"Reformers interested in Indian Affairs met each year from 1883 to 1916 at Lake Mohonk, New York, to discuss Indian matters and to make recommendations.  These Lake Mohonk Conferences of Friends of the Indian had tremendous impact on the formulation of federal policy.  In 1884, in a series of resolutions, the conference gave a preview of the topics that would concern it during the following decades.
[page 163, Documents of United States Indian Policy, Francis Paul Prucha, ed. (1975)]

First Day - Evening Session

The evening session opened with a paper by Mr. Philip C. Garrett, of Philadelphia, on -

    INDIAN CITIZENSHIP

"The study of the history of our own times presents few more difficult problem than that of reconciling diversities of race within the same nation, and so legislating as to their relations as best to promote the common weal.  To produce this result, it is essential that we consider alike the welfare of both races.  Manifestly, if, as is usually the case, one of these is dominant, the self-interest of the dominant race, or its fancied interests, endanger the justice of the solution.  To my mind there is but one sure, safe and pacific course out of this question, as out of most of those which perplex nations in their intercourse with each other, viz. equal, exact and impartial recognition of the even claims of both parties, without allowing the element of self-interest of either to have place.

    "In considering how to resolve the anomalous relation of the North American Indians to the American nation now occupying the territory where they live, this principle holds eminently true, and the absence of the above condition in the law-making power has been one of the greatest obstacles to its solution.

    "There are, however, other impediments.  One of these, curiously enough, is the romance of history.  Few observers of modern literature can have escaped the observation of how uncertain written history is; how dependent on the caprice, the prejudices, their personal surroundings, and even the immediate condition of the writer of it.  The temptation fort a picturesque and brilliant writer to draw on his imagination for paint with which to color his pictures is immense, and it is not a little aided by the popularity of historic fictions, which have no real value as history, though often accredited with it.  How much of the beautiful writing of the brilliant MaCaulay, or even Motley and Prescott, is due to fancy, and how much to exact knowledge, will never be known.  Certain it is that there were no photographs of scenes as vividly depicted and no stenographic reports of the closest conversation so minutely detailed verbatim. It is known that Lord MaCaulay was possessed of a fancy so bright and clear, that even his marvelous memory was not more so, and he often mistook the one for the other.  This pandering, on the part of historians, to the popular craving for the picturesque, is a reflection of the sentiment which feels admiration for the ways, manners and costume of the painted savage.  I believe many people would lament the departure of this gaudy figure from the state of action to that extent that it would influence their opinion as to statesmanlike measures for his own advancement.  A romantic luster hangs over his history, in which gleam phantoms of the ear-dance, gay blankets and feathers, tepés free from many housekeeping cares, mingled with personifications of manly virtues, of courage, of lofty honor, of dignified reticence, of tribal patriotism, all of which should, in point of act, weigh as light as down in the scales against national injustice and dishonor, against danger, not of tribal, but personal , extinction, against continual outrage and wrong from pale-face neighbors, as 'lean' and 'hungry' as Cassius.

    "Were it not for the presence at these gatherings of a bright example to the contrary, I should add to these obstacles another, and that is, the desire of the ethnological student to preserve these utensils for the study of his specialty.  Perhaps in the face of Miss Fletcher's noble work among the Omahas, I may not do this.  Certainly her philanthropy swallowed up her anthropology.  Yet I am not at all sure that, with this brilliant exception, the scientific desire to preserve the Indian animal for study is not a further impediment to his civilization; as Dr. Leidy once, when asked how the horrid caterpillars were to be exterminated, replied that it was not the naturalist's function to destroy any living thing but rather to preserve it, that they might furnish so many elucidations of the problems of nature.  Every tribe converted to civilized ways removes one ore living illustration of ethnology, and remands to the past crystallization of written records and museum collections all search into these customs and manners and implements so much more easily read in the living tribe.

    "There remain two deadly foes to Indian civilization -- the more than savage, the satanic, hate of the fiends in human shape, whose thirst for adventure and blood allures them to the wild life on the border, and the equally satanic avarice, whose selfish clutch tolerates no bar of humanity nor morality between it and the gratification if its cupidity.  It is these, more than other influences, which block the road to any Christian settlement of this vexed question.  The method of the first -- unhesitatingly, unblushingly avowed -- is extermination.  I have myself been met, when expostulating with one of these assassins, with the indignant retort, 'You would not spare the young of the rattlesnake, would you?'  He had declared that he would clear the reptiles out, root and branch; that the squaws were worse and more barbarous than the bucks, and he would destroy even the papooses.  Thank Heaven, the conscience of the nation is at last somewhat aroused, and does sometimes bleed for these daughters of the forest and plain.

    "The time has now come, I apprehend, when the second class are more dangerous than the first, and, through their representatives in Congress, are exerting a heart-less and un-Christian influence upon the legislation of the country.  The extravagant avarice of the land grabber and speculator, stimulated by enormous fortunes from the rise in the value of land, and the chances of gold and silver mining, ill brooks any obstructions in his path from a people to whom the law gives no power to redress wrongs.  Unfortunately, a public opinion, hostile, inhuman, and ready to give ear to false charges against their redskins, exists along the border, and magnifies a thousand-fold, like the echoes of forest and mountain glen, every clamor against them.  The result is, that it reaches the shores of the Potomac in the form of a deafening demand from the voting race for the remedy of some fictitious outrage or evil.  A century of repentant honor and justice will not more than atone for the long era of dishonor and wrong from which, let us trust, America is emerging.

    "But yet one more complication remains to complete the array of difficulties which philanthropic statesmen encounter in their efforts to convert races of savages into civilized people.  Certain person, of probably benevolent but misguided motives, under the guise of defending the Indians' interests, oppose the efforts to free them from their tribal thralldom.  That chiefs, whose importance depends on the maintenance of the tribal relation, should demur at its destruction may be counted on with certainly.  Upon this question, the chiefs are clearly not the authorities to be consulted.  But it is much to e regretted that a weak sentimentality should lead true friends of the aborigines to listen rather to the chiefs than to those who consider the real advantage of the whole tribe, and, indeed, the interests of civilization.  that the cause of peace and quietness, the progress of Christian settlement across the continent, and in short the welfare of the white races are involved in the permanent absorption of all the tribes into the American nation, is, perhaps, a generally recognized fact.  Some prejudice, it is true, appears against the idea of admixture or mingling, in the sense of intermarriage and the entire loss of race identity.  But it is impossible to prevent the mingling of blood on the same soil, even if desirable.  A large part of the population enumerated as Indian is now half-breed.  The same is true of the African race on this continent, and no question is raised against their citizenship and civilization on this ground.  Nor am I sure that the fusion of the whole Indian population in that of the United States would be to the detriment of the latter.  On the contrary, I am quite sure it would  not be to its serious detriment.  Suppose that there are 250,000 Indians of pure blood, and 50,000,000 of our population, the infusion would amount to 1/2 percent of the whole.  The negro infusion amounts to near 10 percent, and the Indians are possessed of noble traits not shared by their African brethren.  Are we not 'straining at a gnat, and swallowing a came.?'  The efficiency of a drug as medicine, or its injury as poison, often depends on the size of the dose; and it is quite conceivable that while 10 grains of Indian to 100 of white man might be injurious to the quality of the white race, half a grain to 100 might supply exactly the element needed to improve it.  But has any serious damage resulted to the population from the presence of the swarming African?  Has, indeed, any considerable mingling taken place, except in the section where it has been most strenuously condemned?  At nay rate, here God has placed them and us together; the Indian first in point of time, the white man next, and the colored  man last, or nearly simultaneously with the white man.  We are descended from a common father; God has made us 'of one blood,' nor have we any right, except that derived from power, to withhold from them any privileges or immunities which we grant to the more civilized people.  In all this I do not recommend the intermingling of the races, but I do not fear it.  Long as the African has lived side by side with the Caucasian on these shores, it is very seldom, even now, that a marriage takes place between a negro and a white.  It may safely be left to the tastes and prejudices of individuals to avert the nightmare of confusion of the races and the degradation of the Caucasian by either Indian or African infusion.

    "While, therefore, there is probably quite as much liability to their fusion, with things left as they now are, it would be perfectly safe, as regards this result, were the Indians scattered in eastern schools, and left to seek employment like everyone else throughout the Eastern States; or were all the barriers broken down, and the tide of western migration allowed to sweep unchecked over all the intervening land, to the Pacific coast.  It would be better, could all the refractory matter be melted as in a furnace, all treaties, all defects of legislation, all past wrongs, all chieftaincies, all common tenure of land, and whatever stands between the present monstrous anomaly and equal citizenship with a fair struggle for a living, if all these could, without injustice be evaporated and obliterated, leaving the red man a component part of the great mass of American citizenship.  The monstrous anomaly is that of weak nations within the limits of a strong, it is the lion and the lamb lying down together, the lamb having been devoured by the lion.  What happy result can there be to the lamb, but in absorption, digestion, assimilation in the substance of the lion.  After this process he will be useful -- as a part of the lion.  It is said that the Indian has not an equal chance in the struggle for existence, because of his inferiority.  Neither has the African, neither have the millions of white men who are able to rise higher than the position of laboring men.  WE did not hesitate to set millions of negro slaves free in one day, and confer on them all the rights possessed by the wealthiest citizen in the land.  They had a had struggle, but the churches and the freedmen's Aid Societies came to the rescue, and they are bravely working out the problem  And yet we are doubtful about trusting these manly aboriginal owners of the soil to take care of themselves.  Are they less equal to the task than the cotton-pickers of the seaboard slave state?  And the churches are ready again, the Indian Aid Societies and the Indian rights Associations are ready, to come to the rescue and help them to defend themselves against avaricious and unprincipled oppressors.

    "But the treaties; we are stopped again by the existence of hundreds of alleged treaties, which imply the perpetual existence of the tribes, or contain some obligation unfulfilled.  I would be loath to commend the infraction of any treaty really contracted between two parties; it may be abrogated by each party absolving the other from its solemn obligations.  But there are two or three questions that present themselves to my mind in this connection as worthy of some thought:

    "(1) Are all of these so-called treaties really treaties?

    "(2) What would be the legal and moral relations of the two high contracting parties were it conceivable that it was subsequently discovered one of them was not a nation?

    "(3) If the termination of the treaty by the United States is undeniably against her own interests, and in the interest of the Indian tribe, does that alter the moral question involved?

    "The second of these questions I shall merely throw out as food for thought on the part of publicists and statesmen, and decline to discuss it here, merely expressing the belief that there are two sides to the treaty question, and considerations that must give us pause, before we suffer it to shut down, like an illogical clam, on all thought of an early solution of the Indian problem.  The consequences are too vast for us hastily to accept the conclusion that the formidable array of treaties presents any insurmountable obstacle to any desirable settlement of the question.

    "The faith of every binding treaty must be observed.  If there any which, while called treaties, are not binding, the Indians ought not to be allowed to suffer by their continuance.

    "Without going at any length into an analysis of the Indian treaties, Miss Fletcher, I believe, has done that, I cannot regard that as a 'treaty' which provides, in its concluding clause, as in that with the Blackfeet band, proclaimed March 17, 1866, that 'Any amendment or modification of this treaty by the Senate of the United States shall be considered final and binding upon the said band represented in council, as a part of this treaty, in the same manner as if it had been subsequently presented and agreed to by the chiefs and headmen of said nation.'  That is not a treaty.  An instrument is not a treaty which is agreed to by only one of the contracting parties.  Neither is it a law, for it is approved by only one house of Congress.  Of what binding force is it, then?  Of none; it is a mere mockery of that which it pretends to be.  Nor can I readily be made to believe that the Blackfeet Indians understandingly and voluntarily assented the fifth article referred to.

