REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
Your committee, to whom has been referred that part of the report of the Executive Committee which concerns the American Indians, beg leave to report as follows:
Another event has occurred, in what may surely be termed the providence of God, to compel the attention of Christians to the condition of the Indians, and to our methods of dealing with them.
Whatever may be said of the policy of the Government, the fact is that the paroxysm into which the country is thrown at each new Indian outbreak, the perplexed uncertainty which is then manifested by our chief public officers, the conflict of orders which issue from the different departments of the Government, the passionate demands which are then made for radical changes in our policy, and the general hopelessness of permanent improvement in the condition of the Indian which that wide-spread demand indicates—these conspire to prove that, if not a fundamental change, at least a more intelligent aim is necessary in our method of dealing with these, the most perplexing of our national wards.
In the hope of furnishing a basis of discussion, and of guiding the efforts of the Association in the new problems which are arising, your committee venture to embody their suggestions in the form of a series of resolutions, which we present for adoption, if your wisdom approves them.
Resolved, That the aim of this Association shall be, as far as possible and as rapidly as possible, to secure for the Indians—
1. A legalized standing in the Courts of the United States.
2. Ownership of land in severalty.
3. The full rights of American citizenship.
These three things, we believe, are essential if the Indian is to be, not Christianized or civilized, but saved from extermination.
Resolved, That this Association most heartily indorses the plan of the Indian Bureau to secure to as many Indians as possible the advantages of education offered at such distant schools as those at Hampton and Carlisle; at the same time we believe that the system of boarding schools on the reservations, which for many years have been maintained by the Government and the missionaries, is the chief educational agency that must be relied upon for bettering the condition of the Indian.
Resolved, That to this end the members of this Association will do all in their power to make the Indian question a pressing question until the attention of Congress is so secured and held to it that the legislative enactment necessary to bring about these changes be completely accomplished.
H. A. Stimson,
A. F. Sherrill,
S. R. Riggs
Wm. Crawford,
M. B. Wilder,
Joseph Hart,
E. P. Smith.