are shame children.—Some white men take care of their children.—It makes my heart sick.—I do not want these things.—Indian is an Indian—we do not want any more shame children. A white man that would take an Indian squaw is no better than we are.
“Our women go to the fort—they make us feel sick—they get goods—sometimes greenbacks.—We do not want them to go there—we want the store here at the agency; then our women will not go to the fort.... Last Sunday some soldiers went to Pompey’s—they talked bad to the women.—We do not want soldiers among our women.—Can you stop this? Our women make us ashamed.—We may have done wrong—give us strong law.”...
Joe Hood (Indian), at a talk seven days after, said: “Meacham came here. Parker told him to come. He brought a strong law. It is a ‘new soap,’ it washed my heart all clean but a little place about as big as my thumb-nail. Caroline’s (his wife) heart may not all be white yet. If it was, my own would be white like snow. Parker’s law has made us just like we were new married. I told these Indians that the law is like strong soap; it makes all clean. I do not want but one wife any more.”...
Allen David said: “You say we are looking into a camp-fire; that we can find moonlight. You say there is a road that goes toward sunrise. Show me that stone road. I am now on the stone road. I will follow you to the top of the mountain. You tell me come on. I can see you now. My feet are on the road. I will not leave it. I tell my people follow me, and I will stay in the stone road.”...
I have given you a few extracts, that you may judge from their own mouths whether they can
become civilized. If Lindsay Applegate, and his sons, J. D. and Oliver, could take wild savage Indians, and, against so much opposition, in the short space of four years bring them to this state, I know they can be civilized. If good men are appointed to lead and teach them,—not books alone, but civilization, with all that civilization means,—men whose hearts are in the work, and who realize that, as soon as duties devolve on them, great responsibility attaches; men who have courage to stand squarely between these people and the villains that hang around reservations from the lowest motives imaginable; men paid fair salaries for doing duty; that will not civilize the people by “mixing blood;” married men of character who will practise what they preach, and who can live without smuggling whiskey on to the Reservation; ten years from to-day may find this superintendency self-supporting, and offering to the world seven thousand citizens.
I am conscious that this is strong talk, but it is surely true. I have not overdrawn this side of the case; nor will I attempt to show what has been done, or will be done, with superintendents, agents, and employés in charge placed there as a reward for political service.
The past tells the story too plainly to be misapprehended. While I am responsible for the advancement of these people, I beg to state my views and make known the result of observation and experience. As a subordinate officer of the Government, I expect to have my official acts scrutinized closely. I respectfully ask that I may be furnished the funds to keep faith with a people so little understood,—people so much like children that when they are
promised a saw-mill they go to work cutting logs, only to see them decayed before the mill is begun, but with logic enough to say, “When you have got us the things you promised, then you may blame us if we don’t do right.”
I have now no longer any doubts about President Grant’s “Quaker Policy,” if it is applied to Indians once subjugated. These people have mind, soul, heart, affection, passion, and impulses, and great ambition to become like white men. There are more or less men in each reservation who are already superior to many of the white men around them. At Klamath they are now working under civil law of trial by jury,—with judge, sheriff, civil marriage, divorce; in fact, are fast assuming the habiliments of citizenship.