The thought here is that the red man was not free to be a red man. He had to be like his conquerors. It is not hard to see in these words the ominous forecast of our current welfare society. When the citizen is reduced to abject poverty because of forced government controls in business, education, agricultural, economic and land ownership policies, it is a tragedy. The outrage comes when the citizen is forced, because of these conditions, into accepting government handouts in order to survive and then insulted with the thought of needing to be grateful for to its benefactor.
Individual sovereignty is annihilated by the kind weapon of handouts.
But education here plays another important role. During the last quarter of the 19th century, thousands of young Indians were taken off their reservations and sent to federally supported boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into white society. But of all the government policies designed to end Indian cultures the cruelest was yet to come. Indian people would be robbed of even their children. Across the country Indian children some as young as four years old were taken from their parents often by force and taken to boarding schools.