While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The following letter from Hon. Henry L. Dawes, who was unable to attend the
conference, was read by Dr. Foster:
Pittsfield, Mass.., October 15, 1901.
My Dear Mr. Smiley:
I had anticipated much pleasure in meeting at another of your delightful
conferences coworkers in the cause, and in renewing most valuable friendships
there formed, but an unexpected delay in business connected with the Indian
Territory compels me to remain at home. I cannot, however, keep out of mind the
range of discussion and the importance of questions likely to come before that
body for discussion. Since I cannot listen, I venture to put on paper briefly
some few words expressive of my views of what has been and what is yet to be
done before the work shall be complete.
In the first place, permit me to congratulate the conference upon the most
gratifying evidence, coming from all quarters, of healthy progress and important
results attendant upon efforts that have been put forth in recent years for the
care of the Indian race in our midst. Results are the best test of wisdom in all
effort. A retrospect of less than twenty-five years covers the entire period
since the work in which you are engaged, of making a self-supporting citizenship
of the Indian race in this country, was begun. And history nowhere records more
gratifying results. It was in 1877 that the nation took from its own money in
the Treasury the first dollar and applied it in aid of this work for Indian
education. It was but $20,000, but it was a beginning; and every year results
have stimulated an increase of the amount, till last year there was appropriated
for the support of Indian schools $3,184,250. That first appropriation of
$20,000, with the help of benevolent contributions and the interest on a few
Indian funds that could not be otherwise used, maintained 48 small boarding
schools, 102 day schools, with 3,398 scholars all told. There were a year ago
148 well-equipped boarding schools and 295 day schools engaged in the education
of 25,202 Indian children, with an average attendance of 20,522. This does not
include those outside institutions of Carlisle, Hampton, Haskell, Genoa, and
others like them, which send forth yearly large numbers of young men and women
fully equipped to take their places and discharge the duties incumbent on the
average citizen. This, in a total Indian population of less than 250,000 all
told, approximates very nearly to the school facilities in the newly organized
Western States.
Statistics also make it plain that 76 per cent of the pupils who yearly leave
these schools to take upon themselves the duties of practical life do, in the
language of the present broad minded and devoted Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
"Go forth equipped for the part of good average men and women, capable of
dealing with the ordinary problems, and of taking their place in the great body
politic of the country."
The next step was the severalty act. Up to 1887, less than fifteen years ago,
there was not an Indian on a reservation who owned the hut he lived in or a foot
of the land over which he had raised a tepee for a night's shelter. That act,
made possible by aid of these conferences, has called into being a home and a
farm of 160 acres for each of 55,457 allotted Indians, aggregating 6,708,628
acres of farms. Each farm is set apart to its Indian owner, with a title
warranted to him by the United States, and which he can not part with, if he
would, for twenty-five years. These thus become so many home centers, where all
the forces of future character and influence must take root and bring forth the
first fruits of civilized life. Before the passage of that act not an Indian on
a reservation had any defined legal status among his fellowmen. He was in law an
incompetent ward of the nation, incapable of making a binding contract, to whom
the very courts, open to you and me, were closed; and he could neither maintain
nor defend any right secured by the Constitution to us. He had no voice in the
making of the laws he was bound to obey, or in the choice of those who were to
enforce upon him their penalties. There is no human being so helpless and at the
mercy of irresponsible selfishness as such a ward under a guardian no one can
call to account for his stewardship. Instead, under this law each one of those
55,000 allot tees stands up among his fellow-citizens clothed with all the
rights, privileges, and immunities of citizenship of which you and I boast and
are proud. Each one of them walks to the polls side by side with the proudest of
us, and to him are open, equally with haughtiest millionaire, every court of
justice in the land. Every door of opportunity in all the pursuits of active
life is as wide open to him as to every other citizen of the United States.
Thus much of the past, if there were nothing more to record, is sufficient for
encouragement and continuance with renewed zeal in the still unfinished work.
But that indirect influence upon the Indian still on the reservation,
undisturbed as we all were before the work you are engaged in was begun, has
been no less marked and is no less hopeful. I cannot now do more than allude to
the changes which have come over Indian life on the reservations themselves,
traceable directly to the policy your conferences have done so much to promote.
We no longer hear of bloody Indian wars, of the slaughter of warring clans, or
the scalping of women and children fleeing from burning wigwams. The pioneer can
now go forth to trade with the red man as safely as he does with his white
neighbor, and return at night to his defenseless home with less apprehension of
peril to those within than when scouts and sentinels mounted guard over it. The
Indian no longer doubts and mistrusts. It is dawning upon him that he is made
for something, and he is beginning to care for the morrow. He is daily growing
more and more sure that the hand held out to him is for his guidance and help,
and not for betrayal and spoliation.
There can be no more striking proof of this great change than the touching
tribute to a life consecrated to the elevation of their race by forty Sioux
Indians and sixty Chippewa journeying on foot a hundred miles, that they might
walk beside the bier and sing hymns of praise in their own language over the
grave of the late Bishop Whipple, whom they had trusted, and who had trusted
them. It was a tribute to a noble life work worth more than all the pomp and
display of a royal funeral.
