civilize a race without subjecting them to the same disadvantages. The same policy the perils of eivilization. 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 welfare of those who are the least responsible for the present conditions-the Indians themselves.

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

instance sent a drunken official to keep the Indians sober, an ignorant official to superintend their education, and a lazy 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 work which he had done. An even 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 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 But even if the Indian Bureau could do the best that could be done for the be taken out of politics and kept out of Indian. Some of them have made not politics, the reservation system would able contributions towards the solution still be incurably bad. It assumed that of the problem. But each one of them the federal executive can administer a has come into office with little or no paternal government over widely scatfamiliarity 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

tered 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

trict of Columbia. But on the decent gov- States assumes political responsibility for ernment of the District the well-being, Cuba and the Philippines, as I personally the health, and, perhaps, the lives of the think it is bound to do, it must fulfil members of Congress depend; the relation that responsibility not by governing them between the government and the governed as conquered territory from Washington, is thus direct, close, intimate. Local but by protecting and guiding, but not communities in the United States exer- controlling them, while they attempt the cise some paternal functions, as in the experiment of local self-government for case of the insane, the sick, and the themselves. We have tried the first method paupers. But here, again, those directly with our Indians, and it has been a coninterested have an opportunity of exer- tinuous and unbroken failure. We have cising an immediate supervision over the tried the second method with the territory work and calling the public officials to west of the Mississippi River, ours by conaccount. But it is in the nature of the quest or by purchase, and it has been an case impossible that a President, a Sec- unexampled success. If the Indian is the retary of the Interior, or even a commis- "ward of the nation," the executive should sioner of Indian affairs, can personally not be his guardian. How that guardiansupervise the innumerable details involved ship should be exercised I shall indicate in the paternal administration of com- presently. munities scattered from Minnesota to New Mexico, and from Michigan to California.

An aristocratic government, composed of men who have inherited political ability from a long line of governing ancestry, and who have been especially trained for that work from boyhood, so that both by inheritance and training they are experts, may be supposed fitted to take care of people weaker, more ignorant, or less competent than themselves, though the history of oligarchic governments does not render that supposition free from doubt. But there is nothing in either philosophy or history to justify the surmise that 70,000,000 average men and women, most of whom are busy in attending to their own affairs, can be expected to take care of a people scattered through a widely extended territory-a people of social habits and social characteristics entirely different from their care-takers; nor is it much more rational to expect that public servants, elected on different issues for a different purpose, can render this service efficiently. Our government is founded on the principle of local self-government; that is, on the principle that each locality is better able to take care of its own affairs than any central and paternal authority is to take care of them. The moment we depart from this principle we introduce a method wholly unworkable by a democratic nation. It may be wide of the present purpose, yet perhaps not as an illustration, to say that if the United

This political and undemocratic paternalism is thoroughly bad for the Indian, whose interests it is supposed to serve. It assumes that civilization can be taught by a primer in a school, and Christianity by a sermon in a church. This is not true. Free competition teaches the need of industry, free commerce the value of honesty; a savings bank the value of thrift; a railroad the importance of punetuality, better than either preacher or pedagogue can teach them. To those, and there are still some, who think we must keep the Indian on the reservation until he is prepared for liberty, I reply that he will never be prepared for liberty on a reservation. When a boy can learn to ride without getting on a horse's back, or to swim without going into the water, or to skate without going on the ice-then, and not before, can man learn to live withcut living. The Indian must take his chance with the rest of us. His rights must be protected by law; his welfare looked after by philanthropy; but protected by law and befriended by philanthropy, he must plunge into the current of modern life and learn to live by living. The tepee will never fit him for the house, nor the canoe for the steamboat, nor the trail for highways and railroads, nor trapping and hunting for manufactures and husbandry. Imagine-the illustration is Edward Everett Hale's, not mine— imagine that we had pursued towards our immigrants the policy we have pursued towards the Indians; had shut the Poles,

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.

