THE FATHERS OF THE REPUBLIC ON INDIAN
TRANSFORMATION AND REDEMPTION
WITH ADDENDUM.

It seems to me best that we consider now and always the
earnest and official views about Indians and their welfare coming
from our greatest rulers who have had responsibility for their
care and progress in civilization.

President Washington said:

"I cannot dismiss the subject of Indian Affairs
without again recommending to your consideration the
exigencies of more adequate provisions for restraining
the commission of outrages upon the Indians without
which all specific plans may prove nugatory. To enable
by competent rewards the employment of qualified and
trusty persons to reside among them as agents would also
contribute to the preservation of peace and good neighbor-
hood.

If in addition to these expedients an eligible plan
could be devised for promoting civilization among the
friendly tribes, and for carrying on trade with them upon
a scale equal to their wants, and under regulations
calculated to protect them from imposition and extortion
its influence in cementing their interests with ours
could not but be considerable.

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I add, with pleasure, that the probability even of their civilization is not diminished by the experiments which have been thus far made under the auspices of Government.

The accomplishment of this work if practicable will reflect undecaying lustre on our National character and administer the most grateful consolation that virtuous minds can know."

President Jefferson said:

"In truth, the ultimate point of rest and happiness for them, (the Indians) is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix and become one people. Incorporating themselves with us as citizens of the United States is what the natural progress of things will bring on; it is better to promote than retard it. It is better for them to be identified with us and preserved in the occupation of their lands than to be exposed to the dangers of being a separate people."

President Madison said:

"The peace and friendship of the Indian tribes of the United States are found to be so desirable that the general disposition to pursue both continues to gain strength.

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I am happy to state that the facility is increas-
ing for extending that divided and individual owner-
ship which exists now in movable property only to the
soil itself, and of thus establishing in the culture
and improvement of it a true foundation for a transit
from the habits of the savage to the arts and comforts
of social life."

President Monroe said:

"Experience has clearly demonstrated that inde-
pendent savage communities cannot long exist within
the limits of a civilized population. The progress
of the latter has almost invariably terminated in the
extinction of the former, especially of the tribes
belonging to our portion of the hemisphere among them
loftiness of sentiment and gallantry of act have been
conspicuous.

To civilize them and even to prevent their ex-
tinction it seems to be indispensable that their in-
dependence as communities should cease, and that the
control of the United States over them should be com-
plete and undisputed. The hunter's state will then
be more easily abandoned and recourse will be had to
the acquisition and culture of land, and to other pur-
suits tending to dissolve the ties which connect them
together as a savage community and to give a new

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character to every individual. Their civilization
is indispensable to their safety."

President John Q. Adams said:

"As independent powers we negotiated with them
by treaties; as proprietors we purchased from them
all the land which we could prevail upon them to
sell; as brethren of the human race, rude and ignor-
ant, we endeavored to bring them to the knowledge of
religion and letters. The ultimate design was to in-
corporate in our own institution that portion of them
which could be converted to the state of civilization.

We have been far more successful in the acqui-
sition of their lands than in imparting to them the
principles or inspiring them with the spirit of
civilization. But in appropriating to ourselves their
hunting grounds we have brought upon ourselves the
obligation of providing for them with subsistence,
and when we have had the rare good fortune of teaching
them the arts of civilization and the doctrines of
Christianity, we have unexpectedly found them forming
in the midst of ourselves communities claiming to be
independent of ours and rivals of sovereignty within
the territories of the members of our Union.

This state of things requires that a remedy should
be provided, a remedy which, while it shall do justice
to those unfortunate children of nature, may secure to

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the members of our Confederation their rights of
sovereignty and of soil."

President Jackson said:

"While professing a desire to civilize and settle
the Indian we have at the same time lost no opportunity
to purchase their lands and thrust them further into
the wilderness. Two policies wholly incompatible. By
this treatment they have not only been kept in a
wandering state but been allowed to look upon us as
unjust and indifferent to their fate. Thus, though
lavish in expenditure upon the subject, Government has
constantly defeated its own policy, and the Indians
redding farther and farther have retained their savage
habits.

If they submit to the laws of our state, receiv-
ing like other citizens protection in their person
and property they will, ere long, become merged in the
mass of our population. If they refuse to assimilate
they are doomed to weakness and decay."

President Grant said:

"The proper treatment of the original occupants
of this continent, the Indians, is one deserving of
careful study. I will favor any course towards them which
tends to their civilization and ultimate citizenship."

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President Cleveland said:

"The conscience of the people demands that the Indians within our boundaries shall be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the Government and their education and civilization promoted with a view to their ultimate citizenship."

"I would rather have my administration marked by a sound and honorable Indian policy than by anything else."

Governor Seymour of New York said:

"Every human being born upon our continent or who comes here from any quarter of the world, whether savage or civilized, can go to our courts for protection, except those who belonged to the tribes who once owned this country. The Cannibals from the Islands of the Pacific, the worst criminals from Europe, Asia or Africa, can appeal to law and courts for their rights of person and property, all, save our native Indians, who, above all, should be protected from wrong."

Bishop Whipple said:

"Indians are the noblest of the savage nations, and more susceptible than any other to Christianizing influences."

The Analetic Magazine for February 1813 said:

"It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines

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of this country to be doubly wronged by the white
man, first, driven from their native soil by the
sword of the invader and then darkly slambered by the
pen of the historian. The former has treated them
like the beasts of the forest; the latter has written
volumes to justify him in his outrages.

The former found it easier to exterminate than
to civilize; the latter to abuse than to discriminate.
The hideous appellations of savage and pagan were
sufficient to sanction the deadly hostilities of both;
and the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and
dishonored, not because they were guilty but because they
were ignorant."