But you will not assemble to contemplate the rich legacy of the past alone. The
work is not yet finished, and new demands upon zeal and energy confront you to
which what has been already gained will incite to still more untiring effort.
Mistakes of the past are to be corrected, and new needs developed by its
experiences are to be provided for. As tribal organizations are dissolving into
individuality, tribal funds now amounting to many millions in the Treasury must
be used. Great care should be taken that these funds be devoted to those needs
of that higher civilization for which tribal organizations are being exchanged,
and which call for new expenditures hitherto unknown. These should, as far as
possible, be in lieu of local taxes for these necessities, from which all
allottees are exempt for the first twenty-five years. Any distribution of such
funds per capita would be worse than waste. Allottees should not be permitted to
barter away all the educational and preparatory teaching for self-supporting
citizenship, derived from occupancy alone, for a mere mess of pottage in the
form of a lease to a white man. The process of leasing now so alarmingly
prevalent is sure, if persisted in, to work the ruin of the lessor, turning him
back in the end to that barbarism from which his only sure rescue is the
preparatory school of personal occupancy. Another question involved in the
question involved in the allotment system not contemplated in the beginning has
grown in importance till its solution has become imperative; and that is the
disposition of the lands fit only for grazing, now occupied in large quantities
by the Indians, not as yet allotted. These lands are unfitted for small holdings
for ordinary farming purposes, but are a great source of profit to large herders
of cattle, who have heretofore rented them in large areas from the Indians for
small rentals, usually effected through agents, who make more than the Indians
by the transaction. Much of this has, unfortunately, been already allotted, to
the great injury of the allottee, unable as he is to utilize it except by
sub-rental, leaving him without other means of support a citizen of the United
States whose contracts are as binding as those of any other citizen, but who
knows no more how to make a contract than a puling infant. Independent
individual ownership and occupancy of such lands, so as to be a school of
preparation for an independent life, makes some change in the allotment system
necessary to save the land and the allottee alike from ruin. I am sure that it
will not escape your attention.
A situation for immediate and honorable employment for those who go out yearly
from those institutions which are doing so much to fit the Indians under their
care for their part in the multiplied activities of actual life is another great
need of that work. It will do much to protect them from the taunts and jeers of
those they have left behind, from discouragement sure to come of waiting for
employment, and temptation to return to the companionship they have left. Every
day that witnesses increasing numbers of the unemployed, calls louder on the
friends of the Indian to take care of their apprentices in the ways of
civilization.
I would gladly dwell at more length upon the work of the Commission to the Five
Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory, in which I am more especially engaged
of late. It will suffice to say that work is progressing satisfactorily along
the lines I had the opportunity to present at your last meeting, though very
slowly, in consequence of new and complicated questions arising there, as among
the other tribes. The most difficult of all these proves to be the discovery of
natural oil and gas in different parts of the Territory. The conditions of land
there make altogether different methods of allotment necessary from those on the
reservations. There unoccupied and unimproved lands of comparatively equal
value, by a list of Indian names furnished at the agency, were to be allotted, a
given number of acres to each one. The Indian Territory, however, has been
occupied for seventy-five years by a people considerably advanced in
civilization when they came there. They have taken in since 300,000 white
residents. Almost all business enterprises common to civilization have been
carried on there. Towns and railroads have been built, and coal and other
minerals discovered, misadjusting and destroying relative values till there are
scarcely 2 acres of equal value side by side. To allot equally among the Indian
owners to whom it belonged to one as much as to any other, the same number of
acres to each had to be displaced by equality of value. The commission has been
compelled, therefore, to acquaint itself with the value of every acre, so that
the allotment to each when it is done, whether it be 10 acres or 50, would be
worth as much as that of any other. That work, covering an area as large as the
whole State of Indiana, was drawing to a close when, during the past year, oil
and natural gas were discovered in different parts, overthrowing all relative
values and appraisements yet made. Ten acres in one place are deemed worth a
thousand in another. The law does not provide for the allotment of an oil well.
Other parts of the work are approximating a close, and the people are fast
adjusting themselves to the new order of things awaiting them.
There is, however, here, as well as on the reservations, much to be done in
clearing away entanglements and pitfalls from the way leading to the goal of
self-supporting citizenship, now opening so auspiciously to the race.
But that work will not be complete till self-respecting manhood shall stand
guard over and modest womanhood adorn every Indian home in the land.
Truly, yours, H. L. Dawes.
Mr. A. K. Smiley. I should like to have the secretary to send a letter to
Senator Dawes, expressing our hearty approval of this fine paper.
Mr. Garrett. I move that the paper be referred to the business committee, that
it may be used in connection with the platform.
It was voted that the thanks and appreciation of the conference should be sent
to Senator Dawes for his paper, and that the paper should be referred to the
business committee. It was also moved that a letter of sympathy with Senator
Dawes in the loss of his wife, and deploring his absence, should be sent to him
by the secretary.
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Thirty-Third Annual Report Of The Board Of Indian Commissioners,
1901
