Harper's Weekly Editorials on Carl Schurz/The Indian Bureau
THE INDIAN BUREAU.
The contest for the transfer of the Indian
Bureau to the War Department is an old
one, and it is waged with great vigor by
Secretary Schurz and General
Sheridan.
It is a question upon which opinions may
reasonably and honestly differ, and there is
no doubt that the revelations of mismanagement
under the late Administration inclined
public opinion to favor a change to military
control. But in its nature it is a question
which ought to be solved by the civil
authority. The place of the military arm in
our system is to enforce civil regulations; and
to hand the Indians over to the army, except
under very positive and precise restrictions
is undoubtedly to solve the problem in one
way, but it is also to confess incapacity.
Undoubtedly the Indian question has been formerly terribly mismanaged. The idea of dealing with the tribes as powers or states, and concluding treaties with them, is wholly mistaken. But Mr. Schurz is entirely correct in holding that a well-ordered Indian Bureau is as adequate to the control of our Indian relations as to any other proper function of the government. It is idle to furnish the Indians with improved arms to massacre the settlers, but it is equally idle to suppose that they can be civilized at the point of the bayonet. If it be assumed that they are vermin to be exterminated, the more overwhelming and sudden their destruction the better. But if our policy be one of civilization, they must be taught that we mean to enforce it consistently.
The gross abuses which were the scandal of the Bureau have not been heard of under the control of Secretary Schurz. That they have wholly ceased is not to be supposed, for in the nature of the case they must long continue. But the ability and efficiency and integrity which have marked the conduct of the Interior Department under the present Secretary are matters of general knowledge and congratulation. In dealing with the Indian question the Department knows that it has to do with a subject which is not generally interesting, and upon which there is an impatient feeling that the ragamuffins should be summarily disposed of. But certainly an Indian policy, sagacious and humane, firmly enforced with due regard to the safety and rights of all, and without any weak surrender to morbid sentimentalism, may be held strictly under the direction of a civil department.
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