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!
Proceedings of the Board of Indian
Commissioners at the Nineteenth Lake Mohonk
Indian Conference
Proceedings Of The Board Of Indian Commissioners At The Nineteenth Lake Mohonk
Indian Conference.
[Addresses and proceedings which concern the Indians are included in this
appendix.]
First session, Wednesday. October 16, 1901.
The Nineteenth Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian was called to
order after morning prayers, which were conducted by Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler,
at 10 a. m. Wednesday, October 16, 1901. The guests were welcomed by Mr. A. K.
Smiley, the generous host of the occasion, in the following words:
Ladies And Gentlemen: The time has arrived for the Nineteenth Annual Conference
of the Friends of the Indian. I am not sure but we shall have to change that
name. These friends are friends of other peoples besides the Indians. I can not
begin to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to welcome you here. To see a
company of men and women, with earnest hearts and clear brains, coming together
to discuss the elevation of different races of people, and the best way of doing
it, is to me an intense delight. I believe all good causes can be best promoted
by the friendly, earnest, open discussion of people holding different views,
comparing notes, and then arriving at some conclusion. We have always had open
and free discussion here, and at the end we have come to some conclusion in
which we could agree, owing to the fact that there were peacemakers as well as
wise heads among us.
I have great hopes for the success of this conference. There are here this
morning just an even hundred invited guests, with about fifty yet to come. There
are two hundred and thirty-one regular guests of the house also here an unusual
number at this time of the year. I am afraid that we may have to put our
conference off later another year, because we do not like to turn away people
who want to attend it.
It has been thought best that the Indian question should not monopolize the
whole three days of the meeting. A great many matters which needed attention
eighteen years ago have been settled now, so that the need of an Indian
conference is not so strong as it was; but other questions have come up which
are very important, such as Porto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii, about which
we ought to confer, and time will be given for that.
It is important that we have a good presiding officer, and I have always assumed
the privilege of nominating one. We have had one man who has served us admirably
for some years, and I have no doubt that it will meet with your full approval
when I again nominate as our presiding officer Dr. Merrill E. Gates, secretary
of the Board of Indian Commissioners.
The motion was seconded, and Dr. Gates was unanimously elected.
Dr. Gates took the chair and called for further organization.
On motion of Mr. Philip C. Garrett, the following secretaries were elected in
the order named: Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, Mr. Joshua W. Davis, Mrs. George H.
Knight.
On motion of Mr. Charles F. Meserve, Mr. Frank Wood, of Boston, who, as was
said, has served the conference faithfully for eleven years in that capacity,
was elected treasurer.
On motion of Mr. James Talcott, the following named persons were elected a
business committee: Dr. Lyman Abbott, Dr. Addison P. Foster, Mr. Daniel Smiley,
Mr. Lucien C. Warner, Mr. D. W. McWilliams, Mr. Philip C. Garrett, Mr. Darwin R.
James, and Gen. T. J. Morgan.
On motion of Hon. W. W. Beardshear, Mr. William H. McElroy was elected press
reporter.
On motion of Dr. H. B. Frissell, the following publication committee was
elected: Mrs. I. C. Barrows, Mr. Joshua W. Davis, and Mr. Frank Wood. 24
The following address was delivered by Dr. Gates, the presiding officer:
The Next Steps To Be Taken. Address Of The President, Merrill E. Gates, LL. D.,
of the Board of Indian Commissioners.
Ladies And Gentlemen, Friends Of The Indians, And Members Of The Mohonk
Conference: Once More, In Response To The Hospitable Invitation of Mr. and Mrs.
Smiley, we are met at Mohonk to take counsel together for the welfare of the
Indians. The beauty of the autumn time renews itself no more unfailingly than
does the gracious and hearty welcome of our host to his annual guests. The
beauty of the autumn does not pall with added years; but all the glories of the
autumn time are suggestive of fruit, and our conferences here, beautiful as they
are in their setting of natural scenery, and gracious and delightful as they are
in their social intercourse and their ennobling friendships, do not exist
primarily and chiefly for these social and aesthetic delights. The rich colors
of autumn and its falling foliage bear witness to a period of life, which has
been used in producing fruit and enriching other lives; and so it passes in
serene beauty, its mission accomplished. And all our conferences here, to those
of us who have known them for almost a score of years now, are valued and have
become beautiful in memory not chiefly for the gracious charm which has marked
our intercourse here, but by the fruitage of ennobling friendship in our united
helpful effort to uplift and enrich the life of the less favored and belated
races of our country.
