The Indian Question Part 1
The Indian Question (1874).
by Francis A. Walker.
On the 3d of March, 1871, Congress declared that "hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power, with whom the United States may contract by treaty."
Brave words these would have seemed to good William Penn, treating with the Lenni Lenape, under the elm at Kensington; or even to doughty Miles Standish, ready as that worthy ever was to march against the heathen who troubled his Israel. Heathen they were in the eyes of the good people of Plymouth Colony, but nations of heathen, without question, as truly as were the Amalekites, the Jebusites, or the Hitt.i.tes to the infant colony at Shiloh. It would have been deemed the tallest kind of "tall talk," in the councils of Jamestown, Providence, and Annapolis, to express disdain for the proffered hand of Indian friendship, or even to object to payment of some small tribute, in beads or powder, to these native lords of the continent. In 1637, when Capt. John Mason marched against Sa.s.sacus, at the head of ninety men, he had with him half the fighting force of the Connecticut Colony. In 1653 a wall was built across Manhattan Island to keep out the savages; though, when we say that the line of defence just covered the present course of Wall Street (which derives its name from that circ.u.mstance), our readers may not fail to wonder whether the savages were not the rather kept in by it. In 1675, when the New-England Colonies had grown comparatively strong, they mustered for their war against Philip one thousand men, of whom Ma.s.sachusetts furnished five hundred and twenty-seven, Plymouth one hundred and fifty-eight, and Connecticut three hundred and fifteen.
To men peering out from block-houses, or crouching behind walls, awaiting the terrific yell of an Indian attack, it was not likely to occur that they might compromise their dignity by treating on equal terms with an enemy tenfold as numerous as themselves; nor were the statesmen of that early heroic age likely to give themselves trouble about the character and standing among the nations of the earth, of confederacies that could bring five thousand warriors into the field.
And so the feeble colonies struggled on through those days of gloom and fear, deprecating the anger of the savages as they might, and circ.u.mventing their wiles when they could; played off one chieftain against another; made contribution of malice and powder to every intestine feud among the natives; bought off tribes, without much scruple as to the ultimate fulfilment of their bargains; postponed the evil day by every expedient, knowing that time was on their side: and when they had, in spite of all, to fight, fought as men who know that they will not themselves be spared,--planned ambuscades and ma.s.sacres; fired Indian camps, and shot the inmates as they leaped from their blazing wigwams; studied and mastered all the arts of forest warfare; and beat the savages with their own weapons, as men of the higher race will always do when forced by circ.u.mstances to such a contest.
Nor during the early part of the eighteenth century, when all danger of a war of extermination had pa.s.sed from the apprehension of the most timid, when the Colonies had become in a degree compacted, and the line of white occupation had been made continuous from Ma.s.sachusetts to Georgia; nor later still, when the Colonies had become States, and the representatives of the new nation of the Western world were received in all the courts of Europe--was the policy abandoned of treating with the Indian tribes as parties having equal powers of initiative, and equal rights in negotiation. In nearly four hundred treaties, confirmed by the Senate as are treaties with foreign powers, our government recognized Indian tribes as nations with whom the United States might contract without derogating from its sovereignty.
The treaties made with Indian tribes have, of course, been mainly treaties of cession. Most of our readers will be surprised to learn the extent of lands east of the Mississippi which are embraced in sales to the United States; being no less than the entire States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, with considerable portions of Tennessee, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And these treaties were not a mere form to amuse and quiet savages, a half-compa.s.sionate, half-contemptuous humoring of unruly children. The United States were not then grown so great that they could afford to value lightly the free relinquishment of the soil by the native owners of it. At the time most of the treaties with tribes east of the Mississippi were concluded, not only did the right remain in the Indians, but enough of power, to make it as much a diplomatic triumph to obtain a cession on favorable terms, as it would be to negotiate a successful treaty with one of the States of Central America to-day. The United States were clearly the stronger party in every such case; but the Indians were, in the great body of instances, still so formidable, that to wrest their lands from them by pure, brutal violence would have required an exertion of strength which the government was ill prepared to make. So that, while it is true that the Indians were generally made ready to negotiate by the use of military force and by the pressure of white settlements, it is not true that the considerations and privileges accorded them in these treaties were a gift out of good-nature.
So much for the power of the Indians when they made these treaties.
Their right to their lands is quite as well established historically. In the early history of the Western world, the principle was fully recognized, that, while sovereignty rested, not with the Indians, but with the civilized power claiming by virtue of discovery, the Indians were the rightful occupants, with a just and perfect claim to retain possession and enjoy the use until they should be disposed voluntarily to part with it. Great Britain, Holland, France, and Spain, the four powers claiming sovereignty by virtue of discovery within the present territory of the United States, conceded no less than this to the natives; while France, in the cession of the province of Louisiana, expressly reserved the rights allowed the Indians by its own treaties and articles, "until, by mutual consent of the United States and the said tribes or nations, other suitable articles shall have been agreed upon."
