particular force
the one at whom it was directly aimed. He went away
silent and thoughtful. About a week later the Super
intendent was attracted to the door of the agency
office by a loud noise outside, and beheld there the
former unjust magistrate alighting from a horse, and
dragging down from behind him a poor wretch who
was bound hand and foot and trembling with a perfect
ague of terror. Gravely saluting the Superintendent,

244 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the judge proffered him a big revolver, exclaiming,
as he pointed with his other hand to the prisoner:
"Dis my nephew — me ketch 'm dlunk — you shoot
'm!" Then, drawing himself up with great dignity
and patting his breast, he added: "Me good judge —
me Blutus!"

Besides a petty court, every agency is furnished
with a small contingent of Indian police, whose duty
it is to preserve order in assemblages on the reservation,
to seize any liquor found within its borders, to arrest
persons accused of wrongdoing, to see that no out
sider enters the reservation without official permission
either express or implied, and to execute the decrees of
the Agent and his little tribunal. As a rule, the police
do their duty well. It is no easy one, because it often
brings them into conflict with white men of the lower
class who are bent on some illicit scheme, and who re
sent interference from a functionary not of their own
race. But the faithfulness of the police under adverse
conditions has long been a proverb in the Indian Ser
vice, and their readiness to face death in carrying out
their instructions has been proved a great many times.
The worst of it is that some of the errands on which
they are sent may require them to take their lives in
their hands in a double sense. A celebrated case in
point was that of five policemen on the Cheyenne River
reservation who in 1896 were ordered to arrest a noto
rious squawman accused of an attempt to kill his wife.
When they approached his cabin he ran out at them
with an axe, and in self-defence they shot him dead.
As he was a white man the courts took notice of the

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 245

incident, and the police were indicted for the murder
and tried, had to spend all their little possessions on
attorneys' fees and court costs, and, but for a very
ably conducted defence, would probably have been
hanged. The whole proceeding against them was a
farce, but it had to be played through for political
reasons, and to give employment and mileage money
to a few white deputy marshals recruited from the
heelers' brigade !

Justice has another useful aid in the " trailers" who
are found on most of the reservations where civiliza
tion has least intruded. They are Indians who have
kept up the skill of their ancestors in hunting fugitives;
and their faculty for observing minute signs whose
suggestiveness would quite escape the notice of a white
pursuer, is almost like the exquisite scent of a hound.
The trailers are in no wise attached to the courts;
indeed, they have no regular organization, but volunteer
their services in response to a call from the Superin
tendent when a murder has been committed on the
reservation and the murderer has taken flight. If the
runaway is of their own race they rarely fail to track
him, for they have a particularly vivid apprehension
of what an Indian would do under any given set of
conditions; and in the last few instances where trail
ers have been used, the guilty man, on learning that
they were after him, has saved further trouble by
suicide.

Allusion has already been made to the fact that
discipline administered on reservations for the lesser
misdemeanors, has no better base to stand on than the

246 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

acquiescence of the disciplined. Probably no race on
earth are more ready to accept punishment, when
they believe it is just and are not spurred to rebellion
by outside meddlers, than the Indians. I was a wit
ness to a case where a young Indian had been con
demned by his Superintendent to imprisonment, with
hard labor, for ninety days, for assault and battery
committed under the influence of liquor. The labor
was to be performed on the roads, and the Superin
tendent had wisely adopted the piece plan for such
compulsory tasks: a certain amount of work was
measured off as the proper stint for one day, and
ninety times that amount would be considered equiva
lent to ninety days' labor. The agency farmer, who
was also the keeper of the guardhouse, fell ill. He
was a favorite with the Indians; and this culprit,
knowing his condition, urged him to stay in-doors and
go to bed, promising to shut himself up in jail every
night and stay there as quietly as if locked in by a
keeper. The farmer agreed, and the young man went
regularly at nightfall to his cell and drew the door
shut, not to emerge till it was time to go to work in
the morning. Next, as it was early summer and the
days were long, the prisoner obtained permission to
rise at four instead of at six, and to work till seven
instead of five in the evening, thus contriving to reduce
considerably his term of punishment.

This is not an isolated case, but a type of much that
I have seen on reservations, where Indian offenders
have recognized the righteousness of the proceed
ings against them. All who have kept track of

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 247

Indian affairs will recall the case of Hosteen Bi-gow
Etten, the old Navajo who was accused of murder
because he had been engaged in a fatal affray with a
party of tyrannous cowboys. He was badly cut up,
and would probably have died if he had been sent to
jail to await trial. A local missionary interceded for
him and went bond for his prompt return when needed,
and he repaired to his camp and remained till the day
set for the hearing. As he was not at hand when his
case was called, most persons present assumed that he
had taken flight; but before the preliminary proceed
ings were far under way, he came galloping up to the
courthouse, his body still bleeding from an open gun
shot wound, and surrendered himself. In spite of all
his pain and peril, he had ridden pony-back one hun
dred and eighty miles across the desert in order to
redeem his word of honor.

CHAPTER XIII
A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES

Thoughtless Demands for Reform — Doom of the Indian Dance
— The Standing Bear Decision — How It Was Ignored by
Those Who Quote It Most — Imprisonment of the Ute
Pilgrims — Story of the Geronimo Apaches — The Punish
ment of Porcupine — By-a-lil-le and His Outlaw Following
— An Interesting Test Case Which Stopped Too Soon —
Situation on the Sac and Fox Reservation in Iowa.

IN the spring1 of 1909, at a gathering of the secretaries
of several mission boards maintaining stations in the
Indian field, a memorial was adopted unanimously to
the effect that " inasmuch as the sun dance and cer
tain other Indian dances are essentially immoral in their
tendency, resolved, that the Department of Indian
Affairs be requested to take more urgent steps to en
force their prohibition." Always on the watch for a
new idea from any source, I obtained a list of the
gentlemen who had voted on this proposition, and
wrote a separate letter to each one, asking (1) in what
respect the measures I had already taken had in his
judgment fallen short, and (2) what measures he would
advise my taking for the future, to the end of breaking
up dancing among the Indians.

The answers were interesting as a study in construc
tive criticism. Every voter for the memorial assured

248

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 249

me (1) that he did not know what methods I was al
ready pursuing, and (2) that he knew so little person
ally about the subject that he was unable to offer any
advice. One clergyman who had been present at the
meeting but had not taken part in framing or adopting
the memorial, wrote me that he had seen enough of
Indian dancing to convince him of its evil tendencies,
and that he hoped that the Government would put it
down with a strong hand; but even he did not suggest
any particular means to be used. I refer to the inci
dent, not for the purpose of being critical in turn, but to
show how easily a body of men of pure character, high
ideals and educated intelligence may be led into saying
and doing the conventional thing in connection with
Indian affairs, without a fraction of the mature consid
eration which they would feel obliged to give to almost
any other of the Government's manifold activities
before passing judgment on its conduct.

Admitting, for argument's sake, all that is charged
against Indian dancing, how is the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs to go to work to stop it? The Indian
Office used to have a rule that if Indians were for
bidden to dance and disobeyed, their rations should
be cut off till they came to a more complacent state of
mind. But the ration system is now pretty well on its
way to extinction, and to threaten to cut off rations
from Indians who are not drawing any is not likely to
prove a very effective measure. Shall the Commissioner
imprison the offenders? On what ground? Is danc
ing in itself a crime? Then how comes it to be a pas
time in vogue among the most civilized people of other

250 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

races? The dance, as has been shown elsewhere, is to
the Indian not a mere amusement: it often has a re
ligious significance as well ; and on broad general prin
ciples the Indian has as good a right to express his
religious emotions through hopping around in a circle
to the beat of a tomtom and the chant of a chorus, as
the white man has to join in a stirring revival service
in his own church. Do we suppress such demon
strations among our own people? No, we simply de
mand that they shall be so conducted as to give no
reasonable cause of offence to persons in the neigh
borhood who subscribe to other faiths, or whose peace
and comfort are liable to be disturbed by noise, even
if it be made as an outgiving of religious ecstasy.

So, with the Indian, I have insisted that the dances
shall be shorn of every cruel barbarism like self-tort
ure, and all forms of indecency, and that the dancers
shall not annoy their neighbors who may be adversely
minded toward such ceremonies. Indeed, I have
gone a step further, and, by letting them learn from
experience some of the harsher lessons of cause and
effect, have endeavored to convince them of the un
wisdom of dancing when it interferes with their work
and prevents them from laying in a good store of win
ter food for themselves and their stock. The white
man we do not have to guard against such follies, for
he has been brought up from the cradle to dread the
pain of hunger and cold and the shame of the alms-
house; but the Indian has not.

There is no room for question that the Indian dance
is doomed to disappear, and will do so before many

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 251

years, regardless of whether or not we lift voice or
hand against it. The evolutionary forces which have
marked it for extinction are the spirit of the age and
the invasion of commercialism. Something of the
spirit of the age finds its way into the Indian camp
whenever a laborer returns thither from a season
spent working for the white people of the outside
world. He has lost much of the keen zest he used to
feel for the dance; his faith in its efficacy as a religious
rite is badly shaken if not utterly destroyed. Repeated
excursions of the same sort increase the gap between
him and his home-keeping kindred in the matter of
credulity. The process is so gradual as to be almost
imperceptible to him and to them, but both feel its
influence.

Then, from holding their dances as a close com
munion, the Indians have little by little admitted
white spectators to witness them. At first this was
done reluctantly; but as the whites have come in larger
and larger numbers and backed their importunities
with money, the ceremonies have lost their old flavor
and become commercialized. To-day it is safe to say
that among the tribes who have had white neighbors
for any length of time, the dances are no longer more
than empty forms except for the oldest people. On
the younger ones who spent their earlier years in the
camp but have since been to school, the religious
ideas behind the dances retain about as much in
fluence as ghost stories and other bugaboos of the
dark exert still among the white generation approach
ing maturity.

252 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Reverting to the consideration of what could be
done in a more strenuous way to control the conduct
of Indians in such matters if the Government were to
undertake a serious campaign without some stronger
legislative or judicial support than it now has, it may
be edifying to review a few cases which have actually
occurred and contributed a little picturesque color to a
rather sombre-hued history. The most notable of these
was the arrest of the Poncas and Chief Standing Bear's
successful plea for liberty.

In the winter of 1877-78 Congress decided that the
Ponca Indians must be removed from their immemorial
home in Dakota to a reservation selected for them in
the Indian Territory. It is needless to discuss here
the excuses offered for this act; whatever they may
have been, it became Secretary Schurz's distasteful
duty to execute the law. The change of climate proved
too much for the hardy northern tribe, and they began
to die — to quote their own descriptive phrase — like
flies. Standing Bear, a highly respected chief, kept
up a constant protest against the Government's action,
and at last, having lost a dearly beloved son, resolved
to endure it no more, but to carry the boy back and
bury him in the country of their fathers.

With the body of his son in his farm wagon, and
followed by a handful of faithful friends, he started
northward in January, 1879. Such an equipment
made travelling very tedious, and it was March, and
corn-planting time, before the party reached the Omaha
reservation in Nebraska. Here they halted, worn out
with their long tramp and utterly destitute. Begging

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 253

the use of a little land and borrowing some seed, they
undertook, with the Omahas' consent, to put in a crop
there, the harvest of which they hoped would carry
them on to the next and final stage of their journey.
Suddenly there descended upon their camp a detach
ment of United States troops with orders to arrest
them and take them back to the Indian Territory.
It was obviously useless to resist, so they yielded;
but they had got no further than the city of Omaha
on the return trip, when the local newspapers heard
their pitiful story and spread it broadcast. A citizens'
movement was organized at once in behalf of the In
dians, and a firm of well-known lawyers volunteered
their services gratuitously to sue out a writ of habeas
corpus.

The proceedings were had before Judge Dundy of
the United States District Court, who, after hearing
the arguments of counsel and the testimony brought
out to show the good and peaceable character of the
Indians and the sufferings they had undergone in their
midwinter pilgrimage, permitted Standing Bear to
speak for himself. The chief's speech was full of fire,
and replete with the beautiful imagery for which
Indian oratory is famous. It wrought to a high pitch
of excitement the audience which packed the court
room. At its close, Judge Dundy delivered an opinion
sustaining the main points raised by the attorneys for
the Indians, that "an Indian is a c person' within the
meaning of the laws of the United States, and has there
fore the right to sue out a writ of habeas corpus . . .
where he is restrained of liberty in violation of the

254 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

Constitution or laws," and that "the Indians . . .
have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pur
suit of happiness as long as they obey the laws and
do not trespass on forbidden ground."

It was proposed by the Department of Justice to
take an appeal and let the Supreme Court of the United
States pass conclusive judgment on the issues raised
at the hearing. But by way of cutting off any further
discussion, the judge discharged the Indians uncon
ditionally from custody, instead of putting them under
bonds as is commonly done in a test case; so the
court above declined to entertain the appeal, as there
were no persons then under detention.

Judge Dundy's utterance has been widely quoted
ever since it was put forth, as the last word which
could possibly be said on the subject. It has been
elaborated by imaginative commentators to cover a
good many things which it did not say, and only rarely
have its qualifying clauses been included in a citation
of it. Hence the resultant conclusion long since fixed
in the public mind, that the Indian may go where
and do what he pleases, with a deal more freedom
than we should accord a white man under similar
circumstances. Personally, I have always sympathized
strongly with the idea of the Indian's entire freedom
to go and come as long as he pays his way and avoids
trespassing on the rights of others; but I have been
equally insistent that these conditions should be kept
constantly in mind.

With three hundred thousand Indians to care for,
spread over millions of acres in the West and distant

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 255

anywhere from one to three thousand miles from the
seat of Government, every Commissioner and every
Secretary and every President, since Standing Bear's
party was set free, has been forced at times to make
his own laws and do things which seemed arbitrary,
because Congress has failed to make any statutory
provision to meet particular exigencies. If Judge
Dundy's decision not only was sound as to the case
before him, but applies sweepingly to all Indians of
every grade of civilization and under every combina
tion of circumstances, then it is safe to say that no
federal officer who has had charge of the dependent
race has got through his administration without vio
lating the law from once to fifty times. It is an unfort
unate condition of things, but we are dealing now with
history and not with theory; and it is due to this long
list of public servants to say that I do not know of
one of them who has not been a humane man at heart,
and as desirous as any one could be of not trampling
needlessly on the rights of the humblest of his fellow
creatures.

In the chapter on "The Indian at Work" I briefly
sketched the experience of a band of two hundred Ute
men, women and children who in the summer of 1906
left their home in Utah because they disliked the
changes which had occurred there, and started on a
march across the country to the Sioux reservations in
South Dakota; but I purposely omitted, as inapposite
to the point which I was seeking to emphasize in that
place, all reference to one important incident of their
journey. Although they made their march on a very

256 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

foolish errand and in defiance of the Government's
friendly advice, it must be said to their credit that
they behaved well throughout its earlier stages. Every
town through which they passed bears witness that
they molested nobody, stole nothing, and paid cash
for all the supplies they bought at the stores. Nay,
at the time that the sensational writers were most busy
flooding their newspapers with accounts of "A Great
Indian Raid," or "Redskins en the Warpath," the
Indian Office was receiving daily communications from
the frontier towns expressing the indignation of their
best citizens at these misrepresentations, praising the
red pilgrims for their peaceable and orderly conduct,
and concluding with such comments as: "We used
to think hard of Indians, but if all the rest are as good
as these you are to be congratulated."

The newspaper clamor, or something else, alarmed
the Governor of Wyoming, and led him to believe
that the passage of the Utes through the less thickly
settled part of his State would lead to race disturbances;
so he telegraphed to the Department a request that
it would remove them. Our answer was that "as long
as they are peaceable and do not threaten hostility
it does not seem that the federal Government would
be justified in interfering with them. . . . The case is
one for the local authorities rather than for the Depart
ment."

As this view did not satisfy the Governor, he applied
to the President for federal protection, following the
form prescribed by the Constitution. The President
ordered out troops to head off the Indians and take

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 257

charge of them. At the first parley, the Ute leaders
seemed disposed to fight; but the exercise of a little
tact by the officers in command induced a better feel
ing, and after being promised a hearing at Washington
for any grievances they might wish to present, the
Indians consented to go with the soldiers and were
marched off to Camp Meade in South Dakota, where
they were held all winter as prisoners. This seemed
to me an uncommonly good opportunity for any phil
anthropic society to test the strength of Judge Dundy's
decision. These Indians were citizens; they had done
nothing deserving of punishment or even of detention,
as far as the Indian Office could discover; they were
not at war with the Government; their purpose was
in no wise hostile to the whites anywhere, or to any
other Indians; they were, it is true, a rather irresponsi
ble body of trampers, but so was Coxey's army, with
which the Government did not interfere till it had
tramped down the grass in the Capitol Park at Wash
ington. Yet not a hand was raised for the discharge
of the Indians from imprisonment. No indignation
meetings were held, no attempts made to stir public
sentiment through the press, no writs of habeas corpus
sued out. What inference was to be drawn from this
portentous quiet in the presence of so significant a
case?

The next spring, after a conference between a few
of their leaders and the President, the whole body of
Indians were released and tendered an escort to take
them the rest of the way to their proposed new home.
The Government itself drove a bargain in their behalf

258 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

for the lease of a good-sized camp on the Cheyenne
River reservation, where the wanderers settled down
and stayed till, as already described, they realized
their folly and asked to be taken back to Utah. The
question naturally arises: Did this case come into
the same category with that of Standing Bear and his
Poncas, or did it not?

In 1885 occurred the raid of the notorious Geronimo
and his band of Chiricahua Apaches upon the white
settlements of New Mexico and Arizona. A more
hideous story of bloodshed has rarely been told of
any era. Troops were sent to the scene, and after a
remarkably sharp pursuit took the Indians prisoners.
The white people of the country through which the
band had swept were so incensed against them that it
was deemed the part of prudence to hurry them off to
some safer place. The captive marauders were accord
ingly conveyed, with their wives and children, to two of
the military posts in the far South, and later removed
to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. There, under the care of
benevolent army officers, they made fine progress in
civilization. By the time of my first visit to them in
1896, they were living in houses built by themselves,
had become successful hay-farmers, were sinking wells
not only on their own premises but on the farms of the
white people of the neighborhood, and were raising
good vegetables for sale. In that one spot they have
stayed ever since, their old people dying off and their
babes born in captivity growing to adult estate. Again
and again they have pleaded with the Government to
set them free and let them go back to their old moun-

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 259

tain home, but to no purpose. When their imprison
ment is to end, is still at this writing a question that
cannot be answered. And yet, though the bulk of the
Indians now at Fort Sill never lifted a weapon against
the Government, and those who did commit depreda
tions never were brought before a tribunal of any sort,
civil or military, not one philanthropic finger has
moved to procure for them the liberty guaranteed to
every person within the jurisdiction of the United
States according to Judge Dundy's famous decision.
What are we to make of that circumstance?

In 1900 a medicine man named Porcupine, on the
Northern Cheyenne reservation, professed to have re
ceived a divine revelation heralding the early advent
of the Messiah, who at His coming would call from
their graves the dead Cheyennes; and these, it was
prophesied, would unite with the living tribe and drive
the white people out of the country. Signs of unrest ap
peared on the reservation. Commissioner Jones be
lieved it his duty to prevent trouble, instead of letting
it spread and then trying to repair the damage done.
He accordingly recommended to Secretary Hitchcock
that Porcupine be arrested and taken to Fort Keogh
"for confinement at hard labor at that post till such
time as he should be thoroughly disciplined and taught
to respect and obey the officers of the Government and
otherwise properly demean himself, and give satisfac
tory assurance to the military officers that in the fut
ure he would behave himself and cause no further
trouble." Mr. Hitchcock took up the matter with
the Secretary of War, and Porcupine was arrested

260 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

and sent at once, without trial of any sort, to the Fort,
and there confined at hard labor for several months.
Then, the Commandant having reported that he " ap
peared to be thoroughly disciplined/' that "his
conduct had been excellent in every respect since his
confinement," and that "he had promised that in the
future he would behave himself and cause no more
trouble," the medicine man was released and allowed
to return to the reservation. That his taste of the
Government's power did him good there is no doubt;
and I can testify from personal acquaintance with him
and knowledge of his conduct later, that he is one of
the deserving Indians now, and has been exerting his
influence for the welfare of his tribe. But although
Judge Dundy's decision was wholly ignored in this case,
not a philanthropist in all our broad land interfered
to prevent Porcupine's receiving the lesson which had
so excellent an effect on him and on his followers.
Why?

