Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/172

138 to Indians and their settlement in severalty have already been attempted under special laws or treaties with a few tribes; in some instances, with success; in others, the Indians, when they had acquired individual title to their land, and before they had learned to appreciate its value, were induced to dispose of it, or were tricked out of it by unscrupulous white men, who took advantage of

their ignorance. They were thus impoverished again, and some of them fell back upon the Government for support. This should be guarded against, as much as it can be, by a legal provision making the title to their farm tracts inalienable for a certain period, say twenty-five years, during which the Indians will have sufficient opportunity to acquire more provident habits, to become somewhat acquainted with the ways of the world and to learn to take care of themselves. In some cases where the allotment of lands in severalty and the granting of patents conveying a fee-simple title to Indians was provided for in Indian treaties, the Interior Department under the last Administration saw fit to put off the full execution of this provision for the reason that the law did not permit the insertion in the patent of the inalienability clause, that without such a clause the Indians would be exposed to the kind of spoliation above mentioned, and that it was hoped Congress would speedily supply that deficiency by the passage of the general “Severalty bill,” then under discussion. Indeed, without such a clause in the land-patents, it cannot be denied that the conveyance of individual fee-simple title to Indians would be a hazardous experiment, except in the case of those most advanced in civilization.

The question whether and how far the Indians generally are prepared for so great a change in their habits as their settlement in severalty involves, is certainly a very important one. Among those belonging to the five so-called