"Such being the right of the Indians to the soil, the United States for more than eighty-five years pursued a uniform course of extinguishing the Indian t.i.tle only with the consent of those Indian tribes which were recognized as having claim by reason of occupancy: such consent being expressed in treaties, to the formation of which both parties approached, as having equal rights of initiative, and equal rights in negotiation. These treaties were made from time to time (not less than 372 being embraced in the general statutes of the United States) as the pressure of white settlements, or the fear or the experience of Indian hostilities, made the demand for the removal of one tribe after another urgent or imperative. _Except only in the case of the Indians in Minnesota, after the outbreak of 1862, the United-States Government has never extinguished an Indian t.i.tle as by right of conquest_; and in this latter case the government provided the Indians another reservation, besides giving them the proceeds of the sales of the lands vacated by them in Minnesota; so scrupulously, up to that time, had the right of the Indians to the soil been respected, at least in form. It is not to be denied that wrong was often done in fact to tribes in the negotiation of treaties of cession. The Indians were not infrequently overborne or deceived by the agents of the government in these transactions; sometimes unquestionably, powerful tribes were permitted to cede lands to which weaker tribes had a better claim: but, formally at least, the United States accepted the cession successively of all lands, to which Indian tribes could show color of t.i.tle, which are embraced in the limits of any of the present States of the Union except California and Nevada."--_Report on Indian Affairs_, 1872, pp. 83, 84.
In 1871, however, the insolence of conscious strength, and the growing jealousy of the House of Representatives towards the prerogative--arrogated by the Senate--of determining, in connection with the executive, all questions of Indian right and t.i.tle, and of committing the United States incidentally to pecuniary obligations limited only by its own discretion, for which the House should be bound to make provision without inquiry, led to the adoption, after several severe parliamentary struggles, of the declaration which stands at the head of this paper.
In abruptly terminating thus the long series of Indian treaties, and forever closing the only course of procedure known for the adjustment of difficulties, and even for the administration of ordinary business, with Indian tribes, Congress provided no subst.i.tute, and up to the present time has neglected to prescribe the methods by which, after the abrogation of the national character of the Indians, either their internal matters or their relations with the general government are to be regulated. The Indian-Intercourse Act of 1834, though still nominally in force, is so largely predicated upon the tribal const.i.tution, and a.s.sumes so uniformly the national sufficiency of the tribe, that all the life and virtue are taken out of it by the Act of 1871 just cited; and the country is, in effect, left without rule or prescription for the government of Indian affairs. It is sufferance, not law, which enables the Indian Office to-day to administer its charge. While the Act of 1871 strikes down at a blow the hereditary authority of the chiefs, no legislation has invested Indian agents with magisterial powers, or provided for the a.s.sembling of the Indian _demos_. There is at this time no semblance of authority for the punishment of any crime which one Indian may commit against another, nor any mode of procedure, recognized by treaty or statute, for the regulation of matters between the government and the several tribes. So far as the law is concerned, complete anarchy exists in Indian affairs; and nothing but the singular h.o.m.ogeneity of Indian communities, and the almost unaccountable spontaneity and unanimity of public sentiment within them, has thus far prevented the attention of Congress and the country being called most painfully to the unpardonable negligence of the national legislature in failing to provide a subst.i.tute for the time-honored policy which was destroyed by the Act of 1871.
In treating the Indian question of the present day, the temptation is strongly felt, to dwell upon the history of Indian tribes, and upon the physical and moral characteristics of this singular race. Yet, if way be once given to this inclination, not only will the time and s.p.a.ce necessary for a discussion of the present and the future of the Indian tribes be sacrificed, but the attention of the reader will be so overwhelmed with the mult.i.tude of names and incidents, that he will be embarra.s.sed rather than a.s.sisted in his understanding of the subject to be treated. The value, for our purpose, of facts and incidents in Indian history is not at all according to their value historically or romantically. Indeed, such has been the fatality to the aborigines of contact with the whites, that it may almost be said, the importance to-day of tribes is inversely as their importance in the annals of the country. Among the greatest figures of the past are those of bands and confederacies that have utterly disappeared from the continent, happy that their long, savage independence, and their brief, fierce resistance to the encroachments of the pale-face, were not to be succeeded by a dreary period of submission, humiliation, and dependence. Other tribes, that but a few generations ago shook the infant colonies with terror, or even dared to stand across the path of the Republic, and for a time flung a shadow as of eclipse over its destiny, are now represented upon the annuity or feeding-lists of the United States by a few score of diseased wretches, who hang about the settlements, begging and stealing where they can, and quarrelling like dogs over the entrails of the beeves that are slaughtered for them. Still other tribes, once warlike and powerful, have, by a fortunate turn of character and circ.u.mstance, become so rich and respectable as not only to deprive them of all romantic interest, but practically to take them out of the scope of the Indian question. Other tribes, still having among them men whose grandfathers besieged Detroit under Pontiac, are now resolved into citizens of the United States, eligible for the chief-justiceship or the presidency.
