Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/644

INDIAN AFFAIRS.  between Indians and citizens of the United States, and all controversies between members of different tribes, as well as certain other cases specially enumerated. By the same act certain laws of Arkansas were extended over the Indian Territory. State courts have no jurisdiction over offenses committed by tribal Indians upon a reservation within the State.

It is the policy of the United States to exercise a general supervision over the affairs of the Indians and to protect them from the encroachments of unscrupulous whites, as well as from the evil consequences of their own ignorance and improvidence. Many statutes have been passed by Congress to prohibit hunting on their lands, to prevent cutting timber from their lands, or pasturing stock on them, to prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors to them, etc. Citizens of the United States of good moral character are permitted to trade with Indian tribes, upon giving bonds. The power of appointing and licensing Indian traders, as well as prescribing rules concerning the kind, quantity, and prices of goods to be sold, belongs to the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs. This officer is further empowered to remove from Indian reservations all persons found there contrary to law or whose presence is deemed detrimental to the peace and good order of the Indians.

Until 1832 the supervision of Indian affairs was intrusted to a bureau in the War Department. In that year Congress authorized the President to appoint a commissioner charged with general superintendence of Indian affairs. He has the direction of eight inspectors and a large number of superintendents, agents, teachers, mechanics, etc. Since 1849 the business of Indian affairs has constituted a bureau in the Department of the interior. The most numerous officials in the Indian service are the agents, appointed by the President for a term of four years, who are required to give bonds. Their duties are to superintend the intercourse among Indians within their respective agencies and to execute the orders of the commissioner. An important feature of the Indian service is the educational work. The President is empowered to employ capable persons to instruct the Indians in agriculture and to teach their children reading, writing, and arithmetic. By an act of 1882 he was authorized to appoint an inspector of Indian schools. The schools under Government control are the non-reservation training-schools and the reservation boarding and day schools. Besides these there are contract schools under the supervision of religious associations which receive Government aid. By an act of Congress passed in 1890, provision was made for field matrons who organize sewing-schools, weekly clubs, and Sabbath-schools among the Indians. In 1893 more than 21,000 Indian children were receiving the benefits of education, about two-thirds being enrolled in Government schools. The number of Indians occupying reservations is 134,476. The annual appropriation by Congress for the Indian service usually exceeds $10,000,000. The policy now being pursued by the Government will result in the incorporation of all Indians in the body politic as citizens, and with it the Indian reservations will disappear, the individuality of the Indian will be recognized, and the paternal care and control now exercised by the United States will cease.

Consult: Annual Reports of the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs; Weil, The Legal Status of the Indian (New York, 1888).  INDIANAP′OLIS. The capital of Indiana and its largest city, and the county-seat of Marion County; on White River, in the centre of the State, 183 miles southeast of Chicago and 111 miles northwest of Cincinnati (Map:, C 3). It lies 700 feet above sea-level, in a broad, rolling plain. The surrounding region is rich in agricultural and mineral resources, and in forest trees of exceptional beauty. Large natural gas and oil fields are tributary to it, and near by are coal lands 7000 square miles in extent. Besides there are found in the vicinity of the capital building-stone, marl, iron, and other minerals. Wholly an inland city, Indianapolis relies on railways for its commerce. Within 50 miles of the centre of population of the United States for the past two decades, its location has made it a great railway centre. Here terminate seven divisions of the Big Four system, six divisions of the Pennsylvania Railroad, two divisions of the Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Western Railway, the Lake Erie and Western, and the Monon, besides ten interurban electric systems. The railways bring their passenger trains into a handsome union depot, and the interurban lines have contracted to erect a large union terminal station to cost over $1,000,000. Freight passing Indianapolis is carried over a belt railway, 15½ miles long. It encircles the city. The street-railway system represents an outlay of about $9,000,000, with 125 miles of tracks, and a park (Fairview) containing 200 acres.

The city is noted for the beauty of its streets, ranging from 40 to 120 feet in width, and shaded mainly by hard maples and elms, and crossing at right angles. In the heart of the city is a circular plaza, once known as ‘the Governor's Circle,’ and now called Monument Place, from which radiate four avenues to the four corners of the city. The park svstem comprises 1250 acres, and includes Riverside, extending for five miles along both sides of White River; the Indiana Central Canal and Fall Creek; Garfield, Brookside, Military, Saint Clair, and University parks, and Woodruff Place. The most notable structure in Indianapolis is the Soldiers and Sailors' Monument, designed by Bruno Schmitz, of Berlin. It was erected by the State to commemorate the part Indiana bore in the wars of the Union. The monument is a shaft of stone and bronze 285 feet in height, surmounted by a figure of Indiana Triumphant. About the base are allegorical groups in stone representing war and peace, and beneath these are two great fountains. Near the monument are four subsidiary bronze statues of Gen. George Rogers Clark, Gen. William Henry Harrison, Gov. James Whitcomb, and Oliver Perry Morton. There is also a statue of Schuyler Colfax in University Park, and in the Capitol grounds one of Thomas A. Hendricks. A large fund has been raised for a memorial to Benjamin Harrison. The buildings most worthy of note are the Capitol, 492 by 185 feet, built of Indiana limestone at a cost of $2,000,000; the court house, city hall, Federal arsenal, new post-office (to cost $2,500,000), Christ Church, Manual Training High School and some of the common-school buildlngs, Columbia Club, Commercial Club, the Claypool Hotel, the Propylæum, a 