    :A treaty wrung from one of the parties under threats, and at the point of the bayonet, whether treaty or not in the eve of international law, is certainly of no moral obligation upon the party upon whom it was so forced.  The sin occurred when he submitted to the force, and signed an instrument to which he did not really consent.  Many such wrongs have no doubt been committed; many such falsely so-called treaties wrung from vanquished or suppliant tribes.

    "In most such cases would to the third query apply?  If the United States have wrongfully and by violence imposed injurious condition s thus upon a tribe, would any one claim that she would be violating a solemn obligation to release the tribe from these conditions?  Assuredly, No.

    "I do not know what proportion of all other alleged treaties with Indian tribes are of this character.  There may be those here who do.  This subject presents a vast and complicated network of difficulty.  A proper treatment of it would seem to involve unraveling this tangle and sifting out the genuine treaties, voluntary with the Indian and beneficial to him as well as to the white man, and therefore binding upon both.

    "But the great mistake has been one which it is to too late to avoid, that of dealing with these numerous races of savages within our borders as nations, as if there could be nations within nations without some organic provision of constitutional law, such as that which regulates the relations of the States of our Union to the Federal Union.

    "How can this anomaly be repaired, at least, but by painfully cutting the Gordian knot, and declaring that this national recognition was a mistake, and that henceforth the United States will only deal with the individual Indian -- as with al other residents within our borders -- amenable to law and equally defended by the law; with all the  chances to become a citizen, and with all the rights, privileges, and immunities appertaining thereto?  Let him lay aside his picturesque blanket  and moccasin, and clad in the panoply of American citizenship seek his chances of fortune in the stern battle of life with the Aryan races.  It will be no hardship, no unkindness to ask this of him.  If civilization is blessing, then in the name of Christianity let us offer it as a boon, even to the untutored savage.  It is only if to be civilized is a curse and not a blessing that we need hesitate to grant full-fledged citizenship to the Indian.  These conferences have avowed themselves in favor if it.  Are we sure that great delay in bestowing the boon will not cost him ten times more than it will save him?

    "But let not mere impatience of times's slow evolutions, nor the fascinations of a bold Caesarean policy control our judgment in this matter.  It should only be based on the real interests of the two races concerned chiefly in the result,  If a postponement for fifty years is likely to cause the destruction of the red man by the inexorable Juggernaut of Western progress, guided by hatred, by inhumanity and party spirit; and if an act of emancipation will buy them life, manhood, civilization, and Christianity, at the sacrifice of a few chieftain's feathers, a few worthless bits of parchment, the cohesion of the tribal relation, and the traditions of their race; then, in the name of all that is really worth having; let us shed the few tears necessary to embalm these relics of the past and have done with them,; and with fraternal cordiality, let us welcome to the bosom of the nation this brother whom we have wronged long enough.  [pages 8-11]

[page 18]

Second Day, Morning Session

    OUR INDIAN POLICY AS RELATED TO THE CIVILIZATION OF THE INDIAN

Prof. C.C. Painter then read the following paper:

    "It is proposed in this paper to discuss in the relation of our so-called 'Indian policy' to he end we seek - the civilization of the Indian.  It is axiomatic to say that before an intelligent judgment can be formed as to the wisdom and adaption of so-called means to and, there must be a clear perception of the end itself.  A piece of mechanism may be of wonderful complexity, exquisite finish, great strength and beauty in all its parts, but cannot be approved as a machine until is adaptation to a certain definite end is made clear.

    "The time has fully come when the friends of the Indian, gathered in council as we are to-day, should propound to themselves and to the Government -- that is to the people -- these simple but fundamental questions in regard to the complicated and expensive machine which, under the general name of 'our Indian policy,' we have been running these two hundred and odd years: What really is the end we are seeking? and What adaption has this machine to that end?

    "So long as we travel without having a point at which are purposing to arrive, and raise no questions as to directions, we are in danger of mistaking simple movement for progress, and feeling the jostle of this ongoing, give ourselves no concern, though we reach no place in particular.

    "The assertion is ventured, with no fear of successful contradiction, that not only is it true that no intelligent mind can, from a faithful study of the several parts of this machine, guess an purpose in its construction, but the further declaration is made that no definite purpose regarding Indian civilization has ever been entertained by the mechanics who constructed it -- in fact, like Topsy, it was never made at all; but, unlike her, it never 'growed up' either but has been nailed and glued together, piece by piece, by divers workmen, acting without concert or plan, during the past two hundred and sixty years, each present adjustment and every several addition made to ease the friction of the last, or to meet an exigency which had arisen, but with no intelligent comprehension of an ultimate purpose, and necessarily without any wise adaptation of means to such purpose.

    "Standing by this ungainly monstrosity, which has been thus pieced together, we have neither time nor patience to write at large its history.  It is more to our purpose to show that it was never designed to move forward to any given result, and that it will not serve the need of those who have a purpose with reference to Indian civilization and their absorption in our body politic as free citizens.  It is a machine, and can at best do only machine work; and a machine which at no point of its operations recognizes or can recognize the fact that the material on which it grinds is more than dead matter.  It nowhere, from its first deadly clutch upon the crude material to its last burnishing touches of the finished article, knows that it is grinding a man; in fact, there is no outcome of finish product; the grist that is put in is ground over and over again.  This mill of our little gods grinds slowly and grinds exceedingly small, but turns out no flour for their using.

    "Dropping the mechanical figure of a machine, so far as it can be done, for it is little air, and speaking of our Indian policy comprehensively, it consists of our treaties, of the reservation system, the agency system, and the legislative, administrative, judicial and executive departments at Washington; and the assertion is repeated after this enumeration of its several parts that nowhere, from first to last, does the idea of the manhood of the Indian find place, and by none of these agencies of departments is the end we seek for the Indian definitely recognized.

    "TREATIES -- We are met at the threshold by the declaration that the very fact of a treaty with the Indian was a recognition of his equality in some sense with us, since this idea of equality lies at the basis of such arrangements.  Well, we did recognize not only the equality but the superiority of his power, and made many of our earlier treaties under an overwhelming senses of it, and, therefore, with a becoming modesty; but these arrangements were in no sense regarded by us as treaties made with a party possessed of equal rights, but were simple arrangements between superior intelligence on the one hand and superior brute force on the other, which were to stand until we were in position either to persuade or enforce better.

    "'We have made,' General Sherman is quoted as saying, 'more than one thousand treaties with the various Indian tribes, and have not kept one of the;' and we never intended to keep them.  They were not made to be kept, but to serve a present purpose, to settle a present difficulty in the easiest manner possible, to acquire a desired good with the least possible compensation, and then to be disregarded as soon as this purpose was tainted and we were strong enough to enforce a new and more profitable arrangement.

    "That this has been the history of our treaty-making no one can deny.  Some will charitably claim that we were sincere in our professions of seeking the good of the Indian; that our intentions were good, but were unable to control subsequent events.  It is a sound maxim of common law, applied both in civil and criminal proceedings, that a man's intentions are to be inferred from his acts, and not alone or chiefly from his declarations.  If he does n act calculated to produce certain results, he is held to have intended these results.  The assertion of a man charged with murder that he only intended to brush off a fly from the temple of his victim would have little weight in the face of the  [page 20] evidence that he used a sledge-hammer, and when captured had on his person the watch and porte-monnaie of the dead man.

    "Our treaties were made primarily toe extinguish Indian titles to land; then to establish trade, and then to adjust difficulties or lessen dangers excited by our too great greed and unscrupulous methods of gaining land and pelf.  These, and these alone, have been the objects for which treaties were made, and for which they were broken as soon as they ceased to subserve these purposes; and nowhere can we find intentions wise or generous with reference to the welfare of the Indian, except in some philanthropic plausibilities with which we concealed our real purpose, as made clear by subsequent events.  And there treaties in many of their provisions constitute one of the greatest obstacles in the way of Indian civilization.

    "The reservation system. -- As the direct result of our treaties for land we have the Indian reservation.  The natural understanding of the Indian was that he, by the treaty, created a reservation for the white man, retaining for himself all excepting the surrendered and defined tract of land which he sold.  Our idea was quite other than this, and we did not so much secure to the Indian lands embraced within the lines of his reservation as we excluded him from what we took from him, being as much as was deemed prudent to claim at the time when the reservation lines were established.  The modesty of our earlier demands in this direction was dictated by weakness, and not by our moderation.  Whatever credit we may give to our Pilgrim Fathers for not exterminating the native savages and taking by conquest their lands at once, it did not occur to them to look at it in just that light, and sober second thought compels a tribute to their superior sagacity in adopting the more prudent measures embraced and carried out in treaties negotiated for the same purpose.  So long as we were weak we bargained for a small reservation for ourselves - when we grew stronger we gradually forced them onto smaller and smaller reservations, which of our generosity and paternal desire to promote their welfare we gave them.  No honest man will dare claim that when, by solemn agreement, we received a small strip of land along the Atlantic seabord and pledged ourselves that no white man should, without the consent of the Indian, pass over the western line defining its boundary, and that we would forever living ourselves to what lay east of that line, that we really meant anything more than that at the date of the agreement we did not deem it prudent to ask for more.  But the more pertinent inquiry for us to make is, 'How did the reservation system related to the welfare, civilization, and ultimate citizenship of the Indian?  What is its value as a means to the end we see,?'

    "The reservation line is a wall which fences out law, civil institutions, and social order, and admits only despotism, greed, and lawlessness.  It says to all the institutions, methods, and appliances of civilized life, 'Thus far shalt thou come and no farther;' and to patronized idleness and to every vice which debauches the savage provided it does not endanger the safety of the white man, 'run riot into whatever demoralizing excess.'  This is the condition of things which has been treated and maintained by the reservation system as a policy -- this is a part of the machinery by which we are to secure the end we seek, and so sacred a thing has it seemed to some that organizations have been formed exclusively to perpetuate it, and many of our friend share to-day have exhausted every effort to extend the blessings of the system for at least twenty years to come.

    "We wish these people to become law-abiding citizens of our common country, and have excluded law from them so effectually that not until this past winter has it for the first time thrown its protecting arm about the person or property of the Indian as against an Indian assailant.

    "We wish them to become industrious, self-reliant, self-supporting, and we forbid to them the conditions which make this possible.  They can acquire not title to the land they would cultivate until they will abandon their people and their inheritance; we deny to them the rewards of toil; debauch all their ambition to labor, and stimulate to the highest degree whatever habits and modes of thought tend to idleness and poverty.  Seriously, let us ask in what way can the reservation be used by us as an instrumentality to the end we seek?  Why should we for a day longer desire to perpetuate the system?