The editor, in asking me to write this article, indicated his desire that I should write "on the probable future of the Indians in their relation with the government, and the reforms necessary in the administration of their affairs." It may seem that I have been a long time coming to any definite answer to this question; but in order to set forth succinctly a reform it is first necessary to set forth as clearly and forcibly as possible the evil to be reformed. That evil, I believe, is the reservation system. The reform is all summed up in the words, abolish it. Cease to treat the Indian as a red man and treat him as a man. Treat him as we have treated the Poles, Hungarians,

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 copper or coal no pickaxe has uncovered; prairies whose fertile soil is prolific only in weeds. "Come," cries the pioneer, eager to develop this useless territory, "let us go in and make those acres rich by our industry." "No!" replies the law; 'you cannot." "Why not?" "It belongs to the Indians." "Where are they?" 'Hunting, trapping, sleeping, idling, and fed on rations." "When are they going to use this land; to convert this timber into boards; these rivers into mill-streams; when are they going to excavate these minerals, and turn these weedy prairies into fruitful farms?" "Never! This land in the heart of a 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 ealled 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

the government should be precisely the such cases should be dismissed. If the

some

same as the relations of any other individual, the readers of this article or the writer of it, for example. This should be the objective point, and the sooner we can get there the better. But this will bring hardship and even injustice on individuals! Doubtless. The world has not yet found any way in which all hardship and all injustice to individuals can be avoided. Turn the Indian loose on the continent and the race will disappear! Certainly. The sooner the better. There is no more reason why we should endeavor to preserve intact the Indian race than the Hungarians, the Poles, or the Italians. Americans all, from ocean to ocean, should be the aim of all American statesmanship. Let us understand once for all that an inferior race must either adapt and conform itself to the higher civilization, wherever the two come in conflict, or else die. This is the law of God, from which there is no appeal. Let Christian philanthropy do all it can to help the Indian to conform to American civilization; but let not sentimentalism fondly imagine that it can save any race or any community from this inexorable law.

This general and radical reform involves certain specific cures. For example:

Indian still needs a guardian, if there is danger that his land will be taxed away from him, or that he will be induced to sell it for a song, the courts, not the executive, should be his guardian. Guardianship is a function the courts are accustomed to exercise. It ought not to be difficult to frame a law such that an Indian could always appeal to a federal judge to have his tax appraisal revised, and always be required to submit to a federal judge any proposed sale of real estate.

3. The Indian and every Indian should be amenable to the law and entitled to its protection. I believe that, despite occasional injustice from local prejudice, it would be quite safe to leave their interests to be protected by the courts of any State or Territory in which they live; for I believe that the American people, and certainly the American judiciary, can be trusted. The policy of distrust has intensified the local prejudice against the Indian. But it would be easy, if it be necessary, to provide that any Indian might sue in a United States court, or if sued or prosecuted might transfer the suit to a United States court. I assume there is no constitutional provision against such a law.

4. All reservations in which the land is capable of allotment in severalty should be allotted as rapidly as the work of surveying and making out the warrants can be carried on. The unallotted land should be sold and the proceeds held by the United States in trust for the Indians. How to be expended is a difficult question. to Not in food and clothing, which only pauperize. The first lesson to be taught the Indian is, if he will not work, neither shall he eat. Perhaps in agricultural implements; perhaps in schools; perhaps in public improvements; perhaps in all three. When the land is of a kind that cannot be allotted in severalty, as in the case

1. The Indian Bureau ought to be taken at once and forever out of politics. The government should find the man most expert in dealing with the Indians he may be the present commissioner of Indian affairs-and instruct him to bring the Indian Bureau to a close at the earliest possible moment. Once appointed office for that purpose he should stay there till the work is completed. I believe that in one respect an army officer would be the best fitted for such a post, because he would be eager to bring the work to a close, while the civilian would see 100 reasons why it should be continued from year to year. His subor- of extended grazing lands, for example, dinates should be Indian experts and removed only for cause, never for political

reasons.