And now we come to the most notable of recent cases
in point, which I feel constrained to describe in some
detail because it is so illustrative in its leading features,
and also because, owing to the fact that the Government
cannot enter into newspaper controversies with private
parties, only one side has had any extended presenta
tion in the public prints. In the heart of the Black
Mountains on the Navajo reservation lived, in 1907,
a medicine man named By-a-lil-le. He was of the
same type as Geronimo, who also had practised the
black art among his fellow Apaches before starting
on his last horrible raid. By-a-lil-le's home was in

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 261

an almost impenetrable fastness where the little band
of renegades whom he and his chief lieutenant, Polly,
had gathered about them, often boasted that no white
man could ever disturb them. From this place he
and his followers would emerge from time to time, to
swoop down upon the inoffensive Indians who were
trying to support themselves as farmers and herdsmen
in the valleys below, destroy their crops, plunder their
homes, kill their sheep, carry off their women and girls,
and generally exercise a reign of terror in their neigh
borhood. When admonished that such courses would
get him into trouble with the Government, By-a-lil-le
laughed the idea to scorn, declaring that he was able
to strike his enemies blind and fill their bodies with in
visible poisoned darts, so that he was prepared to defy
even the soldiers if sent to capture him. These vaunts
his credulous disciples accepted as true.

Appeals from his law-abiding victims were con
tinually coming in to Washington, and with not a little
difficulty and risk two trusted representatives of the
Indian Office investigated the unpleasant situation
with a view to discovering some lawful way of abating
it. The regular machinery of civil justice was unavail
able. As the scenes of the offences lay in a corner
where the State of Utah and the Territories of Arizona
and New Mexico come together, it would have been in
the power of any one so minded to confuse the question
of jurisdiction and cause unconscionable delays, if
not the defeat of the whole purpose of the prosecution,
which would have been not vengeance but a warning
which the culprits could understand. Again, in this re-

262 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

gion, as elsewhere on the frontier, grand juries have
not much time or patience to spare for cases in which
both aggressors and aggrieved are Indians; and had
there been a failure to indict, or long delays at the
trial, or an indecisive verdict, or any other miscarriage
of justice whose technical aspects were beyond the
comprehension of the Indians but whose effect would
have been to set the culprits free, one of two things
would have happened. Either By-a-lil-le, pointing to
his victory for proof that his magic was able to par
alyze all the energies of the white men's government,
would have become a worse tyrant than ever before,
possibly even emulating Geronimo's example; or else
some of the peaceable Indians who had been wronged
by him till they were exasperated beyond endurance,
would have sought him out and killed him, and thus
brought on a small but bloody war inside of the reser
vation. Yet something must be done, for conditions
had become intolerable.

Accordingly I recommended that when next any
of the troops at Fort Wingate, the nearest army post,
were going to make a practice march, they be in
structed to make it through By-a-lil-le's country, for
a double reason: first, the dupes of the medicine man
might thus see that the Government did possess an
armed force near at hand who could come within
reach of his spells with impunity, and by this antidote
the prevalent fever of terrorism might be broken; in
the second place, the soldiers could learn the topog
raphy of the district into which they might one day
be ordered suddenly to suppress an outbreak. The

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 263

march was made that autumn. At a certain juncture
the aspect of things led the Captain in command to
believe that it would be a wise precaution to arrest
By-a-lil-le and his immediate following and hold them
at least till the completion of the march. In making
the arrests the troops were fired upon by the Indians
and returned the fire. The troops suffered the loss of a
horse and a few minor casualties, but two Indians were
killed and one wounded.

The first news which came to me of this skirmish
was an official report announcing that the ringleaders
of the outlaw band were in the hands of the troops,
and concluded with the recommendation that they be
sentenced to imprisonment with hard labor for ten
years at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. On purely physi
cal grounds there was nothing injurious to the Indians
in the site chosen, for the climate at the Fort was
kindred to that to which they were accustomed in the
Navajo country; prisoners at our military posts are
always well fed and kindly treated; and the pro
posal to let them work for their board not only was
reasonable in the abstract but looked to their improve
ment morally. It was a delicate question to decide:
any misstep might have serious consequences. Had
there been an opportunity for consultation before affairs
had reached that stage, my preference would have
been not to hold the prisoners for punishment, as it
might have been a good time to experiment with the
effect of the expedition by leaving matters as they
were ; for the Indians had seen that, when they opened
fire upon white troops, they were liable to pay for the

264 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

adventure with their lives in spite of their having a
medicine man for their leader.

But the matter had got past ifs and an's. Here
were By-a-lil-le and a party of his intimates actually
in durance, and they and their fellow outlaws watching
to see whether the Government would really be power
less to accomplish anything against the leader's magic.
To have set them free at that stage would have been,
from the Indian point of view, such a confession of
weakness as would have amounted to our turning over
the control of the reservation to an irresponsible
necromancer, with all that that implied. I therefore
advised Secretary Garfield not to sentence the culprits
for any fixed term, but, as our sole desire was to reform
their practices, to make their commitment indefinite,
with the understanding that, as soon as they could
give satisfactory assurances that they would cease their
life of outlawry, they be released. On this counsel the
Secretary acted, and the War Department took the
prisoners into its official custody till further notice.
One of them was set free before the expedition started
for Huachuca, as his advanced age made it improbable
that he would take part in any more disturbances in
the absence of his companions. About a year later the
officers at the Fort recommended the discharge of all
the rest except By-a-lil-le and Polly; consent was
given, and the discharged men were sent home under
escort. During their period of confinement, we had
taken special pains to see that the prisoners' families
should be looked after if in need; but so far from
lacking any necessaries, the women said that they and

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 265

their children were in comfort, and actually better off
than when they were under the domination of the men,
as now they could make and sell their blankets and
use the proceeds themselves, instead of having to give
up their money to the men to be spent on ammunition
and gambling.

Before recommending the imprisonment of the cap
tives, I had gone back over the records of the Depart
ment and found that administration after administra
tion had, without interference from outside, disciplined
violent Indians in disregard of the decision in the
Standing Bear case, because that case had never been
carried to the court of last resort; and also because,
as it dealt with a perfectly peaceable and harmless
band, there seemed to be a general disposition not to
try to make it apply to habitual marauders and out
laws. Still, I realized that in the present instance it
was quite possible, for reasons wholly apart from the
merits of the case, that a test suit might be brought;
and in a little while one was brought by the Indian
Rights Association, which applied to the District
Court of Arizona for a writ of habeas corpus, for the
purpose of determining the question whether ad
ministrative officers might deprive Indians of their
liberty without the customary formalities of trial and
verdict.

Contrary to a widespread popular impression, no
officer of the Government who is honestly trying to do
his duty has any dislike for a test case as such, for it
serves to clarify the law and is a help to him there
after in his work; and the only objection any one could

266 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

have raised in this instance was limited to a regret that,
after so many other cases involving less serious possi
bilities had been ignored in the last thirty years, the
beneficiary now should happen to be a person of the
character and antecedents of By-a-lil-le. Still, the fear
lest the issues should be somewhat confused in the
minds of both Indians and whites, and the result im
properly interpreted, was a consideration of expediency
only; and the Association was acting entirely within
its privilege in filing its petition. I did deplore its
resort to the newspapers also, because it seemed to me
that in the courts was the proper place to try out the
questions in controversy, and that if we could carry
this case through the whole series of permissible ap
peals, we should all know a good deal more at the end
of the story than we knew at the beginning. Certainly,
several able lawyers were desirous of having the Su
preme Court pass finally on the lengths to which the
Department was justified in going under the broad dis
cretion apparently vested in it by Congress in connec
tion with its responsibility for the conduct of affairs
on Indian reservations; and also whether Indians still
in a state of barbarism, taken captive by a military ex
pedition after an exchange of hostilities, did not stand
in a somewhat different position, as regards the techni
cal procedure to be followed, from ordinary civil
prisoners, even though the military arm of the Govern
ment had consulted the civil arm as to the term and
conditions of their confinement. The case of Gero-
nimo's Apaches has been discussed a good deal on this
basis.

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 267

In the By-a-lil-le case, the court of first instance,
whose jurisdiction was equal to that which passed upon
the Standing Bear case, declined to accept Judge
Dundy's decision as settling the law, and refused the
writ of habeas corpus. An appeal was therefore taken
by the petitioners to the Supreme Court of Arizona,
which reversed the court below but did not release the
prisoners from custody, as the Government gave no
tice of its intention to appeal to the Supreme Court of
the United States. In spite of the best efforts I could
make for expediting it, the case went over till after the
change of administration at Washington in the spring
of 1909, and was still unargued when I resigned the
Commissionership in June. Later, the new Attorney-
General concluded not to carry it further, and by
mutual consent of the parties it was discontinued, and
the prisoners were sent back to the reservation and re
leased. The whole affair consumed the better part of
two years.

Personally, I am very sorry that the highest federal
tribunal did not have a chance to pass upon the case,
no matter whether it decided for or against the Govern
ment. All I have been able to learn from reading the
records, and from conversations with members of both
houses who were prominent in Indian legislation in
past years, leads to the belief that it was the intention
of Congress to clothe the Department with abundant
powers for preserving the peace among tribes not yet
well started up the scale of civilization, who need a
somewhat different handling from those who have ad
vanced further; and if a clearer definition of those

268 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

powers were necessary in order to make the Depart
ment's authority effective, a conclusive expression
from the Supreme Court of the United States would
have furnished a basis for asking for such legislation as
would meet all needs thereafter. What form the
new legislation might have taken, no one can say:
perhaps the organization of a special tribunal like a
court martial, with summary proceedings and careful
provision against the escape of the guilty by the prosti
tution of measures designed only for the protection of
the innocent. Whatever the method devised, the great
ends to be kept in view would have been certainty
and swiftness; for among the wilder Indians the only
government which commands respect is that which is
capable of enforcing its decrees as the nature-gods do,
striking with the velocity of lightning from the clouds,
or overwhelming resistance, when necessary, as a river
floods a whole valley in a night. Later, after their
minds have become capable of associating the noiseless
majesty of our judicial system with the power over life
and death, the same people would stand in all the more
awe of it because they had first learned thus crudely
the meaning of "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not."

I know precisely what answer will be made to this
argument : that it flies in the face of the whole philoso
phy of Indian administration I have been advocat
ing, since that has for its focal centre the idea of obliter
ating race lines and ceasing to have " Indian" laws
and "Indian" regulations, "Indian" schools and "In
dian" troops, as distinguished from the laws and rules,
educational and military institutions which belong to

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 269

all Americans in common. The fallacy of this criticism
will be apparent on a moment's reflection. I am
simply proposing temporary means of dealing with
temporary conditions, just as we throw a few planks
across a stream which we expect later to span with a
permanent bridge. Did we not, in the midst of our
highest civilization, establish the old Marine Court of
New York for the special benefit of the seamen who
then thronged that port, and whose ignorance of
the ways of the world made them particularly liable
to imposition? Have we not truant courts, and
juvenile courts, and other tribunals which recognize
one or another passing status among offenders? Have
we not reformatories and inebriate asylums, refuges
for the morally weak and homes for the morally defec
tive? These are not regarded as permanent abodes
for all the classes who do not measure up to the highest
standard of efficient citizenship: for the wilfully in
corrigible we have prisons and penitentiaries. As
soon as any individual inmate of an asylum or reform
atory is cured of his malady, or so strengthened that
he can presumptively depend on himself for the future,
his term of segregation ceases and he is merged once
more with the normal majority. So, it seems to me,
if we had a tribunal especially designed for handling
cases arising among Indians still in a state of barbarism,
of which the ordinary courts cannot or will not take
proper cognizance, it could cease to have jurisdiction
over any tribe from the time that that tribe mounted
to a higher level or the local tribunals changed their
attitude.

270 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

The details of such a plan I am not attempting to
work out. It is possible that a dozen better ones might
be contrived. But the illustrations I have cited from
the history of the Poncas, the Utes, the Apaches,
the Cheyennes, the Navajos, all point to the fact that
deep down in the minds of men everywhere lurks a
sense of a distinction — without warrant of law, perhaps,
and not definable in terms of logic — between a class of
conditions under which we feel impelled to rush to the
front with an assertion of abstract human rights, and
another class under which, from motives of regard for
social good order or manifest justice, we recognize the
practical wisdom of non-interference. We witness
such differentiations in the concrete every day, when
a worthy man arrested by the police on dubious
grounds finds a dozen volunteer champions taking up
his cause; while the same police, in preparing a city
for a popular festival, lock up or exile hundreds of
persons suspected of being dangerous to the public
peace and comfort, without so much as an oral
examination or a perfunctory writ, and are not called
to account for their arbitrary vigilance.

The lack of means for handling promptly and de
cisively the difficult situations which are liable to
arise at any moment on a reservation containing sev
eral thousand Indians still under the tribal bond and
influence, is a distinct handicap to the work of any one
who is called to take charge of the Indian establishment
as Commissioner. He may be so fortunate as never to
be confronted with situations with which it is his plain
duty to cope in spite of the fact that his hands are

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 271

tied. But if he finds himself face-to-face with an
exigency in which he feels, from his intimate knowledge
of the people with whom he has to deal, that inaction
may mean bloodshed and pillage, what is he to do?
If he sits still because he cannot be sure that the law
would support him in moving, and the threatened
disaster comes, he cannot defend himself to his own
conscience, much less at the bar of public opinion. If
he obeys his best judgment and acts, he is liable to the
widespread aspersion of his motives as well as of his
conduct. His critics may be technically right, and he
wrong, from the point of view of statutory interpreta
tion, and yet he could not do otherwise and .have any
peace of mind. The whole question is one of the su
preme duty of the moment; and such a question, it
seems to me, every self-respecting man must decide
according to his own best lights when it arises, and
then face the consequences without flinching.

A peculiar situation has developed out of the con
ditions obtaining on the Sac and Fox reservation in
Iowa, which may yet furnish a chapter by itself in the
annals of Indian jurisprudence. A number of years
ago, when the Government supposed that it had found
a desirable home for the Sac and Fox Indians in Okla
homa and had placed them in it, a part of the tribe
decided that they preferred a reservation further east
and north, and one where they could live as they
pleased instead of being subject to the official pro
gramme of civilization. So they seceded from the
main body and went over into Iowa, where they
bought with their own money, just as white people

272 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

might have, a farm near the town of Tama which
contained some arable land, some timber, a sufficient
water supply, etc. From time to time thereafter,
as the pecuniary means were forthcoming and oppor
tunity offered to purchase what they wanted, they
added more farms to their holding. Being non-
citizens, they had to act through trustees, and their
Superintendent and the Governor of Iowa were
clothed with this responsibility. The total area of
their domain is now about three thousand acres. In
1908 the two trustees shifted their charge to the shoul
ders of the Secretary of the Interior, so that, for ad
ministrative and disciplinary purposes, the Sac and
Fox reservation in Iowa stands to-day on substantially
the same footing as other Indian reservations.

Soon after these Indians moved into their present
quarters, the Government established a boarding-
school and agency for their benefit at Toledo, which is
four miles from Tama, though, as both towns are grow
ing toward each other, it puzzles a stranger somewhat
to know when he passes from one into the other. The
Indians, incited by a few mischief-makers and under
the influence of the liquor-selling element who found
profit in debauching them, resisted every effort of the
Government to promote their welfare and encourage
among them a respect for law and order. Intoxication,
loose relations between the sexes, the rearing of their
children in ignorance and lazy habits, and general con
tempt for any authority, social or legal, which could
be evaded, became so obtrusively characteristic of an
important part of the band, that many of the white

A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 273

citizens who at first had sympathized with what seemed
like a natural desire of the Indians to escape from the
deadly trammels of bureaucratic red tape, began to
change their views. They petitioned the Superin
tendent, and through him the Government at Washing
ton, to intervene in behalf of the moral atmosphere of
their community, since their own local courts had
refused, on the ground of lack of jurisdiction, to enter
tain this class of complaints. As soon, however, as a
federal officer would lay hands upon an Indian offender,
some legal pettifogger would rush to the rescue, ready
to raise a technical point for the dismissal of the case,
or to keep the Indian witnesses out of the way, or to
confuse their minds if the matter reached a trial on the
merits.

A favorite argument among these gentry was that
the tract of land on which the school and agency stood
was not a part of the Sac and Fox reservation, and
hence was outside the pale of the laws providing for
the preservation of good order on Indian reservations,
or those which require the Commissioner to compel the
attendance of children at some school on the reserva
tion of their tribe. Unfortunately, one United States
judge took their view of the matter in rendering an
opinion, and at last accounts his ruling stood as the only
recorded adjudication of the question; although other
judges of equal rank, who had evidently taken more
pains to review the history of the establishment of the
school site, have informally asserted that his theory
could not survive an appeal. This appears to be one of
the instances where a laisser-faire policy may work a

274 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

downright wrong to the handful of progressive Indians
who are left victims of the prevalent demoralization,
and at least one of whom has declared that he is dis
couraged, and that it is "no use trying longer to make
anything of himself." It is also a needless and unjust
hardship to any conscientious Superintendent to put
him in charge of such a reservation and demand that
he shall be responsible for conditions which he is not
given the means to control. No considerations of
economy by keeping out of litigation, no timidity about
facing a possible defeat in the courts, ought to be
allowed to weigh against forcing a test case whose de
cision, even if adverse to the Government, will at least
show all parties where they stand, and, it may be,
pave the way for some really effective legislation.

CHAPTER XIV

MISSIONARIES AND THEIR METHODS

The Aboriginal Conception of Deity — Supplanting Nature-
Worship with Christianity — A Missionary's Beginnings —
Teaching the Converts Independence — Status of the Mis
sion Worker Under the Law — Mistakes Which Can be
Avoided — The Hospital as a Faith-Bridge — Marital and
Sex Problems — Ecclesiastical Controversies in the Schools
— A Pagan Indian's Regard for his Vow.

WHAT is the Indian's religious life?

One who is unfamiliar with the native tongues is apt
to be puzzled by the phrases with which ignorant
interpreters express the aboriginal conception of deity.
Sometimes they speak of "the Great Spirit," some
times of "the spirits"; now of "God," anon of "the
gods." Doubtless the concept is as vague in the Ind
ian's mind as in his interpreter's jargon. The only
generalization we can venture is that he has a sense of
the existence of some mysterious spiritual essence
which pervades and controls the universe, and which
finds its visible embodiment in the forces and phenom
ena of nature. Hence in its outward forms his religion
is primarily nature- worship. Power is the attribute
which most impresses him in any being, animate or
inanimate. The sun, source of all warmth; the earth,
mother of all life; the rains which cause the earth to

275

276 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

become fruitful; the winds which blow from various
points on the horizon; a huge crag which could crush
him if it fell; a roaring river at its flood; a cataract he
is powerless to stem, or a mountain he cannot scale:
such are the objects which typify for him the ultimate
principle of might and majesty, and to which he pays
homage with his hopes and fears. He mixes much
imagery with his fetichism, too; so that, if you could
look into an Indian's mind when it is in the attitude of
adoration, you would probably read there some un-
uttered poetry not unlike the psalms of David.

To the gentler side of what we call religion he is a
stranger. He is a man of peace, it is true, when it
comes to yielding his will rather than quarrel with a
friend, or arranging terms of settlement between
aggressors and aggrieved within the tribal circle. But
when he does to others as he would have them do to
him, it is in pursuit of a policy making for comfort
rather than in obedience to a moral impulse. His
hospitality knows no bounds, but he expects yours
to be equally expansive when his turn comes to play
the guest. He will load his visiting friends with pres
ents, even to his own impoverishment; but they must
attest their appreciation by singing his praises as a
giver or rivalling his bounty in kind, unless they would
check the flow of good things and incur his contempt.
The idea of giving to those who do not know of his
existence, and solely for the sake of the good his gifts
may do, does not appeal to him in his natural state.

It is necessary that we should look these facts square
ly in the face if we would do justice to the Indian. A

MISSIONARIES 277

Caucasian who, on receiving a free gift of silver, throws
it away because it is not gold, we should condemn as a
graceless creature for whom it is not worth while to turn
one's hand over a second time. Not so the Indian
who spurns or ridicules your advances when, moved by
pure altruism, you try to help him. No such senti
ment as yours is within his own range of mental ex
perience, so he does not understand it; and what he
does not understand arouses his suspicion.

