It was thus that the annuity system came into extensive vogue among the tribes of the upper Missouri. It probably gave rise to more abuses than any other one thing in the conduct of Indian affairs. The temptations for fraud were as great as the opportunities for its commission were numerous and excellent, and it required more than average public virtue to resist them. The Indian could not go to the market and help select his goods; he had no hand in awarding the contracts for their transportation to his country; nor any means of seeing that he received what he was entitled to. His only function was to accept what the agent saw fit to give him. During the Civil War, when the currency depreciated to such an enormous extent, the annuities shrank in quantity as prices went up, and the Indian was a heavy loser from causes that he could not comprehend. The annuities were always sent up the river in the boats of the traders, generally in those of the American Fur Company. The agents were given no escort and no separate residence or warehouse, and were compelled to throw themselves upon the hospitality of the traders. In this way the annuity goods became mixed with those of the traders, and the Indian paid in furs for what he was entitled to as a free gift. This abuse was a grave one and very difficult to correct, for all that the Department required in evidence of the delivery was the signature of the chiefs, witnessed in the usual manner. It is easy to see how wide open the door was in this business for the commission of almost unlimited fraud.[67]
ANNUITY SYSTEM.
It is doubtful if, during the period from 1850 to 1870, the Indian tribes along the Missouri River received more than half the bounty which was promised them by the government.
A CORRUPT ATMOSPHERE.
In the early days of the Republic the conduct of Indian affairs was in the hands of the military authorities, and it has always been a mooted question whether it ought not to have remained there. The verdict of history will undoubtedly be that it should. The spoils system came into absolute control of the agencies, and fitness and experience received scant consideration. There was more or less friction between the agents and the military, for the latter always had to be called in when the former could no longer control their flocks. But the greatest defect of the system was the total absence of anything like a fixed and recognized procedure. The annual reports of the agents show how utterly lacking in all the elements of practical business was their haphazard management. Every new agent felt called upon, as a necessary preliminary to his own work, to criticise the conduct of his predecessor. He put forth new schemes and tried new experiments, until finally he himself made way for a successor who in turn deplored the failures of those who had gone before him.
Probably the majority of the agents were men of average integrity, but there were many who sought the business solely for “what there was in it.” The whole atmosphere of the Indian trade was so against an honest conduct of the business that an agent who should undertake to enforce strict integrity in his official work was regarded as a fit subject for an asylum of the feeble-minded. At one time the experiment was tried of appointing only clergymen to the agencies. But the scheme was a visionary one. What these agents made up in honesty they lacked in experience, and were pliant tools in the hands of the shrewd trader. Their saintly character, moreover, was not always a sure panoply against the attacks of worldly temptation. To more than one of them, in the words of Captain La Barge, “a dollar looked bigger than a cart wheel,” and they, like the rest, learned how to connive at the crookedness of the traders. But whatever their virtues or intentions, they were powerless to accomplish any good work. The fault was in the system, which was inherently vicious, and mere honesty in the individual could not eliminate its defects.
THE SYSTEM AT FAULT.
The actual results of the treaty-annuity-agency system in the conduct of Indian affairs are now matters of history. No treaty that it was possible to devise could stand. The encroachment of settlement continually increased. It led to resistance on the part of the Indians, and resistance to chastisement and to new treaties, and these invariably to loss of territory and abridgment of rights. At last it led to war, and the final transition of nearly all the tribes to their present situation was accompanied by scenes of blood.
It is not possible to follow here the intricate pathway of the treaty system through the quarter century after 1850, for it is a long story. There were treaty after treaty, commission after commission, and a constant exercise of its best offices on the part of the government to reach some satisfactory result; but in vain. The life of a people, like that of an individual, cannot be extinguished without a struggle. Whether in this case the inevitable struggle was intensified by the procrastinating policy of the government may be an open question. It probably was, for it was preceded by years of bad faith, broken pledges, and cruel wrongs, until the hearts of this unhappy people were embittered, and they drew the sword in a spirit of hatred and revenge.
THE INDIAN AND THE STEAMBOAT.