THE PROBABLE FUTURE OF THE INDIAN.

THE

BY LINCOLN CUMMINGS.

HE most pressing national question since the solution of the problem of slavery, is the Indian question. As a theme for popular agitation and philanthropic endeavor, it derives its seeming importance from sentimental rather than from economic reasons. It has always been a moral question. Given within the borders of our country an alien and semi-barbarous people of considerable number, whom we cannot exterminate, to whom rather we stand in a position of indebtedness, what are we bound to do with them, and what may we expect of them? This is the question which faces us. For over two centuries its solution has seemed impracticable, but today we see in the signs of the times, a dim, distant, but still real prospect of a solution. The nation as a whole is beginning to hold rational ideas, and to demand such rational legislation as may tend in the near future to bring about à radical improvement in the condition of its Indian wards. Many good and sufficient causes have wrought a change of public sentiment, and the man who today repeats or believes that most absurd, formerly familiar proposition, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," may justly be set down as either very ignorant or very prejudiced. The thoughtful and progressive no longer question the possibility of Indian civilization; but the method, how to evolve the civilized from the existing Indian, and further how to adapt this evolution alike to the blood-thirsty Apache, the peaceful Pima, and the war-like Sioux, that is acknowledged to be a question deserving more than ordinary consideration. To-day thousands of Indians living in comfortable homes, earning their bread with industry and sobriety, taking a real interest in education and Christianity, living a self-controlled and consistent Christian life, all demonstrate the fact that the Indian can be civilized. "What has been can be."

What is the present condition of the average Indian? There are civilized Cherokees, there are savage and unsubdued Apaches, but how is it with the great majority of the Indian tribes? I an

swer that in all that constitutes civilization, they are still as children. They have the impatience of control, the curiosity, the recklessness of consequences, the unreasoning carelessness of the future, the restless instability, which accompany the period of childhood, whether it is a childhood of the individual or of the race. Our great mistake, speaking both individually and collectively, is that we have expected and required of the Indian the conduct of maturity, and have not employed in our treatment of him the principle of moral suasion, firmly and forcibly adhered to, accompanied with just and equitable treatment which every judicious guardian knows is absolutely necessary in the care and discipline of children. On the contrary, our relations with this "child of the forest" have preeminently been marked with undignified attempts at persuasion instead of coercion, with a capricious vibration between law and license, and with an injustice and cruelty not to be paralleled in modern history. What wonder that we have not succeeded in our attempts to improve the Indian! What wonder that the Indian in all his childish recklessness and ignorance of the Golden Rule, has sought redress by a means in kind, in acts of cruelty and in deeds of violence! Can we expect more of him than we do of ourselves? Before we say much about the mote in his eye, let us prudently remove the beam from our own eye.

In the evolution of every people may, roughly speaking, be traced three stages. The stage first of savagery, where war and hunting furnish both subsistence and occupation. From this stage the Indian is just emerging. Next comes the semi-barbarous or pastoral stage, in which there is still something of war and hunting, but the chief occupation becomes herding of cattle, with feeble attempts at agriculture and the interchange of commodities. Finally there comes about the stage of full civilization, of perfected agriculture and commerce, the state of the American people. We virtually ask the Indian to take a tremendous leap from the first to the third stage: to make in a generation or two the progress which our ancestors back among the swamps of Germany, and the moors of Britain made only after the slow passage of centuries. Why should we expect such an unnatural and forced development? Give the Indian time, but do not expect him to spend three years in Hampton or Carlisle, and then return to his native people a fully matured and civilized citizen. Men may say

that the Indian needs a continual bolstering up, as it were, that he has not the stamina to break with the customs and habits, which he has inherited and which have been familiar to him from his earliest infancy. Is the Indian to blame for that? Are we justified in concluding that the permanent uplifting of the Indian is on that account a hopeless undertaking? To me it would be one of the most wonderful things in the world if this were not the exact condition of things; and I feel compelled to look with great admiration and respect upon any Indian (and there are many of them) who has broken with his old life, and with the fostering care of his white brother has adopted the habits of civilization and lived the civilized life. Let us be patient with a reason, an intellect, a conscience, so undeveloped and untutored, and expect no more from them than a wise and just perception of their condition may permit us.