This is the phenomenon which baffles many a
Christian missionary on first entering the Indian field.
Full of the zeal of youth, he has bidden farewell to
family and friends and every pleasant physical asso
ciation, and betaken himself to a lonely post in the
wilderness, fancying that all he will have to do is to
visit his poor red brethren, Bible in hand and the
divine message trembling on his lips, to be received by
them in the spirit in which he came, and made welcome
to their hearts as well as to their homes. He is terribly
discouraged when he finds that they are not waiting
for him, eager to be taught, but rather in a mood to
repel him as bringing them something they would pre
fer not to have. They are satisfied with conditions as
they are. Let the white man "walk the Jesus road"
if he takes pleasure in it, but leave the Indian to go on
in "the old Indian way."

Then comes diplomacy. What the proffer of a new
gospel will not accomplish, a Sunday luncheon may;
and Indians are often tempted to come and hear what
a missionary has to say if they know that after the ser
mon a little feast will be spread for them. One of the

278 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

most successful mission workers among the Kiowas in
Oklahoma told me that when she settled there the
Indians bore her presence at the outset with undisguised
impatience, and after two or three weeks sent a com
mittee to wait on her and say: "When you came here
you said that you came to bring us a message. Other
people, when they bring us messages, give them to us
and go away. We have listened to all you told us.
Now, when are you going away?"

She parleyed with them awhile, trying to make
them see that the message she brought was a continu
ing one, not measured by a few spoken phrases. They
were unconvinced, but she induced them at last to grant
her more time, and promised to bake them a cake
against their next visit. The cake, when made, proved
so heavy that she was not very proud of it; but Kiowa
standards in cookery differ from ours, and, in the view
of the Indians, weight and solidity were desirable at
tributes of food, because they made it go so much fur
ther. This particular cake, happily, was heavy enough
to break through the barrier of suspicion, and thence
forward the missionary was able to induce her Indians
to do pretty nearly anything she wished by promising
them a cake when they had shown themselves suffi
ciently amenable.

I have selected the case of this woman for individual
mention because she is the type of missionary for whom
I cherish a profound respect; for, although she re
sorted to what sentimentalists may regard as a sordid
means of attracting hearers at the start, she followed
this up with so practical and energetic a programme

MISSIONARIES 279

that one forgets its beginnings in the contemplation of
its end. She lived and worked in one spot for years,
learning new things herself about farming and domes
tic management in order to pass her information along
to her pupils, but never making the mistake of pauper
izing them. When they needed a meeting-house, she
did not call upon some rich white benefactor for a do
nation. After a round of visits which made her per
sonally acquainted with every man, woman and child
in her district, she had so far won their confidence
that under her direction they reared an arbor of rough
poles covered with brush, which she told them should
be their place of worship till they were able to build
themselves a real " Jesus house" such as the white
people used.

Soon she set them to raising their own building
fund. Some gave her money from their earnings, for
not a few owed their earning capacity to her in
struction. The women she organized into a sewing
club, and taught them how to make quilts which would
sell in the open market. The hunters brought her
pelts; the bead-workers and other experts in the na
tive crafts made curios for sale. From these sources
alone she raised nearly $700 as the fruit of five years'
hard work. So resolved was she to keep her Indians
independent of charity, that when I enclosed a trifling
contribution in my letter of regret at not being able to
attend the dedicatory exercises, she declined to put it
into the building fund but laid it aside for future un
foreseen contingencies. As a matter of fact, various
minor gifts have been made to the church, but they are

280 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

of the same sort which are made to white churches as
memorials, or for some other special object.

Behold the indirect results of this thoroughly prac
tical policy. Thanks to the way she strengthened her
people in their self-respect, and made them realize
that the best preparation for a future life was a good
use made of the present one, my latest report from her
district showed nearly every head of an Indian family
an industrious farmer, and every child of suitable age
in school. The clearest story is sometimes told by
contrasts; and that was my thought as I looked over
into another mission district within cannon-range of
hers, where the Indians had been appealed to in the
conventional way and pampered in order to keep
them under control, and where the representative
convert refused from conscientious scruples to make a
necessary journey on Sunday, but would commit reck
less perjury on any other day of the week.

In short, there is as much difference in quality
between missionaries on Indian reservations as be
tween Superintendents. Some are as devoted men
and women as can be found in any walk of life.
Others are there obviously through an accident of
fortune, or because they have proved unequal to
the tasks set them in civilization. This class has
been considerably weeded out during the last few
years, owing, I believe, to a more effective system of
inspection adopted by the principal mission boards.
The worst sample of it I ever saw was a man of foreign
extraction living on a reservation in a region almost
uninvaded up to that time by white settlers. The

MISSIONARIES 281

Indians did not know what he was doing there,, and
the Agent had never seen or heard of him before. He
had a squaw keeping house for him, whom the neigh
bors assumed to be his wife, and was cultivating a
little patch of land which he called a farm. At first he
did not volunteer any very lucid account of himself,
but on being threatened with expulsion as an intruder
and vagabond he became more communicative, and
finally produced papers which showed that he had
come there as an accredited missionary, and was still
drawing money and making reports of conversions.
He was so patent a fraud that he was quickly shaken
loose from that connection; and his long success in
holding on was due, if I am correctly informed, to the
fact that no one in authority had till then visited his
station to check up his work.

Another, not attached to any mission organization
but posing as an independent teacher of truth, and
supporting himself by contributions from benevolent
persons in the East to whom he wrote from time to
time, carried on a thriving trade in curios and took
a hand in various speculations on the border of his
reservation till he had acquired a competency, and
then dropped his missionary enterprise and set up
business as a farmer in a white community. He first
attracted the attention of the Government by pro
curing some supplies from an agency commissary
through trickery, and would have been summarily
ejected but for the intercession of a few good people
who had never seen him but had fallen under the fasci
nation of his canting correspondence. The authorities

282 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

at Washington were soft-hearted enough to let him off
with a warning, and he showed his appreciation of their
kindness by trying to make trouble for every adminis
tration from that day forward.

Still another, who had made himself particularly
offensive by instigating rebellion among the Indians
in his district, I caught supplementing his modest sal
ary by illicitly running a private herd of sheep on a
range in which he had no proprietary interest. My
reason for citing these instances, which do not stand
alone by any means, is twofold. It is important that
the public who contribute to the support of missions
should understand why the Government, which treats
missionaries as a rule with all respect, occasionally
has to deal severely with one. It is also most desirable
for the welfare of legitimate mission work generally,
that contributors should be prompted to look into the
question, where their money goes and what sort of men
will eventually handle it. Every dollar subscribed to
help an- unworthy missionary is not merely a dollar
wasted, but a dollar kept from some worker who needs
it for a good purpose. It is surely as foolish to shut
one's eyes and solemnly assume that, by virtue of their
calling, missionaries can do no wrong, as it is to take
the other extreme, and rant against all of them as un
deserving of support.

Missionaries on Indian reservations are there purely
by courtesy of the Government. As far as his legal
authority is concerned, the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs could turn every one off to-morrow without as
signing detailed reasons for the step. Actually, it is

MISSIONARIES 283

the uniform practice among Government officers to
give every feasible encouragement to men and women
who come among the Indians on errands of good will
and moral improvement. Most of the beneficiaries
of this policy are glad to return courtesy for courtesy,
lending a hand wherever they can to help the au
thorities in their difficult task, and counselling the
Indians to respect the official regulations and culti
vate friendly relations with the functionaries in charge.
This class is made up of missionaries who are really
doing work which will bear scrutiny; they are not
compelled to foment trouble for the sake of proving
their activity and zeal.

The inefficient class and the shams, on the other
hand, will usually be found sowing the seeds of discord.
This, they fancy, gives them importance in the eyes of
their employers and of the more restless Indians.
Almost in the same group I should place the senti
mental and credulous missionaries who listen eagerly
to every Indian crank, or ignoramus, or mischief-
maker, who comes to them with stories against the
Superintendent, and accept the complaints without
weighing either their truth or their value. I have
been present at conversations where missionaries have
made statements to Indians which, if taken down ver
batim, would not have looked to the eye like indict
ments of the agency officers; and yet the way a phrase
would be put, or the inflection of voice which would
give special emphasis to certain words, were calcu
lated to fire a suspicion lurking perhaps causelessly
in an Indian's mind, and make him an antagonist to

284 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the Government in a situation where antagonism
would be not only foolish but harmful to his larger
interests. I once asked such a missionary what he
had against the local Superintendent, and was told
that he had not anything in particular, but on general
principles "looked askance on anything that man
did." When I followed this up by inquiring whether
the Superintendent entertained a like distrust of him,
he bristled with sudden indignation at the idea that
any one would dare to assume that he was not all right!
Then there is the missionary who complains that
the Government is indifferent to the vital interests of
the Indians because it does not confide enough in the
missionaries, but who, the moment advances are made
toward a closer association, finds an excuse for edging
off. I had once to perform a rather delicate duty in a
tribe which had got itself into a snarl through bad
leadership and factional quarrels. As I could not
leave Washington, I sent an intelligent inspecting
officer to represent me on the ground; and, since he
was dependent upon an official interpreter, wrote to a
local missionary whom I knew to be a master of the
language of the tribe, inviting him to accompany the
Inspector at the Government's expense, to see that the
interpreter employed did his duty well, that the Indians
understood what was said to them, and that their
responses were properly turned into English. He de
clined, on the ground that he was there to do mission
work, and did not wish to undertake anything which
might interfere with his absorption in that. In other
words, he regarded his purely professional functions

MISSIONARIES 285

as more important than aiding the Government to
protect the helpless people of his parish.

It is not always the missionaries themselves who are
at fault for a continuance of unfortunate conditions.
I called one day upon a female missionary who had
been pretty tactless in some of her conduct and thus
alienated the larger part of the tribe among whom she
lived, so that her mission was lapsing into inertness,
and convert after convert dropping away. We had a
long, frank and pleasant talk over the matter. She
was quite sensible of her mistakes, of their present
consequences and of those probably still to come. She
admitted the impracticability of any effort to restore
her standing.

"Then," said I, " would it not be wise for you to
ask your board to transfer you to some other post,
where you could start afresh and profit by your expe
rience here, while your successor would doubtless win
back many of the seceders? "

"I am embarrassed," she answered, "by the fact
that my board is an association of ladies, and most of
the money they spend comes from the private purse of
their president, who is very rich and charitable. Her
heart is bound up in this post, and she is a woman of
great fixedness of purpose. I have made tentative
suggestions about a transfer, but she would not listen
to them."

Further inquiries revealed that neither the president
nor any member of the board had visited the mission,
though it was within a day's journey of their home.
By arrangement, I wrote to the ladies, saying that it

286 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

was with the missionary's approval after a friendly
consultation, giving her full credit for her earnestness
and loyalty, describing the imbroglio as we both saw
it, and couching my proposal for a change in the most
considerate phraseology. After a little I received an
answer from the president decidedly tart in flavor,
treating the presence of the missionary on the reserva
tion as a vested right, and assuming in tone if not
in terms that I was pushing myself into something
which was in no sense my business. It ended with the
declaration that the ladies of the board perfectly
understood the situation, and that they had voted
"to stand firmly by their missionary against the Ind
ians"! In justice to other mission organizations with
which I have corresponded, I ought to add that this
is the only one which appeared to regard its field agents
as hostile emissaries instead of messengers of peace.

One of the misfortunes of mission work among the
Indians is that its extreme isolation too often has the
effect of making a missionary forget that there is any
thing in the world outside of the narrow circle to which
his activities are confined. The result may be that
after he has stayed with a certain tribe for several years
he comes to fancy almost that he owns them. Every
thing that concerns them is so intimately his that he
can brook no plans or policies regarding them which
are not first stamped by him with the seal of approval.
This has led at times to rather sharp clashes between
the Government authorities and the mission authori
ties. The local missionary insists upon a certain
course in administration; the responsible officers can-

MISSIONARIES 287

not see their way clear to doing what he demands; the
missionary enlists the support of his superiors, who
prefer siding with their own representative to siding
with public servants whom they do not know; and
thus in a little while a war is precipitated which is all
the hotter for having entirely conscientious men lead
ing both parties.

When the matter finds its way to the public through
the appeals of the missionary body to church meetings
and to the press, only an unbalanced presentation of
the issues gets abroad, because the Government can
not enter into newspaper controversies or go before
ecclesiastical congregations with its arguments; the
only advantage it enjoys is that which comes from
having the controlling judgment at the end, and being
able to do what it set out to do, regardless of the op
position raised. And even though the sequel may
prove the missionary to have been in error and the
Government right, the advertisement of their clash will
leave a false impression lingering in the minds of
thousands of citizens who have not time for digging
out the facts, who never heard how the incident
ended, or who accepted the missionary's claims as
surely right for their author's sake.

Such a controversy may arise, for instance, over a
purely scientific or technical question, like the method
to be pursued in irrigating the lands of a tribe. Here,
one would suppose, the testimony of the best irrigation
experts would count for something, not to mention
ocular demonstrations on an experimental farm. Yet
I knew of one such war, waged incessantly for several

288 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

years between a sincere but narrow preacher on one
side, and reclamation engineers of broad experience
and established reputation on the other; and, as the
clergyman has the trait of tenacity highly developed,
I am not sure that hostilities are not still going on, in
spite of the Government's having long ago settled on
its programme and set to work.

A mistake far too common among the missionaries
is their tendency to exaggerate the personal virtues of
their converts. One who has spent the larger part of
a lifetime on a single reservation astonished me one
day by appealing for the reversal of an official decision
in a domestic disagreement over property. An Indian
woman whom we will call Hannah had been married
to a man named John, lived with him perhaps a dozen
years and borne him one child. The lands of the reser
vation, which was very limited in area, were in due
course divided among the Indians, and father, mother
and child each received a few acres. Owing to some
technical obstacle, the little farms set apart for them
could not at the time be patented to the occupants,
but by common consent every member of the tribe
respected the inchoate proprietary rights of every
other. John was a kind and faithful husband, indus
trious, sober, and as thrifty as any of the Indians.
The child died, and its land, informally assumed to
belong to the parents as sole heirs, was worked by
John in connection with his own farm.

One day the wife disappeared, and it was discovered
that she had eloped with a younger Indian named
Edward, who had lately come to the reservation and

MISSIONARIES 289

owned no land. She had no fault to find with her
husband, who, she admitted, had always treated her
well; she simply liked the other man better. In due
course Edward appeared at John's farm and attempted
to take possession of what he regarded as Hannah's
property. John yielded her allotment without a
murmur, but when it came to giving up half the dead
child's land he resisted. He was ready to take Hannah
back and forgive her error; or, if she was resolved to
leave him, he was willing that she should cast her lot
where she would; but as she had deserted husband and
home without any offence on his part, and abandoned
her duty as a wife, he insisted that she had no right to
take any of their child's portion away from him, who
had remained faithful to his obligations, in order to
turn it over to her partner in iniquity.

After a time, Hannah came back and John received
her on the old footing. But she had acquired the
habit of unrest, and ere long she once more disappeared
and joined Edward. The couple renewed their effort
to get possession of the child's land. Having vainly
exhausted their powers of persuasion on John, they
carried their case to the Superintendent, who after an
investigation decided that the weight of merit lay on
the side of the wronged husband. As none of the
parties had rights enforceable in law, the dispute had
to be settled on lines of practical equity.

When the missionary urged me to interfere in behalf
of the defeated pair, I inquired on what ground she
based her appeal. She answered that both Hannah
and Edward had been converted since their escapade,

290 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

and were now, she believed, sincere Christians; and
she thought it would be an encouragement to them in
their new life to let Hannah have half the dead child's
land.

"Has she returned to her husband by way of proving
her repentance?" I asked.

"No/7 was the answer.

"Has she even left Edward?"

"No, she has married him, and I believe is true to
him. They come to our services regularly."

I declined to set the Superintendent's judgment
aside, much to the discomfort of the missionary, who
evidently considered my view very sordid and worldly;
but I suspected that a radical change of heart would
move an Indian, like a member of any other race, to
set right as far as possible the wrong he had done, in
stead of trying to hold on with one hand to the fruits
of sin while reaching out with the other for the re
wards of righteousness.

In the same category I should place a missionary's
disposition to dabble in the internal politics of the
reservation in behalf of his converts or his sect. I
used to receive letters like this: "The Catholics have
two of the assistant farmers at this agency, and the
Presbyterians have none. Would it not be possible
to give one of those places to a Presbyterian?" Of
course, I could only repeat my standing formula that
if any employee were not doing his duty, all I wanted
was the proof, and he should be replaced with an
efficient one, but that I could not inquire into the re
ligious any more than into the political affiliations of

MISSIONARIES 291

either man. I used to have more of this sort of inter
vention in regard to the constitution of the Courts of
Indian Offences and of the police force than in other
lines. As partisanship is one of the worst stumbling-
blocks in the path of the Indian's progress, it seems to
me that the poorest service a missionary can do him
is to foster in his mind the idea that membership in a
certain religious congregation means a share in the
distribution of secular offices.

Often I have been asked what I regarded as the best
way to approach the Indians with an appeal to con
sider Christianity. My answer has always been that
they must be furnished first with something on a level
with their understanding, which they can and will use
as a bridge to carry them into the domain of inquiry.
The Catholic priests of old time who established their
faith on the Pacific Coast were experts in husbandry;
they taught the Indians how to raise, harvest and
preserve important additions to their food supply.
The Society of Friends, in their operations in the Mis
sissippi Valley, used to start model stores, carpenter-
shops, and like enterprises. The Mennonites of our
generation have devoted much attention in the arid
zone to agriculture and the improvement of the water
resources. The Protestant Episcopal mission to the
Navajos set up an excellent hospital at Fort Defiance.
Such illustrations show what I have in mind. If you
approach an Indian with the bare abstract proposition
that you are bringing him a religion better than that of
his fathers, you must prepare for either resentment
or indifference; but if you show him new ways of ap

292 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

peasing his hunger, or mend his broken leg, or save the
life of his fever-stricken child, you have given him
something which locks into his environment, as it were.
When he sees you doing this for him not once or twice
but continuously, wonder begins to stir in his mind as
to what it all means. Then comes your opportunity
for telling him that your religion is a religion of love:
that it is founded on the idea that all human beings,
of every name and race, are brothers; that you are
trying to do him good because he is your brother and
you love him. And so your chain of instruction can
go on, one link being forged into another as fast as his
understanding will open to admit it.

A hospital I consider a better channel of approach
than any other, because it accomplishes so many ends
with one stroke. It confers a definite and palpable
benefit upon the patient; it confounds the sneers and
machinations of the native medicine men, when a suf
ferer they are unable to cure puts himself under the
care of white physicians and recovers; it is the most
potent instrument for uprooting superstition, because
in all primitive religions the healing power is an at
tribute of divinity; it is an intelligible evidence of the
superiority of Caucasian culture generally, and it
paves the way for any further advances his white
friends wish to make to the Indian. I have always
encouraged the establishment of hospitals by private
benevolence rather than by public appropriation.
When set up by the Government, half their interest
is lost. The Indian has had his moral perspective dis
torted so long by gratuitous favors from the Treasury

MISSIONARIES 293

that he is apt to look upon a Government hospital as
he looks upon a Government ration house, mixing
contempt with his appreciation of it.

In the second place, a hospital, like a school, is
apt to be better conducted under private control than
as part of the Governmental machinery. Again, it
seems to me important that the Indian should now be
gradually brought into closer relations with private
benevolence, so that he will feel that he has unselfish
friends who will continue to be concerned for his wel
fare after he has been cut loose from the Government.
Incidentally, the arrangement tends to stimulate what
ever of altruism may be latent in him, while it in
creases the number of white Americans who periodically
give some thought to the welfare of the supplanted
race.

As might be guessed from illustrations already cited,
few obstacles with which the missionary has to cope
among the Indians present such perplexities as their
lax marital relations. Polygamy is the least of these
troubles. It appears to be accepted by the women con
cerned as a matter of course, and the men are usually
as kind to their plural wives as they would be to one
if that were their limit. During President Harrison's
administration public sentiment was much stirred on
the subject of polygamy, and demanded that the Gov
ernment should exterminate it on Indian reservations
as well as elsewhere. Secretary Noble tried his 'pren
tice hand as a crusader upon a delegation of Comanches
who were among his first visitors in Washington. The
chief in command afterward described the interview

294 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

to me. The Secretary, he said, asked him how many
wives he had.

