REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, OFFICE OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, Washington, October 5, 1885. SIR: In compliance with the requirements of law, I have the honor to submit my annual report of the operations of the Indian Bureau for the year 1885, prefacing the same with some observatious which will indicate the policy which I think should be adopted in the management of the affairs of the Indians. This Bureau will be fortunate if it should, amid the many conflicting interests with which the rights of the Indians are confronted, be able to secure to them full and complete justice; while, on the other hand, it will fall very far short of its duty should it waver in its determination to require from them a substantial compliance with its regulations and an obedience to the laws. FARMS AND HOMES. It requires no seer to foretell or foresee the civilization of the Indian race as a result naturally deducible from a knowledge and practice upon their part of the art of agriculture; for the history of agriculture among all people and in all countries intimately connects it with the highest intellectual and moral development of man. Historians, philosophers, and statesmen freely admit that civilization as naturally follows the improved arts of agriculture as vegetation follows the genial sunshine and the shower, and that those races who are in ignorance of agriculture are also ignorant of almost everything else. The Indian constitutes no exception to this political maxim. Steeped as his progenitors were, and as more than half of the race now are, in blind ignorance, the devotees of abominable superstitions, and the victims of idleness and thriftlessness, the absorbing query which the hopelessness of his situation, if left to his own guidance, suggests to the philanthropist, and particularly to a great Christian people like ours, is to know how to relieve him from this state of dependence and barbarism, and to direct him in paths that will eventually lead him to the light and liberty of American citizenship. There are in the United States, exclusive of Alaska, about 260,000 Indian souls. Of that number there are in the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory 64,000. There are in New York, 4,970, in North Carolina, 3,000, and there are some in Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and a few in California and the Northwest, who are civilized; and still others who can lay some claim to civilization. Many others on the reservations have cast off the blanket and are adopting the fashions and dress of white people. But among all these, except among the Indians of New York and North Carolina, a few in some of the Northwestern States, and a part of the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory, is a very large number who do not till the soil. Nearly all who are called "blanket Indians" have never tilled the soil to any extent, and fully half of the Indians of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, as yet have declined to commit themselves to the life of the farmer. Exclusive of the lands cultivated by the five civilized tribes, the number of acres in cultivation by Indians during the present year is 248,241, an increase of 18,473 acres over last year's figures. The acreage of cultivated land has steadily increased for several years past, the amount in cultivation for the last three years being-1883, 210,272; 1884, 229,768; 1885, 248,241 acres. The increased interest in agriculture manifested since the opening of last spring, and the preparations on several reservations for still larger increase of acreage in farming, are among the hopeful signs of Indian progress and development. This brings me directly to the consideration of the practical policy which I believe should be adopted by Congress and the Government in the management of the Indians. It should be industriously and gravely impressed upon them that they must abandon their tribal relations and take lands in severalty, as the corner-stone of their complete success in agriculture, which means self-support, personal independence, and material thrift. The Government should, however, in order to protect them, retain the right to their lands in trust for twenty-five years or longer, but issue trust patents at once to such Indians as have taken individual hold. ings. When the Indians have taken their lands in severalty in sufficient quantities (and the number of acres in each holding may and should vary in different localities according to fertility, productiveness, climatic, and other advantages), then having due regard to the immediate and early future needs of the Indians, the remaining lands of their reservations should be purchased by the Government and opened to homestead entry at 50 or 75 cents per acre. The money paid by the Government for their lands should be held in trust in 5 per cent. bonds, to be invested as Congress may provide, for the education, civilization, and material development and advancement of the red race, reserving for each tribe its own money. This is all the Indians need to place them beyond the oppression and greed of white men who seek, as Mr. Barbour said in 1825 in his report as Secretary of War, "to bereave the Indians of their lands." |