    "Agency system . -- As necessarily connected with, and a part of, the treaty and reservation systems, and as related at least t our own needs, we have also the agency system.  When we had purchased from the Indian his consent to hold certain bounds of country for our own occupation and permanent possession, and afterwards allowed him to claim certain limits for temporary occupation for himself; and had secured certain rights and facilities for trade, it became necessary to have an officer appointed to make payments of promised goods and look after the advantages we had opened up. In course of time it was necessary that this officer should permanently take up his residence among those with whom we had relations of comity and friendship.  As we grew stronger and the Indian weaker, and as the business of the agent became more and more that of a large disburser of provisions and annuities, with which we have made them helpless and pauperized depend-[page 21] ents, his power has grown to the overthrow of all self-government, and he is now an irresponsible despot, who has not laws to execute as related to the growth and development of the Indians, nothing but rules and orders as related to the Department at Washington, to which he must give explicit obedience to the last tithe of mint, anise and cummin, though every weighty matter of civilization should be neglected.

    "So we have as parts of our civilizing machine a reservation which excludes civilization and law and social order and the institutions of organized society; which shuts in savagery and lawlessness.  Also, as the guardian of its gates, the agent who was power to shut out every one excepting the officer duly authorized to inspect him; has power even of live and death over those under his care, with no restraint upon him except what restraint fear may exert, with no body of laws to execute, with no institutions of government or social order to uphold, with immense facilities for demoralizing those under his power, and the duty of doing so largely as his business, under orders of the Department, and the temptation to do so in individual cases, to gain his own private ends, always upon him, with little fear of detection; also, until with a few years, unbounded opportunity to enrich himself at the expense of those who had no protector but himself; with no temptation in the way of reward for good conduct, and a wise use of power to advance his people, because continuance in office does not depend upon this, but upon the permanence in power of the political party to which be belongs, and with the assurance that if his wards outgrow the necessity of a guardian that his occupation is gone.

    "Thus circumstances as to power and opportunity and reward, it is manifest that the selection of such a man should be made alone by a commission of angels specially charged by the Almighty with the duty of extreme vigilance and care.  But how is he selected, and for what reasons, and by what inducements persuaded to take a position so forbidding, some irksome in its duties, so illy compensated in its legitimate rewards, which of themselves can be considered only as a premium on imbecility or rascality?  Until recently these positions have been regarded as the legitimate, as they certainly were much should, rewards for the most disreputable and impecunious of partisan political workers.  The appointments were made to pay political debts, and were given to those who, for partisan services, were deemed best entitled to large pecuniary rewards.

    "The appointments are exactly in the same hands to-day, and under no greater restrictions than the most corrupt days of the Indian service, and it would not be difficult to show that they are made for exactly the same reasons to-day, though the same opportunities for plunder do not exist.

    "Abundant proof could be given of the assertion, which is not true of one administration more than of another, that the fitness of a man to administer the grave responsibilities of an Indian gent is not the pr9ime reason for his appointment; and that proved fitness for the office is no protection against his removal, provided the political reasons which secured his appointment are o longer operative.  It is bad, a thing to be deprecated, and wholly corrected if our Government is to stand, when great pecuniary interests are at the mercy of machine politics, and great financial trusts are the rewards offered for caucus and ward services, no matter what their character, provided they have multiplied voters; but when the property, civilization, and very lives of thousands of helpless people are handed over to pay for such service it is simply appalling.

    "As we have formulated our Indian problem the agent is the important factor in it.  Hampered and handicapped as he is, a good, wise, and strong man continued in the service when he proved himself such, may do something to advance the people put into his hands despite the system under which we work, but it is not in the machine to secure such a man, except by happy accident, and it is in the machine to displace him as soon as he begins to make himself useful.

    "The fact that a change in the politics of the appointing power changes 80 or 90 per cent of the agents within twenty months proves one of two things, either that the manner of selecting them is not calculated to secure good ones, or that removing them for such causes as have secured their removal does not operate to the end of retaining such.  In either case there is sufficient reason for crying out loud against the method and principle and system as false and wholly evil and in no wise capable of being made subservient to the end we seek.

    "Department at Washington. -- In addition to the reservation and agency systems, we have at Washington the Bureau of Indian Affairs, under the general control of the Secretary of the Interior.   To this office is committed the care of the Indian when he does not fall into the hands of the War Department wholly, or under the divided jurisdiction of both, which has sometimes happened.

    "There is an Indian division in the Interior Department, more or less complete of itself, in and through which the Secretary may take up and determine the most important matters without the consent or even knowledge of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

    "That he may be informed as to the needs of the Indian service the Secretary has at his command a corps of special inspectors, who report directly to him and who execute his [page 22] orders, to that independently of the bureau the Secretary of the Interior may carry on the Indian service, and the Commissioner may learn, either from the newspapers from the agent of the Indian Rights association, that a matter as important as the opening of the Crow Creed Reservation has been accomplished while he is making his plans with reference to settling the Indians upon it.

    "Then there is the bureau with the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, chief clerk, heads of divisions, clerks, copyists, stenographers and various assistants; making a force of seventy aside from the five special agents who travel, inspect and report to the Commissioner, having special powers with reference to the sixty-one agents in charge of reservations, their clerks and employés.  Also the Superintendent of Indian Schools, and the hole teaching force in the industrial, boarding and day schools.  This is the force which is engaged to execute such laws and regulations as are adopted by Congress, fulfill treaty obligations, and promote the general welfare of the Indians.  It is a large force, and administers large sum of money, and absorbs a large sum, and is managing a mighty and pretentious machine which works wonderfully, and it seems best to pause over it for awhile and see what it does, and how it does it.

    "The Indian bureau as an agency may be characterized as an attempt, by an elaborate and complicated system of book-keeping at Washington, to civilize the Indian on the western frontier.

    "The clerical and other force of the office consists of seventy-five men and women, and costs for salaries alone $120,780.  The disbursements of the office, aside from the pay of its force, is between $5,000,000 and $6,000,000 per annum.  It is manifest that a system of managing a business no larger than this must be complicated to require such a force, and one who has occasion to look into this complication feels sure that it requires the activity and ingenuity of the whole force to work a thing so complicated as this is.

    "This of course does not include the sixty-one agents on the reservations who, at an expense for salaries alone of $91,000, work the other end of the machine.  A noteworthy fact just here is that this wonderfully complex part of the machine has no power either to originate or definitely conclude any action touching the question of the Indian's development, excepting the mere ledger work of keeping accounts and the history of expenditures.  Its action in matters involving discretion is subject to the decisions and actions of other parts of the complicated whole.  The most important measures it may adopt may be brought to naught, wholly negative by the action of the President, of the Secretary of the Interior, or of the Committee on Appropriations in either house of Congress.

    "This bureau is related to the Government as the book-keeper is related to a business house.  It has relation indeed to the needs of many persons who want position, but as an agency for the civilization of the Indian it has no adaptations which ought to satisfy those who desire more than that the books shall be properly balanced.

    "It may be said that there are in addition to the finance and file divisions those also of education and civilization, charged with the special duty of promoting those great interests.  The divisions are more manifest than is the education and civilization, which, when found among the Indians, are traceable largely to other agencies.

    "Though expending large sums of money for education it was not until 1882 that a superintendent of schools was appointed.  The first superintendent died in 1885, and his successor says of him that he was esteemed an able and excellent man, 'but at the time of his death he had not determined the functions of his office.'  His successor was appointed in the following May, and when he made his report in November, 1885, had found out that 'the duties of the office were suggested by its title, but not defined by law.'  When he resigned the office to take another position after a year's faithful effort to find out what these duties were, he was decidedly of the opinion that they consisted largely of bearing responsibility before the public for acts which he had no power to originate or determine. His successor finds after some four or five months' experience that his ideas of his position become more and more muddled, but on the whole thinks his duties are advisory.  Whatever he might or might not admit, I happen to know that even this function is called into exercise rather as post facto assent than as counsel prior to the fact about which he is consulted.

    "Congress has grown liberal in its appropriations for educational purposes.  These have gone up steadily from $20,000 -- the first in the series, in 1876 -- to $1,236,415 in 1886.  It has also grown wise enough to leave the expenditure of this largely to the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior.  This is full of encouragement.  With a wise superintendent of schools, who has $1,200,000 at his disposal to carry on the work of his division, what may he not do?

    "Congress has also been persuaded to provide for the appointment of additional farmers to go among the Indians and teach them how to farm, and $40,000 is put at the disposal of the civilization division of the bureau for this most important educational work.

    "This indicates a willingness on the part of Congress to do this much needed work even liberally, but these vast sums are expended under a system, or want of system which, so [page 23] long as it is suffered to exist, must defeat the ends contemplated.  A leaf from the experience of the late Superintendent of Indian Schools, which I deem it no breach of confidence to give, may serve to illustrate.

    "A brawny promoter of unanimity at ward caucuses who claims recognition and reward, was sent out to a certain reservation to teach Indians how to farm.  Feeling strong in his influence at Washington, he made it lively for the agent and other employés whom he threatened with decapitation unless he was conciliated by due deference.  Complaints of his conduct proved unavailing, and prayers that he might be removed to some other sphere of usefulness were unheeded.  The agent then sent him out to an Indian camp, some 50miles from the agency, where the superintendent had established a day school.

    "He immediately took possession of the school-house for his farming implements, and when the teacher objected, soon gave him muscular proof of his superior claims.  Naturally the teacher objected to this also, and when the superintendent found himself unable to protect him, he made another opening for another worker by resigning.

    "While the good superintendent was solemnly mediating upon the somewhat adumbrated 'functions of his office,' there came in a big double-fisted fellow looking for a job.  He said he was willing to teach; was willing to go to Dakota as an emissary of light and sweetness to the dusky children of that far off land, and so, with some special charges from the superintendent as to the uses to which school-houses ought to be put, he went forth duly appointed to teach, and at last reports was in possession of the school room.

    "Oh, yes!  We have school funds and civilization funds which are administered by the victors in political contests, and if this is not done for political reasons and for party ends, it will be only because the machinery of the party, by a happy accident, has evolved to a not to be expected result.  This is no to be construed as a criticism on the party now in possession and anxious to retain possession, nor of the party which has been ousted and is anxious to get in again, but on the policy whish places such vast interests, lying out from under the protection of general laws and of established courts, at the mercy of shifting political successes and defeats.  No other such interests are thus exposed among civilized peoples.

    "The book-keeping is elaborate and expensive, and so confusing that the condition of things cannot be easily discovered; the civilizing forces which it is supposed to wield are put under control of, and are to be applied by, such officials as party success appoints to the pleasing task of accepting and distributing party spoils.  That we have drunken livery-stable men sent to teach the Indian to plant potatoes -- a hatful to the hill -- and so-called doctors who prescribe a spoonful of iodine to be taken internally for a sore throat, and swear they never make mistakes, and boys who cannot write a readable hand, or add up a column of figures to take chare of accounts involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, because their fathers edit political papers and are members of Legislatures which elect United States Senators; all this and infinitely more; all this and little else is to be expected of a civilizing machine thus constructed and thus propelled.

    "CONGRESS. -- But it should be remembered that we have, as a safeguard against all these possible evils, our wise and good legislative body called Congress, which at the suggestion of the selected and aggregated wisdom of committees in the two Houses specifically entrusted with the grave interests of these people, legislates for their welfare.  So we have!

    "A legislative body to whom is committed the duty of legislating for a people who are so far not of us, not a part of us, that we have made hundreds of treaties with them, by many of which we are bound to-day -- treaties, as has been shown, made for the express purpose of gaining from them all the advantages which intelligent selfishness could secure with the least possible risk from those strong enough to make infinite trouble had force been resorted to gain these same ends.  Legislation by a foreign power to guard and perpetuate advantages gained by repeated treaties and cunning arrangements; legislation, too, by politicians for those who have no political power or influence which is related to the political prospects of those who legislate; legislation by those whose constituents are make every effort to secure what has not as yet been taken away from those affected by this legislation.

