The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-03-09
INDIANS AND LABOR.


 cial records that there are now in round numbers 100000 Indians in the United States, exclusive of Alaska. This census includes the New York Indians who still occupy a reservation in that State. The Indian appropriation bill for 1S03-4 car ried $S5 ,001. more than $50 per head per annum, men, women and children includ- ed. The bill for the next year will carry $7, ,61O,0O0 or say about $s.0OO.0-0 when the Senate has laid its always enlarging hand upon 1t.
 It will surprise most persons to learn how few Indians there are and not less the amount of money annually expended by the government. In training and SUD- porting them. It has been estimated that there wete about 100000 Indians within the region now occupied by the United States when Columbus discovered Amer lea. It would seem, therefore, that the Indians have lost half their numbers in 200 years of active civilization by the whites. What are their prospects for the future?
 The Dawes Commission Is going stead fly forward with their plan of alloting lands in severalty to the individual mem- bers of varous tribes and coincidently, the government is withdrawing support In the form of food, clothing and uten- sils The bottom idea of the govern ment's plan at present is to make the In- dian work. The Indians mode of life has been the most primitive known with the exception of the Bushmen of Northern Australia, Some of the most learned so- cieties in Europe devote themselves ex- clusively to the study of American re- mains and the present day existence of our Indians. These scholars are anxious to get all the knowledge they can while these tribes are still with us. This Is for tunate if the world needs more ethnolog- ical information; for our wards have been disappearing and will, in all Likelihood, disappear faster with the establishment of an economy of self-sustaining labor on small bits of land This is nothing short of making the Indian stand on his head and earn a livelihood in that position.
 This Is not to say our government SONNAAAAG nitely. Free rations for more than thirty years have done just what might have been expected. Tribal customs for hun dreds and may be thousands of years, had bred in the male a scorn of labor. Free food has reduced his initiative still lower and in this state he is committed to the tenderness of the eager. pushing, grasp la nd uyht This frontersman is breaking the Inc dian's hold by intermarriage with his wo- men, by swindling in contracts and fail ing these means. by downright crowd ing him out of the way.
 There Is small ground to anticipate the red man can withstand the powerful agencies at work to absorb or destroy him. His real attitude toward his white brother, We fear, will always remain that of the Apache chief Ol.nsted tells of. in his Journey Through Texas"
 olmsted's guide for the Rio Grande was an old scout. He despised and hated sav- ages Olmsted says, and loved to find any decent and manly pretext for killing them. At the same time he gave them credit for more sense than some people allowed them.
 Why do people who write books" he asked, always make Indians talk in that hifalutin way they do? Indians don't talk so. and when folks talk that way to them they don't understand it. They don't like 1t. neither. I went up with Lieutenant - when he tried to make | a troafv with the Northern Anacba. IT, had been talking up In the clouds, all nonsense, for half an hour. and l was trying to translate 1t just as foolish as he said it. An old Indian jumped up and stopped me. What does your chief talk 1 to us in this way for? We amt babies,