MODERN INDIAN HOUSE
Although on the Allegheny reservation, N. Y., this is the common type of house occupied by better-class Indians in many States.
CHAPTER III. THE INDIANS TODAY AND HON. E. E. AYER’S REPORT
We have seen in the preceding chapter that the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, his assistants, Supervisors, Inspectors and Special Agents stand at the head of a very great Bureau; and that under them are thousands of employees. The diagram on the following page is an outline plan of the entire Indian Service, beginning with that great body, the Congress of the United States, and passing through its various ramifications down to the amalgamation of the educated, competent Indian into the body of American citizens.
This comprehensive table was published by Honorable F. E. Farrell, Superintendent of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency, in the school publication The Carrier Pigeon, in December, 1912.
We should first realize the tremendous difference between the Indians of 1850 and those of 1914. A comparison of the Indian reservation map of 1879 and the map of 1913 will give readers some idea of the tremendous changes in Indian life in this country. In the short space of fifty years, the entire West has been transformed from an Indian country to a white man’s country. The problem of these Indians is today, not so much an ethnologic study, as it is a citizenship and humanitarian problem.
Although there are a few scattered bands of Indians on the public domain (notably Papago and Navaho, and a few other bands) more than nine-tenths of these people are under direct Federal or State supervision. As I have remarked elsewhere, a great many of the Navaho and certain other Indians still keep up tribal customs and continue in the faith of their ancestors, but for the greater part, the Indians are, and should be, considered a part of our body politic. Before discussing some of the larger tribes, and certain phases of Indian history in the broad sense, we should review the Indian situation as it presents itself generally in the United States.
Beginning with the far East, we should glance at the thousand or more native Americans living in Maine and New Brunswick.
Several hundred Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians are located at Oldtown, Maine, and on the St. Croix River above Princeton, Maine. These are of superior intelligence, and all are self-supporting. There is some drunkenness, but it is not prevalent, as among some of our western tribes.
| DIAGRAM OF THE INDIAN SERVICE | |
|---|---|
| Congress of the United States | |
| Statutes, United States | |
| The President | |
| Secretary of Interior | |
| Regulations, Indian Service | |
| Commissioner of Indian Affairs District Supervisors | |
| │ | |
| Non-reservation Schools | |
| Reservation Agencies | |
| Agent, Superintendent | |
| │ | |