Since the time when the United States gained actual possession of a larger part of the continent, a systematic Indian policy has been pursued, although administered largely, it must be admitted, in the American interests, and yet with considerable consideration of the natural inclinations of these hunting peoples. In various states, territories were set apart for them, which were certainly more than adequate to afford their sustenance; schools were built, and even institutions of higher learning; and through solemn treaties with their chiefs important rights were assigned to different races. To be sure, the main idea has always been to persuade the Indians to take up agricultural pursuits; to live merely by hunting flesh and eating wild fruits seemed hardly the thing at a time when millions of people were flocking westward out of Europe. Therefore, with every new treaty, the Indian reservations have been made smaller and smaller. The Indians, who would have preferred always to keep up their wild hunting life, felt, and still feel, that this has been unjust, and certainly many of their racial peculiarities have made it difficult to adapt American legal traditions fairly to their needs. The Indians had no idea of the private ownership of the soil; they considered everything as belonging to their tribe, and least of all had they any notion of the inheritance of property in the American sense. The Indian children belonged to the mother’s family and the mother never belonged to the tribe of the father.
Although all these sources of friction have led the Indian to feel unjustly treated, it is still true that there has been scarcely any actually destructive oppression. The very races which have been influenced most by American culture have developed favourably. Last year the Indian mortality was 4,728, and the number of births 4,742; the Indians are, therefore, not dying out. The largest community is in the so-called Indian Territory and consists of 86,000 people, while there are 42,000 in Arizona. The several Indian reservations together embrace 117,420 square miles.
The Indian question is the least serious problem of all those which concern population in America; by far the most difficult is the negro question. The Indian lives within certain reservations, but the negro lives everywhere side by side with the American. So also the Indian troubles are narrowly confined to a small reservation in the great field of American problems, but the negro question is met everywhere in American thought, and in connection with every American interest. There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between the Indian and the negro; the former is proud, self-contained, selfish and revengeful, passionate and courageous, keen and inventive. The negro, on the other hand, is subservient, yielding, almost childishly good natured, lazy and sensual, without energy or ambition, outwardly apt to learn, but without any spirit of invention or intellectual independence. And still one ought not to speak of these millions of people as if they were of one type. On the Gulf of Mexico there are regions where the black population lives almost wholly sunk in the superstitions of its African home; while in Harvard University a young negro student has written creditable essays on Kant and Hegel. And between these opposite poles exists a population of about nine millions.
The negro population of America does not increase quite so rapidly as the white, and yet in forty years it has increased two-fold. In the year 1860, before the slaves were freed, there were 4,441,000 blacks; in 1870, 4,880,000; in 1880, 6,580,000; in 1890, 7,470,000; in 1900, 8,803,000. In view of this considerable increase of the negro, it is not to be expected that the problem will lose anything of its urgency by the more rapid growth of the white population. And at the same time the physical contrast between the races is in no wise decreasing, because there is no mixing of the white and black races to-day, as there very frequently was before the war. It will not be long before the coloured population will be twice the entire population which Canada to-day has. These people are distributed geographically, so that much the largest part lives in those states which before the war practised slavery. To be sure, an appreciable part has wandered into the northern states, and the poorer quarters of the large cities are well infiltrated with blacks. Four-fifths, however, still remain in the South, owing probably to climatic conditions; the negro race thrives better in a warm climate. But it belongs there economically also, and has nearly every reason for staying there in future.
Nevertheless, the negro question is by no means a problem for the South alone; the North has its interests, and it becomes clearer all the time that the solution of the problem will depend in large part on the co-operation of the North. In the first place it was the North which set the negro free, and which, therefore, is partly responsible for what he is to-day; and it must lie with the North to decide whether the great dangers which to-day threaten can in any way be obviated. Europe has so far considered only one feature of the negro question—that of slavery. All Europe read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and thought the difficulty solved as soon as the negro was freed from his chains and the poorest negro came into his human right of freedom. Europe was not aware that in this *wise still greater problems were created, and that greater springs of misery and misfortune for the negro there took their origin. Nor does Europe realize that opposition between whites and blacks has never been in the history of America so sharp and bitter and full of hatred as it is to-day. Just in the last few years the hatred has grown on both sides, so that no friend of the country can look into the future without misgivings. “Das eben ist die Frucht der bösen Tat.”