Such considerations as we have here briefly sketched suffice to show the inexpediency of entering upon Indian history, _qua_ history, as an introduction to the discussion of the Indian problems of to-day. Equally obdurate must one be to the seductions of Indian ethnology, except so far only as it may simplify the cla.s.sification of the present Indian population to refer tribes and bands to recognized groups or families, for the better or briefer characterization of their qualities and affinities.
Even stronger yet is the temptation to enter upon the a.n.a.lysis and portraiture of the original and native character of the North-American Indian. Voluptuary and stoic; swept by gusts of fury too terrible to be witnessed, yet imperturbable beyond all men, under the ordinary excitements and accidents of life; garrulous, yet impenetrable; curious, yet himself reserved, proud and mean alike beyond compare; superior to torture and the presence of certain death, yet, by the standards of all other peoples, a coward in battle; capable of magnanimous actions which, when uncovered of all romance, are worthy of the best days of Roman virtue, yet more cunning, false, and cruel than the Bengalee,--this copper-colored sphinx, this riddle unread of men, equally fascinates and foils the inquirer.
This, however, is the Indian of history. The Indian for whom the government is called to provide subsistence and instruction presents no such psychological difficulties. Curious compound and strange self-contradiction as the red man is in his native character, in his traditional pursuits, and amid the surroundings of his own wild life; yet when broken down by the military power of the whites, thrown out of his familiar relations, his stupendous conceit with its glamour of savage pomp and glory rudely dispelled, his occupation gone, himself a beggar, the red man becomes the most commonplace person imaginable, of very simple nature, limited aspirations, and enormous appet.i.tes.
The Indian question naturally divides itself into two: What shall be done with the Indian as an obstacle to the national progress? What shall be done with him when, and so far as, he ceases to oppose or obstruct the extension of railways and settlements? It is because these two parts of the question have not been separately regarded that so much confusion has been introduced into the discussion of Indian affairs. Widely diverse, for example, as are the criticisms popularly expressed on what is known as the "Indian policy" of Pres. Grant's administration, the writer can confidently affirm, as the result of hundreds of interviews, formal and informal, stated and casual, friendly and the reverse, with men from every section of the country, of both parties, and of all professions, that he believes there is no political subject mooted to-day on which there are so slight differences of real opinion, or, indeed, such general consent when men will once come to terms with each other, and begin to talk about the same thing. He has never known a man, even from the Territories or the border States, make objection, on a candid statement, to the intentions and purposes of that administration towards the Indians, unless it were some man peculiarly vulgar and brutal,--such a one, for instance, as, if a Southerner, would give his time and breath to indiscriminate abuse of the negroes. Instead of there being two parties on this subject, there is, therefore, if the observations of the writer have been well made, no reason to suppose that any considerable division of opinion or feeling exists respecting the duty of the government, at the present moment, by the aborigines of the country.
Take the public sentiment of Arizona, for example. It is the almost universal belief throughout the country, that the people of this Territory have a deadly hostility to the Indians, and meditate nothing but mischief towards them; and it certainly must be admitted that press and people alike indulge in expressions which fairly bear that construction, and are quite enough to create an impression that the citizens of the Territory hate an Indian as an Indian, and have no humane sentiments whatever towards the race. And yet the writer would as soon leave the question, whether the government should render some kindly service to the Papagoes or to the Pimas and Maricopas, in the way of a.s.sisting them to self-maintenance, or of providing instruction in letters or in the mechanic arts, to the general voice of the people of Arizona, as to any missionary a.s.sociation in New York or Boston the coming May. When the press of Arizona cry out against the Indian policy of the government, and denounce Eastern philanthropy, they have in mind the warlike and depredating bands; and they are exasperated by what they deem, perhaps unreasonably but not unnaturally, the weakness and indecision of the executive in failing to properly protect the frontier.
