Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/14

12 they occupy has proved in many cases a serious impediment to their improvement and progress. From all quarters we receive expressions of a desire on the part of the Indians to have the land they occupy and cultivate secured to them by the "white man's paper," that is, a patent equal in legal force to that by which white men hold title to their land. Bills have been submitted to Congress for two sessions providing for the division of farm tracts among the Indians in severalty on their respective reservations; the issuance of patents to them individually and their investment with a fee-simple title to their farms inalienable for a certain number of years until they may be presumed to have overcome the improvident habits in which a large part of the present generation have grown up; and, this being accomplished, for the disposition of the residue of the reservations not occupied and used by the Indians, with their consent and for their benefit, to white settlers. It was hoped that this measure would pass before the adjournment of the last session. Had it become a law a very large number of Indians would have been so settled by this time. In this expectation the issuance of patents not containing the important clause of temporary inalienability, which is authorized by a few Indian treaties, has been withheld until a general law should insure to all titles of greater security. It is to be hoped that this important measure will now receive the earliest possible consideration and action by Congress. I look upon it as the most essential step in the solution of the Indian problem. It will inspire the Indians with a feeling of assurance as to the permanency of their ownership of the lands they occupy and cultivate; it will give them a clear and legal standing as landed proprietors in the courts of law; it will secure to them for the first time fixed homes under the protection of the same law under which white men own theirs; it will eventually open to settlement by white men the large tracts of land now belonging to the reservations, but not used by the Indians. It will thus put the relations between the Indians and their white neighbors in the Western country upon a new basis, by gradually doing away with the system of large reservations, which has so frequently provoked those encroachments which in the past have led to so much cruel injustice and so many disastrous collisions. It will also by the sale, with their consent, of reservation lands not used by the Indians, create for the benefit of the Indians a fund, which will gradually relieve the government of those expenditures which have now to be provided for by appropriations. It will be the most effective measure to place Indians and white men upon an equal footing as to the protection and restraints of laws common to both. I desire also to call attention once more to the bill repeatedly introduced in Congress, extending over Indian reservations the government of the laws of the States or Territories in which such. reservations are located, giving the Indians standing in the courts and securing to them the full benefit of the laws. I venture to express the hope that Congress may not adjourn again without having taken action upon