Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-01-04
The Indians Not Dying Out.
Gen Chs y;dan in b,s animal re,

The Indians Not Dying Out.
Gen. She ridan, in his annual report
to the Adjutsnt General of the Army,
gives a concise statement of the cause,
Of our Indian wars. He shows thai
aimee 1869 we have taken from the
Indians their country and their means
Of life, broken up their habits OF liv'
ing, driven them on to reservations,
with their limits circumscribed, theil
opportunities of hunting abridged,
their game disappearing, sickness in
their lodges from change of life and
food, and the latter irregularly mp.
piled. Insufiieiency Of food was Qlis
cause OF the receHt>raids by the Ban
nocks and Cheyennes, who naturally
chose to fight rather than starve. He
points to the dangers which must flow
from this policy, especially with the
army so limited in numbers that there
is but one soldier for the protection OF
every seventy-fve square miles Of ter.
ri DRY.
The brutality with which the In
dams have been treated by the whites
springs largely from a mistaken con-
tempt for them as AN inferior race
bound to disappear before the march
of their superiors. As they are to
fade away, II is of little consequence
how they are treated. The sooner they
are extermineted the better. But what
if they are not to fade away, bnt to re-
main as integral parts of our national
community for all time to come? Can
we afford to go on irritating a danger
GUS foe who is to be always with us?
1t is declared by Col. Mallery, and
by Rev. DR.. Riggs, q well known In
dian scholar, that it is mistake to sup
pose that the Indians are rapidly dying
out. In spite of bad whiskey, fire.
quent wars, the decrease in buffalo,
the rifle OF the frontiersman, and the
swindles of Indian agents, there is
good reason for believing that the In
dams are slowly increasing ON our
hands. There is abundant evidence
that the original Indian population of
the country was overestimated. Col.
Mallory concludes, after thorough in
vestigation, that there were not more
than half million of Indians north of
Mexico on this continent when Column
bus discovered America, and he shows
that after the lapse of nearly four cen.
turtles of contest with destroying
civilization there are now three hun
dred thousand, without counting half
breeds. The Iroquois now number
ID, 66S as against IL $50 in 1868. The
Sioux Confederacy have quadrupled
their numbers in one hundred and
forty years, and doubled them in
twenty nine years. In the last four
years, in population of one hundred
thousand Indians belonging to nearly
one hundred tribes, there has been an
actual, though slow increase, the ex-
cess of births over deaths varying from
six-tenths of one per cent. to 232 per
cent. The Seminoles, in forty years,
despite the efforts of the government
to kill or remove them doubled their
numbers. The Indians in the State of
New York have shown very large in
crease i'll the last quarter of a century.
Missionaries among the Sioux declare
that there is nothing to justify the be-
lief that the Indians are a vanishing
race.
If, then, their future is inseparably
up WIN 4OL SOOu OI SNlly
it becomes question whether we can
afford to go on treating them as ene-
mics to be exterminated, instead of q
race who are permanently part of us.
AS Col. Mallery says:
On. the present theory the Indian is
perforce tramp. He cannot own
property individually-at least he is
not encouraged to do so. If he sep
arates himself from his tribe and tries
to earn his living by labor, he becomes
an object of suspicion and persecution
by the Indian agents, to whom he then
ceases to be profitable; and it is but a
few years since that, in California, hun
dre6s of Indians, living quietly and
usefully as farm laborers, were sud-
denly and cruelty "gobbled up" by
the Indian Bureau, and forced on to
reservation, to be made paupers
against their wills.