CHAPTER VII.
AN INDIAN RESERVATION.
A part of Round Valley, in Mendocino County, is set apart and used for an Indian reservation; and, under the present policy of the Government, an attempt has been made to gather and keep all the Indians of the northern coast of California upon this reserve. In point of fact they are not nearly all there. One thousand and eighty-one men, women, and children, according to a census recently taken, or nearly one thousand two hundred according to the Rev. Mr. Burchard, the Indian agent, are actually within the reservation lines; and about four hundred are absent, at work for themselves or for white men, but have the right to come in at any time to be clothed and fed.
Round Valley is a plain surrounded by high mountains. The plain is mostly excellent agricultural land; the mountain slopes are valuable for grazing. The reservation contains, it is said, sixty thousand acres; but only a small part of this is plain, and the reservation occupies about one-third or perhaps only a quarter of the whole valley. The remainder is held by white farmers; and there is a rude little town, Covelo, in the centre of the valley, about a mile and a half from the reservation house.
The reservation has a mill, store-houses, the houses of the agent and his subordinates, two school-houses, and the huts of the Indians; the latter are either rough board one-roomed shanties, or mere wigwams built by the owners of brush, with peculiar low entrances, into which you must creep on all-fours. These they prefer for summer use, and I found that a number of the board-shanties were empty and the doors nailed up, their owners sensibly preferring to live in brush houses during the hot weather.
When I arrived at the agency the Indians were receiving their ration of flour, and, as they gathered in a great court-yard, I had an opportunity to examine them. They are short, dark-skinned, generally ugly, stout, and were dressed in various styles, but always in such clothing as they get from the Government; not in their native costume. Among several hundred women I saw not one even tolerably comely or conspicuously clean or neat; but I saw several men very well dressed. They carried off their rations in baskets which they make, and which are water-tight. The agent or superintendent, Mr. Burchard, very obligingly showed me through the camp, and answered my questions, and what follows of information I gained in this way.
The Indian shanties contain a fire-place, a bed-place, and sometimes a table; once I saw a small store-room; and on the walls hung dresses, shoes, fishing-nets, and other property of the occupants. The agent pointed out to me that in most of the houses there were bags of flour and meal stowed away, and remarked, "Whatever they may say against the President, no one can say that he does not make the Indians comfortable;" and it is true that I saw everywhere in the camp the evidence of abundant supplies of food and sufficient clothing in the possession of the Indians. The superintendent said to me, "They have plenty of every thing; they have often several bags of flour in the house at once; no man can say they are wronged."
The earthen floors of the houses were usually cleanly swept; there are wells at which the people get water; the school-houses are well furnished, and as good as the average country-school, and the Indians seem to suffer no hardship of the merely physical kind. The agent, Mr. Burchard, seems to be a genuinely kind person, simple-hearted, and, I should think, honest; and his assistants, whom I saw, struck me as respectable men. Indeed, several persons in the valley, unconnected with the reservation, told me that under Mr. Burchard's rule the Indians were much better treated than by his predecessor. I suppose, therefore, that I saw one of the most favorable examples of the reservation system.
In what follows, then, I criticise the reservation system, so far, at least, as it applies to the Indians of California, and not the management at Round Valley; and I say that it is a piece of cruel and stupid mismanagement and waste for which there is no excuse except in the ignorance of the President who continues it.
Most of the Indians of these northern coast counties, as well as those of Southern California, have for some years been a valuable laboring force for the farmers. They were employed to clear land, to make hay, and in many other avocations about the farm; they lived usually in little rancherias, or collections of huts, near the farm-houses; the women washed and did chores for the whites about the houses; and there has been, for at least half a dozen years, no pretense even that their presence among the whites was dangerous to these. Mr. Burchard told me himself that more than half the Indian men at Round Valley were competent farmers, and that the Indian women were used at the agency houses as servants, and made excellent and competent house-help.
Scattered through Potter, Little Lake, Ukiah, and other valleys, they were earning their living, and a number of farmers of that region have assured me that it was a serious disadvantage to them to lose the help of these Indians. Nor was it even necessary to speak their language in order to use their labor, for the agent told me that, of the Potter Valley tribe, nine-tenths speak English; of the Pitt Rivers, four-fifths; of the Little Lakes, two-thirds; of the Redwoods, three-quarters; of the Concows and Capellos, two-thirds. The Wylackies and Ukies speak less; they have been, I believe, longer on the reservation. As I walked through the Indian camp, English was as often spoken in my hearing as Indian.
The removal of the useful and self-supporting part of the Indian population to the reservation was brought about by means which are a disgrace to the United States Government. There is in all this northern country a class of mean whites, ignorant, easily led to evil, and extremely jealous of what they imagine to be their rights. Among these somebody fomented a jealousy of the Indians. It was said that they took the bread out of white men's mouths, that their labor interfered with the white men, and so forth. In fact, I suspect that the Indians were too respectable for these mean whites; and you can easily find people in California who say that it is to the interest of the Indian Bureau to make the whites hate the Indians.