With this brief exposition of the present character and status of the Indian, let us proceed to determine what ought to be expected of him in the future, if we give him the assistance which is our duty to him. Obviously we may expect of him a development slow or rapid in proportion as our government and education of him is judicious or ill-advised. What then is the most important political, the most necessary educational need of this people so deficient in worldly wisdom and culture? The first is the accomplishment of a transition from the tribe to the individual, the breaking of the fetters which bind the Indian to the things of the past. The second is the preparation of the individual Indian to assume the rights and responsibilities which accompany citizenship under our laws and institutions. It is not doubted that there was once a time when it was both wise and unavoidable for our ancestors to treat with the aborigines as with independent nations, but that time is now long past, and as coming generations shall read our history what portion of it will appear more absurd, perhaps rather more disgraceful than the way in which our government has for many years made treaties only to break them at its pleasure, and bought peace with beads and looking-glasses when it ought to have enforced it with the sword. A little more firmness and a little less vacillation and apparent fearfulness in our general relations with the Indian, would have shortened many a struggle, and saved many a life upon our frontier. But our present concern is not with that which has been, but with that which is to be,

with that which the lesson of the past may teach us to avoid. The Indian has judged our strength not by what it was, but by the feeble way in which he saw us listen to and comply with his demands, and by the feebleness with which we forced him to fulfil the agreements which we instead of forcibly demanding had purchased. We can never have the power and influence over the Indian which are necessary until we cease to treat with him otherwise than as with an individual. To him the tribe represents the old régime with its attendant superstition and ignorance and its premium upon indolence and bloodshed. If he comes to the East and spends three years at one of our schools for Indian youths, good as they really are, and then returns to again identify himself with his tribe, he can only by a miracle escape retrograding. The tribal fabric is an absolute foe to all progress toward civilization, and the only hope of the Indian is its destruction. The transition, then, from the tribe to the individual, from the alien to the citizen, must be effected as fast as the various tribes shall become so capable of response to this effort towards the breaking up of the things which bind them to the past, that they can possibly be benefited by the change.

Enwrapped in this is the importance of a measure like that of the Dawes Bill, providing for land in severalty, with the view that citizenship may become consequent upon the personal acquirement and holding of land and other property.

The education which it is for our interest to give the Indian, must obviously be of that sort which his circumstances and surroundings make important and necessary. Much energy has been misapplied in the government schools in teaching the Indian too many branches. The Indian is rare who can make any practical use of learning other than the most elementary. For many generations at least he must be content to see his white competitors in life's race preeminently his superiors in all intellectual pursuits, and must direct himself to those humbler occupations which require only what he possesses, physical strength, a quick eye, and a power of acquisition by imitation. Again the sphere of the Indian must for the present, at least, be among his own people, and the plan of his education must be drawn in those lines which are defined by their needs. He must be instructed in the best principles of agriculture, herding, and of some of the useful arts, as carpentry, shoemaking, the work of the blacksmith, the wheelwright, and the

harness maker. His strictly mental education must be what is required by one who follows these occupations, e. g., reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, and enough of history, geography, etc., to enable him to form intelligent ideas of the rights and responsibilities of a citizen under our government, and of a member of the social organism, the civilized human race. More than this it would be idle to give the Indian, and less is not to be thought of. The principles upon which we base our help for this people must be the same as those upon which we base our help for the poor, i. e., to give him no longer, as has so long been our short-sighted practice, maintenance itself, but to give him the means of subsistence, the ability to support himself. We say the Indian is lazy. Considering the necessary immaturity of his moral being, he would be a fool if he were anything else, so long as he knows that we have inexhaustible stores of rations, live stock and agricultural tools to give him for the asking. What a pity that instead of so many incompetent agents and teachers of the wrong stamp upon the reservations, there might not be some of our New England farmers to teach the Indian what most emphatically he does need to learn, the principle of agriculture, accompanied with economy and foresight. Everything should be done for the Indian which may tend to help him to help himself, and nothing which may tend to make him think himself a privileged person, who will be supported forever at our expense.

The Indian's future is assured if we are willing to wait for it. There must be time for him, and patience for his helpers, and in its own time and way this perplexing question will work out its own solution. It is not a great question. A less number of individuals are concerned in it than from the population of many of our large cities. Boston would hold every Indian, and then displace only about two-thirds of its inhabitants. Yet it is a question in which the national honor is concerned, and about which is enwrapped the sentiment of history. Finally, it is a difficult problem, and one in which our legislators and philanthropists need the unselfish coöperation of a Christian nation, of a people in whose hearts a love of man, springing from a love of God, finds its expression in an endeavor to lift a people of degraded life to the level of its own.