    "This, then, is the relation of the legislator to those for whom he is to legislate.  But more than this, he is both ignorant and indifferent to the needs of those whose interests are so largely in his hands.  There are, indeed, committees on Indian affairs in both Houses, composed of generally wise and kindly-disposed men, to whom is referred all proposed legislation touching Indian affairs, who inform themselves as to the character of proposed measures.  This is so; but they have before them the ex parte statements of the white men who seek this legislation, and they are introduced to the committee by the honorable senator or honorable member who represents their district and needs their votes, and from these the committee gains most of its information.  And there have been appointed from time to time large committees from both Houses of Congress who spend the whole [page 24] of the summer vacation laboriously visiting the Yosemite Valley and National Park, and other haunts of the Indian, and who come back full of information and know all about the needs and progress of the aborigines.  No pains or expense is spared in this effort to gain information.

    "It has been my fortune to follow in the wake of, and to be thrown in with, some of these peripatetic seekers of information, and it is true, I think, that no expense is spared in the search.  Faithfulness to the purposes of this paper compels me to give more fully some of the results of my observation.

    "An honorable member of one of these committees arose in his place in the House two years ago, and moved to strike from a bill proposed appropriations for day-schools on Indian reservations, saying that this kind of school was utterly worthless.  He wanted all school appropriations to go to industrial training and boarding schools.  He then instanced as an example of the worthless day school the school at a certain agency, which, unfortunately for him, was not a day school but an industrial boarding school.

    "Another member of that same committee, during the same session, when the appropriations for eastern Indian schools were under discussion, asserted that the only effect of the training at Hampton and Carlisle was to make the most expert horse-thieves on the plains.  He had seen three or four of the pupils from these schools during his Western tour of investigation.  When pressed afterwards as to whether there were three or four, and whether they were from Hampton or from Carlisle, and who they were, and where, it turned out that there was one boy who was at Carlisle for a month or so, and was sent back because he ought not to have come on, had been put forward to interpret between the President and this committee and other honorable gentlemen, who were seeking reliable information as to the results of Eastern education, and was unequal to it.  This showed that the training at these schools was worthless; and there had been some charge that this boy had been engaged, with others of his tribe, in a horse-stealing expedition.

    "These are, I think, fair samples of the way in which information is gathered by junketing committees on these vacation jaunts.  But when we have thus gathered information we are met with the fact that no legislation can be secured for the Indian beyond the necessary appropriation bill.  There were about one hundred and fifty bills introduced into the Senate alone this past winter touching Indian interests; there must have been more than two hundred like bills in the House.  Aside from the appropriation bill, three important ones passed the Senate; bills which the friends of the Indians have pressed with great earnestness for several years.  These have failed of consideration in the House, which aside from the appropriation bill passed, I believe, a bill to give right of way for a railroad through the Indian territory.

    "Ask members of the committees in either house what the chances are for the Indian bills which seek alone the welfare of the Indian?  It may be said that a similar fate awaits all bills in the present condition of Congress, and the Indian but suffers the same fate as others.

    By no means.  We are under the protection of the general laws of the Government and of the States in which we live, and the courts are open to us.

    "The Indian Board of Commissioners. -- As an additional source of information, and as a wise board of counsellors, President Grant appointed under authority of law a board of Indian commissioners, composed of ten men of eminent probity and wisdom, who serve without compensation, and have done much valuable work in behalf of the Indian.

    They set themselves to the task of reforming abuses and purifying the service.  For a number of years Congress made liberal appropriations to enable them to collect the information on which they asked action by the executive and legislation by Congress.  It was inevitable that they should array against themselves the bitter opposition of the contractors, who could no longer enrich themselves at the expense of the Indian and of the Government.  This opposition soon manifested itself in Congress in a reluctance to vote the Board money for its expenses.  From year to year they have been cut down until for the past few years only enough has been allowed to pay the rent of an office and a meager salary to the secretary.

    "When no longer allowed traveling expenses they have traveled at their own expense.  When unable to travel they have continued, the chairman of the purchasing committee especially, to superintend the purchase of Indian goods, and the letting of contracts, by which supervision millions of dollars have been saved to the country, and the quality of goods furnished vastly improved.

    "But all this has been hard on the jobbers and rascals who would make money at the expense of the Indians, and the man who had especially thwarted them must be got rid of in some way.

    "The President, through some unfortunate misinformation, has been led to suppose this board simply ornamental and of no utility, and as it had unhappily been composed [page 25] of gentlemen of one party alone, he thought he might as well remove one ornament of the opposite party and put on it one from his own, and so a leading merchant of New York, a man whose name is a synonym of probity, honor, and wisdom, whose services had been given without sting for many years, services which would have been cheap if purchased for $10,000 per annum, gave place to a leading liquor dealer, who did not know there was such a board until he found himself seated on it.  Whatever considerations may have led to this, it is certain that desire or purpose to improve the Indian service had no place among them.  Thus it has come about that the only disinterested and non-political agency of the Government with which the Indian was touched has been so far crippled that it can do but little for his benefit.

    "Such in detail are the principal parts of this machine, and it cannot be claimed for them that they were separately created or intended to accomplish the work of Indian civilization.  After careful examination it is not discovered that they possess, in esse or in posse, what Husley claimed for dead matter -- "the potency and promise of organic life" for these people.  Bu if its utility and adaptation are sought in its comprehensive entirety as a whole, and not in its single parts, the result will not prove any more fortunate.  Waiving the philosophic dictum that nothing can be found in a whole which is not in any of its parts, it can be said that one part cannot go without the co-operative action of a second part, and that both these depend upon the direct impulse of a third, and that it not infrequently happens that one of these is presided over by one who knows a little about something unrelated to what he is to do, and the next has for its engineer one who knows a little of something else, and the third by one who knows nothing of anything pertaining to the conditions of the other two, and it has its fulfillment in Keely's motor -- a thing of mighty impulses, but of "no go."

    "A President may for reasons satisfactory to his own mind throw open by Executive order a reservation which the Secretary of the Interior is hopefully settling a band of progressive Sioux, and the Secretary save his work in party by playing his authority over the public land against his loss of power over a reservation.

    "The President and Secretary may, by their entire independence of the bureau created for and entrusted with the care of Indians, without the Commissioner's knowledge or consent, nullify the efforts he is making and bring to naught the efforts of a score of years in behalf of a certain band, by cutting from under his feet the ground on which he has based his effort.

    "A Secretary of the Interior may in deference to the wishes of a railroad corporation, set aside the treaty rights of a most progressive people, bring to confusion their hopes and their efforts by snatching from their grasp almost the patents for their lands for which they have long hoped, and relief comes alone from the accident that a new Secretary has come into office.

    "The Appropriations Committee in Congress may bring to confusion the hopeful efforts of the Secretary and the Commissioner, by cutting under the appropriation necessary to complete an enterprise well begun, which has kindled the enthusiasm and engaged the energies of the Indians, and thus throw them back into hopeless and listless apathy.  Every one familiar with this work has seen instances not a few of just this kind of economy.

    "Time would fail me to tell, not Gideon and Jephtah and the host of worthies, who through faith did wonders, but of the heartbreak and despair of those who have been thrown back again and again into the depths of sullen despair and listless pauperism by some catch in the machinery which has dropped them back from the heights to which they seemed to themselves to be lifted.

    "The fat is, the machine is too complicated, to widely scattered, too much turned in upon itself in its operation, presided over by too many independent dependents, who have diverse and antagonistic ends to subserve.

    "There it stands, and has t\stood for these many years. It has consumed incalculable fuel to make it go, and it has gone with much wear and tear, crushing and mangling its engineers oft times, and its unhappy victims always, but has done nothing but revolve.

    "I believe it safe to put the annual expense of this effort to civilize the Indian at more than $600,000, paid in salaries, wages and expenses to white employés.  This would seem to indicate that the machine has an important relation to the support of the white man if but little to the civilization to the Indian.  How further related to the white man will appear from a closer scrutiny of the facts.

    "A large share of the funds which support the employés of the agencies, excepting the agent, interpreter, and police force, is paid from the funds of the Indians; most of the support and civilization appropriations are part payment for lands sold to the Government; large sums of such money are to be paid in such implements as the President may decide to send, and this discretion has often been used to enrich contractors, and not to meet the real needs of these people.

    "I have heard a delegation of civilized Osages earnestly entreat the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that they might be allowed to estimate the quantity and kind of goods which [page 26] should be bought with their own money, as much of it was wasted on gods the Indians would not take and for which they had no use.

    "I have been at an agency under whose fostering care 480 Indians out of 2,000 had died of starvation within nine months, and I found, if memory serves me faithfully, over 80 heavy wagons, partly piled away under shelter and partly, for want of shelter, rotting on the prairies, for which the Indians had no more use than for so many steam-engines; there were tacks of candle-molds and great quantities of jack-planes, which had little relation of starving Indians.

    "I have seen a first-class saw mill at an agency where there were no logs to saw, and the Indians were praying, as they had for some years, and are yet, in vain, for a grist-mill for wheat which they were forced to haul 15 miles to the railroad, send off at an expense of 50 cents per hundred pounds, and haul home again.  All this with great labor and expense and discouragement to the industry of the people.

    "I was told by a freight contractor who has made himself rich, and still does a large business as such, that he had a contract to haul and engine and boiler for a mill some 200 miles across alkaline plains to an agency where there was no possible use for it; after taking it half the distance he dumped the whole thing on the prairie, procured a certificate from the agent that it was delivered just where he wanted it, and so fulfilled his contract, and left it to rust out unused.

    "We may cry out, 'How can this be possible.' Anything is possible in connection with this service, excepting the one end we desire; and its relation to that is not yet apparent.

    :The practical question comes: if this all be so what would you do about it?  First assure ourselves that it is true, and then force the abandonment of the methods which are manifestly unavailing.  What would you put in place of this?  I would at once break down the reservation walls and let civilization go in; I would secure the Indians for the present inalienable possession of sufficient land, by personal title, for the use of each one; I would sell the remainder for their benefit, and in place of the agent's irresponsible will make them subject to the laws and give them their protection; I would give them without delay citizenship with all its privileges and duties, and for the present place their property under the administration of a wise commission of such men as have been charged with the Peabody and like funds, with all the safeguards that can be thrown around it -- a commission which should be removable only by death or impeachment or proved incapacity, and require that within a reasonable time this fund should be exhausted and there should nothing remain the Indian from other citizens, except the bronze of his skin, and the memory of his great wrongs softened and made tender by the grace and sufficiency of our tardy atonement.

SECOND DAY, EVENING SESSION

... [page 29]...

THE CHAIRMAN.  You remember that Mrs. Own brought before the conference yesterday morning the case of Mrs. Blackbird and her property on the shore of Lake Michigan.  She stated that the enemies of the Indian and the insatiate land-grabbers had fixed up a sort of a will of a woman who had die din Canada, and the fixed up a sort of a quit claim deed by which they deprived this woman of her rights.  A member of this conference has requested me to ascertain if the facts are as represented, and if so, has authorized me to employ counsel to bring a bill in chancery to set aside these bogus claims.  If Col. Elliott F. Shpeherd were not here I would tell you who it was. [applause.]

