APPENDIX TO CHAPTER SIX.
Oneatta, Yaquina Bay Agency, October 1, 1871.
Sir:—I have the honor of submitting this my eighth and last annual report of the affairs of Siletz agency.
I closed my term of service as agent on the 1st day of May, 1871, at which time, as you are already aware, I turned over the agency to my successor, Hon. Joel Palmer. Since then I have been busily engaged in making up my final papers. This task, I regret to say, is not yet entirely finished. The delay has been owing to some irregularities, occasioned by a change of employés, and to other causes over which I have had no control. I shall now, however, push the work forward with all possible dispatch, and shall soon have my papers fully completed. I ask, for that purpose, your indulgence, and that of the department, for a short time.
I presume it will hardly be expected that I should at this time enter into the usual details concerning the affairs of the agency. All the important facts which have not been communicated to the department by myself heretofore will, undoubtedly, be embodied in the first annual report of my successor. He will find it convenient, if not necessary, in introducing himself officially to the department, to give some sort of a summary of the condition of the affairs of the agency at the time he took charge. I feel, therefore, that it would be altogether a work of supererogation for me to go over that ground in detail. As this is my last report, after a somewhat protracted term of service in charge of Siletz agency, I think it not inappropriate that I should present here a few statements of facts in the history of the dealings of the Government with these Indians, in order to show some of the difficulties with which I have had to struggle. I shall also presume somewhat upon your indulgence by offering some suggestions, prompted by my own
experience, concerning the future management of the Indians over whom I have so long had control.
I have had charge of Siletz agency for eight years, and in that time have had to encounter many stubborn obstacles to the successful management of its concerns. I think, too, that I may say, without vanity, that I have overcome many such obstacles. It is not an easy matter, even under the most favorable circumstances and with all possible helps, to conduct successfully the affairs of an Indian agency. To a race accustomed, as the Indians have been, to the licentious freedom of the savage state, the restraints and dull routine of a reservation are almost intolerably irksome. It is not wonderful, therefore, that they should be often fractious and impatient of control, or that, even when reduced to complete submission to the regulations imposed upon them, they should, in many instances, become sullen and unteachable. To manage such a people in such a condition with any degree of success requires unceasing, anxious labor. Yet this is the duty imposed upon almost every Indian agent in the United States. But in addition to these difficulties, which are incident to Indian management everywhere, there are some which are peculiar to Siletz agency. There are at this agency some fourteen tribes and parts of tribes of Indians, numbering, in the aggregate, at the time I took charge, about 2,000. Separate treaties were made with all of these different tribes in 1855, at the conclusion of what is known as the “Rogue-river War,” in Southern Oregon. Some of these treaties have been, in part, confirmed and complied with by the United States Government, but most of them have been entirely and persistently disregarded. In expectation, however, of the immediate ratification of all the stipulations entered into, the Indians were all removed from their lands in the Rogue-river country to Siletz reservation at the close of the war above referred to. Here they have been kept ever since as prisoners of war, supported by a removal and subsistence fund, appropriations for which, varying from $10,000 to $30,000, have been annually made by Congress. For sixteen years this scant, irregular, and uncertain charity, doled out to them from time to time, has been the only evidence they have received that they were not utterly forgotten by the Government. For sixteen years they have been fed upon promises that were made only to be broken, and their
hearts have sickened with “hope deferred.” For sixteen years they have seen the white man gathering in annually his golden harvests from the lands which they surrendered; and for all those sixteen long, weary years they have waited, and waited in vain, for the fulfilment of the solemn pledges with which the white man bought those lands. What wonder is it that, suspicious and distrustful as they are by nature, they should, under such tuition, cease to have any faith in the white man’s word, or to heed his solemn preachments about education and civilization? Who can blame them if, after such an experience, they come to regard the whole white race, from the Great Father down, as a race of liars and cheats, using their superior knowledge to defraud the poor Indian? And is it amazing that, with such an eminent example before them, they should grow treacherous and deceitful as they grow in knowledge; or that they should use every possible exertion to escape from the restraints which, as they believe, the white man has imposed upon them only for the purpose of defrauding them? In my judgment it is safe to assert that by far the greater part of their restiveness and indocility is justly attributable to this cause. I am fully satisfied that it has more than doubled the difficulty of controlling and managing them for the past eight years. So thoroughly have I appreciated this fact, that I have again and again urged, in my annual reports, the necessity of entering into treaties with the Indians at this agency who are not now parties to any stipulations. Feeling as I do that the neglect with which these Indians have been treated in this particular has been most unwise as well as grossly unjust, I cannot permit this last opportunity of expressing myself officially on the subject to pass without again earnestly urging a speedy correction of this grievous error and wrong.
Notwithstanding the many embarrassments with which I have had to contend in the management of the affairs of this agency, I am fully satisfied that no Indians on this coast have made any more rapid advancement than those under my charge, in industry and civilization. When I entered upon the discharge of my duties as agent, eight years ago, I found the Indians in almost a wild state, kept together and controlled by military force. This condition of things rapidly disappeared; and for the past four or five years I have succeeded in keeping the Indians generally upon the