1028

INDIAN TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.

How immensely important, therefore, that the government, instead of driving the red men from one reservation to another in response to the greed of white emigrants, should allot them ample territories which they should own absolutely, and carefully encourage each Indian to feel that in taking a tract to himself in severalty and making a farm he is making, not only a permanent home for himself, but an inheritance for his children. Ifc is right, too, that the Indians should be taught to feel that they have a share in our government. "At this moment, the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, the remnants of the Six Nations in New York, the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, are as fit for citizenship as the average white immigrant or negro voter."

Of our prisoners of war on the reservations are expected the most unreasonable things. In localities so dry that no crop can ever be raised, they are expected to become all at once good farmers. The enormous appropriations of Congress for their support are largely squandered or misapplied by corrupt officials through manipulation of the " trade" with the Indians. One tribe was promised in a treaty so many pounds of beef a year. Congress appropriates the same amount of money each year for this purpose. But the price of beef rises. The appropriation falls far short of buying the requisite number of founds. The Indians, who are left to starve, look on this as intentional robbery.

The problem of supplying the Indians with food excites much difference. The late Secretary of the Treasury thought that it was pernicious; that lazy Indians were made still lazier by feeling that the government owed them a living, and idleness is the great source of Indian mischief. He thought that it would spoil white men to care for them in this way; hence, he reasoned, how far short would this policy fall of civilizing the Indians and teaching habits of industry, virtue, and self-support.

Theoretically this is right.   But like many another proposi-