Indians to them mean Apaches; and their violence on the Indian question arises from the belief that the administration of Indian affairs has been committed to sentimentalists, who have no appreciation of the terrible stress which these Indian outrages bring upon the remote settlements. But were the question one of helping, in a practical fashion suited to the habits and views of life of a border community, a tribe of Indians who are peaceful, and in a poor way helpful, there is no reason to suppose that the inhabitants of Tucson or Prescott would be behind an Eastern congregation in readiness for the work. And this impression the writer derives, not alone from the amiable and cultivated gentleman who represents that Territory in Congress, but from contact and correspondence with many influential and representative citizens of Arizona, and from a study of the very journals that so teem with denunciations of the Indian policy of the government.[B]
On the other hand, in our prosperous and well-ordered communities at the East, a gentleman of leisure and of native benevolence, whose ears have never rung with the war-whoop, whose eyes have never witnessed the horrid atrocities of Indian warfare, and who is only disturbed in his pleasing reveries by the occasional tramp of the policeman about his house, is apt to dwell exclusively upon the other side of the Indian question. To such a man, as he recalls the undoubted wrongs done the Indian in the past, as he contemplates the fate of a race whose heroic and romantic qualities have been greatly exaggerated, or as he listens to the flattering tale of a missionary returned from some peaceful and half-civilized tribe, it is very pleasant to think that the original owners of the soil are to be protected by the government, saved to humanity, educated in the useful arts, and elevated to a Christian civilization. On such a man accounts of Indian outrages make little impression. He regards them as the invention of pioneer malice, or easily disposes of them by a mental reference to the crimes perpetrated in his own town or city. He is, perhaps, so ignorant of Indian matters as to think that all the Indians of the country form one h.o.m.ogeneous community, and cannot understand how it should be, that, while Cherokees are supporting churches and colleges and orphan asylums at home, and sending their sons to receive cla.s.sical and professional education in the best schools of the East, Kiowas should roast their prisoners alive, and brain the babe before the eyes of its mother. Is it a matter of wonder, that men who are contemplating things so different as are the Eastern philanthropist and the Western settler, when Indians are spoken of, should imagine that they disagree as to the policy of the government, and come to entertain contempt or repugnance for each other, while, in fact, on an honest statement of a given case, neither would dissent in the slightest degree from the views of the other? If there is, then, such a liability to confusion and misapprehension in the discussion of the Indian question, we may be allowed to insist strongly upon the necessity of the distinction indicated.
The actually or potentially hostile tribes of the United States number, on a rough computation suited to the rudeness of the definition, sixty-four thousand. It is these only which we have to treat under the first division of our question,--What shall be done with the Indian as an obstacle to the national progress? This number of sixty-four thousand is made up as follows: The actually depredating bands, North-west and South-west, probably have not exceeded, during the past year, seven thousand, mainly Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches. The tribes with which these bands are directly and intimately connected contain about twenty thousand, including the marauders. There are further included in this calculation tribes and bands, numbering in the aggregate about forty-four thousand, which are now generally at peace.
It will be seen that the number which we have taken for the potentially hostile Indians is many times greater than the number of the actually hostile. Yet, on the other hand, we have not intended to embrace all those tribes which might be exasperated to the point of resistance by a reckless disregard of treaties on the part of the government, or by a series of wanton acts of abuse on the part of white settlers. There is a line beyond which no man or people may safely be pressed; and there are few bands of Indians, East or West, however contemptible in numbers or character, which, if wronged and trampled on, might not in their indignant despair teach their oppressors a lesson at which the world would shudder. We are contemplating no such possibilities. We are a.s.suming that the government will, as it has generally done in the past, respect treaty obligations, and that the intercourse of the Indians with their white neighbors will be marked by only such sporadic acts of individual wrong as are in the nature of the case.
The tribes to which we refer as potentially hostile are, first, those now in immediate contact with the whites, whose claims to territory are so far disregarded, either by the action of the government or by the unauthorized intrusion of pioneers and prospectors; or whose means of subsistence are so far impaired or threatened by the extension of railways and settlements,--that hostilities are only prevented by the bounty of the government in feeding the members of such tribes in whole or in part, by liberal presents of trinkets and useful goods, by the exercise of especial watchfulness in avoiding occasions of dispute and points of collision, and finally by a willingness on the part of the government to overlook offences and even to tolerate a degree of insolence, rather than allow a breach of the peace: second, those tribes not now to any great extent in contact with the whites, and exhibiting no desire to go out of their way to make trouble, but of which the same must, in the inevitable course of the national progress, in a few years become true as of the tribes embraced under the first cla.s.s.
But these cla.s.ses, as we have thus described them, are yet far too numerous for the facts of the case. We must still further reduce them by excluding all such tribes as, from location, from traditional friendship for the whites, or from weakness of character, are unlikely, in any event reasonably to be contemplated, to become involved in hostilities.
Among the Indians, who, by the force of their location and surroundings, are rendered powerless for armed resistance, are not a few of the Indians of Minnesota, and even some in Wisconsin, who have no love for the whites, and would make exceedingly bad neighbors to frontier settlements, but who, encircled as they are by powerful communities, submit sullenly to their condition. The same may be said of many bands in Kansas, Nebraska, and on the Pacific coast. These are Indians who have been overtaken, surrounded, and disarmed by the progress of population, but, either through the neglect of the government or by the failure of the usual agencies of instruction and industrial a.s.sistance, have remained barbarous, and, as their natural means of subsistence grow scantier, are becoming every year more miserable.
