Daily Yellowstone journal. [volume] (Miles City, Mont.) 1882-1893, 1886-04-09
F. iday, April 9, 1886.

GENERAL MILES in his last annual
report, makes good many remarks as
to Indians, and Indian affairs which
certainly are pertinent and forcible,
but even his statements do not all
tend to give the right notion to east
ern folks. Ii has always been, and
always will be, impossible to get the
eastern people to know what an In
dian is. To know a man one must
live with him. The Indian il not an
exception to this rule. The General
says 1.-THE Indian Territory, whose res
ervation was originally a Judicious and
humane measure, is now q block in
the way of civilization, refuge for
mongrel outlaws whose vices are kill
ing the Indians rapidly by desease;
without courts of justice or popular in
stitutious it is blot on our maps"
This is sense and fact. The General
suggests and earnestly urges that a
treaty be made to open up the Indian
Territory under the allotment system.
He thinks that this should be done in
the case of nearly every reserve which
stays civilization IN its march. The
best point in his remarks, We believe
to be his conclusion that the commits
sioners, to treat with Indians for the
cession of such land as is not needed
by them, should be men who under
stand Indian methods, tastes and am
billions, and who would inspire the
Indian with confidence; practical
men, not theorists. Again we COM
mend the Generals views as sound,
but we probably would not agree with
the General as to just where We should
20 to find the parties best qualified to
inspire the Indian with confidence.
The General says that with good men
to handle the savages, 1t would be
perfectly practicable to make any tribe
of Indians self-supporting in five
years. If the soundness of the Gen
erals views before mentioned were to
be measured by the unsoundness of
the latter statement, the Generals
opinions would have to sink to the
ordinary level of the peripatetic cor
respondent of some Boston sheet
which gives its columns to the usual
nonsense about the American Indian.
But the General has only fallen, in
this instance, into a common error
held by many, though it is surprising
that so well informed an Indian
fighter as he is, should say
that wild savages can in five years be-
come steady, quiet and provident.
The negros in and around Topeka.
Kan, are not self-supportiDg. though
among those whose immediate fathers
shed blood on Kansas sole in their in
terests, and though the negro has
besn taught to work all his life. The
Indian hates work. Nevertheless the
Indian must and shall work. The
sooner he is put on his allotted land,
and undecided in his notion that the
white man must keep outside Of his
millions Of acres while he sleeps and
the broken-back squaws pack his fire
wood, the sooner he will commence
to labor and support himself, whether
II takes five years or twenty. The
General makes another mistake in his
report. He recommends the enlist.
ment of more Indians as scouts, hav-
ing them under his command for five
years and never had one to desert.
The Cheyennes, up Tongue and Rose
bud rivers, are the scouts referred to,
we suppose. We were out with a
compile of those Cheyennes once, some
three years ago. Every day, as soon
as they finished eating the breakfast
which the soldiers furnished and
cooked for them, they left and were no
more seen until the same cooks had
supper ready at the end of the days
march. The day before the expe'
dition returned to the fort one Of the
two scouts left and was seen no more
until the fort was reached. Military
men lay the fault Of Crook's pitifu
doings In Arizona upon the unrelia
bility of his scouts and 1t may be thai
General Miles may change his mind
about making soldiers Of savages
The right way is to judge nispassion'
ateIy Of the Indian, neither love him
nor hate him. Only impartial eyes
eau discern the best road for the In.
dian to travel, for travel he must in
the way Of civilizing industry.