The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-11-27
KILLING org THE INDIAN.

KILLING OFF THE INDIAN.
Year after year, practically since the
foundation of this government the work
of retaining and civilizing the Indian
has gone on. Today we are reading the
views of Indian Commissioner Jones and
Secretary Hitchcock. Four years hence
other officials on the same subject.
Every generation has had this Indian
puzzle served up in one form or another
for 100 years Other generations viii
continue to look at it. The state, the
church, students, teachers, philosophers,
humanitarians and politicians, soldiers
and civilians have made their contribu
ton to its settlement. Yet there it is,
farther, if possible from settlement than
being reclaimed and civilized off the face
of the earth. That is the only result er-
fected-the speedy passing of the race.
It was the Indians east of the Allie
ghany mountains that Cooper, the now
elist, dealt with. 1t was with those inn
mediately west of that range that Daniel
Boone and his contemporaries fought.
The United States army has been the
only effective agency in the civilization
of the Indian between the Mississippi
and the Pacific ocean. The South has
had her Indian problems. Tecun11eh did
more to solve it than anybody else. But
the solution or the attempt at solution
has gone on. The Indian-what is left
of him-remains the savage he always
was.
Those who read what the present In
dian commissioner has to say will be
disposed to think it very good or very
bad, or neither good nor bad. 1t does
not matter. The Indian is there. We
will go on civilizing him probably until
he has ceased to be. Then there will be
no more Indian agents, no more Indian
commissioners, and the whole thing will
have passed, with the Indian, into his
tory.
1t is not our fault, so much as it is
alike the fault and misfortune of the
Indian. Forces, greater and more potent
of results infinitely than all we can do
or have done, are at work, thwarting
everything that we have attempted. We
70 ho Ind Jof
relapse into savagery. We feed and
clothe him; yet he goes hungry and max
ed We teach him industry both by pre-
cept and example; but he remains a
loafer. We tell him all about Chris
tianity; and he remains pagan. We
recognize his title to the soil; then we
take the soil away from him. We make
individual allotments of land to him;
yet we furnish him with free rations.
civilize the Indian, Carlisle school has
not and will not. The scheme of TAX
ing the papooses away from the wickup
and developing their minds through the
American school ma am, which has been
in progress as a part of our non-sec-
tartan system of education, and to which
Commissioner Jones pays his compH-
ments in a very clever way, simply
makes the difficulty greater. The In
dian reservations are the breeding
places of the disease of which the In
dian is dying, and which will soon make
him as extinct as the dodo or the great
aux. What then? The 'readiest and, per-
haps, the most humane solution of the
Indian problem would be to kill the In
dian off without further delay But as
we are a moral and civilized people we
cannot think of doing this. What we
ought to do, and probably what we will
finally do, is to throw him on his own
resources for his support, and thus kill
him off in the course of two or three
generations.