There is another and much larger cla.s.s of Indians from whom no organized violence is to be expected in the course of the complete settlement of the country, not because they are rendered helpless by the force of their location, nor because they have any traditional friendship for the whites, nor because they do not experience suffering enough to impel a warlike people to a struggle for life, but because they are not fighting Indians. Actual outrage might drive some of these tribes to resistance; but, under the slow wasting-away of their means of subsistence, and the gradual pressure of the settlements, they are, and are likely to remain, wholly pa.s.sive, accepting their fate, and sinking to the lowest point of human misery without a single heroic effort. Some of these tribes have been "put upon" by their more warlike neighbors through many generations, driven from their original hunting-grounds, and hara.s.sed even in the mountains where they have taken refuge, until their spirit has been utterly crushed, and they have become as submissive as the Southern negroes. This is true of large numbers of the Indians of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Southern California. They have neither the individual courage nor the instinct of confederation ent.i.tling them to be reckoned among the potentially hostile tribes.
Still, again, we count out several powerful tribes, able to bring five hundred or a thousand warriors each into the field, which, by reason of traditional friendship and their frequent alliance with our troops in campaigns against hostile Indians, are sure to remain the friends of the government under any tolerable treatment. Indeed, neglect and abuse seem insufficient to alienate these allies. Their faith once pledged, and friendship cemented by sacrifices and sufferings, they cling to the fortunes of the whites with romantic fidelity. Such are the Arickarees,[C] Mandans, and Gros Ventres of the Upper Missouri; such the p.a.w.nees of Kansas; such the Flatheads, Kootenays, and Pend d'Oreilles, whose boast is that their tribes never killed a white man; such, in a degree, the Crows of Montana. These tribes, and others of less consequence, are not only sure, in the event of kindly treatment by the government, to remain its fast friends, but they may be relied upon in the future, as in the past, to do much to check the audacity of their hostile neighbors, and, in the last resort, to furnish re-enforcements of the most effective and economical sort to the troops operating against predatory bands.
Having excluded all tribes and bands of the character, or in the position, indicated under the three heads above, we make up the list of the potentially hostile Indians somewhat as follows: of the Sioux of Dakota,--tribes, bands, and parties, to the number of fifteen thousand; of the Indians of Montana,--Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, a.s.siniboines and roving Sioux, to the number of twenty thousand; of the Indians in the extreme south-western part of the Indian Territory and on the borders of Texas,--Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, to the number of seven thousand; of the Indians of Arizona,--Apaches of several tribes, to the number of nine thousand; of the mountain Indians of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, to the number of five thousand; of the Indians of New Mexico, to the number of two thousand; and of the Indians in Oregon and Washington Territory, to the number of six thousand. The sixty-four thousand Indians thus enumerated comprise substantially all the tribes and bands with which the government is obliged to contemplate the possibility of war. It is in the highest degree improbable, however, that the United States would, even in the event of what might properly be called a general Indian war, be called on to fight more than one-half of these Indians at any one time; while, with a reasonable policy of concession, the number of actually hostile and depredating bands may be steadily reduced, and the whole body of dangerous Indians held in check until the advance of population shall render them incapable of mischief.
The measures by which this is to be effected must be considered candidly, in the light of the alternative presented, and not as if they were proposed as measures wholly agreeable to the tastes or the temper of those who are called to administer Indian affairs.
That we may obtain a true impression of one of the conditions on which peace is maintained with certain Indian tribes, let us take a leaf out of the official record of the dealings of the government with the Sioux during the past year. Early in 1872 an unusually large number of Indians were a.s.sembled at the Red Cloud agency, near Fort Laramie in Wyoming. By far the greater part were _habitues_ of this or some other Sioux agency; but among them were many Northern Indians, who were for the first time the guests of the government, and who, not having become accustomed to eat the bread of dependence, were much more intractable and insolent than the others. The presence of these Indians produced great turmoil at the agency, and considerable apprehension on the part of the agent.
Nothing in the nature of an outbreak occurred, however: the strangers gradually went away to their summer hunt on the Powder River; and the agency was brought back to its usual condition. But, while this was being effected, a ranchman named Powell, who had a large drove of cattle near Fort Laramie, was robbed and murdered. The b.l.o.o.d.y details were soon known; for Indians are such inveterate gossips that they can keep no secret, however dangerous disclosure may be to them. The murderers were Northern Indians, who had instantly left for their own country. At two successive councils, both the civil and the military authorities demanded the surrender of the guilty parties and the return of the stolen stock. The chiefs present and the great body of their followers most unmistakably disapproved and regretted the act, if for no better reason than because they apprehended the consequences; but they disclaimed any responsibility therefor,--the murderers not being of their own proper number,--pleaded their inability to arrest the fugitives with their b.l.o.o.d.y spoils, and, for the rest, did nothing. The government, for that matter, after much expostulation, did the same: troops were not marched northward to seize the murderers; the rations of the Sioux were not ordered to be stopped until satisfaction had been given; and the murder of Powell remains to-day unpunished by the government of the United States.