2. There are, it is said, ten or a dozen reservations in which the land has already been allotted in severalty and the reservations broken up. The agents in

it would seem as though a skilful lawyer should be able to devise some way in which the tribe could be incorporated and the land given to the corporation in fee simple; in which case the shares of stock possibly for a time should be inalienable, except by approval of the court; or pos

INDIAN RESERVATIONS-INDIAN TERRITORY

sibly the property might even be adminis- Indians include Quapaws, Peorias, Kastered for a time by a receiver appointed kaskias, Ottawas, Wyandottes, Miamis, by and answerable to the court.

5. Every Indian should be at once free to come and go as he pleases, subject as every other man is to the law of the locality and the processes of the courts where he is, and under their protection. The Indian with his blanket should have the privilege of travelling where he will, as much as the Italian with her shawl.

6. Finally, as fast and as far as the tribal organization is dissolved and the reservation is broken up, the Indian should have a ballot, on the same terms as other citizens; not so much because his vote will add to the aggregate wisdom of the community as because the ballot is the American's protection from injustice. The reform is very simple, if it is very radical. It is: Apply to the solution of the Indian problem the American method; treat the Indian as other men are treated; set him free from his trammels; cease to coddle him; in a word, in lieu of paternal protection, which does not protect, and free rations, which keep him in beggary, give him justice and liberty and let him take care of himself.

Indian Reservations. TIONS, INDIAN.

Shawnees, Modocs, Senecas, Cayugas, Sacs and Foxes, Pottawattomies, Osages, Kaws, Kiowas, Comanches, Apaches, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Piankeshaws, and Weas, and the affiliated bands of Wichitas, Keechies, Wacoes, Tawacanies, Caddoes, Ioneis, Delawares, and Penetethka Comanches. In the latter part of 1873 the Modocs (a remnant of Captain Jack's band) and about 400 Kickapoos and Pottawattomies, from the borders of Texas and Mexico, were removed to the Indian Territory. The Teritory is well watered and wooded, and has much fertile land suitable for raising cereals and cotton, while the climate is mild and salubrious, but dry. Previous to the Civil War the five civilized tribes were well-to-do, even wealthy, possessing large farms and many slaves, and having an extensive trade with the Southern cities. Many of them enlisted-some with the Nationals, some with the Confederates— and at the close of the war the tribes were reduced to poverty. Since then, however, they have made remarkable progress, and have regained much of their former wealth. In 1891 the IndSee RESERVA ian population cultivated over 400,000 acres of land, and raised fully 4,500,000 bushels of wheat, corn, and oats, 400,000 bushels of vegetables, 60,000 bales of cotton, and 175,000 tons of hay, amounting in value to nearly $6,000,000. A portion of the Territory is fine grass - land, well fitted for grazing, and the several tribes owned 800,000 head of live-stock. Besides these there were produced large quantities of maple sugar, wild rice, cord-wood, hemlock bark, and wool. More than 8,000,000 feet of lumber was sawed, and many thousands of woollen blankets, shawls, willow baskets, and other small articles of manufacture were produced. The Territory also produces iron, coal, marble, sandstone, and brick-clay. Wild turkeys and other varieties of small game are abundant. In certain instances, where white men are concerned, the jurisdiction of the United States courts extends over the Territory. The subject of a territorial governinent for the Indian country has long been discussed, but no decision has yet been reached. It was the policy of the United States to settle the various tribes in this

Indian Territory. By act of Congress, June 30, 1834, "all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi River, and not within the States of Missouri and Louisiana, or the Territory [now the State] of Arkansas, shall be considered the Indian country." It has been reduced in area by the successive formation of States and Territories, until now it is bounded north by Kansas, east by Missouri and Arkansas, south by Texas, and west by Texas and Oklahoma, and contains an area of 31,000 square miles. The population in 1890 was 180,182; in 1900, 391,960. This aggregate population, however, is only partially Indian, as many squaw men," other whites, and negroes are included therein. In 1900 there were seven reservations in the Territory, and five civilized nations, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, and over 97 per cent. of the entire population was in the first four nations. It was estimated that the population of the five nations included 84,750 Indians. The reservation

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