John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on the 28th of June,
1812, gives this as his expression of the value of any research
to discover the origin of the Indians:

"Whether the serpents' teeth were sown here and sprung
up men; whether men and women dropped from the clouds
upon this Atlantic Island; whether the Almighty creat-
ed them here, or whether they immigrated from Europe,
are questions of no moment to the present or future
happiness of man. Neither agriculture, commerce, manu-
facturning, fisheries, science, literature, taste, religion,
morals nor any other good will be promoted or any evil
averted by any discoveries that can be made in answer to
these questions."

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Mr. Beecher said:

"The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation. When a lion eats an ox the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes lion. So the immigrants of all races and nations become Americans, and it is a disgrace to our institutions and a shame to our policy to abuse them or drive them away."

I have taken the foregoing from the columns of a little newspaper printed at one of the Indian schools during and prior to 1885. There are those in the audience who worked in the printing office, who set the type, printed, addressed, and sent out over the country the paper containing these great thoughts, designed to guide the Nation. A goodly number of those present were under the care of that school and are greatly indebted to the spirit and purpose of the school for what they have become, and who will testify that these declared purposes of the greatest leaders of the Republic were constantly pressed upon them as the guide and rule of their lives. Sentiments accentuating these principles went into every edition of the paper. Let me quote a few:

"We have found that with little training and with an improved knowledge of English and of English ways

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Indian boys and girls have values sufficient to gain a welcome to our civilized homes, and if the building can only go on it will certainly lead to higher values and homes of their own, and this too, in the midst of surroundings that will support them and carry them forward to the perfection of civilized life."

"The solution of the Indian problem is to be secured by bringing to bear upon the Indian more than all else the school of experience. If we really desire to civilize him we must surround him with the appliances of civilization, just as we teach a boy to swim, not by putting him into water ankle deep, but by sending him into a sufficient quantity of water to enable him to swim. It is not only possible but practicable to envelop Indians, old and young, with such civilizing influences as will make them all useful and civilized. The appliances will have to be simple and in many cases very strong. Education should be enforced when necessary."

"The great trouble is that we hold our Indians on reservations, segregated and away from the opportunities that make and keep all others well civilized and useful. We educate some and then we kill the life and hope that we have put into them by sending them back to their segregated and reservation life. The Germans, the Irish, and man of every other nation, goes where he likes

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in this country, but the Indian even by our so-
called education receives no encouragement to go
anywhere or be anything else but an Indian."

"The point to be reached in Indian educational work is the placing of all the youth in schools and yet have no Indian schools. Purely Indian schools of any and every sort either on or off reservations will never complete the work. The necessary broadening of experience and competition is lacking. Our every message to the Indians is 'You are a separate people and must so remain. You may improve a little in your civilization and your affairs generally, but you must remain tribal Indians.' There will be no complete success until we break up this seclusion and give to them the same rights we give to the people of every other nation."

"Individual ability and individual accountability should be the aim of every school and every industrial and other effort for the Indian."

"Always keeping the Indians from the tests of civilization and citizenship never produces anything of real value to them or to us."

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"At least fifty industrial schools for Indian youth with 300 to 500 students each should be established at once, at points sufficiently remote from their reservations to insure regular attendance to pupils. These should be in industrious communities and the children, as rapidly as they can be prepared, should be placed in good families to learn practically, agriculture and other industries of civilized life, and to attend the public schools with the children of our own race, in which they find welcome everywhere."

"If we do not educate Indian children to our civilized life their parents will continue to educate them to their aboriginal life."

"The Indian tribes, languages, and reservations are combinations against the first law announced to man at the creation, directing him to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth." They are in every way inimical to the Indian because they stand as a wall separating him from the knowledge and industry which is the only sure life and health of men."

"The day of real progress for the Indians will begin when each Indian becomes an individual and an organized unit in himself to make the most of himself that he can. It does not appear from either the present or past conditions that tribal units, organizations,

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languages or characteristics are calculated in any degree to forward the civilization or well-being of the individual Indian."

"One of the greatest hindrances to the Indian in his transit from barbarism to civilization is his entire exclusion from the experiences of practical civilized life. Unless we can make our Indian school systems build Indian children out of and away from the experiences of aboriginal life into the experiences of civilized life in all its varied forms and competitions, we shall not succeed in making capable citizens. Experience and full opportunity to compete and compare is the most important school."

"We shall end our Indian problem not by feeding our civilized life to the Indians but by feeding the Indians to our civilized life. If we are to have one people in one home one must absorb the other. In this case there is no question which."

These utterances of the long ago are far more pertinent now than they were originally because all Indian schools and all Indian management have been whipped into line to contribute their results to the tribe instead of the Nation. I trust that my bringing these old views before you will be accepted as a fulfillment of my promise to occupy twenty minutes. My feeling about it is that I could not offer any-

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thing just now that would be more timely.

The fatality of violence and the disease and death born of hopelessness and mistreatment are strown abundantly all along the trail of our dealing with the Indian, not through any fault or weakness of the Indian, or because real civilization harms in any way, but solely because we have not listened to and been guided by the golden rule methods our greatest presidents urged.

We have levied taxes upon our own people, raised and expended on account of the Indians Five hundred millions of dollars, catering to a false system of control which forces them to continue in tribal masses. We continue to enlarge this enduring system at increased expense, refusing to listen to the wisdom of the Fathers, and are decoyed by the voice of many sirens who live and fatten on exploiting and consolidating Indianism under many guises.

All men of every race are born blank. What is writ into them or omitted to be writ after birth is what makes them capable or leaves them a burden. Parents, guardians, and the government are responsible for the writing and its quality and intention.

Let me in closing submit for your pondering what Lowell through Hoses Biglow said: "The great American idea, is, to make a man a man, and then to let him be."