A second condition on which peace is maintained is the subsistence of certain tribes at the expense of the government, without reference to their ability or disposition to work. Every five or seven days, twenty thousand Sioux, big and little, a.s.semble around the agencies for the distribution of food. Soldiers' rations are dealt out: flour by the hundred sacks is delivered to them; beeves by the score are turned loose to be shot down and eaten up in savage fashion. The expense of this service is a million five hundred thousand dollars a year,--one-seventh the total cost of poor-support in the United States. About one million more is expended for the total or partial subsistence of other tribes, especially in the South-west. Coincidently with this, occasions for increased expenditure have arisen in connection with tribes not upon the feeding-list; so that the average cost of the Indian service has gone up from four millions in 1866, 1867, and 1868, to seven millions at the present time. It should be remarked, however, that it is only the increase which measures the cost of the "peace policy," so called, more than one-half of the four millions of expenditure in the former period being the lawful due of the Indians under treaty stipulations, in consideration for the cession of lands; and the remainder covering the general expenses of the service. The following table exhibits the expenditures of the government on account of the Indian service for the twelve years 1861 to 1872:--
Year. Expenditures on Indian Account.
1861 $2,865,481.17 1862 2,327,948.37 1863 3,152,032.70 1864 2,629,975.97 1865 5,059,360.71 1866 3,295,729.32 1867 4,642,531.77 1868 4,100,682.32 1869 7,042,923.06 1870 3,407,938.15 1871 7,426,997.44 1872 7,061,728.82
Now, it must honestly be confessed, that the United-States Government, in such dealings with Indian tribes as have been recited, does not act a very handsome part. To pay blackmail to insolent savages (for that is simply what it amounts to); to feed forty or fifty thousand people who make no pretence of doing any thing for themselves, and who appear to think that they are conferring a distinguishing honor upon the government by accepting its bounty; to allow the murder of an American citizen, of whatever character or degree, to go unpunished,--these are not things pleasant to contemplate. It may be a duty to administer Indian affairs in this way; but it must be a duty far more disagreeable to any man of spirit than would be a call to take part in the punishment of the savages, at no more than the personal risk usually incident to a campaign. And yet, in the face of all this, we do not hesitate to say that the general course of the government in such dealings as have been described above is expedient and humane, just and honorable. This is a proposition, which, in the view of such admissions as have been made, may seem to impose a formidable burden of proof; yet is it not only consistent with the highest reason of the case, but susceptible of very simple and direct demonstration.
In the first place, it should be remarked that there can be no question of national dignity involved in the treatment of savages by a civilized power. The proudest Anglo-Saxon will climb a tree with a bear behind him, and deem not his honor, but his safety, compromised by the situation. With wild men, as with wild beasts, the question whether to fight, coax, or run, is a question merely of what is easiest or safest in the situation given. Points of dignity only arise between those who are, or a.s.sume to be, equals. Indeed, nothing is at times so contemptuous as compliance. It indicates not merely a consciousness of strength, but of strength so superior as to decline comparison or contest.
Grant that some petty Sioux chief believes that the government of the United States feeds him and his lazy followers out of fear, or out of respect for his greatness: what then? It will not be long before the agent of the government will be pointing out the particular row of potatoes which his majesty must hoe before his majesty can dine. The people of the United States surely are great enough, and sufficiently conscious of their greatness, to indulge a little longer the self-complacent fancies of those savage tribes, if by that means a desolating war may be avoided.
And in this we shall only do what other nations have done, and esteemed themselves wise in doing. The Greeks and Romans, except in periods of ambitious frenzy, recognized the fruitlessness and folly of fighting absolute savages, and did not scruple, in the height of their conquering pride, to keep the peace with Scythians and Parthians as best they could. The English, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, in their American colonies, only fought the natives when for their purposes they must, preserving the peace when they could by presents, and even by tribute. Statesmen who would have embroiled Europe on a question of dinner-etiquette have fully recognized the principle that there could be no issue of dignity between a civilized power and a band of irresponsible savages, and have submitted, without any feeling of degradation, to demands the most unreasonable, urged in terms the most insolent.
Nor is there any savor of treachery in the government thus biding its time. In this the government simply, from a wise consideration of the exposed situation of the settlements, refrains from the full exercise of the authority which it claims. It in no wise deceives the Indians, but only indulges their illusion till the time comes when the illusion must be broken. It watches the troubled sleep of the maniac, ready to restrain his violence if he wakes, yet mercifully willing that he should remain unconscious. And this forbearance of the government is not less kind to the aborigines than to those of our citizens who are building their homes within reach of the red man's hand. If the savages--Sioux, Kiowas, Cheyennes, Comanches, whom the United States are thus playing with--realized in any adequate measure what the next few years have in store for them, how completely they will be surrounded and disarmed, how certainly they will be forced to labor like squaws for their bread, how stringently the government will enforce its requirements when their power of resistance shall have departed; it is inconceivable but that, in their present temper, ignorant as they are of the real resources of the whites, and conscious that they can still bring eight thousand warriors into the field, they would precipitate a contest which, though it would involve untold misery to our border population, must inevitably end in their own destruction.