The Indians were an industrious and harmless people; even the squaws worked; the Indian men had learned to take contracts for clearing land, weeding fields, and so forth; and many of them were so trustworthy that the farmers made them small advances where it was necessary. They were not turbulent, and I was surprised to be told that drunkenness was rare among them.
After secret deliberations among the mean whites, incited by no one knows who, and headed by the demagogues who are never found wanting when dirty work is to be done, a petition was sent to the State Superintendent of Indian Affairs at San Francisco for the removal of the Indians; but the more decent people immediately prepared and sent up a counter-petition, stating the whole case. This was in the spring of 1872.
I do not know the State Indian agent, but I am told that he hesitated, did not act, and, in May of the same year, a mob, without authority from him or from any body else, without notice to the Indians, and without even giving these poor creatures time to gather up their household goods or to arrange their little affairs, drove them out of their houses, and sixty miles, over a cruel road, to the reservation.
Against this act of lawless violence toward peaceable and self-supporting men and women, who are, I notice, officially called "the nation's unfortunate wards," the proper officer of the United States Government, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, did not protest, and for it no one has ever been punished.
But this was not all. The Indians being thus driven out, a meeting was called, at which it was announced that if they dared to return they would be killed; and, in fact, three unfortunates, who ventured back after some months to see their old homes, were shot down in cold blood; and, though the men are known who did this, for it no one has ever been punished. Why should they be? The mob was only carrying out the prevailing "Indian policy," and the United States Government looked on with its hands folded.
It happens that the Indians of these little valleys are a mild race, not prone to war. When the white settlers first came to this region they lived unmolested by the Indians, who were numerous then, and might easily have "wiped out," to use a California phrase, the intruding white men. It happens that the Indians of the interior are braver and more warlike; and, accordingly, among them there were forty-five resolute Modocs, unwilling to be driven to a reservation, defying the United States for half a year. But from what I have written one can see how the Modoc war came about; for it arose from an attempt to force Captain Jack on to the Klamath Reservation—an attempt made, not by United States troops, as it ought to have been if it was to be done, but in their absence, and by men who purposely and carefully kept the military ignorant of what they intended to do; for there exists the utmost jealousy on the part of the Indian agents, of the War Department and the military authorities; and I repeat that the removal of the Modocs was planned and attempted to be carried out by the Indian Bureau officers, they keeping the military in careful ignorance of their designs.
I do not say too much when I say that if General Schofield had been informed and consulted beforehand, there would have been no Modoc war, and General Canby and Mr. Thomas might have been alive to-day.
Accordingly, these "unfortunate wards of the nation" are driven on the reservation. If their agent happens to be honest and kindly, like Mr. Burchard, they get enough to eat and to wear. If he is not, they do not fare quite so well. Captain Jack said he was "tired of eating horse-meat."
But if you are a guardian, and have a ward, you are not satisfied if your ward, presumedly an ignorant person in a state of pupilage, merely has enough to eat and to wear. You endeavor to form his manners and morals. Well, the Indian camp at Round Valley is in a deplorable state of disorder. No attempt is made to teach our wards to be clean or orderly, or to form in them those habits which might elevate, at least, their children. The plain around the shanties is full of litter, and overgrown with dog-fennel. As Mr. Burchard, the superintendent, walked about with me, half-grown boys sat on the grass, and even on the school-house steps, gambling with cards for tobacco, and they had not been taught manners enough to rise or move aside at the superintendent's approach. As we sat in the school-house, one, two, three Indian men came in to prefer a request, but not one of them took off his hat. We entered a cabin and found a big he-Indian lying on his bed. "Are you sick?" inquired Mr. Burchard, and the lazy hound, without offering to rise, muttered "No; me lying down."
The agent, in reply to my questions, said that they gambled a good deal for money and beads during the week, but he had forbidden it on Sundays; and he would not allow them to gamble away their clothing, as they formerly did.
There are about eighty scholars on the school-list, and about fifty attend school. Was there any compulsion used? I asked, and he said No. Now surely here, if anywhere, one might begin with a compulsory school-law.
Did he attempt to regulate the conduct of the growing boys and girls? No.
Do the Indians marry on the reservation? No. One chief has two wives; men leave their wives, or change them as they please.
What if children are born irregularly? Well, the reservation feeds and supports all who are on it. Nobody suffers.
Are the women often diseased? Yes, nearly all of them.
Have you a hospital, or do you attempt to isolate those who are diseased? No; the families all take care of their sick. The doctor visits them in their shanties. (Bear in mind this reservation was established, and has had Indians on it since 1860.)
Do the Indians have to ask permission to go to the town? No; they go when they please.
Is there much drunkenness? No; singularly little.
Do you attempt to make them rise at any specified hour in the morning? No.
Have you a list or roster of the Indians who belong on the reservation? No.
How many Indians own horses? I do not know.
On Sunday there is preaching; the audience varies; and those who do not come to church—where the preaching is in English—play shinny.