Much has been accomplished in these eighteen years. In the autumn or 1884, when
I was first present at a Mohonk Indian conference, the only original Americans
had no rights before the law. They were without citizenship, and they could not
possibly become citizens. They had no homes. No way was open to them by which
they might enter into the life of our people. There was no door of hope for the
Indian. A severalty bill to give them homes, which had been outlined and urged
by the Board of Indian Commissioners as early as 1870, did not become a law
until 1886. There was no adequate system of Government schools; and the mission
schools and contract schools of the different denominations reached but a small
fraction of the Indian children of school age.
Now about 60,000 of the Indians have become citizens under the severalty act. If
we except the 20,000 Navaho, there is almost enough of opportunity at Indian
schools for all the Indian children of school age. The average of attendance at
Indian schools is approximating that of the average schools for whites in our
country. The number of Indians who are dependent upon rations is decreasing from
year to year, and should be still more rapidly diminished. Wars between Indians
and the United States Government are at an end, as we believe. And we dare to
hope that there will not be much more even of bloody rioting on the part of
Indians against the authorities. The regulations of the civil service have
removed from the problem many of the evils connected with inexperience and
incapacity on the part of teachers and employees in the service. There is no
longer a " clean sweep" for partisan reasons after each general election. The
service still suffers terribly from the appointment of incapable and worthless
agents by local and political influence, and purely from partisan
considerations. But we remember that in 1892 Theodore Roosevelt, then Civil
Service Commissioner, and an interested participant in this conference at Mohonk,
said that the President of the United States, while he could not by his own act
put Indian agents under the civil-service law, could, if he chose, put an end to
many of the evils attaching to the present system of appointing agents by
declaring that he would not nominate as Indian agent any man whose fitness for
the service had not been tested and approved by examination or by some competent
commission; and we have confidence that Theodore Roosevelt, as President of the
United States, knowing the actual condition of affairs upon our Western Indian
reservations by personal observation as no other President has ever known them,
in some way which shall commend itself to his sound judgment and his high
principles, as President will carry into effect the reforms which, as
Commissioner, he saw were so much needed in order to secure well qualified and
effective men as Indian agents, and to keep in positions where their experience
will be of service to the nation and the Indians, the agents who show themselves
capable.
During this last year decided progress has been made in more than one line of
effort that looks toward the solution of the Indian problem. Those of you who
were present at this conference a year ago remember how strongly your chairman
insisted at that time upon the crying need of regulations for the licensing and
solemnizing of Indian marriages, and for the making and keeping of a permanent
record, at every agency, of family relations, and of births and deaths, as well
as of marriages. If any others felt, as your chairman certainly felt (at the
close of the session, in which the Commissioner of Indian Affairs had spoken to
us in a way to command so fully the interest and the esteem of all who heard him
make that address), that the chairman of the conference went to the extreme
limit of the allowable in urging upon the Commissioner of Indian Affairs his
personal responsibility for taking immediate action to carry into effect such a
system of family records, we may say, in the circle of this conference, that the
friendly challenge to act at once was taken up most cordially by the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs; and before your chairman and the Commissioner
reached Washington, steps had been taken to prepare the necessary papers and
blanks. The experienced head of a division in the Indian Bureau, Miss Cook, was
named by Commissioner Jones to give especial attention to this matter. Members
of the conference will be gratified to know that the entire system of
instructions, forms and regulations requiring the licensing and solemnizing of
marriages between the Indians, forbidding polygamous marriages, providing for
the immediate registration of all families at each Indian agency, and for a
permanent record of all births, marriages, and deaths, has gone into effect in
the Indian service within the last two months. To Commissioner Jones (and to
Miss Cook, of the Indian Bureau, to whose manifold duties the preparation and
supervision of forms were added), belongs the credit for immediate and effective
action along this important line. The Secretary of the Interior has given his
hearty approval to the plan. We are anticipating with pleasure the presence of
Commissioner Jones to speak to us at a subsequent session of this conference;
and from him we shall hear in detail of the progress of the year in Indian
affairs.
Among the many matters connected with the Indian problem which interest us, and
to which true friends of the Indian and lovers of their country must still give
thought and steadfast effort, one or two subjects are so centrally, so supremely
important, that I want to impress them especially upon your thought. I want to
ask you, as leaders of public thought and shapers of public opinion, through the
press, the pulpit, and the ever widening influence which belongs to the
intelligent womanhood of our land, to do all that lies in your power to
stimulate thought, and to secure legislative and administrative action along
these central lines.