If, then, there is nothing inconsistent with national dignity or honor in thus temporizing with hostile savages, it certainly can be shown to be in a high degree compatible with the interests and the welfare of all the white communities which are, by their advanced position, placed at the mercy of the Indians. Thousands and even tens of thousands of our citizens are now living within reach of the first murderous outbreak of a general Indian war. Since 1868, when the trans-continental railroad was completed, population has found its way into regions to which the rate of progress previously maintained would not in fifty years have carried it,--into nooks and corners which five years ago were scarcely known to trappers and guides. Instead of exposing to Indian contact, as heretofore, a clearly defined frontier line, upon two or three faces, our settlements have penetrated the Western country in every direction and from every direction, creeping along the course of every stream, seeking out every habitable valley, following up every indication of gold among the ravines and mountains, clinging around the reservations of the most formidable tribes, and even making lodgement at a hundred points on lands secured by treaty to the Indians. Even where the limit of settlement in any direction has apparently, for the time, been reached, we learn of some solitary ranchman or miner who has made his home still farther down the valley or up the mountain, far beyond sight or call.
It is upon men thus exposed, without hope of escape or chance of resistance, that the first wrath of a general Indian war would break. No note of recall would avert their doom. Long before friendly runners could reach them, the war-whoop would be in their ears; and alone, unfriended, undefended, unaided, they would perish, as hundreds and thousands of our countrymen have perished, at the hands of the infuriated savages. But it is not alone the solitary ranchmen who would be swept away on the first onset of Indian attack. Scores of valleys up which population has been steadily creeping would be instantly abandoned; streams that now, from source to mouth, resound the stroke of the pioneer's axe, would be left desolate on the first rumor of war; a hundred outlying settlements would disappear in a night, as the tidings of outbreak and ma.s.sacre were borne along by hurrying fugitives. As the blood retreats, on the signal of danger, from the extremities to the heart, so would population retire, terror-struck and precipitate, from the frontier on the first shock of war. Towns, even, would be abandoned; and the frightened inhabitants, men, women, and children, c.u.mbered with household stuff and overdriven stock, would crowd within the shelter of garrisons hardly adequate for their defence.
There could be but one plea on which such considerations as these might be disregarded; and that would be the plea that such forbearance and indulgence on the part of the United States towards the savages only encouraged them to increased insolence and incited them to fresh outrages, rendering the situation less and less tolerable, and in the end involving greater sacrifice of life than would a prompt vindication of the authority of the government, once for all, however disastrous in the immediate result it might prove to existing settlements. If the policy of temporizing which has been described does indeed only serve at the last to aggravate the evil, and by a false appearance of peace to draw within the reach of Indian ma.s.sacre larger numbers of whites, then it is plainly the duty of the government to recall, as far as may be, its citizens from the exposed frontier, and, at whatever expense of blood and treasure, make issue with the savages, and forever close the question by the complete conquest and reduction of all the hostile or dangerous tribes. But no a.s.sumption could be farther from the facts of the case than that the effect of lenity has been to increase the sum of Indian outrage. There is no _scintilla_ of evidence to show that any savage tribe has been incited by the forbearance of the government to increased depredations. On the contrary, the history of the past three years has shown a steady decline in the number of robberies and murders reported on the frontier.
If a humane consideration of the exposed condition of our frontier settlements requires the continuance of the policy of buying off the hostile and dangerous tribes, it is also true that the argument from economy equally favors this action on the part of the government.
Expensive as is the Indian service as at present conducted in the interest of peace, it costs far less than fighting. What would be the expense of a general Indian war, which should seek the complete subjugation of the tribes which we have described as potentially hostile, it is impossible to compute within a hundred millions of dollars; but it would undoubtedly reach an aggregate not much short of that of the year of largest preparations and largest operations during the rebellion. Does this seem extravagant, impossible? Words of truth and soberness on such a subject surely might be expected from a commission comprising such men as Gens. Sherman, Harney, Augur, and Terry of the regular army of the United States. Yet these officers united in a report rendered to the President on the 7th of January, 1868, in which they use the following language in reference to the "Chivvington ma.s.sacre" and the Cheyenne war of 1864:--
"No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the government thirty million dollars, and carried conflagration and death to the border settlements. During the spring and summer of 1865, no less than eight thousand troops were withdrawn from the effective force engaged in suppressing the Rebellion, to meet this Indian war. The result of the year's campaign satisfied all reasonable men that war with Indians was useless and expensive. Fifteen or twenty Indians had been killed at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece, while hundreds of our soldiers had lost their lives, many of our border settlers had been butchered, and their property destroyed."