" Three," was the prompt response.

"Well, you know what the law is: no man may have
more than one."

"All right, Mr. Secretary. But I love all three just
the same; I should not know how to choose between
them. You, Mr. Secretary, will have to tell me which
two to turn out of my home."

The Secretary seemed nonplussed. After thinking
the matter over, he announced that it was impracti
cable to make a choice, so all three might as well stay;
but the chief must see to it that the young men of the
tribe, as they grew up and married, should take only
one wife apiece.

This compromise has been the unwritten rule ever
since : the old men might retain their wives if they had
more than one, but the rising generation would have
to conform to civilized custom and law. It is easier to
make such a rule than to enforce it. Some of the
young men have felt that, although they were for
bidden more than one wife at a time, there was nothing
to prevent their taking serially as many as they chose,
and as rapidly. The law in most of the States and
Territories being very lax as to forms, no particular
ceremony was regarded as necessary; and a marriage
thus easily contracted, they reasoned, might be can
celled about as lightly. Indeed, this condition of
things was indirectly encouraged by the local courts
themselves, through their indifference toward all
Indian domestic affairs.

MISSIONARIES 295

Where the missionaries, co-operating with the local
representatives of the Government, have tried to bring
about better practices by haling offenders before a
civil court on a charge of bigamy, or having them
bound over to support abandoned wives and children,
resort has often been had to a life of mere license
under the guise of "marrying in the old Indian way."
A young man of strong attractions for the other sex
might take to himself a half-dozen girls in as many
years, with no ceremony at all and no pretence of one;
and as the successively discarded squaws would not
take any part in the prosecution of their whilom
partner, it was impracticable to bring him to justice.
I recall an instance where a young Indian of exceptional
natural ability, and with as good an education as the
Government could give him, went back to his res
ervation, took to his cabin one of the most intelligent
and winning girls in the tribe — also a graduate of a
Government school — lived with her the better part of
a year, and then married, with all the formalities of
book, priest and ring, a white girl, the daughter of one
of the agency employees. On the very day of his regu
lar marriage, the victim of his irregular connection
bore him a child. The local missionary, the field ma
tron and one or more of his former teachers united in
an effort to make him recognize his obligations, but
without avail; and the most strenuous opponent of
every plan for compulsion was the Indian girl he had
wronged. Her civilized education notwithstanding,
she was Indian to the backbone. It was the "way
of her people," she protested, and, though tears welled

296 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

up in her eyes as she fondled her nameless baby, she
had no complaint to make.

Indians are always greatly puzzled by the differences
between the sects, and the appearance of hostility so
often assumed by one toward another. It has little
effect to assure them that all the sects are but parts
of one religious body, worshipping the same deity.
Doctrinal subtleties are of course beyond the reach of
the ordinary Indian's mind, but in matters of discipline
he discovers what seem to him serious incongruities.
An old chief once expressed to me his deep concern
because a missionary had warned his children that
they would be punished after death if they broke the
Sabbath with their accustomed games, yet he had seen
with his own eyes a missionary playing tennis on Sun
day. Another raised in my presence, with a sly sug
gestion of satire in his tone, the question of marriage.
One missionary, he told us — referring to a visit from a
Mormon apostle several years before — had four wives,
and said it was good in the sight of the white man's
god; the missionary who preached at the agency
school had only one wife, and said that that was all
right, but it would be wicked for him to marry any
more; but the priest who came once in a while to bless
the children had no wife at all, and said that the white
man's god would be displeased with him if he took
even one.

On the broad area of a reservation, active contro
versies between missionaries are rather rare. Though
each may be tenacious of his own prerogative, it seems
to be generally agreed that there is room enough for

MISSIONARIES 297

all. It is in the schools that the most vigorous ecclesias
tical warfare has been carried on. Several years after
the enactment of the law putting an end to public ap
propriations for contracts with mission schools, a
question was raised whether this prohibition applied to
tribal funds as well as Government money raised by
taxation for public purposes. The Attorney-General
gave his opinion that it did not. Accordingly Presi
dent Roosevelt ordered that an Indian who was en
titled to participate in a tribal fund should be per
mitted to contribute his share, or any part of it, toward
the support of any mission school he preferred. Two
denominations, the Catholics and the Lutherans, took
advantage of the order, and presented petitions numer
ously signed by Indians interested in some particular
school, praying for the diversion of so much of their
respective shares as might be necessary to support and
educate a certain number of children at that school.
In order to test the right of the executive to make such
a diversion of trust funds, even on the petition of the
wards, the Indian Rights Association brought suit in
the names of sundry Indians of the Sioux nation to en
join the Government from entering into contract with
the schools in their neighborhood. The case went all the
way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which
decided against any restraining order, substantially
confirming the administration's claim that the money
belonged to the Indians, and was properly subject
to expenditure in the executive discretion for purposes
promotive of their civilization. Funds available for
such use, however, are not many, and the worst storm-

298 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

centres of controversy have been not the tribal schools,
but the big institutions distant from the reservations.

In each of these are gathered pupils from -several
tribes, who may represent as many different sects.
Their Superintendents vary also in liberality of view,
and some who honestly believe themselves free from
all prejudice seem temperamentally incapable of hold
ing the balance even between the several denomina
tions interested. The Protestants, as a rule, have
always wished to hold all religious exercises in common,
but the Catholics have been unwilling to do so. As a
consequence, it became necessary several years ago to
divide the children according to the expressed prefer
ences of their parents and hold two Sunday schools
simultaneously. But this did not meet all the diffi
culties. The Catholics wished arrangements which
would insure their children's being carried on Sundays
to their nearest church, and being called together at
particular hours once in so often for private instruc
tion; the Protestants wanted their children taken
every Sunday to one of the Protestant churches; and
some programme had to be contrived for the brief
assembly exercises in which the whole pupil body was
expected to join, so that these, though devotional in
character, should be free of offence to any denomina
tion represented.

For experimental purposes I chose an institution
whose Superintendent I knew to be broad-minded,
intelligent and loyal, and personally liked and trusted
by all the local religious teachers. To him I wrote
an official letter laying down the principle that, in

MISSIONARIES 299

religious as in secular matters where several diverse
interests are concerned, kind feeling and a spirit of
concession go a great way toward smoothing the path
of duty for all; and saying that as long as the ministers
of each denomination interested in his school were
given such exclusive privileges as were practicable
with regard to Sunday school exercises and the like, I
believed that each could afford, in the arrangement
of exercises in which the whole school was to take part,
to yield a non-essential point as to anything which was
liable to wound the conscience of a neighbor. He fell
in with the idea at once, and soon had a programme
arranged for his own school which was so good that I
sent copies of it, and of the letter which brought it
forth, to all the leading schools of the Service.

Later we established another rule for such schools,
issuing a circular requiring that in all those which had a
contingent of Catholic pupils the Bible reading at the
assembly exercises be confined thereafter to the four
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in the revised
version; that the Lord's Prayer be recited as given in
the same version, and that a Protestant hymnal be
used for the singing, with certain hymns omitted which
the Catholics regarded as objectionably doctrinal.
Before adopting this plan, I had laid it before the
Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, two Bishops of
the Protestant Episcopal church, two Methodist
Bishops, one Congregational, one Presbyterian and one
Baptist clergyman, selecting only men of prominence
in their several communions. I found all heartily
sympathetic; and the broad principle at the basis of

300 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the whole matter has, I hope, become so well intrenched
that the great schools will never be thrown back into
their former chaos of sectarian contention.

One group of employees in the Indian Service has
been, and still is, recruited largely from the missionary
element. Many of the field matrons began their careers
as missionaries sent out by one of the benevolent
societies, and were taken over by the Government
after serving their apprenticeship. For women of a
certain temperament and training, this is a fascinat
ing field of activity. They are expected to cultivate
the acquaintance of the women and girls, and try to
raise the standard of living among them. The statute
defines their function as "to teach Indian girls in
housekeeping and other household duties," but the
Department has always put a liberal interpretation
upon this phraseology. It is surely a part of good
housekeeping to take care of the little children of the
family, so the best-equipped field matrons are those
with strong maternal impulses and some ability in
domestic medicine and nursing. If it has fallen upon
the women of a tribe, from time immemorial, to weave
the blankets or plait the baskets or make the pottery,
is not the field matron free to show them, as " other
household duties," more economical and more san
itary methods of doing this work, and better means of
marketing their products? At the bottom of every
thing lies the idea of teaching the women how to be
faithful wives and sensible mothers and helpful sisters
and daughters — of fortifying them in character as well
as increasing their mental and physical resources.

MISSIONARIES 301

How well some of these workers fulfil their mission
is evident from the terms of warm friendship upon
which they get with the women among whom they live.
I met with a marked example of this in an Indian vil
lage where, two or three years ago, I had to resort to
extreme measures to enforce the compulsory school
regulations. The women had hidden their children
in their houses, and in order to find them the Govern
ment's emissaries had to make use of the knowledge of
some one intimately acquainted with every family.
With great reluctance, but moved by loyalty, the local
field matron undertook to act as guide, pointing out to
the searching party the houses in which there were
children of school age. She feared, and we all shared
her apprehension, that her usefulness at that station
would end forthwith. Not so in fact. The Indian
mothers, stolid as they might appear outwardly, seemed
fully to realize her relation to the Government, and to
bear her no ill will for the part she took in the raid;
and as soon as the atmosphere was clear again she went
on with her work as before, entering on the old terms
the very households from which she had helped to
take away the children.

We have also the outing matrons for girls, whose
duties are in a certain sense missionary: they find em
ployment for the young women who look to domestic
service of some sort for a livelihood. They supervise
the contracts, formal or oral, between mistress and
maid. If a girl so placed falls ill, it is the outing matron
who makes sure of her having medical care and com
fort, or attends to sending her home; if one goes astray,

302 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

the matron follows her up and exhausts every instru
mentality to reclaim her. In the rare instances where
an estrangement occurs between a very independent or
wayward girl and her parents, it is often the outing
matron who, as a friend of both parties, heals the
breach and restores peace to the household.

While on the subject of girls, it may be said that
they present perhaps the most perplexing feature of
the Indian problem at large. We can tell pretty well
what to do with a boy: give him the opportunity to
become a farmer, a mechanic, a stockman, a laborer,
and then throw him upon his own resources with a
reasonable assurance that he will get along somehow.
But a girl is in a different position. Only in exceptional
cases does she incline toward the pursuits of her broth
ers, and nature has impeded any ambition in that di
rection by certain physical disabilities. Domestic ser
vice, including nursing; art or clerical work; or some
strictly feminine mercantile calling like dressmaking
or millinery, seem to offer her the only outlet for her
energy, and, at least in the early stages of her occupa
tion at one of these, she must be watched and guarded.
For there is no Indian Mrs. Grundy. Neither the
hereditary respect for social conventions, nor the in
tuitive perception of evil, which causes a white girl
to shrink as she approaches the danger line, is operative
for the protection of the Indian girl. She is a child of
nature; and in a state of nature those instincts remain
keen and aggressive which have been blunted in our
young women by generations of regard for "the pro
prieties." She needs therefore to be defended against

MISSIONARIES 303

herself almost if not quite as much as against a pursuer.
It is such considerations as these, little realized by per
sons who do not come directly into contact with Ind
ian character and life, which make the work of the
matrons so important.

As I am closing this chapter, I am asked by a friend
interested in missions: "Has the Indian a basic
sense of moral responsibility sufficiently robust to be
capable of high religious development?" Let me tell
you a true story. A number of years ago a group of
twenty Indians who had been in controversy with the
authorities in Washington entered into a solemn pact
not to accept certain money which the Government
was preparing to distribute among their tribe in three
or four successive payments, because they believed
that that would be a surrender of the principle for
which they had been contending. Later the ques
tions at issue were cleared up by a judicial decision
which left the Indians' protest not a leg to stand on.
Nineteen of the twenty, including a candidate for the
chiefship who had led the party into their attempt at
resistance, bowed to the inevitable, took the money
offered them at the next payment, and applied for the
instalments then in arrears. The twentieth man,
whose English name was Bill, stood out alone in his
refusal to touch anything, but refused to tell why.
Soon afterward I visited the reservation on business,
and he sought me privately and opened his heart. He
was poor, and his family were actually in need of some
things the money would buy; so I tried to make him
feel more comfortable by assuring him that the with-

304 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

drawal of the others from their mutual agreement left
him free to do as he wished.

"No," he declared; adding, in a phraseology which
I shall not try to imitate, "we are all bound by a vow.
I swore that I would not take my share of that money,
and I must not. The others may change if they choose,
but they cannot release me from my oath."

"That is honorable, certainly," I answered; "but
if you feel so strongly about it, why did you come to
me for advice?"

"There is something you can tell me, and I am
afraid to trust the others. I vowed for myself and not
for my family, though they have not drawn their
shares either. Now, can they get their money even
if I don't touch mine?"

I said that I could get it for them.

"What becomes of my money if I don't take it?"

"It will accumulate in the Treasury, and be paid to
your heirs after your death."

"You have made my heart glad," exclaimed Bill,
laying his hand affectionately on my shoulder while
his face beamed with satisfaction. "That is the way
I would have it. I felt right in standing out, but I
did not want my wife and children to suffer if I were
wrong."

A cynic might find the moral of this story to be
that only one Indian in twenty is high-minded enough
to hold his ground against such temptation. But it
would be fairer to temper that judgment with the
inquiry, how the proportions would have arranged
themselves in a like number of any other race?

CHAPTER XV

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM

The Popular Notion of Philanthropic Societies — A Too Sweep
ing Verdict — Their Several Fields of Effort — Distinctions
Worth Observing — Public Officers and Criticism — Judg
ing as We Would be Judged — How the Societies Are
Organized and Managed — Practical Benevolence and the
Other Kind — Native Testimony — The Chronic Complain-
ers' Faction — Indians in Shows — Pseudo Scientists and
Real.

ONE hears a good deal in disparagement of the phil
anthropic societies which make a specialty of Indians.
They are composed chiefly of persons who know
nothing about Indians by direct contact; and it is
charged that they criticise without inquiry and
meddle without discretion, obstruct progress under
the delusion that they are helping it, and would do a
good cause their best service by letting it alone.
Such sweeping denunciation seems to me about on a
level with the proverb that there is no good Indian
but a dead one. Because a society with an honorable
past happens to fall under the sway of a reactionary
element and become somewhat of a by-word among
the more intelligent class of citizens, it does not thereby
commit itself never to regain its old place in the public
respect; and because another makes a mistake now
and then, the worst we need think of it is that it is

305

306 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

human. I believe I can speak without prejudice, for
I have never been a member of any of these societies;
I have performed confidential services for more than
one, and thus obtained an intimate view of their inner
life and workings: and as a public officer I have re
ceived from some of them both just and unjust treat
ment. It seems to me that instead of accepting them,
on the one hand, as impeccable, or, on the other,
joining in a philippic against them, the profitable
course is to point out, in a friendly spirit but with can
dor, certain ways in which they can establish and
maintain a higher usefulness.

First, I should urge upon them a due realization of
their position and relations. They stand between the
Government and the public. To the public they look
for their support, financial and moral; on the Govern
ment they depend for the accomplishment of results,
since it is the Government which must, in the last
extremity, do the things they desire or prevent the
things they object to. Hence, whether it is collecting
contributions, or urging a popular demonstration for
or against a proposed measure, or pressing its advice
upon the powers that be at Washington, the conduct
and methods of a society ought to be so above re
proach as to commend it to universal esteem. In an
emergency which arose in the earlier nineties, the Com
missioner then in office showed me one day a waste-
basket full of letters of complaint identical in phrase
ology — ^1 the result of a circular issued by a single
philanthropic body — and declared that whatever else
of the same sort might arrive would be sent with these

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 307

to the fuel bin. Such machine practices, he added,
were worthy only of the small politicians, and pro
duced no effect upon him except disgust. During a
more recent administration, a responsible officer of a
prominent society attacked the Commissioner in the
press, inexcusably misquoting him, and basing on
this misquotation a call to humane people all over the
country to write protests to the President or the Sec
retary of the Interior. Not a single protest came in
to either President or Secretary: this man's influence,
once great, had died of shameful misuse.

The next desideratum seems to me a dignified con
ception of the purpose and scope of a society by its
own members. Each has its special field of activity.
For example, the National Indian Association, com
posed chiefly of women, establishes mission stations
here and there, and furnishes from them some of the
best-tested material for the Government's field matron
service; the Indian Rights Association, in Philadelphia,
was founded for the purpose of securing to Indians
their rights under the law, and promoting new legisla
tion for their advancement; the Indian Citizenship
Committee, of Boston, aims at the extension of Ameri
can citizenship to Indians as fast as they can properly
be endowed with it, and its protection after it has
been conferred; the Indian branch of the Anti-Saloon
League of America devotes its attention to breaking
up the traffic in intoxicants in the Indian country;
the Indian Industries League, with headquarters in
Boston, strives to foster public interest in Indian
craftsmanship, to save the native arts from degenera-

308 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

tion through meaningless designs and poor materials,
and to work up markets for the products of Indian
looms and forges and potteries; while a score of others
have for their respective specialties the instruction of
Indian women in lace-making, the purchase of homes
for landless tribes, and similar objects.

Sticking each to its own task, these associations can
do much good. Danger lurks, however, in the temp
tation often presented to trench upon each other's
domains, or undertake operations not contemplated
in the organic law of any. A Government employee,
it may be, complains that he has been unfairly treated
by his superiors in office; or another is seeking " in
fluence" for a promotion; or a quarrel breaks out at
an agency, and each party threatens to report the
other's doings to one of the philanthropic associations
and cause an upheaval. These are not subjects which
come legitimately within the purview of any of the
bodies named, and yet they are continually obtruding
themselves under association auspices. The effect is
to lower the general influence of the society concerned,
when its members and prospective members discover
the devious ends to which their benevolence is liable
to be diverted.

The greatest mistake a society can make in this line
is to assume that it exists not for the purpose of help
ing the Government in its work, but to perform the
functions of government itself. Such a proposition,
stated in the abstract, looks ridiculous; still, it is a
claim constantly put in under a thin disguise of hu
mane intervention. A crisis occurs on a remote

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 309

reservation, and the Department undertakes to deal
with it in a certain way. That way is not agreeable
to some philanthropic association, which, acting on
misinformation, airs its objection publicly. Unless the
Government responds by surrendering its prerogative
and doing something which it believes wrong, every
body responsible for its obstinacy becomes a personal
target for attack.

Note the position in which this places both parties.
If a Government officer, forgetting dignity and cour
tesy, retorts in kind, it must be at a sacrifice of his self-
respect. If he attempts the thankless task of setting
forth publicly his reasons in detail, it means an indefi
nite continuance of the controversy, to the neglect of
his proper duties. If he remains silent, his assailants
hail it as a confession that nothing can be said in his
behalf. Again, suppose that the officer concerned,
dreading to be spattered with mud to no purpose,
compromises with his honest judgment in defiance of
the spirit of his official oath, and does as he is bidden
by his self-appointed instructor; and then suppose
that later developments show that he was right in the
first place and that his surrender was a blunder: what
happens? He is condemned not only by the conscience
with which he has trifled, but by popular opinion,
which sees only his act and not the menace of perse
cution that brought it about. Meanwhile, not being
officially accountable for anything or to anybody, the
society whose bad counsels wrought all the mischief
goes its way unscathed, to turn its attention to fresher
things and prepare for its next assault upon a citadel

310 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

of administration. Is this fair? Is it honorable? Is
it in any sense an equitable division of obligations?

Public officers do not object to criticism as such.
On the contrary, they welcome constructive criticism
as an aid to their work. They do, however, resent
mere scolding for things they have never done, and
the covert snarl which is but a cowardly attempt at
insult. Sneers, innuendoes, petty personalities, are
not arguments. They excite only contempt for the
censor who, reduced to the use of such weapons,
thereby advertises the poverty of his case.

