Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/605

Rh those in each local community; and as soon as possible the disabled, the aged, and the needy of an Indian community should look for their relief, not to the United States Government, but to their able-bodied fellows. The peace policy is put upon its vindication, not only against the war policy, but also against that fostering and entail of pauperism among the Indian tribes which is taking the manhood out of them, and burdening a hard-working people for whom the struggle for existence is already sharp enough.

It is a noteworthy fact, that, just coincident with the fierce working of our socialistic problems which has developed the communistic theory as the relief for all the evils of our civilized state, our wisest statesmen and philanthropists should find in this same communism — the very basis of Indian tribal life — the most formidable obstacle to the relief, the improvement, and the civilization of the savages. However wide and earnest and impassioned the differences as to a wise Indian policy entertained by those who discuss the subject, one point in which they all heartily accord is this, — the Indian will never be reclaimed till he ceases to be a communist. He must give up his tribal relations so far as they involve and cover a merging of all his individual proprietary rights to territory, for a joint and common privilege in a vast and unimproved domain. He will be a vagabond and a pauper so long as he is not an individual proprietor and possessor, with a piece of land held by him in fee, with tokens of his own interest and ownership. We are told that some of the tribes, under the influence of a few astute chiefs, protest against the assigning of portions of their reservations in severalty to families, guarded by the provision that for a term of years each such homestead shall be inalienable. The ground of the objection is that the tribal hold upon territory is more secure when it is held in common. This argument would be more plausible, and indeed really a strong one, were the reservations themselves secure in their tenure and permanency. But we have seen