[page 30]

SENATOR DAWES.  ... There is one thing upon which we can all agree, however much we may differ upon details, and that is that the only solution of they problem is in making the Indian a self-supporting citizen of the United States.  Everything that contributes to that end [page 31] is welcome in this work.  All that does not contribute to that is misspent.  Now being convinced of that myself, and growing more and more so every hour, I have come to have little trouble about those matters that stirred us so last night and to-day.  To me it is no matter of consequence at all whether the reservation system is to be abolished and the treaties abrogated, whether the civil-service reform should be applied to the appointment of agents, or whether it should not; or whether we have got so sick of the existing state of things, as brother Painter said, that he would blow it up sky-high, and let these men sink or swim, as they might.  If you make the Indian a self-supporting citizen of the United States, all these things disappear of themselves.  When that time comes there can be no reservation to abolish or to perpetuate; no Indian agent to appoint or dismiss; no treaty to keep or abrogate. The work is accomplished when the Indian has become one of us, absorbed into this body politic, a self-supporting citizen, and nothing is left of these questions that are troubling us.  I have got out of patience with them sometimes; have vexed myself and quarreled with friends at Washington or here, as to whether it was right to break a treaty or keep it, or whether this system of appointing officers was good or bad, or whether you would destroy these agencies.  The one thing with me is what can I do that will hasten on the day when every Indian in this land shall be a self-supporting citizen.  If these things are all done just as every one wants them done, when all is done, if the Indian is not a self-supporting citizen, it is barren work; it is empty and useless, and you are worse off with him without this machinery, bad as it is.  And if he becomes a citizen, then the machinery all disappears like an April cloud before the sunrise.

    With that idea, the committee of which I am a member have been at work five or six years in an endeavor to provide such legislation as shall be necessary to supplement and help on the friends of such institutions as this and other private and public institutions in fitting the Indian to what he must be or nothing.  There is no law now by which the Government of the United States ca do anything in that direction.  Nobody in the whole United States Government has nay power to take one step towards making the Indian a self-supporting citizen.  What it is doing towards his education by appropriations is helping that people from year to year.  And it is a wonderful agency, which has been increasing from year to year till the first appropriation of only $20,000 has increased till last year it was $1,200,000.  That is preparing him for citizenship. But what is to be done with him when he is fitted?  In this work the committee of the Senate have prepared four or five bills, all looking to this end.  The one fundamental bill, called the severalty bill, is the one about questions have just been raised.  I have sent to Washington for copies of the bills and they have sent me copies of the old ones, so I cannot read what I have inserted at the request of the religious societies.  The trouble first originated with some Episcopal friends who had schools on the reservation.  I intended to put in so broad as to cover just what my friends stated.  I think I have. It satisfied my religious friends.  I am certain if it is not broad enough it now will be.  As to Mr. Kinney's question, I will state that the bill, as originally drawn, contained a condition about a tribal patent.  When this idea was first broached, the opinions of people about the best way for Government to aid were different from what they are now.  My own work on this bill has had the effect to constantly change my views.  I have written this bill seven times and never twice alike.

    I came here last year very anxious to preserve the tribal patent.  I have been for years in a fight with Western men who are bent upon taking land from these Indians without the slightest regard to their rights or the obligations the Government had entered into.  I began this work with Secretary Kirkwood, whose idea was to first secure to the tribe their reservation so that they could be certain it should not be taken from them wrongfully.  I have pet this in year after year.  Every year I have been weakening on it because I have come, from year to year, to the conclusion that this pressure upon the Indian for his lands has come to be irresistible, and that we have go to make provision for him now just as quick as we can, or we will lose the opportunity.  I have come to the conclusion that the quicker he is mingled with the whites in every particular the better it will be.  This bill went through the Senate and reached the House, where it encountered opposition on two opposite grounds.  There is an organization in Washington of very excellent men, but their purpose is to perpetuate the existing state of things.  They boast that they have prevented the passage of this bill.  They got a committee to insert another provision which would spoil the bill.  That is, that the bill should have no force except a majority of any tribe should adopt it.  The theory of the bill is to treat the Indian as an individual Indian; and whenever, in the opinion of the official whose duty it is to administer the law, viz: The President of the United States -- but let me read it and you will see the idea of treating the Indian as an individual.  We would like to read this section, and if any one can improve it I would like it.  I am aware that there is nothing so imperfect as what I do from day to day, and nothing I do [age 32] welcome as suggestions of improvements.  I got some valuable ideas here last year, and hope to have some of them incorporated into this bill.  Listen to this section: "That 9in all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been, or shall hereafter be, located upon any reservation created for their use."

    now, I have spent some time on that bill.  The idea is that when the president sees an Indian or tribe so far advanced that, in his opinion, they can maintain themselves, he is authorized thereupon to allot to every adult head of a family a quarter section, and to every single person an eighth of a section, and to every child a sixteenth section.

    Q. Is that to every adult desiring it, or to every adult of the whole tribe?

    A. The theory is that when any Indian is so far advanced as to be able to support himself he will want land.  If he doesn't want it, it will show that he is not fitted for it.  A farm is no blessing to a man who doesn't want it.  This is not a compulsory allotment any more than it so compulsory on the State of Massachusetts to pass a law that I shall be a farmer.  We don't compel a man to take land.  We do not enact a law that a man shall be a mechanic, a blacksmith, or a shoemaker.  It is only when he shall, through some agency, be enkindled to be a man that there is any reasonable hope that he will be anything.  It is provide that they are to select for themselves.   Wherever there is an orphan the Government appoints a man to select the land.

    Q. Cannot an Indian go away from the reservation and select land?

    A. An Indian can make an entry under the pre-emption act, and before he gets 100 rods from the land office he can sell it for a bottle of whiskey.  He can make his entry just like a white man.  Burt after all the result is, there being no limitations upon his power to dispose of his land, that he loses it in a short time.

    Q. Does the Government give him anything more than this allotment?

    A. I am going to talk about that in a little while.  The great danger with the Indian is that he will be circumvented; that he will be cheated, if not directly out of his property, yet that in one way or another he will lose it.  The State is hostile to his coming there and settling.  If he forgets to pay his taxes they will sell it out from under him.  The committee provided for that a kind of tenure that mikes it impossible to part with this land except on the agreement of the United States and the Indian too.  An Indian cannot make a contract impairing his tile for twenty-five years.  So no man can agree that for so many dollars he will convey his land.  it is fixed absolutely that it shall be held for the Indian's use exclusively for twenty-five years, and at the end of the twenty-five years the Government shall give him a patent. [Reads]

    Q. Will this bill annul the other law?

    A. The last bill that passes annuls all laws that conflict with it. [Recs. section 5, "that upon the approval of the allotments provided for in this act," &c.'    

    Q. In view of the present condition of the Indian is twenty-five years enough?

    A. There is a provision in this bill that if, in the opinion of the resident it shall be deemed necessary, it may be continued.

    I was remarking that there are people who are distrustful.  My friend Kinney is afraid that the tribal patent will die out.  Western men are afraid of that too, and for a different reason from that of the New England ma; they want that land.  Now I propose to give up the tribal patent by reason of this strong sentiment in the country that the tribal relation must be broken up sooner than twenty-five years.  I have alluded to an organization whose sole purpose is to perpetuate the present state of things.  They have been around saying that there is an organization to right the wrongs of the Indians; that the whites are trying to get their land.  They have an organization of which our friend, Dr. Sunderland, the President's pastor, is vice-president.  The argue that the reservation has got to be kept entire.  My friend Welsh remembers when Dr. Sunderland went before the House committee and denounced his bill.  I propose to let the tribal patent go, and to let the reservation stand as it is, with this provision [reads, "And provided further, That at any time after lands have been allotted to all the Indians of any tribe as herein provided," &c. S. 54p. 9]

    As fast as you allot this land, you can negotiate with the Indians for the rest of the land, you shall capitalize that land and put the money in the Treasury, and pay 5 percent, annually for the education of the Indians.  I think any one who is troubled about these reservations protected will see that this is provided for.  They are just as safe if the tribal patent is taken away as before.  If you will prepare the Indian to take care of himself upon this land that is allotted, you will find the solution of the whole question.  Added to this is the section which provides that every Indian that takes land in severalty under this bill, and every Indian who has abandoned the habits of a savage life and adopted those of the white man, thereby becomes a citizen of the United States, with all the privileges and immunities of a citizen.  When I was here at the last conference that was not in the bill.  It is in a separate bill which I have been trying to get through.  There seemed to be a good deal of anxiety that it would not get through.  I was afraid it would jeopardize this bill. [page 33]

    When I went back and said to the committee that I proposed to put it in, it took me ten days to get their consent; and last of all, one of the ablest men in the committee said he would resist it.  He said he was for the bill, but he did not wish to jeopardize it.  A native of my State labored for a long time to keep it out of the bill, but I took the risk.  I said, "The Senate can strike it out but I will try it."  so I put it in.  The Senator who said he should oppose it, made an argument against it, and every Senator but he voted for it.  He came to me and said he would not vote against it, but he could not vote for it.  There are many details in this bill all tending to the good of the Indian, but I will not take your time on them.  I am as conscious as any man of the imperfections of this bill.  I would like to have it improved.  No man shall suggest a reasonable amendment which will not meet my heart support.  It has been a work of love with me.  I have been six or seven years upon it.  I would like to see it the law of the land.  This bill, the Sioux bill, the bill for the Mission Indians for the Round Valley Indians, and the bill extending the civil and criminal law of the land over the Indians, have all passed the Senate in the last session and are pending in the House of Representatives.  I don't know of any special objections to them.  I think the committee see where they have made mistakes, and I have no doubt the bill will come out of their hands ultimately in good shape,  The great thing needed is that you take hold of these things and get them through the House of representatives.

    Q. If an Indian should prefer to have sufficient education to become a mechanic or teacher how would he get any advantage by this bill?

    A. He would get his land sold by the United States and the money would be put on interest, and he would get his share.  These bills have not stuck in the House of Representatives from the fault of any man.  The Indian committees approve of these bills in the main.  The trouble arises from the difficulty of transacting business there.  Unless some extra effort is made there is not much hope.

    Taking out the holidays we have January and February for work in this Congress.  It is important to get the bill through this Congress, as new men are coming into charge of Indian affairs in both branches, an dif it does not pas the coming winter it will have to go over till a year from December, and then be taken up by new men.  A sentiment favorable to the bill will have to be crated anew in Congress.  One third of the Senate is new, and the whole House is new, and if it is taken up a year from now you can't get legislation under two years.  If there is any efficacy in this bill it is necessary, in order to obtain beneficial results, that it become a law this winter.  The Sioux Reservation contains 30,000 square miles right in the heart of the Territory of Dakota.  Twenty-eight thousand Indians occupy a tract of land four times larger than the State of Massachusetts.  The little town in which I live contains that number of inhabitants.  You see at once that people who want that land look upon the idea that 28,000 Indians are to have that land exclusively as a monstrosity.  The were put there in 1868 with the idea that white man would never reach them.  The six tribes hold it in common with a covenant on the part of the United States that not a foot of it should be got away except b the written consent of three fourths of the adults of all these tribes.  That was less than twenty years ago, and now there are 500,000 white people all around them, and two great railroads coming square up to the reservation, and there they stop; and 38,000 people on the west side have to travel as best they can across the territory for 200 miles to get to the railroad.  Dakota contains 150,000 square miles, 30,000 of which are taken up by this reservation.