You know the intensely conservative force of vested funds in maintaining an
established order of things. Many who are eager and strenuous in their efforts
to influence men toward new and wiser courses of action seem to be struck with
paralysis of awe when they contemplate millions of dollars which have been used
in certain ways, and therefore, in the minds of many, always should be used in
precisely the same way. When vast tracts of land and great sums of money are
united in their force of inertia to perpetuate great abuses, all hope of change
seems to die out of the hearts of many. The history of " mortmain, " and its
deadly conservative effect upon the life of certain European nations, is a
notable case in point.
By the old system, in Indian affairs our National Government palavered and
treated with the so called "tribal governments" of Indians. This evil old system
was based upon the idea of isolated reservation life for savages, while we
pauperized them by feeding them rations in their laziness; and thus we cut off
from civilization (not for the use of Indians, but merely as vacant "roaming
ground," no longer hunting fields) vast realms of our territories, larger than
States. Twenty years ago this system seemed solidly entrenched behind the
conservative bulwarks of landed interests and great tribal funds.
The inertia and opposition to all reform which was inherent in the land system
of the undivided reservation for the tribe we have successfully attacked by the
severalty act. Nearly six thousand homestead farms and holdings have been
carved out of a small fraction of the reservations. And the land still held by
the Government for Indian reservations is greater in extent than the area of all
the New England States, New York, New Jersey, and half of Pennsylvania. But by
recognizing the individual Indian (instead of the tribe) in his right to hold
and use land, we are steadily making of Indians self supporting and home loving
citizens; while we are at the same time doing away with many of the evils of the
reservation, and opening vast tracts of land to settlement and to the influence
and example of American homes and civilized families.
The conservative influence of the vast tribal funds held in trust by the
Government of the United States for Indians remains intact. Only those who watch
attempted legislation and the efforts of claim agents for Indian tribes, can
properly estimate the dead weight of inertia which often crushes attempts at
reform in methods of dealing with the Indians, or the constant temptation to
perversion of justice, which the maintenance of these unused funds inevitably
stimulates. The influence of these funds is always felt in favor of perpetuating
the worst abuses of the reservation system, with its issue of rations to able
bodied idlers, its favored and too often exorbitant agency traders, its long
perpetuated "annuity payments" in goods and in cash, its indefinitely prolonged
period of helpless tutelage for Indian men and women who are not taught the
proper use of money and property, by themselves using it, but become sadly
familiar with its abuses by having it doled out to them in ways which render
them still more helpless. When this conference and other friends of the Indian
unite in asking that agencies pronounced by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
to be no longer needed, and worse than useless, be abolished, the selfish
interests of the localities where money from the tribal funds has been spent
come to the front. Intense pressure is brought to bear upon Senators and Members
of Congress to continue the agency with all its evils. This is not the place to
recount in detail the history, even of the last year, in respect to such
recommendations. But here, as everywhere, the conservative force of these tribal
funds in keeping "things as they are" and at their worst, in our Indian service,
can hardly be overestimated. When Dickens satirized the delay the "red tape,"
the deadly conservatism of "the circumlocution office " in attacking the evils
of chancery practice in England a generation ago, Americans used to feel
thankful that in America such things were not possible. But those of us who at
Washington watch the skill with which a system of "how not to do it" can be
perpetuated by department methods, under the influence of the conservatism of
great tribal funds, at times are tempted to feel that the worst enemy of reform
for the Indians is the (sometimes unconscious) combination of well meaning
employees who stand for doing things precisely as they have always been done,
and shrewd intriguers Indian and white who wish tribal funds and Indian claims
to be indefinitely perpetuated, that they may profit by the "system as it is."
(Here the speaker related incidents to illustrate his position.) I ask you,
then, how can the Indian take his place as an American citizen among American
citizens, if the Government is to perpetuate indefinitely a system, which holds
him in tutelage (for his alleged interest), and administers vast tribal funds
for him "as a ward?" Let the Government, as guardian, prepare to "give a final
accounting" of what it has done with these trust funds of its ward. As fast as
they "come to years of discretion" let these so called "wards" be
entrusted with
the management of their own property. And because the Indian tribe is neither a
sound social group nor a political entity, let us cease to keep up the pretense
that the Government can do good to Indians by dealing with the little groups of
half-breeds, Indians, and "squaw men" (I use the term with an apology, but
purposely, to indicate the whites who for interested reasons marry Indian
women), whose corrupt and selfish use of the funds which come into their hands
has been proved in so many cases and has brought "tribal councils" into
contempt.
