More and worse than this—it has at times been cowardly in the face of political and private buccaneering.
Each new administration, having to pay its pressing political debts,—those debts that helped boost it into office,—must deliver the hapless Indian over to a new [[120]]set of theorizing experimentalists who do not know a moccasin from a sabot. Men too small for the Cabinet, yet who have spent anxious years in log-rolling and who must be paid somehow, offer themselves eagerly to the job of guaranteeing the destiny of nations of aliens. Problems that puzzle the ethnologist and sociologist are approached without alarm, with a crude and vicious confidence, by a politician from Squawk Centre who once crossed an Indian reservation to shoot ducks.
Finding that methods current in doubtful precincts are of no avail in this work, and being forced to do something to make a showing, he proceeds to tear down the work of his predecessor, who had started in the same way but had learned a little during four years of fumbling; and when the whole works are fatuously gumbled, it must be done all over again to reach a point of normalcy, all Indians and their officers of the field marking time until the new Colonel has learned the traditions of the old barracks. Imagine John McGraw signing as pitcher some aspiring village quoit-champion! Conceive of Henry Ford halting his factories until a needy ward-heeler mastered the mysteries of a carburetor!
And the Indian, judging only by the effects of vacillation, springs to the suspicion of chicanery. The many inventions of stupid officials excite his apprehension and distrust. The Indian comprehends very little of first or political causes. When he distrusts his superiors he tends to throw himself on the hungry bosom of sentimentalists. He knows only the Agent on the ground, and too frequently finds in him a reflection of that which someone interested wants Washington to arrange. And no sooner does the Indian find an Agent who will fearlessly represent him, investigate his complaints, support his charges, [[121]]and fight his just battles, and who will have nothing to do with intrigue, than he expects the removal of that uncompromising and foolish idealist to other scenes.
To-day the Hopi waits for a reasonably just settlement of his range problem, and he has been hoping for seventy-five years. He packed the trail to Santa Fe in 1850 to petition the first Indian Agent of the Americans, with the same evidence he brings patiently to his present one. The Navajo who troubles the Hopi in the west of the Empire, suffers similarly from whites on his eastern lines.
The point is that neither the Indian nor those who best know his actual condition have any direct voice in matters that affect his very existence. [[122]]
XII
COMMENTS AND COMPLAINTS
The seven Moqui pueblos sent to me a deputation who presented themselves on the sixth day of this month. Their object, as announced, was to ascertain the purposes and views of the Government of the United States toward them. They complained, bitterly, of the depredations of the Navajos.—Report of James S. Calhoun, First Indian Agent at Santa Fe, October 12, 1850