Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1871.djvu/6

4 of a degree of progress which offers good reason to hope for the gradual social elevation and christianization of the race.

As encouragement to those who believe in the capacity of the Indian for civilization an examination of the report of the Acting Commissioner will show that the various tribes have raised during the year agricultural products to the value of more than eight millions of dollars not including the products of the Cherokees from whom no report has been received, but whose products last year were valued at over two and one-half million dollars, an aggregate of about ten millions of dollars worth of farm produce. It will also be seem that there are 216 schools among the Indian tribes with 323 teachers and an average attendance of 8,920 pupils.

Though this peace policy has been generally maintained and a better understanding of the designs of the Government toward them prevails among the Indians excepting a few nomadic tribes in Arizona New Mexico, and on the western borders of Texas which have not yet been so fully reached by the influence of the new policy outrages by those bands or tribes have been punished so promptly by the military authorities under the influence of which the disposition to make peace is generally manifest.

Some progress is being made towards inducing the more troublesome of those tribes to accept and enter upon reservations and there is reasonable ground to hope that it will eventually be accomplished.

For this purpose it is of importance that increased and liberal appropriations for food, clothing and farming implements be made by Congress.

On the line of the North Pacific Railroad in the Territory of Dakota the Sioux have also made some offensive demonstrations against the progress of that work but thus far judicious management has prevented serious outbreak. The hostile disposition of that numerous and powerful tribe may require skillful treatment to avoid hostilities in the future.

Encouragement is afforded to the friends of the existing policy in the fact that the Indians long in contact with the whites as in New York Michigan and Wisconsin as also of those whose proximity to the whites is not of so long standing as in Kansas Nebraska and the Indian Territory have made considerable progress in the arts of civilization in the cultivation of the soil or in the pursuit of general business, with success as well as in their increased efforts in behalf of the education of their youth.

Without progress in industrial pursuits and in education we cannot hope for any lasting good results from the new policy and it should therefore be the first effort of the Government to so act as to encourage the Indian in those directions which will induce him to cultivate habits of industry and foster a desire for mental and moral culture. It might be well to establish a system of compulsory education to such an extent, at least, as to withhold annuities from those individuals who refuse