Year: 1872

| AxPerhmcnt-nepOrt o. Our SPocASA
Commissioner.


From o HERALD commissioner accompany
ing the two special commissioners of the
government detailed by the President to in
quire into the condition of affairs in the In
dian Territory, and into the causes of the
present troubles therein of our red brethren,
we publish this morning q very interesting
| report The conclusion drawn from our
commissioner observations in this Territory
| is that the experiment therein of elevating the
red man to the systematic labor, arts and
usages Of civilized life is failure, and that q
very different policy must be sought to achieve
that end. Whether we look backward for q
sign or forward for q hope, the situation is
not at all cheering. Our treatment of the
Indians has been simply dictated by the force
of uncomfortable circumstances which have
wrought out woe and extinction for
them. The pressure of white settlement
which drove them ever westward, has been
stayed at last by the presence of refuence of
civilization from the West; and the Indian,
shiftless, lazy, revengeful and depredatory,
finds himself hemmed ina savage at bay.
We're this the only feature of the approaching
end it might appeal to our sentimentallty just
feebly enough to make us regret the necessity
of blotting out, under the sulphurous cloud of
musketry volley, the last vestige of the un-
mixed blood of human beings who owned this
Continent for ages before Columbus trod the
soil of San Salvador. Were the policy one
of blood only against the Indian he might ere
now have turned to mere historic regret; but
tartan age, trying to patch up peace with him
and save him from his worst enemy--himself.
The Indian Territory was the result of this ex-
pertinent tried years ago, and the report of
our commissioner, published to-day, will tell
its utter unsuccess. ~.r-ss-


The Indian Territory covers an immense
area Of land, well wooded and watered, and of
great fertility. The tribes located there are
principally Choctaws, Chickasaws, Greeks,


Kiowas, Cherokees, Arapahoes Cheyennes,


Senecas, Wachitas and Quaapas. The govern
ment given into their hands binds them
chiefly to the claws of their Nation and
confines them in theory to their respective
reservations. With this certain encourage
ment has been furnished to agriculture, with
the slimmest results The United States has
established q qua 81 blockade, with an embargo
on whiskey, and certain well-meaning mis-
sionaries supply a limited quantity of Gospel
to them. All this created a semblance of we'll
doing and advancement which was perpetu-
ally belied by accounts of heathenish outrages
from the Gospel-fed Indians and sad
stories Of drunkenness from these teeto.
tallers of Uncle Sam. The truth of
the matter is, that the Indian never re-
ceived the idea of civilization with anything
idea of having country four times the size of
New York set apart for him, rations tolerably
sure, hunting not bad, and enough corn and
vegetables to be had by making his squaws
cultivate o little patch. He knew it would not
be difficult to procure frewater and firearms
so long as he had anything to give in exchange
for them. Accordingly, when hunting did not
yield peltry he organized border foray in
Texas or anywhere of easy reach, and soon got
all he wanted from Mexicans or bad Ameri-
cans. This was a pleasant prospect enough
for the red man, and would have satisfied him
until borrowed vice, intemperance and disease
had extinguished him. But he was not left to
SO easy fate as living in the lap of luxury
and finally dying drunk. Dishonest agents
irritated him and swindled him. The white
man, restless under the smallness of the
rest of the world, crowded in upon his
reservation, and sent him on the warpath
with settlers scalps down his moccasins. The
border ruffian met him, if he made treaty
and laid down quietly again, with cards and
smuggled whiskey and robbed him to the
tune of everything movable, with bowie
knife accompaniment. Then the Indian
wanted the border rufian executed, and when
he failed in this set out and murdered inoffen-
sive whites in return, and solemnly acquitted
| his braves according to the laws Of the


'Naton." If this exhibit be multiplied
twenty times, with varying circumstances only
in degree, and we add thereunto thousand
intestine feuds between the tribes, some vague
idea may be formed of the complexity of the
Indian Territory difficulty to-day with even
the settled tribes. With the nomads taken
into account, who preserve their independence
Of all such entanglements by the simple pro-
cess Of taking all they can get from the gov
ernment and numbering and robbing for the
remainder elsewhere, the situation can be
better understood.


When the eminently humane idea of nor
NAL school for teaching Indians to be civilized
on such an enormous scale was first put into
effect, it was hoped that by the time civiliza-
ton walled them in they would be fitted to
assume relations with the outspreading whites
on grounds Of nearly equal intelligence. How
| this vision has faded away the facts tell, and
how inefficient the present peace policy Of the