Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/17

Rh schools at Carlisle and Forest Grove, may be said to have been very effective in this direction. When, in addition to all this, the bill advocated by this department to allot lands among the Indians in severalty, and to confer upon them individual title in fee simple, inalienable for a certain period, shall have been made a law, and that law shall have been applied among all the Indian tribes, which, in my opinion, it can be in a few years, and the rights of the Indians are accorded equal protection in the courts of the country with those of white men, then it may be said that all essential measures will have been taken to solve the Indian problem, and the time may be confidently looked for when the Indian population may be merged in the great body of American citizenship. We are on the straight road to that solution and nearer to its accomplishment than is generally supposed. It is essential, however, that the policy here set forth should be carefully protected against hostile interferences and guarded against ill-advised precipitancy.

The management of Indian affairs has to deal with two distinct currents of sentiment in this country. The one is that Indians will not work; that to recognize any rights of the Indians is a wrong to the white people; that to secure them in the possession of lands, whatever title they may have to them, is an obstruction to the progress of the country, by depriving whites of the lands they ought to have for their use; and that the only proper thing to do is to get the Indians out of the way altogether. This theory, I regret to say, is most strongly upheld in that part of the country which is inhabited by most of the Indians themselves. The pressure of the white population upon Indian reservations, animated with this spirit, has, in fact, been the principal source of our Indian troubles. It is scarcely necessary to point out to fair-minded men the injustice and inhumanity of such principles, or to show to those who have the experience of the past before their eyes that to act upon those principles would not only be a great wrong to the race which was the original occupant of this continent, but must also lead to most costly and disastrous conflicts with them. The other current of opinion is that the Indians, even as they now are, must at once be relieved of all restraints to which white people are not subjected, and must, without further preparation, be accorded the enjoyment and exercise of all the rights which the civilized citizens of this country enjoy and exercise. This view is entertained and advocated most warmly in that part of the country which is farthest removed from the ground upon which the Indian problem has to be solved. While this will certainly be the ultimate end of a wise policy, and should be applied to all who are capable of intelligently exercising and enjoying such rights, it must be admitted that the number of Indians fitted for their intelligent enjoyment and exercise, and, in fact, even for an intelligent understanding and appreciation of them, is still comparatively small, and that to throw the uncivilized red man, such as he now is, into the struggles and competitions of life with his white neighbor, without sufficient preparation and active