    There has been a constant attempt the last six years to get away that land by people who don't care a copper whether the Indian ever gets anything for it or not.  They come within what Jerry Black once called a "squirrel's jump" of getting it through Congress, of getting these 11,000,00 acres for 25,000 cows.  They got a bill through the House of Representatives giving them that land for 25,000 cows, but it got stopped in the Senate about 2 o'clock in the morning of the last day of the session.  The President was in the next room waiting for Congress, and wanted to know what was the trouble in the appropriations.  They were fighting for those Indians, and only saved them by permitting the members to substitute a committee go out there and look into the matter, and out of that visit out there has come the Sioux bill.  I became satisfied -- no man can go there and not be satisfied -- that those white man will have a large portion of that reservation; that this land cannot be kept by Indians with a population increasing all around them.  I made up my mind that I could do more good by accepting the inevitable, and seeing to it that if they part with their land they shall have an equivalent for it.  Out of that has come this bill, and if anybody is alarmed, let him rest upon this section which requires a vote of approval of three-fourths of the Indians.  But it is so drawn that they do approve it, they are anxious for it.  What are the provisions?  First, 11,000,000 left to them shall be divided into six parts, and each of the six tribes shall be located upon its own part.   The other 11,000,000 are to be sold to actual settlers, who are to live upon the land five years before they have any title at all to it. [page 34]

Any contract they have made beforehand shall be null and void, so they cannot sell themselves out as the pre-emptioners are dong.  They have got to stay five years.  Then they pay only 50 cents an acre, while the ordinary public land is $1.25 an acre.  Fifty cents an acre will bring $5,500,000, and it provides that this money shall be put into the Treasury of the United States and the interest applied to the education and civilization of the Indians.  They capitalize one half to satisfy the white man who are clamoring for the land.  They are located for the first time on land of their own.

    The railroads come up to the Missouri River and want to go across the reservation 200 miles.  Whether this is the best part of the road or not I am not prepared to answer.  This bill is the result of the personal examination of a committee and of a commission, and of our Indians rights association, upon whom I have relied, and upon agents like McGillicuddy and Mr. Gassman.  There are lines written in here by Mr. Gassman himself.  Thus the work has been done with the utmost endeavor to meet the want of the Indian and secure to him a home when you and the class of men like General Armstrong and General Pratt have got him ready to take care of himself.  He shall have a home and be a citizen of the United States; shall be one of us, contributing his share to all that goes into make up the strength and glory of citizenship in the United States.  There are four or five of these bill.  The Mission bill and the Round Valley bill have similar features; and the bill extending civil and criminal law over the Indian.  All this is a part of the machinery which it is the duty of the Government to take up, and you people are to do your part.  The Government can furnish money, but it can't teach a school.  The Government can give land, but it can't teach how to cultivate land; that must be done by private and benevolent effort or not at all.  You and your associates must keep your part of the work along so that every Indian, the moment he can be picked out by the Government and put on the land, shall find some helping hand to show him how to work that land.  It would be idle to take him out and give him 160 acres of and, ignorant how to use it, better let him be where he is.

    My dear friend here knows White Eagle, chief of the Poncas, and the clearest head of all the Indian tribes.  I asked him if he didn't want to take land in severalty.  It was some time before I could make him understand me.  He stopped and shook his head and said, "It would not do me any good; I can't speak your language; I don't know what to do with that land.  If I had it you white men would strip me as bare as a bird in a month.  Take my children and teach them your language; teach them how to trade with the white man; put them on this land, and you will do them some good; but I am too old."  Now we seem to think that land in severalty is the be-all and end-all of our Indian effort.  Some one here I thought had an idea that you could force him on to land in severalty, take him by the collar if he has one, or by the blanket, and force him to be a farmer.  A few years ago we were enchanted with that absurd idea.  We are only in the beginning of the work; we have much work ahead of us.  We need great patience, perseverance, and kindness before the Indian will become a self-sustaining citizen of the United States.  If the law power, if the executive and legislative power do their part; if the Government furnishes authority for making him a citizen and furnishes land, it is all they can do.  The Indian is to be trained and educated, not by Government officials, but by private effort.  Teachers should be paid in large degree by the Government, and the Government ha shown its readiness to supply everything that can be done in educating him.  My friend said that he could not find any money in the treasury.  Why, $1,00, in place of $20,000, has been the growth in grace n the past ten years.  And I believe they would have doubled that if they could have seen the agencies, the school-houses, and the opportunities for effective expenditure of that money.  The United States is doing its part; everything is encouraging to you and me as outsiders co-operating with the Government.  All we want is a little more patience with the Indian and a little more patience with ourselves, and we shall get along with what is disagreeable and unpleasant in this work.

    We want a little self-abnegation such as is exhibited in that martyr down at Hampton.  We must have this, or all is a failure.  Our work must be done now and without delay, for the greed for the Indian's land is growing every day, and it is as impossible to resist it under the forms of our Government as to stop the flow of the river.  We may guide and direct it, but we cannot stop it.  We are blind, we are deaf, we are insane if we do not take cognizance of the fact that there are forces in this land driving on these people with a determination to possess every acre of their land, and they will lose it unless we work on and declare that the original owner of this land shall, before every acre disappears from under him forever, have 160 acres of it when he shall be fitted to become a citizen of the United States and prepared to bear the burdens as well as share the rights of our Government.

    JUDGE CAMPBELL:  The ladies who are interested in California missions want to know whether there is a bill relating to those Indians. ...

THIRD DAY, MORNING SESSION

[page 37]

Spanish tenure

Mrs. O.J. Hiles, of Milwaukee, ... "a lady who takes a deep interest in the Mission Indians."

Spanish tenure: in case  they might not e considered as 'subjects' of the king, this wise monarch decreed that (and this forms their second tenure) 'After distributing among the Indians whatever they may justly want to cultivate, so, and raise cattle, confirming to them what they now hold, and granting them what they may want besides, all the remaining land may be reserved to us, the king.'

    PROCEEDINGS OF

    THE LAKE MOHONK CONFERENCE

    FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING

FIRST DAY - MORNING SESSION

At 10 o'clock on the morning of September 28th, 1887, the Hon. A.K. Smile called to order, in the parlor of the Mohonk Lake Mountain House, and after a few words of welcome, opened the Fifth Annual "Lake Mohonk Conference" by nominating General Clinton B. Fisk as Chairman, a motion which was unanimously endorsed by the conference.

[page 3] ...

    A CHANGE OF POLICY REQUIRES A CHANGE OF METHODS

    Paper by C.C. Painter

    The Dawes Land in Severalty and Indian Citizenship bill, made a law since our last Conference, has given us what Archimedes wished for, that he might test the power of his lever to lift the world, and we now have a standing place, and opportunity to test the power of our civilizing influences to lift the Indian.  The law we have done much to secure, we should bear in mind, is not the end we have been seeking, but only a deeded mean to its attainment; it has only supplied a necessary condition for successful work; the work still remains to be done.  In this case, as in all others, enlarged opportunity means also increased dangers, and we who are responsible for the present condition of affairs will be held responsible for their future outcome.  We cannot hold ourselves innocent of disasters which may come to these people through these enlarged opportunities unless we do all we can to improve them.

    The law we have secured must surely, as its provisions are carried out, undermine and destroy the present Indian policy, and the machinery by which it is carried out.  This was but ill adapted to any work which as friends of the Indian we desired to see done for him, but it has o place in the new order of things introduced by this law which as been enacted since our last Conference.  Under its [page 4] provisions he steps out of his undifferentiated, impersonal tribal relation into one of individualized, responsible citizenship, under the constitution and laws of the republic.  All things are made new in his status and relations; perforce all things must be made new in our methods of dealing with him.  When we make him a citizen we recognize his manhood with all its inherent rights under the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  What power can an Indian agent, carrying out the rules and regulations have over a man who has refuge under such protection?  Whatever restrictions Congress n its wisdom may put upon his power to alienate land to which he is after twenty-five years to have a title in fee simple, none can be put upon a free citizen except such as are imposed alike upon all.  Whatever power a clerk in the Indian bureau, who happens for the nonce to be acting commissioner, has to forbid a missionary society from teaching, at its own expense, and in its own schools, the Gospel to an Indian in his own tongue, so that he may go forth in obedience to the Master's command and preach it to his people, this power, inherent in the office under the old order of things, withers and dies in the presence of this law which lifts the Indian from the category of things and sets him among the sons of God and gives to him all their rights.  The fact is, we have entered upon the beginning of a new dispensation, and we shall find it necessary  that all things, in the methods and machinery of our Indian policy, shall be made new and adapted to the growth and development of men.  The sooner we take in this fact and adjust ourselves to it the better. ...

[page 17]

    Judge Draper, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of New York: "Mr. Chairman:  I came into the office of Sate Superintendent a year and a half ago with no more knowledge upon the Indian question and no more interest in it than the great body of readers of current literature have upon the subject.  I confess that the experience of a year and a half has led me to take something of an interest in the subject.  I came into office, however, with a feeling that I knew all about it.  I have gone on, month after month, with the feeling rowing upon me that the more I know the less I know, and the question wit me now is as to how much longer this condition of things is to go on.  We have in this State eight Indian reservations, with an Indian population of our thousand, in round numbers.  The condition of things upon these Indian reservations in our state is truly deplorable.  These people live upon lands as fertile, as delightful as could be found within the borders of the Empire State.  They are, however, shiftless.  They speak their own language very largely; they are lazy; they are entirely indifferent; they are acting upon a theory in their own minds that is in entire antagonism to the theory upon which this Conference is proceeding, and the question with them is, 'How long will it be before we exterminate you and reduce you to our ideas, and how long before the time will come when the Indian tribes will claim their own again, and we will be masters of these hills and these dales and valleys?'  The Indian population of this State is increasing; they are not being dispersed; they are not dying out.  They are growing in numbers.  There are more Indians upon the reservations in the State of New York than there were ten, twelve, or fifteen years ago.  There is no police regulation upon these reservation, nor any power or authority of law there.  They live in about the shape, probably, that the same number of whites under such circumstances, with such a history, and under such conditions, would be living.  If there quarrel, there is no executor of the law at hand to interfere to prevent it.  If they commit crime the law stands away off at arms length, and there is no power to punish.  there is scarcely any marriage relation among these Indians upon our reservations, and the entire condition of things is truly deplorable.  I have paid enough attention to the matter to go personally upon the reservations with our School Board to investigate and see what to do.  I say here that there is no such red tape about the management of Indian education in this State as has been referred to this morning as applying to Indians in the Territories.  The entire responsibility is placed upon the State Superintendent and he has the entire power over local superintendents.  He can remove them at pleasure if they are not capable and good men.  This is true of the teachers in these schools; if they are not the best that can be secured it is his fault and no one else's.  I find that one of the things which interferes with the progress of this work of educating and civilizing the Indians upon our reservations is this: that they have the control, or assume to control the right of assigning lands to whomsoever they will.  The question as to where the title of Indian lands is, is a very troublesome law question.  Where it be in the United States or in the State of New York, or in the tribes, or where it is, is a thing that none of the officers of the State Government seem to be able to answer.  The Indian councils upon each reservation assume to control this matter.  Now the Indians are natural politicians.  They seem to take to politics very naturally, and there is no reservation within the State to-day in which there are not Indian political parties.  They have their caucuses; they nominate tickets and declare, in their crude way, the platforms and principles of their party.  Now, then, this territorial government controls, or assumes the right of locating one Indian upon one piece of land ...