Whether investigation is a function of the philan
thropic society, depends on what the term is stretched
to include. If a society believes it has scented some
thing wrong in a matter falling within its scope,
should it not follow up the scent and bring the offender
to justice if possible? Yes, under certain perfectly
clear restrictions. It should go first to the Com
missioner and state its suspicions, giving him — in
confidence, of course — the sources of its information.
He it is who has most at stake in the right handling
of Indians and their concerns, and who will have the
final disposition of this affair; and by his advice the
society should be governed. If the Indians are at the
moment in a state of abnormal excitement, he may
advise waiting a little before doing anything to add to
their agitation. If, on the contrary, he thinks the
conditions such that a quick, sharp stroke would be
most effective, he may wish to push the business in
stantly to its climax. He may deem it a case where
the society should be conspicuously in evidence, or

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 311

one where, for prudential reasons, it had better keep
in the background for the present. He may wish its
agents to carry out some independent research, or it
may appear the part of wisdom to have everything
done in co-operation. He may, and probably will,
ask the society to collect its evidence and act as prose
cutor instead of sitting as judge. None of his desires
may accord with the designs of the society; but it is
for him, after all, to distribute the duties and superin
tend their performance, for the reins of authority are
in his hands alone and upon him must fall the blame
for anything that goes wrong.

But, demands the society, how do we know that the
Commissioner will be just in dealing with the offences
of his subordinates? Friends, look squarely at your
own argument. If you are afraid to trust him, with
what face can you ask him to trust you? In trusting
him, you risk only the failure of your present plan;
in trusting you, he risks everything. Because he is
not such a poltroon as to let the good name of the
humblest member of his Service be wantonly traduced,
you suspect that he may be tempted to unjustifiable
lenity in such cases as this. Do you realize what that
means? To keep bad men in the Indian Service after
their character has been discovered is to invoke an
endless chain of troubles for the Commissioner, and
make his administration a mere monotony of irritation.
From no higher point of view than that of selfish
comfort, therefore, his prime interest lies in sifting
the Service of its undesirable elements as fast as he
can. And as for the society, having set out to punish

312 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

a man or group of men, is it sure that it is so far above
human frailty itself as to be satisfied with anything
short of triumph?

By virtue of the very fact which gives an advantage
to organized over individual charitable effort — that is,
that organization enables the assembling of many
units of human energy, to be put forth later in concen
trated form through a few channels — the main work
of a society of several hundred members usually falls
upon, and its influence is used by, its president, its
secretary, and possibly an executive committee.
These are elected at an annual meeting which is at
tended by only a handful of the membership, and for
which a ticket has already been prepared by an inner
circle so that the vote glides through as smoothly as
the " slate" of a ward caucus. If any of the men thus
chosen is narrow and shrew-tongued, or emotionally
ill-poised, great mistakes may be made and wrongs
perpetrated in which every contributor to the susten-
tation fund becomes an unwitting participant. This
makes it important that the officers be distinguished
for their breadth of mind and sound judgment. If
they are going to show the Department how to handle
the property of the Indians, they should have proved
their capacity by making a success of their own
worldly undertakings. If they are going to advise
the Commissioner what men to place in certain posi
tions, they ought to be expert readers of human
nature, lest they find themselves trying to instruct a
pupil who understands his subject better than his
teachers. If they are going to direct him how to

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 313

govern his three hundred thousand Indians, it would
be fitting to inquire at least how well they have man
aged their own households.

Commonly the officers are chosen, not for their
knowledge of Indians, but for the sake of their names,
which may serve to attract new members. It is not
unusual for one of their number to push to the front
and take most of their joint burden upon his single
pair of shoulders. I remember the half-humorous,
half-pathetic plaint which the president of a large
society once confided to me, that his proper authority
had been usurped by the secretary; that he was al
most never consulted, and but rarely apprized of what
the society was going to do; and that in connection
with a recent meeting of special interest the secretary
had issued the call and invitations, arranged the
programme, selected the speakers, and even asked
another prominent citizen to preside, apparently for
getting the very existence of his superior officer!
This, of course, was a comedy situation, and, as the
president had a sense of humor under his grave ex
terior, no harm was done; but the vista of tragic
possibilities opened by such an incident is startling.
The subjection of the activities of a large society to
the whims of one man is a dangerous condition, if
that man happens to be erratic and irresponsible. I
knew of an instance where the one man in power,
accepting with ready credulity a mass of false infor
mation, wrote a personal letter full of untruthful and
offensive charges to the then Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, who answered it in the only way such a letter

314 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

could be noticed — with a request that he be troubled
with no further personal communications from the
same source. Taking umbrage at this, the author of
the letter began to make use of the society for a sys
tematic persecution of the Commissioner, which for
reckless vindictiveness I have never seen surpassed.

The officers of a philanthropic association, as well
as the rank and file of its membership, derive their in
formation about Indian affairs, and some of their
opinions also, from its field agents; so the value of its
work and its standing with the public depend in no
small measure on the style of men it keeps in these
apparently subordinate positions. One who is a
gentleman by instinct and antecedents, like the former
Washington agent of the Indian Rights Association,
Charles C. Painter, commands wide recognition, and
whatever information he desires is his for the asking,
because he comes for it in a manly way. His reports
are believed by men of high character, because he
belongs in their own class, being frank and courageous,
and loving truth for truth's sake. One of the opposite
stripe soon makes himself despised among honorable
men, and has to find his intimates among those of like
kidney with himself, who can aid him in stabbing at a
reputation or two in every bulletin he sends to his
employers.

Apropos, the attitude assumed by some philanthro
pists toward every one in public life is indefensible
on grounds either of common sense or of common
custom. Let us suppose that a man enters the Gov
ernment who has always borne a fair name among His

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM, 315

fellow citizens, including those who have known him
most closely from boyhood. He is not a politician or an
office-seeker, but neither was he ever known to shirk
responsibility when called upon to shoulder it. Since
from his official vantage-ground he can see every sub
ject within his jurisdiction from the inside as well as
the outside, and how one case interlocks with a hun
dred others governed by the same generic policy, he
is better fitted to judge of the actual merits of a ques
tion than any person so situated as to see only one
phase of it. So the whole test of his efficiency is re
duced to this: is he a man of habitually sound judg
ment and of established integrity of character?

Were such an inquiry put to us with regard to one
engaged, not in the administration of public affairs,
but in some money-making business, we should reason
about in this wise: "He was esteemed an upright
citizen when he was in the shipping trade, and it is
folly to assume that because he has lately become a
banker his whole character has undergone a change.
As to his judgment, has he made a success of his un
dertakings generally? Has he assumed large respon
sibilities and frittered them away, or grappled with
small opportunities and made them big? Has his
home a wholesome atmosphere? Do his employees be
lieve in his justice and his straightforwardness? Do
his business associates and competitors respect him,
independently of any personal likes and dislikes? "

Apply the same logic to our friend who has entered
public life. Has his whole nature been made over by
his passing change of occupation? Is he any the less

316 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

an honest man or a gentleman for it? Are not his
companions as competent as ever to estimate his
worth? Is not his word as valuable when he makes a
statement concerning the interests in his custody?
Has he lost any of that real pride which has always
impelled him, when he discovers that he is mistaken,
to acknowledge it freely? Has his judgment so col
lapsed that it can no longer be trusted, even though
we may not know all the complex reasons which have
led to its conclusions? Is he any the less keen in
guarding his own honor and requiring those under
him to guard theirs?

If his administration is assailed for some specific
policy, look at the records and see whether the same
policy has not always been followed, but passed over
in former instances without complaint. This will de
termine whether the hostilities have a sincere origin,
or are merely a cloak for personal revenges. Inquire
who instigated them. It may be that they started
with some discredited peddler of " sensations" to the
yellow press, by whom our officer declined to be black
mailed; or with some hired informer who has not been
able to terrorize him; or with some one of respectable
social position but childish credulity and fanatical
temperament, writhing under a rebuke he has brought
upon himself. Those of us who know the world have
met many such human types, and learned to give them
a wide berth in secular affairs; what is there, then, to
justify our showing them greater consideration in
others?

As long as bearers of false witness are so diligent in

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 317

the pursuit of their calling, how can the general public
avoid unjust judgments? It may not be possible to
avoid them entirely, but much could be accomplished
by not accepting wholesale one side of a story till the
other side has been heard. A few years ago, at a
meeting of a philanthropic society in a New England
State, the orator of the evening vehemently attacked
a certain measure taken by the Government in Indian
affairs, and at his instance the gathering adopted a
condemnatory resolution and sent it to Washington.
A week or two later a speaker whose sympathies were
with the other side, addressed a sister society, which,
after he had gone, held a meeting of its own accord
and adopted a resolution commending the Govern
ment, and this went to Washington also. Now, suppose
that the authorities at Washington, instead of under
standing their subject and having a plan ready to
execute, had been waiting to ascertain public sentiment :
which of these resolutions must they have accepted
as representing the best thought of New England?

Another good idea for the philanthropists is to cul
tivate a sportsmanlike spirit, always state their adver
sary's case as fully as their own, acknowledge their
errors as cheerfully as decent people do in private life,
and take defeat or victory with equal grace. When I
entered upon my duties as Commissioner I inherited
a quarrel between a reservation Superintendent and
two of the local employees. A Special Agent had in
vestigated it and reported in favor of the Superinten
dent; but a number of Eastern philanthropists had
besieged the Indian Office to discredit the report and

318 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

order another investigation. I asked them whom they
would recommend to conduct this proposed second
inquiry, and they united upon one of our Supervisors,
declaring that he was courageous and honest, had the
judicial temperament, and could be trusted to get to
the bottom of the difficulty. I telegraphed him to go
at once to the scene of trouble, disregard everything
done up to that time, and report his independent
findings.

He did so. His report not only upheld the Super
intendent, but enclosed the resignations of both of the
defeated employees. Those complainants who were
business men promptly admitted that there was
nothing more to be said; but a few others continued
to pursue the Superintendent with one absurdly false
charge after another, and kept the Indian Office busy
for a year afterward with 'futile correspondence, to
the detriment of really deserving causes which were
waiting for a chance to be heard.

A relief for this picture is furnished by a woman
who wrote me on behalf of her association, protesting
against what she conceived to be a fresh instance of
race aggression in California, where she had heard
that one of our Superintendents was letting into his
school a number of white pupils; but she assured me
that she was keeping her own counsel, so that I could
act without needless publicity. I referred her to my
recent annual reports, and to legislation I had obtained
from Congress authorizing the very thing the Superin
tendent was accused of doing, as it was part of my
policy to encourage the friendly mingling of the races

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 319

in childhood. There came back a letter full of sym
pathy with this plan, which she had not happened to
notice before in our official literature. Her desire to
co-operate, instead of priding herself on picking flaws,
was no cheap pretence of the lips but a genuine mental
attitude. She was seeking not her own glory but the
welfare of the Indians; she was ready to take for
granted the good faith of the Department, just as she
expected it to accept hers; and, having found that
she had made a mistake, she joined hands at once with
the Government in a worthy undertaking.

Animated by a like spirit was the woman of distin
guished ancestry and fine associations who dropped
the pleasures of her life in the East to go for me on a
confidential mission to an Indian tribe which had fallen
into the clutches of the whiskey men and the land-
grafters. She spent a whole season among them as an
ordinary summer visitor without exciting suspicion,
observed local conditions keenly and laid her finger on
the spot which needed administrative healing. All
that has since been accomplished for those Indians is
due to the intelligence with which she collected the
data needed by the Department — not hybrid gossip,
but pure fact.

Again, take the case of the young college professor
who, getting an inkling of mischief in sundry land
transactions on a Northern reservation, came to us
about a year ago, frankly stating his fears, his reasons
for entertaining them, and the sources of such infor
mation as he already possessed. Sent to the scene of
the transactions, he returned with a mass of material

320 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

which, as soon as it could be digested, was handed
over to the law officers of the Government for action
against the alleged malefactors; and from my knowl
edge of Commissioner Valentine I predict that if there
is any lack of energy in the prosecutions it will not be
due to the negligence of the Indian Office. Neither of
these volunteer assistants — and they are merely a few
of the more conspicuous — was disturbed by doubts
whether the Department really wished to punish
wrongdoing; but they were seeking only justice, not
revenge or notoriety.

Philanthropic work by untrained hands in the In
dian field sometimes suffers from ignorance on one or
two points which are an old story to the experienced,
such as the uncertainty of Indian testimony, and the
effect of factionalism in a tribe upon both witnesses
and inquisitor. I have heard members of a tribe
threaten each other, and Indians threaten agency
employees, with " investigation" by one of the phil
anthropic societies, with the obvious notion on both
sides that such investigation always means conviction.
This appears to have grown largely out of their obser
vation that the side which presents the first appeal to
the sympathetic inquirer is apt to capture him, so that
he ceases to be an umpire and turns advocate. As to
testimony: if you know that an Indian saw a certain
thing happen, you can depend upon him to describe
its external phenomena with marvellous fulness of
detail. But when the issue harks further back and
involves the primary question whether the thing actu
ally ever did happen, look out for your witness; it

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 321

becomes of the highest importance then to know all
about his antecedents, of what family and faction he
is a member, what his relations are with the several
parties immediately concerned, and even what he has
reason to believe the investigator wishes him to say.
More than one Indian witness has confessed to me
under close interrogation, when we were alone and face
to face, that substantially every sentence he had ut
tered on the stand was untrue. Words are wasted on
that kind of man if you attempt to make him appre
ciate the enormity of his transgression. The social
ostracism of such offenders, which among whites is a
potent force in behalf of outward good conduct at
least, is without any precise parallel among Indians.
They recognize the difference between good and bad
men, as we do; but to be exposed as a bad man in
matters of this sort does not mean the same thing
among them as among us.

White sentimentalists are liable to misinterpret the
factional divisions which confront them on every
reservation. That element in a tribe who are chronic
complainers find time for such activity by spending so
little in any other. We have a corresponding class of
white people, but in our rapid life their worthlessness
is so apparent that they are given the cold shoulder;
whereas the visitor to an Indian reservation who is
hunting only for badness welcomes them with their
tales of trouble. Go to their farms and you find the
fences down, the cattle astray, the fields growing up to
cockle-burrs, the home in disorder. Seek the reasons
for this, and you discover that the owners have not

322 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

done anything there for most of the season, having
been absent consulting lawyers or attending secret
councils of malcontents. Referring to the census, you
probably discover that these men constitute only a
modest fraction of the population of the reservation.
Then you wonder why, if matters are as bad as repre
sented, the whole tribe, or at least a majority of its
members, have not come to you with similar stories.
You find the rest apparently getting on pretty well:
at any rate, they are too busy with their regular occu
pations to be chasing up investigators. Ask the mal
contents to explain this, and they will tell you: " Those
are the Agent's pets. The farmer takes good care of
them." Watch the farmer, and you will see that the
way he " takes care" of them is to answer their ques
tions and show them how to do the work needed on
their allotments. He is equally at the call of the
grumblers, but they have nothing to ask of him:
they are wholly absorbed in their secret meetings,
and their travels in search of evidence in support of
their complaints.

Judging them by the standards prevailing anywhere
outside of the realm of sentiment, no man of ordinary
sense would have any trouble in deciding which of
these factions is the more worthy of support. It may
be that the fault-finding minority is made up largely
of returned students — " educated Indians," as they are
prone to style themselves — and mission converts, and
" progressives" of the strictly professional type; and
that the self-effacing majority are still pagans who do
not know their A-B-C's; who wear their hair in long

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 323

braids and who live in tepees; and yet the latter fac
tion may be earnestly trying to attain a good thing
for its own sake, while the former are only restless,
and aspire to climb to power on the odds and ends of
Caucasian civilization which they have picked up for
that purpose alone. Still, it is the minority whose
cause seems oftenest to approve itself to the philan
thropic field emissary. Every time a crowd of mal
contents are arrested for inciting riot or for conniving
—of course, in behalf of "the freedom of the Indian" —
at bringing whiskey into their reservation, the culprits
denounce this in bitter terms as an outrage upon
human rights; and, if their cry reaches far enough,
you will hear its echoes ringing from a dozen Eastern
centres of philanthropy. The good people who join
in the tumult have no idea that they are encouraging
lawlessness: they have simply fallen into the habit of
thinking that, in any difference between the Indian
and anybody else, the Indian must be always right
and his adversary always wrong.

In an earlier chapter I showed the illogical position
in which one body of philanthropists recently placed
themselves in pressing the Department to take "more
urgent steps to enforce the prohibition" of Indian
dancing, at the very moment that another body were
contesting in the courts its right to take such steps
even for the protection of peaceable Indians from
brigandage. Equally thoughtless, I fancy, has been
the siege kept up for some years on successive Com
missioners, by persons bent on preventing Indians
from becoming actors in Wild West shows. Their

324 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

assumption seems to be that the Indian Office encour
ages Indians to join such shows and spend their time
travelling about this country and Europe instead of
settling down at home and following some quieter pro
ductive calling. As a fact, the Office has no more to
do with this practice than with any other by which
Indians seek a livelihood off the reservations. Fur
thermore, under any rule of law which guarantees to
an Indian the right to move whither he will as freely
as a white man, there is no way to prevent him from
joining a show if he wishes. The Department has
power to forbid a canvasser for a show to enter a
reservation, and it does refuse permits to disreputable
showmen on precisely the same ground that it would
refuse them to disreputable farmers or physicians or
merchants; nevertheless this class of showmen gather
bunches of Indians for their companies by corre
spondence, even when physically excluded.

So the Department has been faced with the alter
native of sitting still and letting the low class of show
men outstrip their respectable rivals, or minimizing
the possible dangers in these transactions by the exer
cise of a little paternalism. To a showman who is
known to give a decent exhibition, take good care of
his employees, pay them their wages regularly, and
keep liquor-peddlers and other disorderly characters
at a distance, it has been in the habit of issuing a note
of introduction to the Superintendent of the reserva
tion from which he wishes to recruit his Indian con
tingent. The Superintendent sees that iron-bound
contracts are drawn, supported by heavy bonds; he

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 325

also uses his influence with the Indians to deter those
from going away who are most needed at home.
Under a clause in the contract form the manager is
to retain a certain percentage of an actor's wages until
the actor returns to his reservation; hence most of
the show Indians come back to their families with a
comfortable sum to their credit, and some notion of
the practical wisdom of saving a few dollars.

As an occupation, the show business may not be
particularly exalting, but as much can be said of many
a vocation entirely reputable in itself. It does give
its votaries a chance to see something of the world,
teaches them a little about taking care of themselves,
and proves to them that it is possible to enjoy a life
of freedom without getting drunk or running into
other excesses. I have heard the complaint made
that it is degrading to an Indian who has taken a few
steps up the path of civilization, to let him don his
fanciful toggery once in a while and imitate the war
riors and hunters of his race in a past era; yet the same
critics raise no protest against plays like " Samson"
or " Macbeth," or those laid in the time of the Cru
sades, which depict the life and manners of our own
race when it was still in a semi-barbarous state. I
have known a good many Indian tent actors, and I
have yet to meet one who is not perfectly appreciative
of the difference between the old and the new, the real
and the imitation, in spite of the fact that twice a
day he puts on buckskin leggings, sticks feathers in
his hair, and gallops his pony around an ellipse of
tanbark.

326 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

There is another side to the spectacular business,
however. A performance depicting the old frontier
life has at least a certain educative value; but when
a manager came begging for permission to take Gero-
nimo from place to place and make a peep-show of
him at so much a look, or permit visitors to shake
his hand for a fee, I refused to have anything to do
with it, as a piece of low sensationalism. Geronimo's
sole value as an exhibit lay in the fact that he bore
the name of being the most inhuman butcher who
ever raised hand against his fellow man; and it seemed
to me that the only effect of carting him around the
country for idle people to stare at for pay, was to put
a money premium upon cruelty and feed a morbid
craving for horrors.

This chapter would be incomplete without some
mention of a small company of white friends of the
Indian who undoubtedly consider themselves entitled
to a place in the philanthropic category, and yet who
are distinctly separated from all others there. I refer
to the pseudo-scientific element. The real scientists,
though they may regret the passage of old things
before they have had a chance to study them thor
oughly for the purposes of their calling, are perfectly
conscious that a change in the life and thought of the
Indian is inevitable. Their only plea is the humane
one, that he be allowed to grow out of the old order
and into the new by a natural process of development,
instead of being goaded or dragged. I sympathize
entirely with their view. But many persons who
pose as scientists, and possibly believe themselves

PHILANTHROPY AND CRITICISM 327

such, are so unscientific as to ignore the evolutionary
forces which are bound to affect the Indian as they
affect the rest of us. To their minds it is a crime that
the Government does not put a stop to the settlement
of the West, and halt every engine of progress at work
for our own race, in order that the Indian may be left
undisturbed as a social nonconformist and a human
oddity. They complain that what we style "the
American spirit" is gradually eliminating the most
picturesque feature in the population of the country;
and I have heard the Government denounced by this
class for "standardizing the red race" and "reducing
their artistic ideals to the commonplace," because,
forsooth, it was trying to surround the Indian home
with sanitary defences against an epidemic of disease!
As to this group of critics, it suffices to state their
case and leave it to the public judgment.

