CAUSES OF THE MISMANAGEMENT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.
REV. A. H. BRADFORD, MONTCLAIR, N. J.
In the management of Indian affairs there has been little, if any, progress since colonial days.
I. The New World was supposed to belong to its discoverers, and the Indians also, because they belonged to the land. When England transferred her colonies to the new Republic, it was without any mention of the aboriginal inhabitants, or their rights. Trees and stones could not have been more completely ignored. With the single exception of the Treaty of 1803, by which Louisiana was obtained, all the Indian population was unconditionally transferred with the land. “In our first treaty of peace with Great Britain, by which the latter yielded all claims to the country as far as the Mississippi River, not a single stipulation appears in regard to the aboriginal inhabitants, and when they were received they were considered to be in the same situation,—as far as their legal status was concerned,—as the nation by which they were surrendered had placed them.” (The Indian Question, Otis, p. 51.) What was that status? The Indians were many; the colonists were weak. The stronger compelled the weaker to treat with them as sovereign tribes. The weaker became stronger. The same method was pursued then because of jealousy of the French. Treaties were made, and what the colonists could not compel by force they accomplished by intrigue. In the wars between England, Spain and France, the aborigines held the balance of power, and thus compelled their own recognition. When the war for independence came, the same was true. Both British and colonists sought their friendship, and paid for it. Thus, in a word, grew up the recognition of the sovereignty of the tribal and national organizations. Thus commenced the atrocious policy of quietly, by treaty and gifts, removing the Indians westward, as lands were required for settlement. Since the revolution, until 1871, when the treaty system was abolished, the same general plan has been followed.
In everything else, there has been progress. In the management of our Indian affairs, we are hardly a step in advance of those who, in 1753, in forming a unity of action against the savages, organized the germ of our Union of States.
II. The Reservation system seems to have had its birth in the administration of Jefferson. The object was to make conflict impossible until the natives could be civilized by isolating them. Education was to be provided, missionaries sent, protection guaranteed until they should become new men. Did the plan succeed? It had hardly been commenced before its failure was recognized. It has been continued, and the longer it has lasted the worse it has failed.
The removal to reservations was commenced in earnest under President Jackson, who advised Congress to set apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any state or territory, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they should occupy it; each tribe having the management of its own portion of the district, and being “subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier, and between the several tribes. There the benevolent may teach, and an interesting commonwealth may be raised up, destined to perpetuate the race and attest the humanity and justice of this Government.” (Otis, p. 96.) President Van Buren was not less sanguine than President Jackson. Never were golden dreams more ruthlessly shattered. As well might our representatives have attempted to tame a herd of buffaloes by corraling them at the base of Mt. Hood, as to attempt to civilize the Indians by separating them from all civilizing influences. As well might you plant a keg of nails and expect it to come up a piano, as to seclude such wild natures on the prairies, or between mountains, and expect peace and harmony to result. The policy of removal did not benefit the Indian, and has brought but temporary relief to the country, by “the elimination of a troublesome element in society.” It has not been pursued to any great extent during the last twenty-five years, but still the massing of the Indians in two or three great reservations seems to be the ideal of our legislators, an ideal which has not a single support either in reason or experience.
Then the reservations have been such only in name. The Black Hills territory belonged to the Dakotas only a few years ago. You remember the story. Reports of mineral wealth reached the outside world. Emigration commenced. But that country had been set apart by treaty to the Dakotas. “Yet,” say Felix R. Brunot, “every step from the moment of making that peace with the Indians, has been in the direction of depriving them of the very land which the Peace Commission gave them.” Though there were wealth in the Black Hills, our nation should have said, and stood by the declaration—“Gentlemen, that Black Hills country belongs to the Indians. If those mountains were built of solid gold, and those river beds were paved with diamonds, not one of you should be allowed there, unless in honorable trade you had purchased the right.” But adventurers crowded in, and, because they had white skins, the sacred covenants of the nation were broken. What wonder that when the land was assigned them they eagerly asked, “How long will it be that the President will keep his promise?” Why should they be loyal to the Government? The Rev. Mr. Sherrill, of Omaha, writing in the Advance, says, “The commonly accepted report is, that when Commissioner Hayt visited Spotted Tail on the Upper Missouri, and attempted to misinterpret his promise to the tribe, Spot shook the written document with Mr. Hayt’s name at the foot of it in the Commissioner’s face, called him a ‘bald-headed liar,’ and walked out of the tent indignantly refusing to have anything more to do with such a forked tongue.”
The reservation system has not secured to the Indians permanent homes; it has not preserved them from molestation; it has not improved them either morally or physically; it has not relieved the Government of care or expense; from beginning to end, it has been a stupendous fraud and failure.
