ing Indian youth educated in the Hamp- undertake the experiment of having Indton Normal and Industrial Institute in ian youth educated there also, and such Virginia, which was originally established encouraging results followed that the for the education of colored youth only. government has since kept a large The success of the institution in its origi- class of Indian boys and girls in the nal purpose induced the government to institution.

INDIAN PROBLEM, THE

Indian Problem, THE. The following is a consideration of this subject from the pen of the Rev. Lyman Abbott:

Helen Jackson has written the history of 100 years of our nation's dealing with the Indians, under the title of A Century of Dishonor. Her specifications seem to make the indictment of her title good. Yet I am persuaded that the dishonor which justly attaches to the history of our dealings with the North American Indians is due rather to a lack of prophetic vision, quite pardonable, in the nation's leaders, and an ignorance and indifference, not pardonable, in the nation at large, rather than to any deliberate policy of injustice adopted by the nation. Bad as has been our treatment of the Indians, it is luminous by the side of Russia's treatment of the Jews, Turkey's treatment of the Armenians, Spain's treatment of the Moors, and, if we include the war of Cromwell against the Irish, the English legislation against Irish industry, Irish education, and the Church of Ireland's choice, it compares favorably with England's treatment of Ireland.

over it. Each decade was satisfied to provide for its necessities and leave the next decade to take care of itself. As the boundary-line was pushed steadily westward, new treaties were made, by which all territory west of a given boundary was reserved for the Indians forever. I think it was in 1800 that such a treaty was made, securing to them for all future time the land west of the Mississippi River. All future time is a long while, and each new treaty was made only to be broken, as increase of population and incoming immigration made new demands on the continent for support. Thus gradually grew up without design the so-called reservation system. Less and less land was reserved to the Indians; more and more was taken up by the whites; until at last certain relatively small sections were deeded to separate Indian tribes. In these, according to the treaties made, the several tribes were at liberty to remain forever hunters and trappers, freed from the obligations and without the advantages and perils of civilization.

These reservations have been practically prison yards, within which the tribes have When thirteen States-a fringe of civ been confined. If any member passed beilization on the eastern edge of an un- yond the boundaries of the reservation known wilderness-constituted the Amer- without leave he was liable to arrest. If ican Republic, there was no prophet to he raised crops or manufactured goods foresee the time when the republic would he could not carry them for sale to the stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific open market; if he wished to buy he could and from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, not go to the open market to purchase. and would include 70,000,000 people. The land was owned by the tribe in comIf there were any such prophet he was as mon, and the idle and industrious shared a voice crying in the wilderness; no one alike its advantages and disadvantages. heard or heeded. The politician is al- Industry received no reward; idleness inmost invariably an opportunist, perhaps volved no penalty. Money due the tribe necessarily so, since no great prevision is under the treaty was paid with more or granted to the children of men. The in- less regularity, generally in rations, somefant republic did not know and took little times in guns and ammunition to fight pains to ascertain the extent of the domain the white man with, or scalping-knives which stretched to the west, or the num- to take from his head a trophy of the ber or character of the people who roamed battle. The forms of industry to which

agent, a person of ill-defined, and to the Indian mind, of illimitable power. He was as nearly an absolute despot as can be conceived existing on American soil. He was sometimes an intelligent and beneficent despot, sometimes an ignorant and incompetent one; but in either case a despot.

the men were accustomed-hunting and as existed was administered by an Indian trapping- gradually disappeared; little or nothing was done to teach new forms of industry or to inspire the men to undertake them. From the reservation all the currents of civilization were excluded by federal law. The railroad, the telegraph, the newspaper, the open market, free competition-all halted at its walls. By favor of the government, generally freely granted, the missionary was allowed to establish a church, or Christian philanthropy to plant a school. But as an educated Indian was rather impeded than aided in the tribal community by education, neither the church nor the school could do more than save individuals from a population shut up by law to the general conditions of barbarism. No courts sat in these reservations; no law was administered by those judicial methods familiar to the Anglo-Saxon; no warrants from local courts outside could be executed; no Indian, if wronged, could appeal to any court for redress. Such law

Thus there has grown up in America, by no deliberate design but by a natural though mischievous opportunism which has rarely looked more than ten years ahead, a system as inconsistent with American principles and the American spirit as could easily be devised by the ingenuity or conceived by the imagination of a man. It has denied to the Indian, often under the generous desire to do more for him than mere justice, those rights and prerogatives which the Declaration of Independence truly declares to belong inalienably to all men. It has made a prisoner of him that it might civilize him, under the illusion that it is possible to

civilize a race without subjecting them to the same disadvantages. The same policy the perils of civilization. It has en- of political removal and political apdeavored to conduct him from the relative pointment has characterized the whole innocence of barbarism to the larger and Indian administration. Sometimes the more perilous life of a free and civilized appointments have been made by the comcommunity, and to guard him from the missioner of Indian affairs, sometimes by dangers of temptation and the consequences the Secretary of the Interior, sometimes of his own ignorance en route. The practically by local politicians; but in reservation system is absolutely, hopeless- all cases alike, not for expert knowledge ly, incurably bad, "evil and wholly evil of Indians, but for political service renand that continually." It was never dered or to be rendered, or from reasons framed by any one. It has grown up of personal friendship. The notion that under the commingled influence of careless there is a continuous and consistent indifference, popular ignorance, local policy to be pursued towards the Indians, prejudice, and unthinking sentimentalism. and that this requires continuity of serThe Indian problem is, in a sentence, vice and expertness of knowledge in the how to get rid of it in the easiest and administration, has not entered the head quickest way possible, and bring the Ind- of our public men; or, if so, has not been ian and every Indian into the same in- allowed to obtain lodgment there. That dividual relation to the State and federal so bad a system has secured so many governments that other men in this coun- good Indian agents and subordinate offitry are, with the least possible violence cials is a matter for surprise. It is not of rupture with the past and the greatest surprising that it has in more than one possible regard for the right and the instance sent a drunken official to keep welfare of those who are the least re- the Indians sober, an ignorant official to sponsible for the present conditions-the superintend their education, and a lazy Indians themselves. official to inspire them with industry. One illustration of the result of this method of administration is to be seen in the removal of Dr. Hailman, the superintendent of Indian education, an expert educator, whose retention in his office was urged upon the administration by substantially all those familiar with