CHAPTER XVI

THE INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT

How the Indian Territory Came into Being — Setting an Un
trained Race to Found a Republic — The Governments of
the Five Civilized Tribes — White Outlawry and Native
Graft — A Long Reign of Terror — Interference of the
Federal Government — Reducing Chaos to Order — The
Segregated Coal Lands — Applicability of the Incorpora
tion Plan— Birth of the State of Oklahoma.

No primitive race of men, attempting to govern
themselves by methods which, however well adapted
to an advanced civilization, are alien to their own
traditions, has made a success of the enterprise.
Nor is this fact to be counted to their discredit in
making up our judgment of their natural equipment
of character and capacity. For the methods in ques
tion were a product not of divine inspiration but of
human evolution: they have grown gradually out of
the needs of the people who formulated and employed
them, and the primitive race to whom they were
handed ready-made had no share in bringing them
into existence or putting them into practical shape.
Imagine, in classic times, a community of Goths set
at the task of converting itself into another Athens,
with the physical beauties, the code of law, the learn
ing and culture which distinguished that intellectual

328

INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT 329

leader of the world; then you can conceive in a meas
ure of the problem which confronted the Cherokees,
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles when
they were planted on the tract set apart for an Indian
Territory, far removed from the atmosphere of our
civilization, and undertook to build up there alone a
commonwealth akin to that which the fathers of our
Constitution had founded and christened the United
States of America.

True, the name given to this federation of Indian
nations was the Five Civilized Tribes; but such a
designation meant nothing more than that the mem
bers of these tribes had been living in the midst of our
white population and were therefore assumed to have
become thoroughly indoctrinated with its spirit. The
assumption was unwarranted. The more intelligent
of the Indians knew something of the externals of our
institutions, but even they had never absorbed the
spirit of the system of self-government prevailing
among the whites. That system must be grown into,
as it were, by any one who would understand it; but
the Indians had not made themselves part of the body
politic as a naturalized immigrant does, and such
familiarity as they had with the system was the re
sult of study from without, like the knowledge one
gains of a foreign language by memorizing its vo
cabulary after the sympathetic plasticity of youth is
past.

Up to 1830 the tribes named had occupied in their
tribal capacity various parts of five States east of the
Mississippi River. The steady development of these

330 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

States had brought sharply before the minds of the
people the irrepressible conflict between the progres
sive civilization of the whites and the conservative
habits of thought and traditional customs of the
aborigines. It therefore became apparent to Congress
that some other disposition of the Indians must be
made; and with the ready ingenuity of a generation
which is willing to let posterity wrestle with its own
perplexities, the leaders of that body devised the plan
of giving the tribes, in exchange for their lands in
North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and
Mississippi, a home so far west that it would probably
never suffer from the encroachments of white men.
So an act was passed authorizing the President to set
apart certain districts in the public lands west of the
Mississippi for the reception of those " tribes or nations
of Indians who might choose to exchange lands then
occupied by them for such districts and remove
thereto," and "solemnly to assure any tribe or nation,
with which such exchange is made that the United
States will forever secure and guarantee to them and
their heirs or successors, the country so exchanged
with them."

This was the origin of the Indian Territory. It
was a beautiful, fertile, and, as has since been dis
covered, richly underlaid country. Whether its value
was then guessed by any of the officers sent to spy it
out and mark its boundaries, nobody knows. All
that appears on the historical record is the fact that it
was set apart with the distinct purpose of providing a
place for a pure Indian community beyond the influ-

INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT 331

ence of white people, just as the republic of Liberia
was established later in order to enable the Negroes
transported thither to work out their own salvation
undisturbed; and every treaty negotiated with the
five tribes from that day till 1866 was based on the
same idea of the exclusion of the Indians from the
whites and the non-participation of the whites in their
political and industrial affairs. The only break in
the programme, till the general reorganization began,
was when, in 1889, a large irregular tract not then
occupied by these tribes was cut off and erected into
a separate Territory under the name Oklahoma.

To how little practical advantage the lawmakers
of eighty years ago had studied the philosophy of
social evolution was shown by the outcome of this
experiment. The more clever element among the Ind
ians forged promptly to the front, and in due course
built up something not unlike the loose Confedera
tion of our emancipated Colonies after the first war
with Great Britain. Each of the tribes settled down
in its own district and established there its own gov
ernment, with a Principal Chief or Governor for its
executive head, a National Council or Legislature, and
a small regiment of officers of less degree. It had its
periodical elections, sometimes followed by a contest
in which the struggle between the de facto and the de
jure claimants paralyzed public business for a while.
The several tribes or nations were united by no mutual
bond stronger than the native tie of race and a common
dread of interference by the Government of the
United States.

332 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

But of course human nature presently asserted it
self, and the party in power mastered the Caucasian
trick of perpetuating its hold and making hay while
the sun shone. The popular institutions degenerated
by degrees into mere shells underneath which the Ind
ian practice of patriarchal rule went on under a
change of names and forms. The Principal Chief
assumed the authority and responsibilities of a chief
in a nomadic tribe; he was recognized as the father of
his people, his reign was that of a good-natured petty
despot, and when any of his poor and ignorant con
stituents left their shanties in the river bottoms and
came up to the capital they expected to enjoy his
hospitalities. The legislative body voted away the
tribal revenues as briskly as a board of aldermen
bores into a city treasury among ourselves, but other
wise was like the council of an ordinary tribe, except
that it observed a certain formality in its proceedings
and aimed to keep a record of them. The courts ac
quired so oriental a character that at one time within
my recollection a Secretary of the Interior had to in
terfere on grounds of simple humanity, and threaten
armed compulsion to save the life of an alleged cul
prit condemned to death on highly unsatisfactory
evidence.

White people poured into the Territory like an
animated flood. The existence of one republic inside
of another had some most inviting concomitants for a
class of men who had found life in the higher civiliza
tion uncomfortable. A reprobate who could not keep
out of the clutches of the police within the jurisdic-

INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT 333

tion of any State or of the federal Government,
could jump the Territory line and feel perfectly secure:
the outside minions of the law could not invade this
exclusive Indian domain, the courts there had no
concern with offences committed elsewhere, and no
extradition machinery was at work. Adventurers
who believed that in so fruitful a country there was
a future for whoever could get a foothold, slipped in
and found Indian women willing to accept them as
husbands. Missionary societies sent in a better ele
ment, but even their presence served to swell perilously
the heterogeneous wave which was fast submerging
the aboriginal surface.

The Government of the United States has often
been blamed for not carrying out its guarantees and
sweeping the country free of intruders; but every one
who was in that region in the later days of unrestricted
Indian rule knows that such a campaign would have
required a larger army than the United States pos
sessed, and that the first persons to resist any attempt
at the indiscriminate removal of whites would have
been the governing class of Indians themselves. What
they wanted, as some of them admitted to me at the
time, was to leave those whites undisturbed who were
helping, as they expressed it, "to build up the coun
try." The best proof of the dominant sentiment on
the subject was the course of the Indian lawmakers
in admitting to citizenship those whites who married
members of their tribes, and the devices adopted both
publicly and privately to attract into the Territory
any who would pay for licenses as traders, or farm the

334 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

land, or practise medicine or law. It is but just to
say, therefore, that when the Indians found their
intended isolation destroyed and themselves overrun
by a population of strangers outnumbering them five
to one, it was less the result of neglect at Washington
than of their own abandonment of the policy with
which they had entered upon their experiment.

As the country just outside of the Indian Territory
filled with settlers, matters inside went from bad to
worse. Owing to the lack of any provision for com
mon schools open to white children, a new generation
was growing up in ignorance and immorality. Graft,
large or petty, was ostentatiously visible wherever one
came into contact with local public affairs. Towns
of mushroom growth, which owed their beginnings to
a concentration of white intruders at some point for
mining or market purposes, were without sanitary or
police regulations, so that swine and cattle ran at large
everywhere, the wells were polluted with sewage
dumped in the open, and it was unsafe to go about the
unlighted streets at night. Gangs of outlaws infested
certain neighborhoods, and from time to time held up
stages and trains, robbed travellers and station agents,
and wantonly shed the blood of harmless persons,
always with full assurance of impunity. I remember
well a drive I had to make between sundown and mid
night in an army ambulance over thirty-odd miles of
very uncertain road from Fort Sill to Chickasha.
Bill Cook's notorious robber gang had been operating
in that neighborhood, and the two soldiers who accom
panied me never let go of their carbines for the whole

INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT 335

trip. On another night I was on a railroad train when
we ran at full speed past a way-station at which we
had been signalled to stop, because the conductor had
received a cipher telegram warning him that Bill
Cook was making preparations for a raid somewhere
near that point. The local reign of terror could hardly
have been more complete.

By 1893 the situation had become such that Congress
decided to take steps looking to ultimate Statehood
for the Territory. The Senate committee having
charge of the subject reported of the Five Civilized
Tribes "that their system of government cannot be
continued; that it is not only non- American, but it is
radically wrong, and a change is imperatively de
manded in the interest of the Indians and the whites
alike, and such change cannot be much longer delayed.
There can be no modification of the system. It
cannot be reformed; it must be abandoned and a better
one substituted.7' And in the Indian appropriation
act of 1896, Congress declared it "to be the duty of
the United States to establish a government in the
Indian Territory which will rectify the inequalities
and discriminations now existing in said Territory,
and afford needful protection to the lives and property
of all citizens and residents thereof."

The burden of preparing the ground for the change
fell upon the body first popularly known, in honor of
its chairman,. as the Dawes Commission, and later as
the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes. It was
no small task to procure agreements with the several
nations preliminary to the allotment of lands in sever-

336 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

alty, because the forces of greed were marshalled
solidly against any interference with a state of things
which was enriching the shrewd few at the expense of
the ignorant many. The end was accomplished, how
ever, by patient diplomacy and plenty of hard work;
and with the ratification of the agreements by Congress
the allotment of lands began. It will not be necessary
to cripple our narrative by rehearsing in detail the
progress of events during the next few years. Let it
suffice that by successive acts of Congress the Five
Civilized Tribes were shorn of their governmental
functions; their courts were abolished and United
States courts established; their chief executive officers
were made subject to removal by the President, who
was authorized to fill by appointment the vacancies
thus created; provision was made for the supersession
of their tribal schools by a public school system main
tained by general taxation; their tribal taxes were
abolished; the sale of their public buildings and lands
was ordered; their legislatures were forbidden to re
main in session more than thirty days in any one
year; and every legislative act, ordinance and resolu
tion was declared invalid unless it received the approval
of the President. The only present shadow or fiction
of the survival of the tribes as tribes is their grudging
recognition till all their property, or the proceeds
thereof, can be distributed among the individual mem
bers. As one of the federal judges has summed it up,
this is "a continuance of the tribes in mere legal
effect, just as in many States corporations are con
tinued as legal entities after they have ceased to do

INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT 337

business and are practically dissolved, for the purpose
of winding up their affairs."

Such a lingering death was rendered necessary by
various circumstances like the discovery several years
ago, in the Choctaw and Chickasaw country, of about
a half million acres of land containing coal, petroleum
and asphalt deposits of undoubted value. It was
surveyed and excluded from the operation of the allot
ment laws, to be held as the property of the two
nations jointly. This tribal estate, known as the
"segregated coal lands," the Government has been
administering ever since, making leases to parties who
could and would develop the underground resources,
collecting royalties from the lessees, and using the
proceeds as an educational fund for the children of the
tribes interested. There has been a wide diversity
of opinion among members of Congress who have had
to handle directly the business of the Five Civilized
Tribes, the officers of the Indian Service, and sundry
outside capitalists who have volunteered their advice,
as to what disposition should be made of the segre
gated tract, which in the ordinary course of things can
hardly remain the common property of the two tribes
after the latter have absolutely gone out of existence.
The Indians generally favor the outright sale of the
lands, with all the mining rights and privileges per
taining thereto, to whoever will give a high enough
price. The trouble with that proposal is to know
what price would be adequate. The extent of the
deposits must be more or less a subject of conjecture,
and the Indians and the Government would therefore

338 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

have to take a gambler's chance, with the odds rather
against them, as no expert purchaser of mineral lands
would be willing to pay for this tract more than his
lowest reasonable estimate of its worth, and his esti
mate would be conservative.

By way of bringing into notice my plan for the
incorporation of Indian tribes and giving a concrete
example of its operation, I adapted it in 1906 to the
conditions then existing in the Choctaw and Chickasaw
nations, threw it into legislative form and laid it before
the leading members of the Senate and House Com
mittees on Indian Affairs. Both chairmen were
sufficiently impressed with its practicability to intro
duce it, with a few immaterial modifications, in their
respective chambers almost simultaneously. Although
it may never become law, I am as strong a believer
in its underlying principle as on the day of its submis
sion; and it seems to me important enough to justify
a brief review of its provisions in this place.

The bill creates a corporation under the title of the
Choctaw-Chickasaw Coal, Oil and Asphalt Land Com
pany, in which one share of stock is to be issued to
each member of the nations named. The capital
stock of the company is to consist of its assets, a pro
vision which of course rules out all possibility of
watering. Its officers are to be the President of the
United States, ex-officio president; the Secretary of
the Interior, ex-officio treasurer and transfer agent,
and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, ex-officio
secretary; and these officers, together with the Secre
tary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Commerce

INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT 339

and Labor, both acting ex-officio, and one member
of the Choctaw and one member of the Chickasaw
tribes elected by the stockholders, shall constitute the
board of directors. The ex-officio directors are of
course to serve without pay; the fact that they are
continuously in office and constitute a majority of the
board would keep the Government always in control
of the business; and it would go on, through its re
sponsible representatives, administering the estate as
it has done heretofore, making leases and collecting
royalties as long as there are assets in sight and the
company remains in existence. But the proceeds,
after deducting a proper amount for running expenses
and a modest surplus account, would be distributed,
not as tribal annuities, but as corporate dividends.
This would complete the change of the whole business
from a communal basis foreign to our national institu
tions and our social order, to the basis of personal
ownership and combination on which substantially all
great industrial enterprises of our day are conducted.

While my bill was pending, I invited the freest
criticism of it. Most of the comments took the form
of inquiries, and a few of the more sensible of these I
collected for answer. Let me cite one or two as sam
ples. Would the Indians, with their well known im
providence, be able to hold fast to their stock? Yes,
as long as necessary. The Secretary of the Interior is
now the officer charged with the responsibility of de
ciding when an Indian is capable of taking care of his
own affairs, and hence fit to be trusted with the dis
posal of his private property. As ex-officio transfer

340 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

agent, he would exercise the same authority, for no
share of stock could be transferred without his signa
ture; and this would be a sufficient protection for the
incompetents. What would become of the stock that
was transferred? It would probably pass in most
cases into hands other than Indian. Or, should it be
deemed desirable, there could be inserted in the charter
of the company a requirement that the company
itself should always enjoy the privilege of a preferred
bidder if it were willing to give a shareholder the same
price offered by a would-be purchaser from outside;
this would enable the Indians to keep control of their
property as long as they wished to. However, no
harm would result from the dispersion of the stock
gradually, if other persons wished to pay the Indian
shareholders a price which would be of more value to
them than their participation in the uncertain income
and distributive assets of the concern.

An important end to be gained by putting this
segregated coal lands proposition upon a thoroughly
businesslike basis is the assurance to each Indian
interested of a definite bit of property which is actually
his, and which cannot be diminished in value by the
acts of anybody but himself. Under the communal
system of ownership by which these lands are now
held, every person's share dies with him, for there is
no such thing as individual inheritance of that which
is owned by everybody. We are trying to train our
Indians in the idea of individual property, as the only
hope of teaching them how to take care of property
at all. They will never learn this lesson under com-

INDIAN TERRITORY EXPERIMENT 341

munism; but the plan I have suggested offers a means
not only of cultivating the interest of the present
generation in its own possessions, but of stimulating
in it that wholesome impulse to thrift which comes
from the hope of having something to hand down to
a generation yet to come.

In 1906 Congress passed an act "to enable the
people of Oklahoma and the Indian Territory to frame
a constitution and State government and be ad
mitted into the Union on an equal footing with the
original States. " Somewhat in contravention of its
general attitude and sentiment as reflected in former
legislation dealing with the Indian Territory exclu
sively, in which it had been at great pains to cultivate
the idea of the wardship of the individual Indian, it
put into the Oklahoma enabling act a provision that
all male persons over the age of twenty-one years,
who are citizens of the United States or who are mem
bers of any Indian nation or tribe in said Indian
Territory and Oklahoma, and who have resided
within the limits of said proposed State for at least
six months next preceding the election, are hereby
authorized to vote for and choose delegates to form a
constitutional convention for said proposed State;
and all persons qualified to vote for said delegates
shall be eligible to serve as delegates. Here was a
direct recognition of these Indians as no longer wards
but citizens; and for the purpose of keeping such
recognition well to the front, the mixed communities
in the Indian Territory elected a number of Indians
to serve as delegates in the constitutional convention.

342 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

In the opinion of most persons conversant with con
ditions in that Territory, it was an unwise step to
unite it with Oklahoma in a common State until the
Indians had become better grounded in their new
civic status; for, as regarded the further protection
of the Indians by the United States Government in
any particular, this was plainly the beginning of the
end. But the time seemed ripe for the admission of
Oklahoma as a State; the momentum of this main idea
carried with it the combination plan, without which
it appeared that the enabling act could not have got
through; and the sentiment among the mass of the
white people concerned was strongly set in favor of
throwing off as much as possible of the burden of the
Indian as a dependent, and his reduction to the com
mon level of American citizenship. Any one who
doubts the wisdom of the policy I have advocated so
heartily, of pushing the allotment of lands in severalty
and the opening of reservations while the friends of
the Indian still hold the balance of power in our national
councils, is respectfully referred, for a forecast of what
is liable to happen if we delay till the other element
obtain ascendancy, to this closing chapter of the
Indian Territory experiment.

CHAPTER XVII

AS THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON

What the Future Has in Store for the Indian — Absorption and
Merger — Intermarriage of the Races — The Squaw-Man
and His Mixed-Blood Progeny — Some Prevalent Errors
Challenged — Distinguishing Mixed from Pure Blood —
The Family Record Book — Fighting Disease and the Liquor
Evil — Could the Indians Produce a Booker Washington ? —
A Parting Message of Appeal.

FOR years it has been my habit, at the close of a speech
on the Indian problem, to invite questions from the
audience, and almost invariably the first one has
been : " What is to be the ultimate fate of the Indians? "
When I have answered that they were to be absorbed
and merged with our own race, the subject of mixed
marriages has been raised, and my opinion asked as
to their wisdom or unwisdom. Intimately speaking,
it may be said that, for persons very sensitively or
ganized, so close a union as marriage with those of
widely different ancestry, associations and mental
habits is always a hazardous experiment; but regarded
in its broader aspects, the intermarriage of Indians
and Caucasians has nothing to condemn it. There is
no barrier of race antagonism to overcome, fortthe
Indian and the white mingle everywhere on a legal
and social equality; and the offspring of such a mar-

343

344 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

riage derives from each of the parent races certain
traits which work well in combination. With his Ind
ian blood he inherits keenness of observation, stoicism
under suffering, love of freedom, a contempt for the
petty things which lay so heavy a burden on our
convention-bound civilization; with his white blood
the competitive instinct, individual initiative, resource
fulness in the face of novel obstacles, and a constitution
hardened to the drafts made upon its strength by the
artificialities of modern life.

A good deal has been said and written in derogation
of the squaw-man, or white husband of an Indian
woman. He is represented as a low fellow, who cannot
live in civilization and has been forced to seek ref
uge in a place where his idiosyncrasies will not attract
too much attention. The half-breed, too, is usually
depicted in romance as a scheming rogue, capable of
any mischief he can commit on the sly, and often
murderous in disposition when he has vengeance to
wreak. These are as unjust as most such generaliza
tions. Many of the old squaw-men are good citizens.
Their occupations as hunters and trappers, guides,
woodsmen, scouts, miners, telegraph and railroad
builders, pony express riders, or other work in the
pioneer line, necessarily carried them into the wilds
and kept them there. Indians were almost their sole
companions, and the camp was the only home they
knew. Few white women ventured into the region,
and those who did were already married if they were
of the marrying sort.

