Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/600

580 continent of Europe seventy persons to a square mile. An acre of the Indian Territory has a productive power of that of ten average acres of Massachusetts soil. Of the seventy thousand persons inhabiting it, scarcely half are of pure Indian blood. No white man can reside there unless he has for a wife an Indian squaw, and so secures the noble title of “a squaw man.” There are four thousand whites and six thousand negroes, formerly slaves to the Indians. The mongrel breeds are steadily increasing and the pure race dying out. Practically there is no local law in the Territory, and the United States jurisdiction is little more than nominal. It is hardly strange that, under these circumstances, Congress should have appointed a Senatorial Commission with reference to organizing a new Territory from this abused waste (the name proposed being Oklahoma), special care being had for securing to the occupants, by a breaking up of tribal relations, homestead farms in perpetuity and money annuities.

There are also reservations in the States of New York (the oldest dating from 1794), North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Wisconsin, California, and Oregon; and in the Territories of Arizona, Dakota, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. These reservations, including the Indian Territory, cover an area of about two hundred and forty-three thousand and ninety-one square miles, or nearly one hundred and fifty-six million acres.

It is estimated that one sixth of our Indian population is of mixed blood; and that of the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, only one half are wholly of the pure race. By our last census we had one hundred and fifty whites, and twelve negroes or mulattoes, to each Indian.

We are experiencing, in our joint interests as a nation and in those of a common civilization, the embarrassments attending this system of reservations. The single States