The five tribes longest settled in the Indian Territory, now called civilized, number about 60,000 souls. More than half of these can read. All wear citizens’ dress. They have a school-house for every 312, and a church-building for every 458 inhabitants. During the past year, they cultivated more than 22 acres of land for each family of five persons, raised more than 263 bushels of grain and vegetables, and owned five and one-sixth horses or mules for each family. This favorable showing would appear even more encouraging from a full exhibit of all the statistics given in this Report, to which our readers are referred.
The showing for the other tribes is fully as encouraging, when it is remembered that their circumstances have been much less favorable. In fact, it appears evident that the progress of these people has been great just in proportion to their opportunities; that what is lacking is not susceptibility to civilized life, but opportunity for adopting it, which we have denied them. Give the Indian the chance, and he will become a civilized and valuable citizen. About 77,000 among the remaining tribes wear citizens’ clothes and own more than 11,000 houses, 1,212 of which have been built during the past year. Eleven thousand and eighty-one can read, and 1,717 have learned the art within the same time.
It is significant that the five tribes above mentioned expended $156,856 of tribal funds for schools, while the Government added $3,500 for this purpose. Among the other tribes, $13,043 of tribal funds were raised for schools, and the Government appropriated $164,702. That is to say, these five tribes numbering 60,000 raised, in round numbers, twelve times as much for schools as all the other tribes, and only $12,000 less than the Government appropriated to all the others for school purposes; and the Government expended more than forty-seven times as much upon the other tribes as it did upon these five.
This would seem to indicate, even to an average Congressman, that the cheaper policy would be to give the Indian a chance to take care of himself. Aside from the discouragements to a civilized life furnished by the amount of land occupied by the Indian, and by the kind of title he has to it, it should be remembered that much of this land is valuable and presents a strong temptation to the white man’s greed, and that it lies, often, in the direct line of advancing civilization, an almost insurmountable barrier to its progress. We cannot reasonably be expected to double the length of our railroad lines, simply to build them around lands which ought to be opened up by them. The North-western and Milwaukee railroads, in their westerly march, have nearly reached the Sioux reservations. These cannot be entered except by force, or with the full consent of this tribe. The right of eminent domain, under treaty with our Government, belongs to it, not to us; to the individual members of the tribe, and must be surrendered with each one’s consent, or not at all. These roads are not willing to pay what is demanded for the right of way, and are preparing to enter without permission. The probable result will be this: the roads will enter; the Indians will resist; the army will be sent in to punish them for murder; and after a war that will cost many lives and millions of money, the roads will be built, and the remnant of Indians forced into some other reservation. Of course, we cannot allow this people to throw a barrier across the Continent; the road must be built.
The fact is, the whole policy of treating these people otherwise than as citizens who are to be fitted for the privileges, and from whom are to be exacted the duties, of good citizens, is foolish, wicked, costly and suicidal. Is it not time for the good common sense—we say nothing of the humanity—of the American people to declare that this shall be done now; that the rights of these people shall be wisely and righteously adjusted to both our and their highest interests?
BETTER HOMES FOR THE COLORED PEOPLE.
That the subject of village improvement was discussed in some of the essays presented at the closing exercises of the Hampton School last May is due, doubtless, to the fact that some of the teachers came from Stockbridge, Mass., and belong to the Laurel Hill Association, rather than to any spontaneous ideas on the part of the students themselves. The idea of village improvement comes as a development and outgrowth of such a degree of home improvement as is yet unknown, not alone to the negroes, but to the vast majority of the Southern whites. Not until the log hut has been supplanted by something better, and the idea of improvement has put in floors and windows, has built a chimney and yard fence, has planted some trees and flowers about the house, can it be expected that much interest will be taken in public streets and cemeteries; neither can much be hoped for in the elevation and refinement of the people.
Man is so far a chameleon that he takes his color largely from his habitat, and the observant traveler through the South is slow to believe that much has been, or can be, done for the culture of the negro so long as he vegetates, rather than lives, in the miserable shanties, devoid alike of beauty and comfort, about which flocks of children like so many crows, or scarecrows, are roosting. From such homes our pupils come, and back to such they return. It has been despairingly said that the cultivated Indian gradually, but almost inevitably, sinks back to the level of the home-life by which he is surrounded; rarely has he strength to lift others to his isolated level. This is deplorable, but not surprising. It requires a vast amount of moral heroism to stand out against the universal customs of one’s people. It requires more than the strength of one or two men or women to lift up a whole tribe, and except for an evident and wide-spread desire among the Indians to better their condition and change their modes of life, but little could be hoped for from the experiments now being made at Hampton and Carlisle; neither can we doubt that much of the culture received in our schools for the negroes will be lost, or serve only to quicken a sense of degradation, unless special efforts are made to counteract the inevitable tendencies of surroundings when these pupils return to their homes. Educational effort should be largely directed to a practical knowledge of bettering these homes, and to the kindling of a desire to do so.
Historically and, perhaps, philosophically, dress seems to have been developed from ornament. All savages strut in paint, feathers, and skins, intended to set off their charms of person, long before either decency or comfort suggests clothing; and among the colored girls of the South, pains should be taken to develop a womanly pride which will be ashamed of a bare and squalid hut, a pride which, without care, will prove to be mere vanity, delighting in gaudy dress and brilliant pinchbeck. In its present stage of development the South is the Eldorado of the cheap jewelry peddler, and many a youth, who can without shame sleep on straw, live on corn and get along without shoes, is miserable for lack of a brass ring and pin.