Yet where did the sin begin? Shall the blame fall on the English Parliament, which countenanced and even encouraged the trade in human bodies, or shall it fall on the Southern States, which kept the slaves in ignorance, and even threatened to punish any one who should instruct them? Or shall it fall on the Northern States, which were chiefly responsible for immediately granting to the freedmen, for the sake of party politics, all prerogatives of fellow-citizenship? Or shall the fault be put on the negro himself, who saw in his freedom from slavery an open door to idleness and worthlessness?
For generations the white man has regarded the black man as merchandise, has forcibly dragged him from his African jungles to make him work in ignorance and oppression on the cotton, rice, and tobacco fields of a white master. Then all at once he was made free and became an equal citizen in a country which, in its abilities, its feelings, its laws, and its Constitution, had the culture of two thousand years behind it. How has this emancipation worked on these millions? The first decade was a period of unrest and of almost frightened awakening to the consciousness of physical freedom, in the midst of all the after-effects of the fearful war. The negro was terrified by Southern secret societies which were planning vengeance, and confused by the dogmas of unscrupulous politicians who canvassed the states which had been so savagely shaken by the war, in order to gather up whatever might be found; and he was confused by a thousand other contradictions in public sentiment. Nowhere was there a secure refuge. Then followed the time in which the negroes hoped to employ their political power to advantage; the negroes were to be prospered by their ballot. But they found this to be a hopeless mistake. Then they believed a better way was to be found in the public schools and books. But the negro was again turned back; he needed not knowledge but the power to do, not books but a trade. So his rallying-cry has shifted. The blacks have never lost heart, and in a certain sense it must in justice be added the whites have never lacked good-will. And yet, after forty years of freedom, the results are highly discouraging.
On the outside there is much that speaks of almost brilliant success. The negroes have to-day in the United States 450 newspapers and four magazines; 350 books have been written by negroes; half of all the negro children are regularly taught in schools; there are 30,000 black teachers, school-houses worth more than $10,000,000, forty-one seminaries for teachers, and churches worth over $25,000,000. There are ten thousand black musicians and hundreds of lawyers. The negroes own four large banks, 130,000 farms, and 150,000 homes, and they pay taxes on $650,000,000 worth of real and personal property. The four past decades have therefore brought some progress to the freedman. And yet, in studying the situation, one is obliged to say that these figures are somewhat deceptive. The majority of negroes are still in such a state of poverty and misery, of illiteracy and mental backwardness, that the negroes who can be at all compared with the middle class of Americans are vanishingly few. Even the teachers and the doctors and pastors seem only very little to differ from the proletariat; and although there is many a negro of means, it is still a question whether he is able to enjoy his property, whether the dollar in his hand is the same as in the hand of a white man.
A part of the black population has certainly made real progress, but a larger part is humanly more degraded than before the slaves were freed; and if one looks at it merely as a utilitarian, considering only the amount of pleasure which the negroes enjoy, one cannot doubt that the general mass of negroes was happier under slavery. Their temperament is crueller to them than any plantation master could have been. The negro—we must have no illusions on that point—has partly gone backward. The capacity for hard work which he acquired in four generations of slavery, he has in large part lost again during forty years of freedom; although, indeed, the tremendous cotton harvests from the Southern States are gathered almost wholly by negro labour. It must be left to anthropology to find out whether the negro race is actually capable of such complete development as the Caucasian race has come to after thousands of years of steady labour and progress. The student of social politics need not go into such speculations; he faces the fact that the African negro has not had the thousands of years of such training, and therefore, although he might be theoretically capable of the highest culture, yet practically he is still unprepared for the higher duties of civilization. Under the severe discipline of slavery he overcame his lazy instincts and learned how to work both in the field and in the shop, according as the needs of his master required, and became in this way a useful member of society; but he was relieved of all other cares. His owner provided him with house and nourishment, cared for him in illness, and protected him like any other valuable piece of property.