Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/598

578 their chief security in their industry and thrift. All the pleadings that can be uttered in the name of an ancient right or on the score of humanity will never persuade the white man of average intelligence who improves his patch of land, under taxation which increases exactly as he improves it, that beyond a certain boundary-line men and women may live in idleness on vast spaces of rich soil, and call for all supplies to be sent to them free of charge.

Experience and the best practical wisdom which they can bring to bear on the subject have led the heads of our Indian Bureau to suggest for the future a radical change in the disposal by our Government of the matter of Indian reservations. The principle underlying the provision of reservations, from the first recourse to them, was this: the solemn covenanting with the Indians — one or more tribes of them — to secure to them forever portions of all the territory on this continent, in consideration of our having seized other parts of it. On the supposition that the hordes which the white men found in roaming, nomadic occupancy here were the lawful holders of a perpetual fee in the territory, there would be something farcical in an intruding people covenanting back to them a fragment from the spoils of the whole. It is more reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the whites, not believing that the savage roamers had a legal and inextinguishable claim to the whole or even any part of the territory, thought they were making a generous settlement of any doubt there might be in the case, by bounding a region here and there, and assuring it to the Indians. The pledges of these reservations use the phrase “for ever.” The tendency of modern thought and speculation is to regard nothing as eternal except eternity itself.

The precedent for Indian reservations was very early, and first, set by the Massachusetts Colony Court. As a general rule, we may say that the Indians who have had reservations assigned to them have been broken and defeated