SECOND DAY, EVENING SESSION [page 60]

President Magill, of Swarthmore College: ... "during the past winter, while attending some of the interesting sessions of the Indian Commissioners at Washington, on the eve of the passing of that bill in which this Conference was so much interested last year -- the Dawes Land in Severalty Bill -- I listened with great satisfaction to the reports of the large sums of money expended in the Indian cause during the previous year by the various religious denominations.  Well knowing that the sums thus expended by these bodies might be taken as a fair index of the amount of effectual work done I was greatly encouraged in listening to these reports.  I was at that time deeply impressed with the conviction that, for the realization of all our highest hopes for the Indian, for his education and training, for his introduction as an equal among civilized people, and for his preparation for the high and responsible duties of American citizenship, we must look largely, if not chiefly, to the religious organizations of our country.  For this work the Dawes Bill, then under consideration, would most effectively open the way.  That bill has now been passed, and has become a law of the land; and it has been partially put into operation in several tribes.  As its honored author so distinctly told us last year it does not, of itself, do the great work that is needed to be done for the Indian.  It does not essentially change his character.  But it is surely the most important key to the whole situation that has ever been presented in the history of our legislation for this oppressed and outraged people.  Indeed, our legislation on this subject, beginning with our treaties with them, as independent nations within a nation, and continued by repeated violation of these treaties when it suited our purpose can hardly be characterized as a series of blunders and crimes from beginning to end.  In the passage of the Dawes Bill, light has at last dawned, and the ends sought, justice to the individual Indian, and his elevation to the rights of an American citizen, are likely to be secured.  By its wise and carefully drawn provisions it presents a method by which the government can deal directly with the Indian as an individual, and not merely as a member of a tribe.  And by it the solution is honorably reached of the gradual but sure disintegration of the reservation system and the final extinction of the tribal relations.  When this is accomplished, and they become citizens of the United States, settled upon homes of their own, and amenable, in all respects, to the same laws, and sharing equal protection with other citizens, the Indian problem, as a [page 61] distinct question, will be taken out of the hands of the government.  Surely, after all that they have suffered from this special legislation in their behalf, every true friend of the Indian would say, 'This is a consummation devoutly to be wished.'

    "But after this is done, and during its progress, there is another and even greater work which must continually be going on.  This other work is no less than the proper education, training, and full development of the Indian race for the great change from a savage, semi-savage, or barbarous, to a truly civilized people.  No such change can ever come except by patient training and in the course of some generations.

    "The great question which confronts us to-day is, therefore, 'How shall this work be most effectually performed?'  This is clearly the problem to which we, of this Mohonk Conference, should now address ourselves.

    "This long and patient labor for the elevation of a race, to be effectual, must devolve upon earnest consecrated men and women, who gladly devote their lives to it, and whose high qualification for this service depends on no mere government appointment.  In other words, the religious organizations of the country must continue the noble work which they have so well begun, and upon them the chief burden must rest.  It will be worse than vain for the government to attempt it, without their constant cooperation and their most efficient aid.  A merely secular education, a training of the intellect alone, will not accomplish it.  You may swell every expense, you may furnish the best equipped boarding and manual training schools, you may obliterate the Indian vernacular and substitute for it, in the rising generation of Indians, the most elegant and grammatical English speech, you may teach them agriculture and all the mechanic arts; your attempts will be forever vain, and worse than vain, unless their moral and spiritual natures are trained to keep pace with the intellectual.  This is true of the education of any people, and applies with especial force to the present condition of the Indian race.  No truth is more trite than that a purely intellectual education can only make the recipient a more efficient agent for evil.  But because moral and religious teaching should be combined with the intellectual, is it necessary that this work shall all be done, without the powerful aid and cooperation of the government?  This is the one question which I deem to be vital, and toward which I would direct your serious attention.  Let me say then, distinctly, that wile popular education in our country maintains its present status, all of the most important work for the education and elevation of the Indian race must be done by the religious organizations directly, and substantially, without the aid of the government.  All that we can ask of it, at present, is not to be a hindrance, while it cannot become a help.

    "The rivalry between opposing religious sects, and the fear that some one of them should secure too great a preponderance, has induced legislators to frame laws and constitutions which have brought about an almost absolute divorce between religious and secular instruction.  In my own State of Pennsylvania within the past twenty years important changes have been introduced into our Constitution, emphasizing more than ever before this most unwise separation . [page 62].  As a result of this fear, we have been fostering a great public system of the intellect alone, may I not almost say a Godless system, of which the generations to come, unless very important modifications are introduced, are sure to reap the bitter fruit. ... The fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of the whole human family, and our duties toward God and each other, naturally springing from these relations -- what fruitful themes are these for the most profitable instruction, and of such character that all religious sects can heartily unite in them. ...

SENATOR DAWES: ...That he will pass away as an Indian I don't doubt, and that very rapidly.  It will be into citizenship, and into a place among the citizens of this land, or it will be into a vagabond and a tramp.  He is to disappear as an Indian of the past; there is no longer any room for such an Indian in this country; he cannot find a place.  The Indian of the past has no place to live in this country. ... Something stronger than the Mohonk Conference has dissolved the reservation system.  The greed of these people for the land has made it utterly impossible to preserve it for the Indian.  He must take his place where you have undertaken to put him, or he must go a vagabond throughout this country, and it is for you and me to say which it shall be.  He cannot choose for himself, and he does not know where the ways are. ... 'The survival of the fittest' is all you can ask after you have done your duty, and all that can be expected. ...

THIRD DAY - MORNING SESSION

Mr. Price: ...[page 78]

    "What is needed, is an act of Congress to make the law more stringent and effective, so that the grog shop influence shall not be allowed to retard these wards of the Nation who are now in the transition state, struggling up from the gloom of barbarism to the light of civilization.  We have now, thanks to congress, and to the Christian men and women who have volunteered their services in this work and labor of love, lands in severalty, with hundreds of dwelling-houses on them, schools, churches, and other means that are lifting these people to the plane of usefulness, intelligence and dignified citizenship.  The people are beginning to believe that a dead Indian is not the only good Indian, but it would not be very difficult to prove that a dead Indian is less dangerous to the community than a drunken Indian, and might therefore be preferred.  A drunken white man is a curse to himself, his family and community, but a drunken Indian, in addition to all these, is an intensified condensation of savage brutality; and I earnestly hope that this Conference will declare in terms not to be misunderstood that Congress can do not one thing that will so effectually make available and operative the good things that will so effectually make available and operate the good things it has already done as to provide by law for the swift and certain punishment of any person who directly or indirectly furnishes intoxicating liquor to Indians.  I am not to be understood as supposing that this will cure all the ills that Indian flesh is heir to, but that it will very materially reduce them, no one who as properly considered the subject will for one moment doubt."

THIRD DAY, AFTERNOON SESSION [page 95]

Mr. Smiley: "I think there are some reasons for the government order.  The whole subject of getting the children into the schools in different denominations is in a muddle, and there should be some systematic plan about it.  I think there are great abuses all over the country.  The schools out in Indiana and the schools in the Eastern States are constantly bidding for scholars.  They go and take up the scholars attending the Government schools there, and even take the scholars that have been expelled from schools there, and some that are so diseased that they won't have them, and bring them to the schools in order to draw pay.  You know the government pays for the time they are in.  They get a contract for these schools, and they get pupils (diseased children) under that contract and bring them East, and call it a school in order to draw pay from the government.  There are scholars that have left Hampton and Carlisle who are put into these schools.  A grandfather, a father and children and grandchildren in the same school draw pay from the government.  The whole thing wants systematic arrangement.  Mr. Oberly, got the right matter in hand; he saw all these buses.  This order, as I understand it, may have been made in this way.  There were at Santee three schools when I was there.  The Government school could be depleted by the other schools in the field.  These private schools draw from it, and I suppose they do not like it to have their best scholars drawn away from them."  [The issue of 'inferior schools' was used to draw attention away from the kidnapping.  Rather than let anybody look at them and see what they are doing, they draw attention  somewhere else.]

Mr. Shelton.  "They were drawn away because the Government schools are so inferior. .."

THIRD DAY -- EVENING SESSION

[page 104]

    FINAL REPORT OF THE BUSINESS COMMITTEE

    I. We congratulate the country on the notable progress towards a final solution of the Indian problem which has been made during the past year.  The passage of the Dawes Bill closes the "century of dishonor"; it makes it possible for the people of America to initiate a chapter of national honor in the century to come.  It offers the Indians homes, the first condition of civilization; proffers them the protection of the laws; opens to them the door of citizenship.  We congratulate the country on the public sentiment which has made this Bill possible, on the Act of Congress responding promptly to the sentiment all to tardily roused, and the action of the Executive welcoming the Bill and the policy which it inaugurates, initiating the execution of its provisions in a just and humane spirit, and pledging its cooperation with philanthropic and Christian societies in the endeavor to prepare the Indian for the change which this Bill both contemplates and necessitates.

    II. The Dawes Bill has not solved the Indian problem.  It has only created an opportunity for its solution.  The acceptance of allotment and citizenship by all Indians on United States reservations must be a matter of several years' time, gradually extinguishing the Agency system, but requiring in consequence increased facilities for the administration of local justice, both civil and criminal, and methods of governmental supervision and protection during the transition period wholly free from partisan control.  Surrounded as the Indian is by those who have little sympathy with him in his ignorance, we are persuaded that further legislation will be required to guard him his rights and to prevent his new liberty and opportunity from becoming a curse instead of a blessing.  The method is yet to be determined.  The necessity is a constant fact.

    III. While the Dawes Bill will change the Indian's legal and political status; it will not change his character.  The child must become a man, the Indian must become an American; the pagan must be new created a Christian.  His irrational and superstitious dread of imaginary gods must be transformed into a love for the All-Father; his natural and traditional hatred of the pale-face into a faith in Christian brotherhood; his unreasoning adherence to the dead past into an inspiring hope in a great and glad future.  In his case religious education must precede and prepare for secular education, the Gospel for civilization, the story of God's love for the era into which the spear shall be beaten into a pruning hook and the sword into a plowshare.  This is the work of the Christian churches, on them the new era lays new and grave duties, because before them it opens new and larger opportunities.

    IV. This work necessitates cooperation, if not combination.  The work of education, which has been heretofore desultory, individual, fragmentary, denominational, must be made systematic, harmonious, organic, Christian.  For this purpose the various missionary and educational bodies working among the Indians are earnestly urged to secure at once a joint representative meeting to frame some [page 105] plan of cooperative action that they may not conflict with one another in the field; that they may reduce expenses and increase efficiency; and that, especially, in dealing both with the Indian and the United States Government, they may act as one body representing one great constituency, and combining their various energies to one great end, the Americanizing, civilizing and Christianizing of the aborigines of the soil.