III. I turn now to the Indian treaty system of the United States, one of the most fearfully and wonderfully concocted systems that human stupidity ever devised. It was in operation until 1871. More than three hundred and sixty-six treaties with native tribes are recorded in the statute books since the adoption of the Constitution. If it is remembered that in many of these covenants several tribes were united, the actual number of treaties is multiplied to nearly one thousand. It would puzzle a philosopher to get at the true inwardness of this system. The fact is, that in colonial days, and almost ever since, the Indians have been treated with as if they were independent and sovereign States. As such, they were distinct from United States subjects, and could only be reached under the forms of international law. In the language of Justice McLean of the Supreme Bench, “The President and Senate, except under the treaty-making power, cannot enter into compacts with the Indians or with foreign nations.” That is plain; and if the Indians had always been treated according to that decision, there would have been less trouble. But Congress has claimed jurisdiction over them, and while the President and Senate were making treaties, has held each member of the tribes individually amenable to such laws as it might choose to enact. The Court decides that they are to be treated with as independent tribes, and Congress proceeds to manage them as a portion of our dependent population.
Two illustrations. The Wyandotte Treaty of 1855 declared the Indians of that band to be citizens of the United States. The treaty with the Pottawatomies in 1862 placed it in the power of the President to confer citizenship upon the members of that tribe. Now, if the Indians were foreigners, they could become citizens only by naturalization, according to rules prescribed by Congress. The treaties with them imply that they are foreigners; but the courts have decided that naturalization laws do not apply to them; therefore it is evident that it is competent for Congress, and no other power, to confer upon them political rights. Yet, in the instances cited, the treaty-making power assumed these rights. The Executive and Senate abandoned, at length, the process of making citizens by simple declaration. In 1866, they compelled the Delawares who wished to become citizens, to appear in the United States District Court, and take out naturalization papers the same as aliens. They first made them foreigners in order to make them citizens. But that was of doubtful legal validity. Then, to crown this wonderful achievement, it was decided that the children of those thus naturalized were still foreigners, and must choose for themselves whether they would enter the tribal relation, or seek citizenship by naturalization. A white man who could unravel this snarl would be a genius; to an Indian, it must have been transparent as the waters of the Missouri. I give this instance to illustrate the utter confusion which has characterized the administration of our Indian affairs, and the absolute impossibility for any one to be elevated by such stupidity.
My second illustration is the Indian Territory itself. A civil government exists there, subject to Congressional dictation. Yet Congress never had anything to do with it, and never authorized it. Its powers have never been defined or controlled by statute. It was a scheme of the treaty-making power of government alone. It is an organization devised between tribes, recognized as independent, and is to take cognizance of matters “relating to the intercourse and relations of the Indian tribes and nations resident in said territory and represented, but can pass no act inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, the laws of Congress, or existing treaties; or any act affecting the tribal organizations, laws, or usages.” Each tribe is independent of this so-called legislature in all its own affairs. Each tribe has its own laws; and its own courts, both civil and criminal, are the last resort; and by treaty, Congress is denied the right to interfere with, or annul, their present tribal organizations, rights, laws, privileges and customs. Thus, if an Indian commits murder in his own tribe, he can be brought to justice only by his own tribe. “The non-treaty Indians can freely rob, murder, trade with each other, without incurring responsibility to United States authority.” (Otis, page 115.) If a white man joins an Indian tribe and commits murder, who tries him, the United States courts or the tribal? Exactly that issue has arisen. A United States marshal was condemned because he attempted to take forcible possession of a United States citizen, who was also a citizen of the Cherokee nation, and who was accused of the murder of a Cherokee squaw. Other inconsistencies might be enumerated. Treaties have guaranteed privileges that only Congress had the right to grant. When the United States court comes in conflict with the treaty, then confusion and bloodshed follow, and the absurd clumsiness of official action is hidden beneath the cry of shocking cruelties by Indians, when they are only defending rights guaranteed by solemn covenant.
Two other facts may be barely mentioned. Treaties have been repeatedly solemnized which both parties knew perfectly well could not be kept; as in the case of the covenant with the Mississippi and other bands of Chippewas in 1855, when the treaty included a thousand little details of moral conduct; or the treaties of 1855 and 1865 with the Indians of Oregon and Washington Territory, where all sacredly promised to take a temperance pledge.
The other fact is that, when Congress has ratified Indian treaties, the prerogative has been repeatedly asserted of changing the treaty without consultation with the Indians. In the Cheyenne Treaty of 1861, the Senate struck out article eleven, one of the most important articles, and then held the tribe to the treaty as it chose to amend it.