What might have been expected happened: the

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 345

pickets of civilization adopted the life of the country
into which fate had thrown them, and married Indian
women who could cook their meals, take care of their
cabins, and share uncomplainingly their excursions
through forest or desert. The men were hardy, fear
less, sharp-witted. I count a number of them among
my best friends in the West. Their manliness, their
ability to turn their hand to anything, arid their efforts
to improve themselves and get a little taste of the
better things in the world, give them a strong hold on
my liking as well as my respect. Their homes are
characteristically Indian in one particular — the silence
and self-effacement of the mistress in the presence of
strangers; but you can find among the squaw-men as
true husbands and as faithful fathers as the best in
our social centres. They have brought up their chil
dren as well, and given them as good an education, as
their circumstances would permit, and the influence
of their advice and example on the tribesmen around
them has been excellent.

As against these, we are bound to take notice of
some who deserve the worst that has been said of their
class. They are dissolute, dishonest, treacherous,
with no sense of accountability to any power on earth
or above it. To the Indians they are objects of loath
ing, and to the local representatives of the Govern
ment a constant source of irritation. Many of them
never thought of marrying Indian wives till the allot
ment laws put a premium on such marriages by holding
forth to the head of every household the prospect of
controlling an acreage of land proportioned to the

346 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

size of his Indian family. If we despise men who
marry heiresses of their own race for the sake of an
idle life; what shall we say of those who seek unions
with women in a lower stratum of civilization with no
worthier end in view?

Once while travelling in Montana, I was approached
by a squaw-man who proclaimed himself a victim of
official persecution and asked me to interfere in his
behalf. An Indian Agent, he said, had driven him off
the reservation on which his wife lived, and threatened
to punish him if he returned. Although not favorably
impressed with his looks, I made some investigation of
his case, and found that the Agent in question had been
in the habit of warning all white men who came to
the reservation on wife-hunting errands that, if they
married Indian women, they must do for them what
they would do for white women under the same con
ditions — take them away, establish them in civilized
homes, and support them. The man who appealed to
me had assented to this programme but immediately
broken his pledge by settling down in his wife's home;
he had therefore been notified to leave the reserva
tion in a certain number of days and stay away.

Strong measures seemed amply justified in this case,
because the squaw-man proved to be a scamp who had
left a noisome trail behind him wherever he had lived.
Nevertheless, I suggested to the Agent that although
I sympathized with his desire to keep his reservation
clear of human riffraff, and believed with him that a
man who thought enough of a woman to marry her
must think enough of her to support her also, yet his

THE NEW DAY NEARS 5FS NOON 347

rule would be hard to administer consistently. Sup
pose the man were willing, but the woman were not:
had she not an equal right to decide where their home
should be? The chances were that she would prefer
to remain among her own people, and what must the
husband do then? To send him away alone, on no
better ground than that he was not able to induce his
wife to accompany him, would be to defeat at least
half the purpose for which the rule was framed. If
he were of bad character, as in the present instance,
that would be reason enough for excluding him from
the reservation, married or unmarried; but if he were
reputable, however ignorant and unrefined, it seemed
to me a mistake to make him the victim of a general
order whose unvarying enforcement might break up
more families than it benefited. A better practice, I
thought, would be to hold every intermarried white
on the reservation to a rigid account for the way he
cared for his family, and banish him promptly if by
a life of vagrancy he set a bad example to the sur
rounding Indians.

As to the progeny of mixed marriages, it is equally
impossible to generalize justly. The child of one white
and one Indian parent normally inherits the shrewder
and more self-seeking traits of his white ancestry.
The chances are, also, that he will be thrown more
among whites than other Indians, and hence will be
likely to take advantage of his educational opportuni
ties. Among his white associates will not be lacking
those who can show him how to use his little learning
to outwit the members of his tribe who have not any.

348 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

For these reasons you will find on most reservations,
or hanging about their borders, a small contingent of
mixed-bloods whose trade it is to act as go-betweens
for white grafters bent on getting hold of the property
of the Indians. In such an undertaking the mixed-
blood, with his alert and confident ways, his facile
speech and his inkling of worldly wisdom, is a valuable
medium through whom to approach the unsophisti
cated full-bloods. As an interpreter, he can throw
whatever shades of meaning he wishes into the phrases
used by either party to a negotiation, and deliver the
ignorant into the clutches of the clever before his
dupes are fairly aware of what is going on.

As in the case of the squaw-man, it is the bad class
of mixed-bloods who have given a bad name to all,
so that one of the most frequent inquiries from per
sons who do not know Indians is: "The half-breeds
make a great deal of trouble for the Government, do
they not?" And comparisons of the simple-hearted,
gentle, trustful Indian of the old school with the selfish,
grasping, tricky creature who has a taint of white
blood in his veins, are a common staple of conversa
tion among whites who have derived all their ideas
on the subject from books. In my own acquaintance,
which is large, the good mixed-bloods outnumber the
bad. They stand up for the rights of their red kins
men, while their broader intelligence saves them from
irrational extremes. Moreover, it is not their ancestry
which makes the vicious specimens what they are:
we find the same overreaching disposition among the
better-educated but morally ill-balanced members of

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 349

all races, whether of pure blood or mixed. It is our
common human nature, not Indian nature or white
nature, which is to blame.

But back of all this lies a consideration more strictly
vital, that there is no outward sign whereby we can
tell whether any given Indian is of the full or of the
mixed blood. My use of these terms in earlier para
graphs has been colloquial, not precise. Sundry mem
bers of every tribe are popularly classed as full-
bloods, and sundry others as mixed, but largely as a
matter of tradition or guess-work. Different environ
ments make for different probabilities, of course.
Tribes like the Sioux and the Chippewas, for example,
exposed through several generations to contact with
white pioneers and adventurers, show more signs of
blood dilution than the Navajos or the Pueblo tribes,
who have lived in comparative race seclusion; but it
would be safe to say that no tribe is now free from
Caucasian admixture, whether extensive or slight.

This is one of the reasons why I have always op
posed drawing the blood line in Indian legislation.
It is bound to work inequitably, if indeed it does not
prove wholly impracticable in administration. Let
me cite a single case in point. A few years ago a law
was enacted granting the Indians in a certain tribe
an increased allotment of land in a district containing
much valuable timber. Although abundant notice
had been given to all the tribesmen to present them
selves at the agency office on a particular day and
make their selections, the laggard element postponed
their visit till most of the best-timbered tracts had been

350 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

disposed of. They then united in a memorial to the
Commissioner charging that the first comers were
mixed-bloods, and had taken unfair advantage of the
petitioners, who, being full-bloods and unused to busi
ness ways, had not realized the importance of prompt
ness. An investigation followed, which disproved all
the charges of unfairness, and the tribal council voted
overwhelmingly in favor of letting everything stand
as it was.

A few months later another law was passed, in the
face of strong objection from the Indian Office, grant
ing certain privileges to the mixed-bloods on the same
reservation; and among the first Indians to come
forward with a demand for their share of these benefits
were several who had signed the recent protest as
full-bloods! Ever since that day, the Indian Office
and its field representatives have suffered from a
hundred uncertainties in trying to execute the law
righteously; and present indications are that not a
few of the transactions which have taken place on the
theory that the Indians concerned were of the mixed
blood will yet be brought into court, condemned as
illegal, and made the vehicle of money damages to
whoever has been injured by them.

Is our Indian population increasing or decreasing?
The answer to that question depends on whether we
compare the figures of past times or those of our own.
Comparisons covering a long period point to a decrease;
that is, the best data obtainable lead ethnologists to
believe that at the time of the discovery of this con
tinent between 800,000 and 900,000 Indians occupied

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 351

the territory between Canada and Mexico now known
as the United States. The Indian Office estimates
their present number roughly as 300,000, the decrease
being due to war, famine, pestilence and exotic vices
which have sapped their bodily strength. The figures
quoted exclude the Alaskans, who are not under the
Indian Office but under the Office of Education.
The distinction here suggested, by the by, has been
scrupulously observed in legislation, the Alaskans
never appearing in the statutes as " Indians" but as
" natives of Alaska," and under other designations
which emphasize their separateness.

If we were to consider only the changes which have
come over the full-blood Indians, we should have to
note a much more serious decrease, because so large
a proportion of those who are legally classed as In
dians are recognized as being from one-half to seven-
eighths white, and doubtless many who claim an eighth
of Indian blood would have difficulty in proving as
much as a sixty-fourth. Their reason for clinging to
their tribal membership is that they may thus draw
their annuities and share in the final distribution of
assets. Since the Office of Indian Affairs was organ
ized as a branch of the Department of the Interior,
there is reason to believe that the tide has turned and
that the birth-rate among the Indians of mixed blood
has been, for the last thirty years at least, more than
keeping pace with the death-rate among the full-
bloods. While preparing an encyclopaedia article in
1896, I made a comparison of the records then avail
able which led me to believe that the current rate of in-

352 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

crease in the Indian population was about one-fifth of
one per cent, a year. The statistics in the possession
of the Department, however, were unsatisfying. Some
of the tribal census-rolls had not undergone a thor
ough revision for a long time, and had been amended
only here and there on reports from the Indian police
of a death in this family or a birth in that. The dis
position of the families among the more backward
tribes was to advertise the births and ignore the
deaths as far as possible, because every addition to a
family meant increased rations and annuities, whereas
a decline in its number meant a proportional reduc
tion in these benefits. So it was necessary, in making
up my net totals, to allow for a varying tare, as it were
— a margin of uncertainty, with the probabilities
favoring a departure from the gross figures according
to the stage of development a given tribe had reached,
the apparent completeness of its original rolls, and the
recency of any effort to check these up.

A notable gain in accuracy in such matters has been
made through the machinery of the allotment system.
Since the Indian has come to own property of consider
able value which must descend to his heirs at his
death, it has been important to ascertain who those
heirs are. Owing to the peculiar kinship relations
recognized by so many tribes, the universal fondness
of Indians for adopting children, and the common
terminology in which they confuse brothers and sisters
with cousins, parents with uncles and aunts, sons and
daughters with nephews and nieces, the Allotting
Agents were often hopelessly bewildered in their at-

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 353

tempts to straighten out the lines of consanguinity.
So the Department opened for each tribe undergoing
allotment a book of family records, in which should be
written a condensed statement of the blood relation
ships of every member of the tribe as far as these could
be ascertained. In order to obtain such data, not only
is it necessary that the Indian directly concerned be
questioned with great care, but his answers have to
be scrutinized by the elders of the tribe who presump
tively have known his parents and grandparents and
the collateral branches of his family.

This is no insignificant task, for it is often difficult to
induce Indians to talk about themselves and their
relations, so suspicious are they of the purpose behind
the questions. Among the Kiowas we adopted a plan
which may be worth noting. A large payment was to
be made to the members of the tribe on account of a
land transaction. As a few mischief-makers had as
sailed the integrity of the rolls then in use, asserting
among other things that they contained names of
Indians not in existence, we ordered that no money
be paid to any Indian who did not appear in person
and identify himself to the satisfaction of the officers
in charge. At the door of the pay-room we placed a
table and seated around it some of the older and more
intelligent tribesmen, a few of the intermarried whites
whom we knew to be trustworthy, the clerks who were
to make the memoranda, and a few other persons who
understood both the native and the English languages.
Each applicant who entered the room was halted at
the registration table and required to answer every

354 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

question put to him there before being furnished with
the identification-card which he had to show to the
cashier at the pay-table in order to get his check. I
can recommend this method as producing results
both prompt and complete.

The use of the family record as an appendage to the
allotting system means that as fast as the allotments
proceed we shall be able to unravel the web of Indian
relationships, till at last every Indian will know not
only what he owns, but from whom he may look to
inherit more, and to whom his property will descend
at his death. This will mark one further step in his
journey up the path from the stone age to ours. How
fast the allotment work is advancing may be judged
from a few figures.

In 1887, when the Dawes Several ty Law was enacted,
the Indian reservations outside of the Indian Terri
tory — which has a separate system of its own — con
tained 117,000,000 acres; to-day they are shrunk to
about one-half that area. Up to June 30, 1909,
nearly 81,000 Indians had received allotments aggre
gating a little less than 12,500,000 acres of land.
Between July 1 and the close of the year some 6,700
additional Indians received allotments covering more
than 1,600,000 acres. In other words, the work is
now three times as rapid as in the earlier days. If
the same rate of acceleration continue progressively,
the settlement of the Indians still unallotted but pre
sumptively entitled to allotment, numbering between
125,000 and 130,000, will be witnessed by the present
generation in charge of our public affairs.

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 355

Of the causes which led to the decline in the Indian
population between the first white invasion and the
present day, war and famine have practically disap
peared. With disease and vice we must still reckon. In
this connection much is heard among benevolent white
people of the desirability of a great Indian sanitarium
in the arid Southwest, to which sufferers from tuber
cular troubles may be removed for treatment. I am
most reluctant to throw any discouragement upon
such an undertaking, but is it workable? In order to
satisfy myself on this point I procured from Congress
in 1905 authority to look into the question of estab
lishing a sanitarium, and went energetically about
the business. It did not take me long to discover
that the difficulty of inducing Indians to remove, or
to send members of their families, into a strange coun
try for medical treatment would be too great to warrant
our going into any broad scheme of this sort. Sani
taria on their own reservations or in the immediate
neighborhood they are more ready to patronize. I
have also been able to start sanitarium schools for con
sumptive children in suitable places, and to attach
health camps to a few of the big boarding-schools in
connection with their hospital outfit. But to set up
a sanitarium in New Mexico, let us say, with the ex
pectation of drawing to it any considerable number
of Indian patients from Minnesota or the Dakotas,
Montana or Idaho, I believe is out of the question
under existing conditions.

Doubtless the time will come when tuberculosis,
like small-pox and yellow fever and other contagious

356 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

and infectious disorders, will be handled from the
point of view of the safety of society rather than the
comfort or pleasure of the individual. When that
era dawns, the person discovered to be suffering from
tuberculosis in a communicable stage will be given the
option of voluntarily placing himself under treatment
or being treated by public physicians, and, if need be,
in a public institution. It will then be in order to
enforce the same regimen among the Indians as among
the whites; but to seize an Indian sufferer now, and
compel him to leave family and friends and seek health
in a region where he is as liable to die of homesickness
as to recover from tuberculosis, would be a cruel dis
crimination, to say nothing of the question of its
lawfulness.

Concerning the scrofulous diseases which are the
fruits of dissolute living in the present or a past gen
eration, we need say no more than that the habits
prevailing among camp Indians promote their wide
and rapid dissemination. The sources of this evil
must be reached, if at all, by moral rather than by
physical correctives. That everything of the sort is
aggravated by the use of intoxicants makes plain the
duty of the Government to do what lies in its power
toward removing from the Indians the temptation to
such excesses. No prohibitory law, from the creation
of the world to the present time, ever prevented men
from drinking if they were bound to drink, but that
argues nothing against the use of instrumentalities
which tend to diminish suggestion and restrict oppor
tunity. The work of the Secret Service of the Indian

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 357

establishment is radical and effective, and Congress is
backing it up admirably. So are the churches; and
so, I am glad to add, are many Western communities
which long seemed indifferent. It is a dangerous
business, calling occasionally for a resort to arbitrary
measures. But with public sentiment stanchly be
hind it, and a continuance of such fearless official
support as President Roosevelt gave to it, there is no
reason why the Department, even if unable to destroy
the scourge of intemperance among the Indians,
should not greatly cripple its capacity for harm.

It has been asked sometimes whether the red race
would not one day produce such a leader as the black
race has in Booker Washington. In my judgment it
never will, for Washington's leadership was evolved
from conditions which find no parallel among the
Indians. At the base of everything lies the solidarity
of the Negroes in America. They are substantially
one people in their later history, in language, in social
condition, in customs, in mode of thought, in outlook.
Almost all of them are descendants of men and women
who were brought to this country by force and sold
into bondage. Their transition from chattelhood to
citizenship was so sudden that it might almost be de
scribed as effected at a single stroke, and when it came
it was universal.

Like people who had long stood in darkness but
found themselves all at once in a great blaze of light,
they were dazed and bewildered, and groped as blind
men do with no strong hand to guide them. Socially
segregated, treated in one part of the country with

358 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

scorn and in the rest with indifference, they have
formed a class by themselves, bound together more
closely than any other race on this continent by their
common antecedents, their common experience and
their common aspirations. When, therefore, one arose
who said to them, "I, too, am sprung from the despised
slave stock; I have suffered poverty and oppression
and ostracism as painful as yours; I crave as strongly
as you my share of the precious things in life which the
Caucasian has monopolized for himself, and I believe
I have discovered the way to attain these/' it is not
wonderful that he found many an ear waiting for his
voice. His argument that the Negro must command
recognition for his manhood by producing practical
proofs of his ability to do a man's work in the world,
appealed to the reason of the honest members of his
race, and met with opposition only from a few pre
tenders who dreaded the downfall of their fraudulent
supremacy.

It is true that the sources from which the black
population of this country was drawn were as diverse
as those of our hundred or two Indian tribes. But in
four centuries of associated servitude the Negroes had
become amalgamated. The only language they could
use in communicating with each other was that of
their masters. Their compulsory subjection to rules
of living which were a humble replica of those govern
ing the whites, the fact that they were surrounded
exclusively with reminders of white supremacy and
taught to admire only what they saw admired by their
owners, led this naturally docile people into the imita-

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 359

tive habit which has been either their bane or their
blessing, according to their individual faculty for dis
tinguishing between worthy and unworthy objects of
emulation.

The Indians, on the other hand, are descended from
a free and independent ancestry, full of race pride,
disdainful of new and alien things. Their chiefs of
old made treaties directly with the United States
Government, whose emissaries they met on a footing
of equality, and against which they did not hesitate
to make war when they believed themselves wronged.
Though they have passed through many vicissitudes
of fortune, as a race they have never known what it
was to be despised, but in the days of their strength
were greatly feared. Far from aspiring to be white
men or like white men, they have almost universally
looked forward with dread to the day toward which
all signs point, when they will have lost their ethnic
individuality and become an indistinguishable part of
the body politic. In spite of their sense of racial
separateness and their reluctance to part with it, they
have cultivated no homogeneity of interests. Every
tribe has maintained its own laws, its own language,
its own traditions and sentiments apart from the rest.

This brief summary will suffice to show the absence
of those conditions among the Indians which among
the Negroes led to the appearance of a Washington.
If any Indian were to come forward to-morrow and
sound a call like Washington's to his people, he would
hear no response except from the handful of Indians
who spoke the same tongue and knew him and his

360 THE INDIAN AND HIS PROBLEM

forefathers. If he urged the mass of his race every
where to lay hold of the work nearest their hands and
perform this so well as to compel recognition from the
whites, they would scoff at him, for the only favor
they have to ask of the whites is to be let alone.

If the leader comes not to-day, may he not come
later? No. There will be no " later" for the Indian.
He is losing his identity hour by hour, competing with
whites in the labor market, mingling with white com
munities and absorbing white pioneers into his own,
sending his children to the same schools with white
children, intermarrying with whites and rearing an
offspring which combines the traits of both lines of
ancestry. In the light of his new day which is now
so near its noon, he need not be an inspired seer to
discern the approaching end of his pure aboriginal
type and the upgrowth of another which will claim the
name " American" by a double title as solid as the
hills on his horizon. All that once made for the racial
insulation of his people has passed or is passing; before
the lapse of a period like that which it took to evolve
a great leader for the Negroes, there will be no Indians
to lead.

However imperfectly, the task laid out for this
little book in its preface is finished. As I put aside
my pen, there comes back to me the memory of
another leave-taking. I had passed a whole day in
an Indian council, arguing, urging, pleading, in an
effort to induce the tribe to recede from what seemed
to me an unwise stand they were taking. A battle of

THE NEW DAY NEARS ITS NOON 361

words in an unknown tongue had raged fiercely over
my head, as the speakers who supported me and
those who resisted fought the question out between
themselves. The struggle ended in a victory for my
champions.