The reservation system, I say, is wholly bad. The indietment against it is fourfold.

more striking object-lesson is afforded by the outbreak among the Pillager Indians, largely due to three successive appraisals of their timber lands, two of which appraisals have been set aside as inadequate, through the incompetence of the appraisers, the enormous cost of each appraisal having been charged to the Indians.

In the first place, the Indian Bureau is, and always has been, a political machine, whose offices are among the spoils which belong to the victors. In the twenty years during which I have had the work which he had done. An even some familiarity with Indian affairs, not a single commissioner of Indian affairs has been appointed because he was familiar with the Indians, or an expert in the Indian problem, and only one who was an expert in that work of education which is, of course, one of the chief elements in the Indian problem. They have been, I think, all of them, men of excellent character-honest, able, ambitious to do the best that could be done for the Indian. Some of them have made notable contributions towards the solution of the problem. But each one of them has come into office with little or no familiarity with the problem, has had to acquaint himself with it, and has hardly had more than enough time to do so before his term of office has expired, and he has been replaced by a successor who has had to take up the work subject to

But even if the Indian Bureau could be taken out of politics and kept out of politics, the reservation system would still be incurably bad. It assumed that the federal executive can administer a paternal government over widely seattered local communities. For such a function it is peculiarly unfitted. The attempt to engraft a Russian bureaucracy on American democracy is a fore-doomed failure. The federal government does exercise paternal authority over the Dis

the Hungarians, the Italians, the Germans, unproductive idleness a territory which, the Scandinavians, each in a reservation if cultivated, would provide homes for as allotted to them, and forbidden them to many thousands of industrious workers. go out into the free life of America until No treaty can give them that right. It is they had Americanized themselves-how not in the power of the federal government long would the process have taken? to consecrate any portion of its territory thus to ignorance and idleness. It has tried, again and again, to do so; it has always failed; it always ought to fail; it always will fail. English parks kept untilled, yet ministering to taste and refinement, have always been regarded by political economists as difficult to justify; nothing can be said to justify American reservations, kept untilled only that they may minister to idleness and barbarism.

But the capital objection to the reservation system is that it is one impossible to maintain; and it is impossible to maintain because it ought not to be maintained. The tide of civilization, surging westward, comes some day to a fair and wealthy but unused and idle territory. There are forests which no woodman's axe has ever touched; rivers where water-falls turn no mill-wheels; mountains whose treasures of gold and silver, iron or cop- The editor, in asking me to write this per or coal no pickaxe has uncovered; article, indicated his desire that I should prairies whose fertile soil is prolific only write "on the probable future of the Indin weeds. "Come," cries the pioneer, ians in their relation with the governeager to develop this useless territory, ment, and the reforms necessary in the "let us go in and make those acres rich administration of their affairs." It may by our industry." "No!" replies the law; seem that I have been a long time coming 66 you cannot." Why not?" "It be- to any definite answer to this question; longs to the Indians." "Where are but in order to set forth succinctly a rethey?" Hunting, trapping, sleeping, form it is first necessary to set forth as idling, and fed on rations." "When are clearly and forcibly as possible the evil they going to use this land; to convert to be reformed. That evil, I believe, is this timber into boards; these rivers into the reservation system. The reform is all mill-streams; when are they going to ex- summed up in the words, abolish it. cavate these minerals, and turn these Cease to treat the Indian as a red man weedy prairies into fruitful farms?" and treat him as a man. Treat him as "Never! This land in the heart of a we have treated the Poles, Hungarians, civilized community is forever consecrated Italians, Scandinavians. Many of them to barbarism." The pioneer's impatience are no better able to take care of themwith such a policy is fully justified, selves than the Indians; but we have though his manner of manifesting it is thrown on them the responsibility of not. Barbarism has no rights which civil- their own custody, and they have learned ization is bound to respect. The ques- to live by living. Treat them as we have tion on what basis the right to land rests treated the negro. As a race the Afriis one of the most difficult which political can is less competent than the Indian; economy has to answer. Many scholars but we do not shut the negroes up in who do not accept Henry George's con- reservations and put them in charge of clusions accept his premise, that the soil politically appointed parents called belongs to the community, and that in- agents. The lazy grow hungry; the dividual ownership rests not on any criminal are punished; the industrious indefeasible right, but on the express or implied agreement of the community. Certain it is that the 500,000, more or less, of Indians who roamed over this continent in the seventeenth century, had no right by reason of that fact to exclude from it the several hundred million industrious men and women whom eventually it will support. As little have a tribe of a few hundred Indians a right to keep in

get on. And though sporadic cases of injustice are frequent and often tragic, they are the gradually disappearing relics of a slavery that is past, and the negro is finding his place in American life gradually, both as a race and as an individual. The reform necessary in the administration of Indian affairs is: Let the Indian administer his own affairs and take his chances. The future relations of the Indians with