Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/19

Rh civil and not to the military branch of the public service. The history of Indian management shows many failures and miscarriages, which patriotic citizens look back upon with keen regret; but it is a mistaken opinion that these failures and miscarriages would have been avoided had the control of Indian affairs been intrusted to another branch of the public service than that which now conducts it. The period during which the management of Indian affairs was in military hands need only be carefully studied to cure any fair-minded man of such a delusion.

Last year I set forth the fact that the normal condition of the Indians is not, as is believed by many, turbulence and hostility to the whites; that it must not be the only nor the principal object of an Indian policy merely to keep the Indians quiet, and that to keep them quiet the constant presence and pressure of force is not required; that of the 71 Indian agencies then existing, now reduced to 67, there are only 11 which have military posts in their immediate vicinity, and only 14 with a military force within one to-three days' march; that those in a state of hostility usually form but a very small percentage of the whole Indian population; that of the 250,000 Indians in the United States there have been since the pacification of the Sioux at no time more than a few hundred in hostile conflict with the whites; that such partial disturbances have not been provoked by the absence nor prevented by the presence of a military force; that of the four disturbances which occurred within the last three years three broke out in the immediate presence of such a military force, and only one without it; that a very large majority of Indian reservations are in a condition of uninterrupted quiet without the presence of a soldier; that the more civilized an Indian tribe becomes, the more certainly can its peaceable and orderly conduct be depended upon, and that the progress of civilization and the maintenance of peace among the Indians have always gone hand in hand. I am by no means unmindful of the difficulties connected with the management of the Indians by civil officers, which difficulties consist partly in finding men peculiarly qualified for so delicate a task, and in maintaining the integrity and working efficiency of the service. These difficulties, formidable as they may appear, can be and have been in a great measure overcome by constant watchfulness and careful direction. Complaints that the Indians do not obtain the goods appropriated for by Congress, or obtain them only in inferior quality, are disappearing. Cases of peculation and gross misconduct on the part of Indian agents have become exceedingly rare, so much so that even the reports of military officers who had been the most watchful, ever ready and willing critics of the Indian service while in the hands of civilians, have become almost entirely silent upon this subject as to the present management. I do not see any reason why this condition of things cannot be maintained in the future by the application of the same means, and why the same pride of calling which inspires other branches of the service should not be kept alive among the officials of the Indian Department. That the service is not perfect, as, perhaps, no
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