Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/603

Rh and then, as their territorial domains are circumscribed, their land can be distributed to individual occupants. As the question presents itself, how large a land allotment shall be made to each for concentration of work and for support, we may be guided somewhat by the Government measurement of a homestead lot for a white family, which is one hundred and sixty acres.

Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, the Government, instead of distributing among the Indians the best breech-loaders and ammunition and metallic cartridges, must put in force the extreme measure of actually disarming them. Practically this will be no undue severity or hardship, as we ourselves are in effect disarmed, — the guns of our militia even not belonging to those who bear them. In Canada the Indians are to a large extent kept in control by an Indian police; and it has been advocated by wise and experienced advisers among us that we introduce a system by which the young Indian braves — armed or unarmed — should be organized for that service among our tribes.

While the most hopeful believers in the capacity of the Indians for civilization make these conditions to be primary, they maintain that we have a basis to work upon in the progress already made by portions of the tribes of Cherokees, Choctaws, Seminoles, Creeks, and Chickasaws, who in the first third of this century were such hardy fighters against us. It is somewhat wildly affirmed that just before our war of rebellion the Cherokees were the richest people per capita in the world. However this may be, they have largely abandoned roaming and the chase, have learned to become herdsmen and agriculturists, to build houses and put up fences, to have their individual farms and their private property, and to know some of the advantages of schools, churches, trades, and tools. Hence comes the suggestion that for the future the gifts of our Government to the Indians should no longer be in money,