Harper's Weekly Editorials on Carl Schurz/The Indians

by Harper's Weekly

THE INDIANS.

It is probable that the present discussion of the Indian question, while so humane and able and incorruptible a Secretary as Mr. Schurz is at the head of the Interior Department, will lead to some practicable good results. There is a more general and intelligent interest in the subject than we have ever known, and the discussion is conducted in such an excellent spirit that a question which is usually so little attractive is assuming its true place in public attention. The differences between the Secretary of the Interior and those who advocate making the Indians amenable to law, and those who wish to see the Indian Bureau transferred to the War Department, are differences of method, not of purpose. All aim to civilize the Indians, to teach them self-support, and to merge them gradually in the mass of citizens. But the conditions are very difficult, and there may be the most reasonable differences of opinion. Mr. Tibbles, who has brought the case of the Poncas to the attention of the public, has two objects in view: to secure for the Indian a standing in court, making him amenable to law, and giving him the protection of law, and to arouse public interest to that end. We do not understand the Secretary to deny the desirability of this object, and he has constantly stated in his reports that the Poncas were grievously wronged by their forced removal from their reservation upon the Missouri to the Indian Territory. The wrong, he says, was occasioned “by a mistake in making the Sioux treaty.” But that the Poncas instead of the Sioux should have suffered by the mistake was manifestly unjust, and the Interior Department under Mr. Schurz's control has done all that it could do in the absence of legislation to repair the wrong.

When, however, Standing Bear and his party left the Indian Territory last spring to return to their old reservation, they were arrested at the request of the Indian Department, in accordance with the uniform practice, to be returned to the Indian Territory, where the tribe had lost large numbers by disease. A writ of habeas corpus was granted by the United States Court in Nebraska, and the Indians released. The question now raised is whether peaceable Indians can be forcibly removed by the government from lands once confirmed to them by treaty, and returned to a reservation upon which they have not bound themselves by treaty to remain. Obviously this can not be done by any government which pretends to have any respect for treaty rights or justice. It can be done only by a government which proposes to do merely what it chooses to do; and it is because of this bad faith which has been constantly shown by us to the Indians that they distrust our overtures, and are taught to hate us. The truth is that we impose treaties upon the Indians, and observe them just so far as suits our own pleasure, and no farther. When the white population presses closely upon an Indian reservation, as now upon that of the Utes in Colorado, the Indians are made to give way. Of course the advance of civilization must not be restrained. But equally of course a government which does not intend to respect treaties has no right to make them; and when they are made with people who can not compel their observance, the violation of them is as mean as it is infamous.

The Secretary agrees that it would be well to have the rights of Indians judicially defined and fixed, but he justly holds that this alone would not solve the Indian question. If it should result in the roaming of Indians at pleasure, it would, in his opinion, be a serious evil, and in the case of the Poncas he thinks that their return to Dakota would be only injurious to them. However this may be, the Secretary sums up the whole case in saying that the Indians must be “treated, not with justice, but with patience.” First of all with justice, and that requires two things — that we should distinguish between the civilized and the semi-civilized tribes, and that we should keep our word with both. If the white pressure is sure sooner or later to require the lands that have been ceded to the Indians by treaty, let us take care to make no cessions. If we mean to do with the Indians just what we please, let us say so frankly, and put an end to a pretense which is constantly irritating and vexatious and costly. It is evidently absurd to treat the Cherokees as we treat the wild Sioux and the savage tribes of the plains. But the wilder tribes are to be treated with humanity and justice. Honesty is still the best policy; and if we give our word to the red man, let as hold to it against the white man. The trouble generally begins with the whites, and even when the Indians take the first step, it is because of some previous white offense. For the civilized Indians the system of agencies and traderships is very questionable. Indeed, many of those who are most familiar with the subject insist that it should be abandoned altogether. When retained for the wilder tribes, the system, it seems to us, can be efficiently regulated only by military force. The ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. Persuade the Indians by experience that they shall have fair play, and Indian wars will be very few. This is the purpose of the Secretary, and of those who only differ with him as to the best means of accomplishing it. As the Rev. Dr. Storrs said at the meeting in his church in Brooklyn in favor of the Poncas, and after Standing Bear had spoken, “As this man has told you, in his singular oratory, of the sufferings and oppressions of his people, it belongs to us to see that our magistrates secure them their rights, to crystallize the right feelings into law and justice, and to understand that it is wrong for a nation to oppress the weak.”

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