IV. Two changes must be wrought in our Government before these wrongs can be permanently righted.
1. The people must be aroused. In 1862, Secretary Stanton said to a committee who went to him demanding justice for the Indians: “If you come to Washington to tell us that our Indian system is a sink of iniquity, and a disgrace to the nation, we all know it. This Government never reforms an evil until the people demand it. When the hearts of the people are touched, these evils will be reformed, and the Indians will be saved.” When the people demand justice to the Indian, and officers know that swift retribution will be meted to those who longer trifle with his interests, Indian Commissioners will no longer dare to condone corruption, and Interior Secretaries will cease to stand in the way of righteousness.
2. There must be a reform in our system of civil service. In British Columbia, for the last hundred years, there has been spent not one dollar for Indian wars, and not one life has been lost. In the United States, thousands of lives have been lost, and more than $500,000,000 expended. What do these facts signify? That in British Columbia they have had able and honest men in the civil service; and in this Republic, imbecile and corrupt men. Contrast parts of the two systems. With us the Indians are under the control of the Secretary of the Interior, and the Indian Department is but one of numerous important and complex departments under the supervision of that officer—each one enough to tax to the full the ability of a trained statesman. With us, the Indian Department must take its chances with others, and he who ought to give it his entire attention is “Jack-of-all-trades and master of none.” In British Columbia, the Minister of the Interior is the actual superintendent of Indian affairs, and directly responsible for them as the most important part of his official duties. With us, in our Indian, as in our civil, service, which is as vicious as any system can be, officers are continued only during party supremacy.
In the Dominion, officers are continued for life or good behavior, with the obvious benefit, in matters requiring special skill and experience, produced by a civil service well established, on a correct system of selection, which with us has only recently been attempted.
The trouble with us has been, we have not chosen our best men to do our most difficult work. We have had two vast problems to solve in our history—the problem of Reconstruction and this Indian problem. “In both cases, where France, England, Russia, would have used the flower of their educated youth, their most honored soldiers, their wisest lawyers and scientific men, we collected a large horde of broken-down men of all trades and callings, and men of none, the riff-raff of caucuses and nominating conventions, in fact, the very refuse of our busy and prosperous society,” and gave to them to solve, the most difficult and delicate questions of public policy which statesmen have ever faced on this continent. The failure was inevitable in the one case as in the other.
V. In the light of the experience of the last century, I think we may safely make the following affirmations.
All tribal distinctions ought, as soon as possible, to be abolished by the Government, and the Indian treated the same as any other man.
The Reservation system should be given up, and Indians be allowed to go and come whenever and wherever they may choose. Land should be allotted in severalty. If the Indian has a hard time, the discipline will probably educate him.
Education should be compulsory, and for a reasonable time, under patronage of the Government.
All the rights and penalties of citizenship should be accorded to the Indian, as to the Italian, Irishman, and Negro.
The Indian should understand that this is a final settlement of his case, and that now he must shift for himself as other citizens have to do. With justice, and the protection and penalties of law awarded to him, let the Indian take his chances in the struggle of life. The germ of civilization is obedience to law. Put him under state and national law. The fittest will probably survive, Darwin or no Darwin.
So much for the Government. Then let Christianity, through its voluntary agencies, do the rest, as it well knows how to do, and is so grandly doing through the American Missionary Association. There are difficulties attending the execution of these suggestions. This consideration would require time that I have not at my disposal. They are not insuperable to a wise statesmanship.
When Dr. Riggs was visiting and preaching in the Indian Territory, one day there sat before him an old chief, nearly a hundred years of age, listening attentively. It was the missionary’s last sermon before leaving. When the service was over, the old man went up to Dr. Riggs, and reaching out his scrawny hand to the missionary’s snow-white beard, grasped it firmly, and turning him to the full sun-light gazed intently into his face for a long time. “What do you do that for?” at length said the Doctor. “Because I want to know you in the resurrection,” the old chief slowly replied. His people had been scattered, his children killed, his horses stolen, he had been driven from the home of his childhood to a strange land. While he waited to die, this noble old apostle, in whom Christ dwelt, crossed his pathway. The speech and tenderness were so strange, coming from a white man, that he wanted to be sure of recognizing him after death. “I want to know you in the resurrection.” How many white men will the Indians want to meet in the resurrection? It is time these awful wrongs were righted. It is time we learned with the wise fool in A Fool’s Errand, “The remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for wrong, righteousness.” It is time the people were roused. It is time a tide of public opinion, demanding justice for the Indian, was rolled in upon our rulers, too strong to be longer resisted. If the Government never reforms until the people demand it, let us be sure that we voice our part of that demand, loud and clear, at once and unmistakably.