    V. The abolition of the reservation system effected by the Dawes Bill necessarily involves the largest civil and religious liberty in the work of education in the reservations, and such liberty is required in order to carry on missionary and educational work.  While government must still determine on what conditions it will make appropriations for education, and while it must control all educational operations which are supported by its appropriations, the way should be open for any and every voluntary organization to carry on instruction among the Indian tribes without hindrance or interference.  Experience cal alone determine what method promises the cheapest, quickest and best results.  Failures may be as suggestive of truth as success, and o experiment should be forbidden by government authority of it is not made a charge upon the government purse.  There is no danger of too many schools; a great danger of too few.  No policy can be endured which forbids Christian men and women to teach Christian truth, or to prepare instruction in it in any way they deem right, in any part of this Commonwealth that is consistent with that civil and religious liberty which is unhampered in every other part of our land, and must hereafter be unhampered within all Indian reservations.  We lay on every Christian organization in the land the duty, and therefore, we claim for every Christian organization in the land the right, to push forward this work with all enthusiasm, directing their efforts according to their own judgment, not directed in them by any civil or political authority whatever.

    VI. The United States Government, however, leaves this work wholly to voluntary effort.  It possesses large funds equitably belonging to the Indian.  These are trust funds.  The Indian's greatest need is education in primary, industrial, normal and other schools.  To hold these moneys in the treasury while the Indians are allowed to grow up in ignorance is a misuse of trust-funds.  We call for an immediate enlargement of government educational work, largely increased appropriations for it, and a full recognition by Congress and by the Department, as well as by the churches, that the educational need of the Indian is instant, the exigency pressing, the perils in delay great, and the duty of action unmistakable.  We urge the immediate establishment of Indian schools at every practicable point, an increase in the umber of teachers, and whatever enlargement of salaries may be required to secure efficient teachers.  The most vigorous and united efforts are required to prepare the Indian for citizenship as rapidly as the Dawes Bill will confer it upon him.

    VII. In the work of secular education the true end must be kept constantly in view -- to prepare the Indian for American citizenship.  He must therefore be taught whatever appertains to successful citizenship -- the economic virtues, temperance, thrift, self-reliance, the [page 106] duties and responsibilities as well as the rights and privileges of citizenship; some practical knowledge of industrial arts, and above all the language of the country of which he is hereafter to be a citizen.  The English language should therefore be made at the earliest practicable day the sole medium of instruction in all government Indian schools; and even in purely voluntary and mission schools the English language should be brought to the foremost place as fast as the requirements of proper religious instruction will permit.

    VIII.  The introduction of civil service reform into the Indian Department is essential to its honest and effective administration.  For the work of protection and education, permanence and purity are an absolute necessity, and neither is possible under the partisan method.  We therefore demand the absolute divorce if the Indian Bureau from party politics in all its appointments and removals.

    PROCEEDINGS

    OF THE

    SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING

    OF THE

    LAKE MOHONK CONFERENCE

    OF

    FRIENDS OF THE INDIAN

Held September 26, 27 and 28, 1888  (Reported and Edited by Isabel C. Barrows)

FIRST SESSION

[page 11]

The following paper was then read by Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.

    EDUCATION FOR THE INDIAN

    The Indian problem is three problems, -- land, law, and education.  The country has entered upon the solution of the land problem.  It has resolved to break up the reservation system, allot to the Indians in severalty so much land as they can profitably occupy, purchase the rest at a fair valuation, throw it open to actual settlers, and consecrate the entire continent to civilization, with no black spot upon it devoted to barbarism.  Upon that experiment the country has entered, and it will not turn back.  The law problem, also, has been put in the way of solution.  It is safe to assume that it will not be long before the existing courts are open to the Indians; and it is reasonable to hope that special courts will be provided for their special protection, in accordance with the general plan outlined by the law committee of the Lake Mohonk conference.  But nothing has yet been done toward the solution of the educational problem.  A great deal has been done toward the education of individual Indians, something, perhaps, toward the education of single tribes, but no land has been agreed upon; and it is hardly too much to say that no land has even been proposed for solving the educational problem of the Indian race, -- for converting them from groups of tramps, beggars, thieves, and sometimes robbers and murderers, into communities of intelligent, industrious and self-supporting citizens.  But this is by far the most important problem of the three.  Put an ignorant and imbruted savage on land of his own, and he remains a pauper, if he does not become a vagrant and a thief.  Open to him the courts of justice, and make him amenable to the laws of the land, and give him neither knowledge nor a moral education, and he will come before these courts only as a criminal; but inspire in him the ambition of industry, and equip him with the capacity of self-support, and he will acquire in time the needful land and find a way to protect his personal rights.  These reforms must move on together.  Certain it is that without the legal and educational reform the land will be death to the Indian, and burden, if not disaster, to the white race.  My object in this paper is simply to set before the Lake Mohonk Conference the outlines of a possible educational system, in the hope that the principles here announced, and the methods here suggested, may at least b found worthy of discussion, out of which may be evolved a plan worthy to be presented to the country for its adoption.

    At present we have no system of Indian education.  Some Christian and philanthropic individuals and societies are attempting, in various fragmentary ways, to do a work of education in special localities.  The Government is doing some educational work under teachers whom [page 12] it has appointed and whom it supports, but the efficacy of thee governmental efforts depends largely upon the ability and character of the agent of the reservation on which the school is situated.  The Government and the churches have in other instances entered into a quasi partnership, which is as perplexing in its results as it is anomalous in its nature; the Government sometimes furnishing the buildings, sometimes furnishing the teachers, sometimes making appropriations for the one or the other, and sometimes simply sending pupils to the schools established by private benevolence, and paying their tuition.  Under such a method as this the churches naturally enter into vigorous competition with each other for governmental appropriations.  It is simply an incidental evil of this anomalous condition of affairs that in the year closing June, 1886, out of fifty religious schools supported in part by the government and in part by religious societies, thirty-eight were under Roman Catholic control with 2,068 pupils, and twelve were under Protestant control with 500 pupils.  This is not to the discredit of the Roman Catholic Church, which works with efficiency because it works as a until, but rather to the discredit of the Protestant churches, which are unable to lay aside their differences and combine their efforts in so simple a matter as the non-sectarian education of a pagan people within the bounds of our own country.  It is at all events entirely to the discredit of a method which never would have been devised; -- which, like Topsy, was not made, but only "growed."

    Nor is this the only vice of the present essentially vicious no-system of Indian education.  A minority of Indian children are taught more or less feebly the rudiments of civilization, some in boarding schools, some in day schools, some on the reservation, some off it, some under one, others under another sectarian influence.  When a little smattering of education has been given them, they drift back, or are sent back to the reservation, to forget what they have learned, -- to take off the beaver and put on the feathers, to lay aside the hoe and take up the hatchet, and resume the war paint which they had washed from their faces at the schoolhouse door.  That so many Indians are able to resist the evil influences of their savage environments, and interpenetrate their tribe with any civilizing influences whatever, affords a singular testimony to the stability of character which goes along with a saturnine disposition.  what the country should do, what the friends of Indian emancipation -- rather let me say of justice, humanity, and equal rights -- should do, is to substitute for this chaotic congeries of fragmentary efforts, a system which shall secure within a generation the education of all Indian children within the borders of the United states in the essentials of American civilization.  Certain propositions looking to this ultimate result I desire to put before the Lake Mohonk Conference for its discussion.

    I. The United States Government must undertake to provide this education, not to supplement provision made by others; not to aid it with appropriations, niggardly in some instances, excessive in others; not to try tentative experiments here and there, dependent upon the idiosyncrasy of individual agents, -- but to assume the work of equipping for civilized industry and intelligent citizenship the entire mass of Indian population now under the age of, say, eighteen.  This is the duty of the United States Government to do.  We have no right to throw this burden on the locality in which the Indian tribe happens [page 13] to be located; we have o right to require Dakota to provide for the education of the Sioux, or New Mexico for the education of the Apache.  We have steadily pressed the Indian tribes westward, and they no longer trouble the New England, nor the Middle, nor even the Western States; the burden that belongs properly to the entire country has been upon the scattered populations of the far West.  It is wholly inequitable that we of the East should philanthropically demand that the Indians be educated, and drop a dime or a quarter no and then into the church plate toward their education, while we leave the few of our fellow-citizens who are struggling with the problems of a pioneer life to choose between enduring the intolerable burden of a great ignorant and vagrant population, or to shoulder the almost equally intolerable burden of educating them out of their vagrancy and pauperism.  There is as little reason for throwing this burden upon the churches.  The Christian churches of America have all that they can do to fulfill the duty definitely laid upon them of preaching the Gospel to the heathen of their own and other lands, and of teaching what obligations that Gospel imposes on their own congregations.  If the Government were poor and the churches were rich, it might be asked of the churches that they should assume the burden of educating the Indian children of the continent.  But it is the churches who are relatively poor, while the Government is so rich that it is raced by political debate from one end to the other over the question what it shall do with its surplus.  The education of the wards of the nation is a duty imposed upon the nation itself.  It do not stop here to dwell upon the fact that it owes, upon solemn treaty obligations, thousands of dollars promised to Indian tribes for schools never established and teachers never commissioned; nor upon the other fact that it will soon have in its hands, from the sale of Indian lands, millions of dollars belonging to the Indian tribes, with no possible way of expenditure so advantageous to them as the way of education.  If we had no Indian lands out of which to reimburse ourselves, if we had not make sacred treaties only to break them, it would still remain true that it is the duty of the nation, out of its abundant wealth, -- wealth produced by the lands where these Indians once roamed in savage freedom,  -- to provide the means necessary to enable those same Indians to adjust themselves to the conditions of civilized life.  Nor is this a problem of proportions so vast that the country cannot venture to enter upon it.  The entire population of India children between the ages of six and sixteen is estimated at less than fifty thousand.  An adequate, continuous, systematic education of fifty thousand pupils for less than half a century would solve the Indian problem.  It would not be costly.  Schools are less expensive than war.  It costs less to educate an Indian than it does to shoot him.  A long and costly experience demonstrated that fact.

    2. The education thus to be afforded must not merely be offered ass a gift; it must be imposed by superior authority as a requirement.  In other words, the education of Indian children must be made compulsory.  It is a great mistake to suppose that the red man is hungering for the white man's culture, eager to take it if it is offered to him.  The ignorant are never hungry for education, nor the vicious for morality, nor barbarism for civilization; educators have [page 14] to create the appetite as well as to furnish the food.  The right of Government to interfere between parent and child must indeed be exercised with the greatest caution; the parental right is the most sacred of all rights; but a barbaric father has no right to keep his child in barbarism, nor an ignorant father to keep his child in ignorance.  There may be difficulty in compelling the children of Indians to attend the white man's school, but there need be no question of the right to compel such attendance; and in this, as in so many other cases, when there is a will there will without difficulty be found a way.

    3. In organizing such a system of education as I am trying to outline before you, the Government should assume the entire charge of all primary education.  As fast as possible contract schools should be passed over either to the entire control of the Government, which maintains them, or to the entire maintenance of the church or society which controls them.  It is absolutely right that the Government should administer all the moneys which the Government appropriates.  There is only one form of contract school which is legitimate in any permanent or well-organized system of education; it is that in which the school is wholly administered and controlled by private enterprise, and the Government sends pupils to it and pays for their tuition as any other patron might do.  In assuming this work of primary education, the Government should assume to give all that is necessary to equip the Indian child for civilized life.  It should teach him the English language.  While the Government was wholly wrong in assuming to prohibit individual societies and churches from teaching what doctrine they pleased in what language they chose, so long as they paid the expenses out of their own pockets, it was wholly right to refuse to spend a dollar of the people's money to educate a pagan population in a foreign t