Is not all this deplorable? Here is a company of ignorant and semi-barbarous people, forcibly gathered together by the United States Government (with the help of a mob), under the pretense that they are the "unfortunate wards of the nation;" and the Government does not require the officers it sets over them to control them in any single direction where a conscientious guardian would feel bound to control his ward. How can habits of decency, energy, order, thrift, virtue, grow up—nay, how can they continue, if in the beginning they existed, with such management? Captain Jack and his forty-five Modocs were at least brave and energetic men. Can any one blame them, if they were bored to desperation by such a life as this, and preferred death to remaining on the reservation?
Nor is this all. Of the two thousand acres of arable land on the reservation, about five hundred are kept for grazing, and one thousand acres are in actual cultivation this year—seven hundred in grain and hay, one hundred and ninety-five in corn, and one hundred and nine in vegetables. A farmer, assistant-farmer, and gardener manage this considerable piece of land. When they need laborers they detail such men or women as they require, and these go out to work. They seldom refuse; if they do, they are sent to the military post, where they are made to saw wood. Not one of the cabins has about it a garden spot; all cultivation is in common; and thus the Indian is deprived of the main incentive to industry and thrift—the possession of the actual fruits of his own toil; and, unless he were a deep-thinking philosopher, who had studied out for himself the problems of socialism, he must, in the nature of things, be made a confirmed pauper and shirk by such a system, in which he sees no direct reward for his toil, and neither receives wages nor consciously eats that which his own hands have planted.
In the whole system of management, as I have described it, you will see that there is no reward for, or incentive to, excellence; it is all debauching and demoralizing; it is a disgrace to the Government, which consents to maintain at the public cost what is, in fact, nothing else but a pauper shop and house of prostitution.
And what is true of this reservation is equally true of that on the Tule River, in Southern California, which I saw in 1872. In both, to sum up the story, the Government has deprived the farmers of an important laboring force by creating a pauper asylum, called a reservation; and, having thus injured the community, it further injures the Indian by a system of treatment which ingeniously takes away every incentive to better living, and abstains from controlling him on those very points wherein an upright guardian would most rigidly and faithfully control and guide his ward.
To force a population of laboring and peaceable Indians on a reservation is a monstrous blunder. For wild and predatory or unsettled Indians, like the Apaches, or many tribes of the plains, the reservation is doubtless the best place; but even then the Government, acting as guardian, ought to control and train its wards; it ought to treat them like children, or at least like beasts; it ought not only to feed and clothe them, but also to teach them, and enforce upon them order, neatness, good manners, and habits of discipline and steady labor. This seems plain enough, but it will never be done by "Indian agents," selected from civil life, be these ministers or laymen.
An army officer, methodical, orderly, and having the habit of command, is the proper person for superintendent of a reservation; for drill and discipline, regular hours, regular duties, respectful manners, cleanliness, method—these are the elements of civilization that are needed, and which an army officer knows how to impress without harshness, because they are the essence of his own life. But under our present Indian policy the army is the mere servant of the Indian agent. If it were not for the small military force at Camp Wright, Mr. Burchard, the agent, could not keep an Indian on his reservation. But the intelligent, thoroughly-trained, and highly-educated soldier who commands there has neither authority nor influence at the reservation. He is a mere policeman, to whom an unruly Indian is sent for punishment, and who goes out at the command of the superintendent, a person in every way his inferior except in authority, to catch Indians when no mob is at hand to drive them in.
A true and humane Indian policy would be to require all peaceable Indians to support themselves as individuals and families among the whites, which would at once abolish the Round Valley and Tule River reservations; to place all the nomads on reservations, under the control of picked and intelligent army officers, and to require these to ignore, except for expediency's sake, all tribal distinctions and the authority of chiefs; to form every reservation into a military camp, adopting and maintaining military discipline, though not the drill, of course; to give to every Indian family an acre of ground around its hut, and require it to cultivate that, demanding of the male Indians at the same time two or three days of labor every week in the common fields, or on roads and other public improvements within the reservation during the season when no agricultural labor is required; to curb their vices, as a parent would those of his children; to compel the young to attend schools; to insist upon a daily morning muster, and a daily inspection of the houses and grounds; to establish a hospital for the sick; and thus gradually to introduce the Indian to civilization by the only avenue open to savages—by military discipline.
Under such a system a reserve like that of Round Valley would not to-day, after thirteen years of occupation, be a mass of weeds and litter, with bad roads, poor fences, and an almost impassable corduroy bridge over a little ditch. On the contrary, in half the time it would be a model of cleanliness and order; it would have the best roads, the neatest cottages, the cleanest grounds, the most thorough culture; and when the Indians had produced this effect, they would not fail to be in love with it.
Nor is it impossible to do all this with Indians. But it needs men used to command, well educated, and with habits of discipline—the picked men of the army. At present, an Indian reservation differs from an Indian rancheria or village only in that it contains more food, more vice, and more lazy people.
