The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has reported a bill for enabling Indians to become citizens of the United States. The conditions of admission to citizenship are that the Indian shall belong to some organized tribe or nation having treaty relations with the United States, and that he shall appear in a United States Circuit or District Court and make proof to its satisfaction that he is sufficiently intelligent and prudent to control his own affairs and interests, that he has adopted the habits of civilized life, and has for the last five years been able to support himself and family, and that he shall take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. The bill also provides that the Indian shall not, by becoming a citizen, forfeit his distributable share of all annuities, tribal funds, lands, or other property.
In his Annual Report, the Secretary of the Interior says that, respecting the Indians, the great difficulty in dealing with them is that there is no longer any frontier line; they are divided among the whites who are constantly spreading over the Western country. The immense region allotted them, and the strict dividing line between them and the whites, in British America, is the reason the English Government is enabled to manage them so easily. We can make no such restriction, with our growing population. The report recommends as progress toward civilization that the Indians be gathered in smaller reservations and taught agriculture and cattle raising; that small tracts be deeded each one, so that they may have fixed homes; that hunting be discouraged; that proper tribunals of justice be established; that schools be introduced, and attendance by youth made compulsory; that farmers be employed to teach Indians agriculture, and that Indian labor be employed on all reservations.
CHINESE NOTES.
Governor Irwin, of California, has urged the Legislature of that State to memorialize Congress that it is the duty of the United States Government to prevent unlimited Chinese immigration. The State Senate has forwarded such a document. The Memorial says, that the 180,000 Chinamen constitute one sixth of the population of California, pay less than one-four-hundredth of the State revenue, and send back to China $180,000,000 annually ($1,000 each); that they have no families here; that not one has been converted to a Christian faith or way of living; that the cheapness of their labor, owing to their cheap living, stops American and European immigration, and interferes with the development of the State; that if not interfered with, they will ultimately drive out white labor, and leave only masters and serfs on the Pacific Coast.
The “Chinese Six Companies” make a representation on their own account, calling attention to the fact that, since the treaty, the United States Government has received from China nearly $800,000 indemnity for outrages on American citizens and their property, while in not one case in fifty of similar offenses against themselves have the perpetrators been brought to justice. In the July riots in San Francisco, when upward of thirty Chinese laundries and dwellings were raided, some burned, one Chinaman killed, and his body thrown into the flames, not one arrest was made by the authorities, State or municipal. They say that for twenty-five years the emigration has not averaged over 4,000 annually. They reiterate what they said to the chairman of the late Chinese Congressional Commission, the late Senator Morton, in a communication addressed to him—“That if the restricting the emigration of our people to this free country would have a tendency to allay the fears of the timid, and protect our people in their just rights, we would give our aid and countenance to any measure to that end.”
If the assertion of the California Senate, in its memorial to Congress, that “there is no evidence that a single Chinaman has been converted to Christianity, or has been persuaded to adopt Christian manners and habits of life,” is a fair sample of the truthfulness of the statements of that document, it offers a very weak foundation on which to base a legislative enactment. This we know to be false. Those who have read our monthly letters from Mr. Pond will not need to be reminded that more than a hundred in our schools alone are now giving convincing evidence that they are Christian men, and that not simply in name, but in deed and in truth; and that a large number have united to establish and maintain a Christian home for the expressed purpose of adopting Christian manners and habits of life. We are regretfully compelled to doubt the familiarity of California Senators with the progress of Christian missions in their own State. Are their other “facts” no truer than this?