Meanwhile the day had waned, and the horses had
been brought to the edge of the village preparatory to
my departure. As the rank and file of the band
pushed forward to shake my hand, one — tall, erect,
dignified — remained aloof. He was a splendid-looking
Indian, a proud figure among his fellows, who had
fought me till overwhelmed, and then had surrendered
with all the honors of war. When the last of the lesser
men had dropped back and I had turned to go, he
advanced and checked me. His face, though still
earnest, had lost all its sternness. I read in it that he
had put aside the animosities of debate and wished
now to tell me so. Throwing his arm around me, he
drew me toward him till we stood heart to heart, and
then said with great impressiveness: "Farewell, my
friend. Do not forget us. We have now only God
and you!"

To the readers who have been patient enough to
accompany me thus far, and whose purpose toward
the superseded race is neither robbery nor charitable
exploitation, but honest, unselfish, practical help, I
pass on his appeal.

INDEX

AGE, respect for, 18, 19.

Agents: Allotting (see Allotting};
and superintendents, 4, 25,
26, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41, 58, 67,
68, 70, 71, 97, 98, 100, 104,
155, 159, 190, 223, 224, 225,
226, 241, 245, 272, 274, 283,
298, 317, 322, 346; duties
of, 104; military, 105, 217;
Special. (See Special Agents.}

Alaska, natives of, 351.

Allotment, land, 34, 47, 61, 79, 81,
106, 288, 345, 354.

Allotting Agents, 85, 106.

Anti-Saloon League of America,
307.

Apache Indians, 82, 162, 258, 270.

Appropriation, annual Indian,
bill, 207, 213. (See also Veto.}

Arizona, 258, 261.

Army officers as agents. (See
Agents, military.}

Artistic instinct, 12, 55, 166, 327.

Assinaboine Indians, 162.

Assistant Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, 96.

Attorneys, 37, 71, 207, 241, 253.

Aztec civilization, 23.

BALLOT, premature gift of the, 35,

61, 341.

Bannock Indians, 174.
Beet, sugar, farming, 90, 156.
Blackfeet Indians, 162.
Blacksmiths, Indian, 162.
Board of Indian Commissioners,

107.
Boston, 307.

Bureau of Indian Employment.

(See Employment.}
Burke, Representative Charles H.,

63.
Burke Law, working of the, 61, 206.

(See also Allotment system.}
By-a-lil-le, 260.

CALIFORNIA, Mission Indians of.
(See Mission Indians.}

Camp Meade, 257.

Carlisle Indian School, 122, 129,
147.

Carpenters, Indian, 162.

Cattle industry, 27, 38, 162, 179,
192.

"Century of Dishonor," the, 82.

Cherokee Indians, 329.

Cheyenne Indians, 162, 259, 270.

Cheyenne River Reservation, 244,
258.

Chickasaw Indians. (See Choctaw
and Chickasaw Indians.}

Chief Engineer, Indian Service,
106.

Chief Special Officer, Indian Ser
vice, 106. (See also Liquor
question.}

Children, 16, 18, 33, 39, 44, 126,
162, 210, 234, 288, 318, 345,
360.

Chinese, 33.

Chippewa Indians, 3, 162, 349.

Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians,
193, 329, 337, 338.

Citizens, Indian, 35, 53, 63, 92,
257,307,341. (See also Allot
ment ; Ballot ; Burke Law, etc.)

363

364

INDEX

Civilization: Aztec (see Aztec)', by
artificial devices, 42, 48, 51,
57, 149, 153, 169, 180, 326,
328.

Civilized Tribes, Five. (See Tribes,
Five Civilized,'}

Civil Service Rules, 30, 97, 98,
108.

Claims, Indian, 194, 195, 196.

Clapp, Senator Moses E., 77, 214.

Clerical work, Indians at, 127, 148,
164.

Cleveland, President Grover, 62,
207.

Comanche Indians, 82, 293.

Commerce and Labor, Secretary
of, 338.

Commission to the Five Civilized
Tribes, 335.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs:
32, 38, 77, 80, 96, 97, 100, 107,
108, 109, 210, 211, 225, 226,
249, 255, 270, 282, 306, 307,
310, 311, 312, 313, 323, 338;
Assistant. (See Assistant
Commissioner of Indian
Affairs.)

Commissioners, Board of Indian.
(See Board of Indian Com
missioners.)

Communism, evils of, 27, 47, 182,
192, 219, 332, 334, 339, 341.

Congress : attitude of, toward Ind
ians, 82, 195, 198, 219;
committees of, 77, 197, 199,
200, 211, 219, 338; irrespon
sible speech in, 196, 212;
meaningless bills in, 215, 218;
the chronic "improver" in,
204.

Congressional Documents. (See
Documents.)

Contractors for Indian supplies,
100, 148.

Cook, Bill, 334.

Councils, Indian, 15, 19, 38, 360.

Court: Marine, of New York (see
Marine Court of New York);

of Claims, United States, 196;
proposed special, for Indian
claims, 196.

Courts: frontier, 210, 235, 244,
261; of Indian Offences, 241;
proposed special, for wild Ind
ians, 269; tribal, in Indian
Territory, 332, 336.

Courtship. (See Marriage, court
ship, eip.)

Crazy Snake, 218, 219.

Cree Indians, 173.

Creek Indians, 218, 329.

Crime and discipline. (See Dis
cipline.)

Criticism, philanthropy and (see
Philanthropy and criticism) ;
of public officers, 88, 208, 210,
215, 216, 217, 249, 271, 283,
306, 308, 309, 313, 316, 318.

Crow beet-farm project, 90.

Crow fair, 159.

Crow horse-farm project, 91.

Crow Indians, 90, 91, 159, 162.

DAKOTA, 355.

Dances, Indian, 20, 159, 230, 248.
Dawes Commission. (See Commis
sion to the Five Civilized

Tribes.)

Dawes, Senator Henry L., 34, 61.
Dawes Severalty Law, 34, 61. (See

also Allotment, land.)
Deity, aboriginal conception of,

275. (See also Religion.)
Delegations to Washington, 225.
Departments, executive, and their

secretaries. (See Commerce;

Interior; Treasury; War, etc.)
Depredations, Indian, 197.
Digger Indians, 173.
Discipline: enforcing, 105, 171,

210, 221, 229, 248, 249, 271,

323; a few illustrative cases

of, 248.
Documents, Senate and House,

215.
Domestic service. (See Service.)

INDEX

365

Drunkards, habitual, 234. (See

also Liquor question.)
Dundy, Judge Elmer S., 253.

EDUCATED INDIANS. (See Indians.)

Educating, cost of, an Indian, 201.

Education, theory and fact in, 115.

Educational policy of the Govern
ment: 29, 32, 45, 50, 53, 115,
132, 210, 234 (see also School) ;
time for a turning in the, 132.

Employment Bureau, 48, 155, 170.

Employments, 152, 162, 251, 301.
(See also Blacksmiths; Car
penters ; Clerical work ; Farm
ers, etc.)

Engineer, Chief, Indian Service.
(See Chief Engineer.}

Engineer, Irrigation. (See Irriga
tion.')

FAMILY RECORDS, 353; relations,

10, 13, 16, 18, 45, 288, 352.
Farmers, Indian, 23, 26, 39, 153,

159, 162, 165, 228, 250, 321.
Fetichism. (See Religion.}
Field Matrons, 295, 300, 307. (See

also Outing Matrons.)
Filipinos, 167.
Five Civilized Tribes. (See

Tribes.}
Florida, 330.
Fort Belknap, 91.
Fort Defiance, 291.
Fort Huachuca, 263.
Fort Keogh, 259.
Fort Sill, 258, 334.
Fort Wingate, 262.
Fox, Sac and, Indians. (See Sac

and Fox Indians.)
Fruit-growers, Indian, 148, 162.
Funds, tribal, 47, 173, 183, 297.
Funds, tribal, dividing, 47, 183,

192.

GAMBLING, 54, 88, 153, 190, 265.
Game, destruction of wild, 26.
(See also Hunting.)

Gardeners, Indian kitchen, 162.

Garfield, Secretary James R., 264.

Generosity, 22, 54, 185, 276, 293.

Georgia, 330.

Geronimo, 258, 266, 326.

Girls and women. (See Women

and Girls.)
"Give-away" entertainments, 21,

186, 188.

Grant, President Ulysses S., 107.
"Grass Money, "39.
Gratuities, ill effects of, 32, 44, 137

171, 178, 292.

HALF-BREEDS. (See Indians,
mixed-blood.)

Hampton Institute, 162, 200.

Harris, Commissioner William T.,
6.

Haskell Institute, 148, 162.

Health, 21, 32, 49, 57, 130, 136, 2<
137, 144, 145, 146, 148, 156,
189, 252, 300, 301, 327, 334,
355. (See also Hospitals;
Medicine men, etc.)

Heff decision, 36.

Hitchcock, Secretary Ethan A.,
259.

Homeric ethics, 6, 9.

Honesty, 9, 54, 191, 246, 247,
303.

Hoopa Indians, 75.

Hopi Indians, 3, 15, 20, 55, 133.

Horse industry, 91, 162.

Hospitals, 291, 292.

Hosteen Bi-gow Etten, 247.

House documents. (See Docu
ments.}

Humor, 4.

Hunting, 8, 25, 93.

IDAHO, 355.

Illegitimacy. (See Infidelity and

illegitimacy.)
Imprisonment of Indians without

trial, 248, 252, 255, 258, 259,

260.

366

INDEX

Improvidence, 22, 51, 75, 152, 171,
185, 321, 339.

Incendiarism, 239.

Incorporation of tribes. (See
Tribes, incorporation of.)

Indian: citizens (see Citizens');
citizenship committee, 307;
education (see Education);
folly of segregating the, 47,
139, 167, 268; how a young,
went around the world, 123;
Industries (see Industries} ; In
dustries League, 307; Nation
al, Association (see National
Indian Association); Office, 96,
351; Office regulations, 224;
popular ignorance about the,
1, 198, 206, 220; problem,
the, and a way out, 42; prob
lem, the, folly of prolonging,
52, 94; Rights Association,
the, 82, 265, 297, 307, 314;
schools (see Schools}; Service,
the, 96; Service, charges
against officers of, 217; Ter
ritory, 193, 206, 219, 252;
Territory, the, experiment,
328; the, as a capitalist, 173;
the, as he was, 1; the, at
work, 151; ultimate fate of
the, 343, 360.

Indians: allowing $10 a month to,
186; at play, 18, 190; do
educated, degenerate? 119;
going on visits, 224; hiring,
with their own money, 180;
how, work and rest, 14, 151;
illiterate, who have succeeded,
161, 164; in Wild West Shows,
323; in the Constitution of
the United States, 197; in
the Indian Service, 110; in
the learned professions, 116;
mixed-blood, 37, 46, 343, 344,
347, 360; the, pushed west
ward, 25, 330.

Individuality, 3, 43, 53, 57.

Industries, native, 55, 165. (See

also Indian Industries
League.)

Infidelity and illegitimacy, 16,
288, 295.

Inheritance, 40, 183, 185, 352.

Inspectors, 28, 39, 106.

Interior, Department and Secre
tary of the, 38, 66, 76, 80, 82,
92, 96, 208, 241, 255, 272,
307, 332, 338, 339, 351.

Interpreters, 275, 284, 348.

Investigation, 217, 311, 319, 320.

Iowa, 271.

Irrigation, 94, 287.

Irrigation Engineer, 106.

Irrigation, Superintendents of,
106.

JEFFERSON, PRESIDENT THOMAS,

11.
Jones, Commissioner William A.,

98, 179, 186, 259.
Judges, Indian, 241.
Justice, sense of, 246.

KANSAS, 36, 148.
Kickapoo Indians, 209.
Kiowa Indians, 82, 86, 353.
Kitchen-gardeners, Indian. (See

Gardeners.)
Klamath Indians, 162, 194.

LABOR. (See Blacksmiths; Em
ployment; Indian, the, at
work; Railroad work, etc.)

"Labor, proceeds of," 178.

Lace-making, 57, 308.

Lacey Bill. (See Funds, tribal,
dividing.)

Lacey, Representative John F.,
183.

Laguna Dam, 156.

Land: allotment (see Allotment);
tenure, 23, 34, 37, 40, 47, 79;
values, 86, 194.

Lands: disposing of the surplus
tribal, 79, 336; leasing Ind
ian, 38, 179, 184, 235; re-

INDEX

367

strictions on Indian, 34, 46,
64, 74, 76, 209; selling in
herited, 40, 184.

Language, sign. (See Sign lan
guage.)

Legislating for a dependent race,
197, 307.

Legislation, tribal, in Indian Ter
ritory, 332, 336.

Liberia, 331.

Liberty and discipline, 221. (See
also Discipline.)

Liquor question, 26, 36, 64, 106,
153, 160, 234, 241, 272, 307,
319, 323, 356.

Lobbyists, 38, 218.

Lone Wolf Decision, 82.

Lumbermen, Indian, 162. (See
also Timber.)

McKiNLEY, PRESIDENT WILLIAM,

207.

Makah Indians, 3.
Manila, 123.

Marine Court of New York, 269.
Marriage, courtship, etc., 16, 28,

290, 293, 296, 333, 343, 360.

(See also Polygamy.)
Matrons, field and outing. (See

Field Matrons; Outing Ma
trons.)

Mechanics, Indian, 163.
Medicine men, 230, 259, 260.
Mineral deposits, 179, 192, 207,

330, 337.
Minneapolis, 116.
Minnesota, 355.
Mission boards, 248, 285.
Mission Indians of California, 3,

162.
Missionaries and their methods,

275.
Missionaries in Indian Territory,

333.

Missionary convocations, 228.
Missionary work, 21, 29, 307, 322.
Missionary work of a trader, 190.
Mississippi, 330.

Mixed-blood Indians. (See Ind
ians.)

Montana, 80, 355.

Morgan, Commissioner Thomas J.,
110, 211.

NATIONAL INDIAN ASSOCIATION,

307.

Nature-worship, 20, 268, 275.
Navajo Indians, 3, 15, 56, 158,

162, 166, 247, 260, 270, 291,

349.

Nebraska, 194, 252.
Negroes, 33, 43, 197, 218, 331,

357, 358, 359, 360.
New Mexico, 258, 261.
New York, 116, 123.
Noble, Secretary John W., 293.
North Carolina, 330.
Nurses, 164.

OKLAHOMA, 82, 193, 218, 258, 271,

331, 341, 342.
Omaha, 116, 253.
Omaha Indians, 252.
Oneida Indians, 177.
Osage Indians, 10, 177.
Outing matrons, 301.
Outing system in schools. (See

Schools.)

PAINTER, CHARLES C., 314.

Pass, origin of the agency, 222.

Patronage, political. (See Polit
ical.)

Pawnee Indians, 176.

Peaceable disposition, 7, 18, 276.

Philadelphia, 116, 307.

Philanthropy, 2, 48, 56/116, 171,
257, 259, 260, 361.

Philanthropy and criticism, 305.

Pilots, Indian, 163.

Piutes, 173.

Police, Indian, 244.

Political patronage, 97, 99, 100,
108, 308. (See also Civil
Service Rules.)

Polly, 261.

368

INDEX

Polygamy, 293.

Ponca Indians, 252, 270.

Population, Indian, of the United

States, 350.
Porcupine, 259.
Pottawatomie Indians, 176.
Power, Indians' respect for, 268.
Pratt, Captain Richard H., 121.
President of the United States, 11,

34, 74, 80, 96, 199, 214, 255,

256, 307, 330, 336, 338.
" Proceeds of Labor." (See Labor.')
Pueblo Indians, 23, 162, 349.
Punishment, a young Indian's

self, 246.

QUAPAW AGENCY, 206.

RAILROAD WORK, INDIANS AT, 163,
171.

Ration system, 26, 57, 155, 161,
171, 180, 238, 249, 293.

Religion, 20, 228, 250, 275, 276,
322. (See also Dances ; Medi
cine men; Missionary work;
Nature-worship ; Sectarian con
troversies, etc.)

Representatives in Congress, 97,
130, 198, 212, 213, 216.

Reservation system, 25, 27, 44,
81, 84, 92, 273, 342.

Ridicule, dread of, 232.

Rocky Ford beet fields, 156, 157.

Roosevelt, President Theodore, 64,
297, 357.

SAC AND Fox INDIANS, 271.

Sailors, Indian, 123, 167.

St. Mary's Canal, 156.

Salton Sea dykes, 156, 157.

Sanitarium, proposed Indian, 355.

Santa F6 Railroad, 156, 157.

Sawmill hands, Indians as, 163.

School: Indian, system (see Ed
ucation, etc.); need of a com
pulsory, law, 32, 138, 210, 301;
payroll of a large Indian,
142.

Schoolhouses: cheaper, 150; open-
air, 127.

Schools: admitting white pupils
to Indian, 318; boarding, 136;
health camps at boarding,
355; objections to boarding,
141; cost of Indian, 29, 138,
141, 142, 148, 150, 202; day,
125, 133; day, to be given to
the States, 150; Government,
30, 45, 97, 272, 336; mission,
29, 297; non-reservation, 129,
134, 138; non-reservation as
centres of sectarian contro
versy, 298; non-reservation,
mingling sexes at, 143; non-
reservation, outing system
at, 122, 140 (see also Outing
Matrons) ; non-reservation,
sanitary aspects of, 144; non-
reservation, specializing at,
147; non-reservation, traffic
in pupils for, 145; public,
150, 192; reforms needed in
Indian, 132; sanitarium, 355;
setting fire to (see Incendi
arism); shorter terms for
Indian, 136; Sunday, 298;
three classes of Government,
125; tribal, in Indian Terri
tory, 334, 336.

Schurz, Secretary Carl, 252.

Scientists, real and false, 326.

Secretaries and executive Depart
ments. (See Commerce and
Labor; Interior, etc.)

Sectarian controversies, 290, 296.
(See also Schools.)

Seminole Indians, 329.

Senate: "courtesy of the," 211,
213; documents (see Docu
ments.)

Senators, 97, 99, 101, 130, 198,
211, 212, 216.

Sensitiveness, 12.

Service, domestic, 301.

Sexes: division of duties between
the, 13; mingling, in non-

INDEX

369

reservation schools (see

Schools.)

Sheep-herders, Indian, 162.
Sherman Institute, 148.
Sherman, Representative James

S., 77.

Shoshone Indians, 174.
Sign language, 8.
Sioux Indians, 3, 5, 15, 123, 131,

162, 170, 171, 255, 297, 349.
Six Nations, 177.
Smith, Secretary Hoke, 65.
Soldiers, Indian, 123, 163, 167.
South Dakota, 170, 252, 255.
Special Agents, 84, 106, 317.
Special Officers, 106. (See also

Liquor question.)

Squaw-men, 28, 244, 333, 344, 346.
Standing Bear Case, 252.
Strings, story of the Seven Green,

100.

Sunday schools. (See Schools.)
Superintendents, agents and. (See

Agents.)
Supervisors, 106.

TAMA, I A., 272.

Taxation: of Indians, 64, 75, 77,
236; tribal, in Indian Terri
tory, 336.

Tennessee, 330.

Testimony, Indian, 320.

Threats, 232, 238.

Timber, 192.

Toledo, la., 272.

Town sites, sale of, 179.

Traders, licensed, 11, 48, 185,
188.

Trailers, Indian, 245.

Treasury, Department and Secre
tary of the, 183, 338.

Treaties: Indian, 81, 359; Indian,
obsolete provisions in, 176.

Tribal funds, schools, etc. (See
Funds; Schools, etc.)

Tribes: diversity between, 3; feuds
between, 8; Five Civilized,
198, 206, 329, 336; Five Civi
lized, Commission to the (see
Commission)', fragments of,
under Quapaw agency (see
Quapaw); incorporation of,
192, 338.

Turning Bear, 232.

UTAH, 170, 255, 261.

Ute Indians, 15, 18, 170, 255, 270.

VALENTINE, COMMISSIONER ROB
ERT G., 320.
Veto of appropriations, 214.

WAR, DEPARTMENT AND SECRE
TARY OF, 11, 264.

War-path, 238.

Warehouse system, 106.

Washington, Booker T., 357, 359.

Wild West Shows. (See Indians.)

Women and girls, 13, 111, 119,
163, 164, 189, 190, 264, 279,
288, 293, 300, 333, 345, 346.

Wyoming, 256.

YUMA, 156.
ZUNI DAM, 157.

14

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

'.'7