In everything else, there has been progress. In the management of our Indian affairs, we are hardly a step in advance of those who, in 1753, in forming a unity of action against the savages, organized the germ of our Union of States.
II. The Reservation system seems to have had its birth in the administration of Jefferson. The object was to make conflict impossible until the natives could be civilized by isolating them. Education was to be provided, missionaries sent, protection guaranteed until they should become new men. Did the plan succeed? It had hardly been commenced before its failure was recognized. It has been continued, and the longer it has lasted the worse it has failed.
The removal to reservations was commenced in earnest under President Jackson, who advised Congress to set apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any state or territory, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they should occupy it; each tribe having the management of its own portion of the district, and being “subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier, and between the several tribes. There the benevolent may teach, and an interesting commonwealth may be raised up, destined to perpetuate the race and attest the humanity and justice of this Government.” (Otis, p. 96.) President Van Buren was not less sanguine than President Jackson. Never were golden dreams more ruthlessly shattered. As well might our representatives have attempted to tame a herd of buffaloes by corraling them at the base of Mt. Hood, as to attempt to civilize the Indians by separating them from all civilizing influences. As well might you plant a keg of nails and expect it to come up a piano, as to seclude such wild natures on the prairies, or between mountains, and expect peace and harmony to result. The policy of removal did not benefit the Indian, and has brought but temporary relief to the country, by “the elimination of a troublesome element in society.” It has not been pursued to any great extent during the last twenty-five years, but still the massing of the Indians in two or three great reservations seems to be the ideal of our legislators, an ideal which has not a single support either in reason or experience.
Then the reservations have been such only in name. The Black Hills territory belonged to the Dakotas only a few years ago. You remember the story. Reports of mineral wealth reached the outside world. Emigration commenced. But that country had been set apart by treaty to the Dakotas. “Yet,” say Felix R. Brunot, “every step from the moment of making that peace with the Indians, has been in the direction of depriving them of the very land which the Peace Commission gave them.” Though there were wealth in the Black Hills, our nation should have said, and stood by the declaration—“Gentlemen, that Black Hills country belongs to the Indians. If those mountains were built of solid gold, and those river beds were paved with diamonds, not one of you should be allowed there, unless in honorable trade you had purchased the right.” But adventurers crowded in, and, because they had white skins, the sacred covenants of the nation were broken. What wonder that when the land was assigned them they eagerly asked, “How long will it be that the President will keep his promise?” Why should they be loyal to the Government? The Rev. Mr. Sherrill, of Omaha, writing in the Advance, says, “The commonly accepted report is, that when Commissioner Hayt visited Spotted Tail on the Upper Missouri, and attempted to misinterpret his promise to the tribe, Spot shook the written document with Mr. Hayt’s name at the foot of it in the Commissioner’s face, called him a ‘bald-headed liar,’ and walked out of the tent indignantly refusing to have anything more to do with such a forked tongue.”
The reservation system has not secured to the Indians permanent homes; it has not preserved them from molestation; it has not improved them either morally or physically; it has not relieved the Government of care or expense; from beginning to end, it has been a stupendous fraud and failure.
III. I turn now to the Indian treaty system of the United States, one of the most fearfully and wonderfully concocted systems that human stupidity ever devised. It was in operation until 1871. More than three hundred and sixty-six treaties with native tribes are recorded in the statute books since the adoption of the Constitution. If it is remembered that in many of these covenants several tribes were united, the actual number of treaties is multiplied to nearly one thousand. It would puzzle a philosopher to get at the true inwardness of this system. The fact is, that in colonial days, and almost ever since, the Indians have been treated with as if they were independent and sovereign States. As such, they were distinct from United States subjects, and could only be reached under the forms of international law. In the language of Justice McLean of the Supreme Bench, “The President and Senate, except under the treaty-making power, cannot enter into compacts with the Indians or with foreign nations.” That is plain; and if the Indians had always been treated according to that decision, there would have been less trouble. But Congress has claimed jurisdiction over them, and while the President and Senate were making treaties, has held each member of the tribes individually amenable to such laws as it might choose to enact. The Court decides that they are to be treated with as independent tribes, and Congress proceeds to manage them as a portion of our dependent population.
Two illustrations. The Wyandotte Treaty of 1855 declared the Indians of that band to be citizens of the United States. The treaty with the Pottawatomies in 1862 placed it in the power of the President to confer citizenship upon the members of that tribe. Now, if the Indians were foreigners, they could become citizens only by naturalization, according to rules prescribed by Congress. The treaties with them imply that they are foreigners; but the courts have decided that naturalization laws do not apply to them; therefore it is evident that it is competent for Congress, and no other power, to confer upon them political rights. Yet, in the instances cited, the treaty-making power assumed these rights. The Executive and Senate abandoned, at length, the process of making citizens by simple declaration. In 1866, they compelled the Delawares who wished to become citizens, to appear in the United States District Court, and take out naturalization papers the same as aliens. They first made them foreigners in order to make them citizens. But that was of doubtful legal validity. Then, to crown this wonderful achievement, it was decided that the children of those thus naturalized were still foreigners, and must choose for themselves whether they would enter the tribal relation, or seek citizenship by naturalization. A white man who could unravel this snarl would be a genius; to an Indian, it must have been transparent as the waters of the Missouri. I give this instance to illustrate the utter confusion which has characterized the administration of our Indian affairs, and the absolute impossibility for any one to be elevated by such stupidity.
My second illustration is the Indian Territory itself. A civil government exists there, subject to Congressional dictation. Yet Congress never had anything to do with it, and never authorized it. Its powers have never been defined or controlled by statute. It was a scheme of the treaty-making power of government alone. It is an organization devised between tribes, recognized as independent, and is to take cognizance of matters “relating to the intercourse and relations of the Indian tribes and nations resident in said territory and represented, but can pass no act inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, the laws of Congress, or existing treaties; or any act affecting the tribal organizations, laws, or usages.” Each tribe is independent of this so-called legislature in all its own affairs. Each tribe has its own laws; and its own courts, both civil and criminal, are the last resort; and by treaty, Congress is denied the right to interfere with, or annul, their present tribal organizations, rights, laws, privileges and customs. Thus, if an Indian commits murder in his own tribe, he can be brought to justice only by his own tribe. “The non-treaty Indians can freely rob, murder, trade with each other, without incurring responsibility to United States authority.” (Otis, page 115.) If a white man joins an Indian tribe and commits murder, who tries him, the United States courts or the tribal? Exactly that issue has arisen. A United States marshal was condemned because he attempted to take forcible possession of a United States citizen, who was also a citizen of the Cherokee nation, and who was accused of the murder of a Cherokee squaw. Other inconsistencies might be enumerated. Treaties have guaranteed privileges that only Congress had the right to grant. When the United States court comes in conflict with the treaty, then confusion and bloodshed follow, and the absurd clumsiness of official action is hidden beneath the cry of shocking cruelties by Indians, when they are only defending rights guaranteed by solemn covenant.
Two other facts may be barely mentioned. Treaties have been repeatedly solemnized which both parties knew perfectly well could not be kept; as in the case of the covenant with the Mississippi and other bands of Chippewas in 1855, when the treaty included a thousand little details of moral conduct; or the treaties of 1855 and 1865 with the Indians of Oregon and Washington Territory, where all sacredly promised to take a temperance pledge.
The other fact is that, when Congress has ratified Indian treaties, the prerogative has been repeatedly asserted of changing the treaty without consultation with the Indians. In the Cheyenne Treaty of 1861, the Senate struck out article eleven, one of the most important articles, and then held the tribe to the treaty as it chose to amend it.