Let the Government recognize the individual Indian in his right to his divided
share of the tribal fund, as the Government has already recognized the
individual Indian in his right to his divided share of the tribal land. A law
can be and should be devised (and such a law should be speedily enacted) by
which a date should be fixed (for each tribe) after which no more children shall
be born into such tribal relations as will give them the right to an undivided
share in tribal funds. Let no Indian child born after that date have any share
in tribal funds, except as he may inherit, under the laws of the State or
Territory in which he resides, the right to a part of his father's or his
mother's individual holding of a share of those funds.
The system of family records at agencies, for which the Board of Indian
Commissioners has earnestly called for the last two years, within the last three
months has been put into operation. Wherever the Government has sought to divide
tribal funds in the past, the first great difficulty has been to secure a
trustworthy list of those who were entitled to a share in such division. "The
system of family records at each agency, this year inaugurated by the
Department, if faithfully carried out, will at once give a basis for such a
complete list in the case of each tribe.
My idea of a general plan for breaking up tribal funds is something like this:
Let a list of all those in a tribe who are entitled to a share in such a tribal
fund at a given date be prepared and filed; and let a general law provide that,
on that date, the whole fund for that tribe (possibly with such reservations for
educational and tax paying purposes as may be wise and consistent with the
equities of the spirit and intent that governed the treaty) be divided into
individual holdings, and let each member of the tribe who is entitled, on that
date, to a share in the fund, be credited with his divided and individual share.
Let no children born after that date have any share, save as they inherit from
their parents or older relatives, under the laws of the State or Territory in
which they reside. Let these individual holdings stand to the credit of
individual Indians upon the books of the agency, and upon the books of the
Department and the Treasury. This means some increase in clerical force at
Washington, but the expense in salaries for such an increase of clerical force
for a short time would be as nothing compared to the money that is annually
wasted in keeping the system as it is. Let authority be given by law to the
Secretary of the Interior, upon recommendation of the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, to fix a date for each tribe at which these individual holdings shall
be paid to the individual Indians in whose name they stand on the Treasury
books. Such a date might be fixed for the entire tribe in numerous instances,
and payments might be made to all immediately. The Indians of several tribes are
now prepared to use well such payments. In the case of other tribes it might be
wiser to fix a date on which all Indians who can meet certain prescribed tests
of intelligence, and so manifest a fitness to manage their own affairs, should
be paid each his own individual share, while the other members of the tribe
should receive each his own share as rapidly as he might be able to meet similar
tests. In this way we should soon see "the beginning of the end" of that
injurious system by which the United States Government holds and administers
great sums of money for a peculiarly pampered, exceptionally favored body of
native Americans. Of course, some Indians would at once waste the money they
received. But added years of observation are bringing friends of the Indian to
the unanimous conviction that Indians cannot learn to swim successfully in the
tides of civilization if they "never go near the water." We are all settling
into the conviction that there is but one way for people to learn how to use
property, and that is by using it. The Government may deem it best to make some
provision by which Indian holders of allotted lands may have at least a portion
of the regular county, State, and Territorial taxes upon their lands paid for
them during the period of protected title, so that there may no longer be a
harsh division of interests between Indian settlers untaxed and the neighboring
white settlers, who alone are now taxed for local government and local
improvements which are of benefit to Indians and whites alike. Is there any
wiser way to fit the Indian for citizenship than by intrusting to him (with such
limitations as have been indicated above) his own money, to be used in his own
way? When the few years needed to inaugurate such a system shall have passed,
there will be comparatively few Indians under 40 years of age who have not had
some instruction in our schools. The process of education by contact with
whites, melancholy as are some of its results, goes forward, and must go
forward, and upon the whole does good. We are entirely convinced that the
Government should break up tribal funds into individual holdings, and should
bring the Indians as rapidly as possible under the civilizing influence of our
American public schools, where Indian and white children can mingle, and of
local government and good fellowship in neighborly interests. This participation
in our American life will fit Indians for citizenship more rapidly and better
than any other instrumentality that, could be devised.
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Thirty-Third Annual Report Of The Board Of Indian Commissioners,
1901
