Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1881.djvu/6

IV constant. The civilization fund, which has been devoted largely to educational purposes, will be exhausted before the end of this fiscal year if the schools already established shall be continued. The schools at Carlisle and Forest Grove are supported wholly from this fund, and a number of Indian youth of both sexes are maintained at Hampton therefrom. These schools must be abandoned unless Congress shall make provision for their support. The schools at the agencies should be cherished and strengthened. It is idle to expect any material advancement by the Indians in civilization until they have learned to speak and write our language and to labor for their living, and these things to a great extent go hand in hand. Those of middle age and over are I fear beyond our reach. We must depend mainly upon the proper training of the youth. To do this we must teach them, and to teach them will cost money. If we really mean to civilize them we must incur the expense necessary to that end. Our whole Indian policy, in my judgment, has been characterized by a parsimony which has borne the more respectable but undeserved name of economy. We have acted very much as does the man, who, burdened with a heavy debt, contents himself with paying the interest without diminishing the principal. I am satisfied that in the management of our Indian affairs we have found, as many have found in the management of their private affairs, that the policy which, for the time being, seemed the cheapest, in the end has proved the most expensive. When the Indian shall have learned to speak and write our language, to earn his own living by his own labor, to obey the law and aid in making and administering it, the Indian problem will be solved, and not until then. Money wisely applied to these ends will be well spent; money withheld from these ends will be extravagance.

Again, all the traditions of our Indians teach them that the only proper occupation for a brave is war or the chase, and hence they regard labor, manual labor, as degrading. We should not be impatient with them on that account, for while it may be curious that it should be so, it is, I fear, true that this opinion of these people standing on the confines of savagery is held by many who believe themselves to have reached the very topmost heights of civilization and refinement. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the Indian does not willingly engage in manual labor. But if he is to make upward progress—to become civilized—he must labor. The game on which he lived is gone, or so nearly gone that he cannot longer rely on it for food, and yet he must have food. The government, recognizing this situation, has undertaken to and does furnish a large portion of our Indians food and clothing, and at the same time has been endeavoring to teach them to become self-supporting by assigning to them land for cultivation, furnishing them with farming tools, horses and harness, and encouraging them to work. But two difficulties have attended this system, although it has met with considerable success. The first is that adult Indians, thoroughly grounded in the faith that labor is degrading, prefer pauperism to independence; that is,