This was the experience of the United States in a contest with an Indian tribe numbering perhaps four thousand men, women, and children, and able to bring into the field not one-fifth as many warriors as the Sioux bands of to-day. Not to go back to wars waged with tribes now subjugated or extinct, were we to cast up the expenditures involved in the Sioux war of 1852-1854, the Cheyenne war of 1864 just referred to, the Navajo war, the second Sioux war in 1866, the second Cheyenne war in 1867, we should undoubtedly reach a total greatly exceeding one hundred millions of dollars. Yet these wars sought only the submission of individual tribes to single demands of the government, and effected, generally, something less than that. It has been shown that the actual expense of the so-called "peace policy" is measured by the increase of the average expenditures of the period 1869 to 1872 over the average expenditures of the period preceding, that increase being about three millions of dollars. This is the sum which is to be compared with the cost of a war which should seek to reduce all the Indian tribes of the continent to complete submission by force of arms, instead of awaiting their gradual, and in the main peaceful reduction through the advance of population and the extension of railways.
We have thus far treated the policy of the government towards the dangerous tribes as one not requiring the use of the military arm in any emergency short of an actual outbreak. We have done so, first, that we might encounter the full effect of the objections to the plan of concession and conciliation; and, secondly, because we hold it true, that, when the alternative is between allowing a considerable degree of insolence and outrage to go unpunished, and entailing upon the Territories a general Indian war, duty and interest require the government to go to the last point of endurance and forbearance with the savages. But this alternative is not always presented: it is often practicable to repress and punish violence, without exposing the settlements to the horrors of ma.s.sacre. Whenever this can be done, it is scarcely necessary to say it should be done, and done effectually. The feature of the present Indian policy of the government which allows this to be done without incurring general Indian war is known as the reservation system,--a system shrewdly devised to meet the known weaknesses of the Indian character. By it extensive tracts have been set apart for the warlike tribes, within which they may pursue all their customs and habits of life, and indulge themselves in savagery, being also subsisted thereon to the extent of their actual necessities, but outside of which bands or parties are liable to be struck by the military at any time, without warning, and without any implied hostility to those members of the tribe who remain on their reservation, and deport themselves according to the conditions of the compact. The brilliant campaign of Gen. Crook in Arizona during the past season has been prosecuted with the most scrupulous observance of the reservation system, as marked out by the government, and accepted by the Indians themselves. Such a use of the military arm const.i.tutes no abandonment of the "peace policy," and involves no disparagement of it. Military operations thus conducted are not in the nature of war, but of discipline, and are so recognized by the tribes whose marauding bands and parties are scourged back to the reservations by the troops. The effect of all this is something more than negative. It does not merely serve to chastise offending individuals and parties without a breach of peace with the tribe; but it is made the means of impressing the less enterprising Indians with an increasing sense of the power of the government. It was not to be expected that the entire body of a warlike tribe would consent to be restrained in their Ishmaelitish proclivities without a struggle on the part of the more audacious to maintain their traditional freedom. The reservation system allows this issue to be fought out between our troops and the more daring of the savages, without involving in the contest tribes with which our army in its present numbers is wholly inadequate to cope.
Nor will the full effect of this consideration be appreciated if it be not borne in mind that the Indian is intensely susceptible to severe punishment. His own wars are so bloodless, his skirmishing tactics so cowardly and resultless, that the savage fighting of the whites, their eagerness for close quarters, and their deadly earnestness when engaged hand to hand, impress him with a strange terror. With him, as with all persons and peoples in whom the imagination is predominant, the effect of disaster is not measured by the actual loss and suffering entailed, but by the source, the shape, the suddenness, of it. Indeed, it is astonishing how completely the spirit of an Indian tribe may be broken by a catastrophe which does not necessarily impair its fighting power.
Nor even is it necessary that the Indian's sense of justice should be met by the chastis.e.m.e.nt received. Undiscriminating in his own revenge, he does not look for nicely measured retribution on the part of his enemy. Hence it is that certain of the so-called--and sometimes properly so called--ma.s.sacres perpetrated by the army, or by frontier militia, have had very different results from what would have been predicted by persons familiar only with habits of thought and feeling among our own people.[D] Injustice and cruelty exasperate men of our race; but the Indian is never other than cruel and unjust under resentment. Let him feel that he has been injured by a white man, and he will tomahawk the first white man he meets, without a thought whether his victim be guilty or innocent. Let him suffer at the hand of a member of a neighboring tribe, and he will lie all day in wait for another member of that tribe with just as much antic.i.p.ation of gratified hate as if he awaited the footsteps of the wrong-doer. Nay, let him have a feud with one of his own blood, and he will devote the speechless babes of his enemy to his infernal malice. Here, undoubtedly, we find the explanation of the fact that ma.s.sacres, d.a.m.nable in plot and circ.u.mstance, have struck such deadly and lasting terror into tribes of savages; while, occurring between nations of whites, they would have kindled the flames of war to inextinguishable fury.