Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/602

582 made those covenants have essentially changed, — changed for both parties; changed, too, not by any scheming or planning of our own to furnish us with pretences for trifling with them, but by the incalculable and irresistible working of agencies and circumstances that have made it not only inconvenient but wholly impracticable for the covenants to remain in force. The Indians expected to live upon the reservations by hunting, without labor. We covenanted the lands to them for no other purpose, ignorant of their buried wealth, not foreseeing the absolute necessity that we should have to pass through them. The Indians cannot live as it was expected by themselves and by ourselves that they would live, and our people cannot be restrained from availing themselves of new conditions. The case thus becomes essentially one of those to be referred to chancery jurisdiction; the terms of a trust, in its direction, conditions, and uses, having become antiquated and obsolete, an alternative method must be indicated as near as possible to absolute justice in new terms.

The policy now proposed is to have a few very large reservations, divided into several small contiguous ones for different tribes, — even of those which have been hostile to each other, — with an ultimate view that the large reservation shall at some time become a State in the Union, of which the smaller ones shall be counties.

All the exigencies of the case point to the absolute necessity of bringing the Indians under humane and kind, and at the same time rigid and inflexible, control as subjects of civilized law. They are to be compelled to live and work after the manner of civilized people. They can no longer have such extensive wild reaches of territory; we must contract their bounds. They must no longer be nomadic, with hunting as their main dependence, and pilfering as holiday work, with horse-stealing and cattle-slaying for a trial of their prowess. Their tribal relations must be broken up, and we must recognize them as