It was before this necessity of opening Indian lands “to entry and sale” that the Winnebagoes had been fleeing, from 1815 to 1863. It seems they are no safer now. There is evidently as much reason for moving them out of Nebraska as there was for moving them out of Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The Secretary goes on to say: “As soon as the Indian is taught to toil for his daily bread, and realize the sense of proprietorship in the results of his labor, it cannot but be further to his advantage to be able to appreciate that his labor is expended upon his individual possessions and for his personal benefit. * * * The Indian must be made to see the practical advantage to himself of his work, and feel that he reaps the full benefit of it. Everything should teach him that he has a home; * * * a hearth-stone of his own, around which he can gather his family, and in its possession be entirely secure and independent.”
The logical relation of these paragraphs to the preceding one is striking, and the bearing of the two together on the case of the Winnebagoes is still more striking.
In the same report the Commissioner for Indian Affairs says: “If legislation were secured giving the President authority to remove any tribe or band, or any portion of a tribe or band, whenever in his judgment it was practicable, to any one of the reservations named, and if Congress would appropriate from year to year a sum sufficient to enable him to take advantage of every favorable opportunity to make such removals, I am confident that a few years’ trial would conclusively demonstrate the entire feasibility of the plan. I believe that all the Indians in Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota, and a part at least of those in Wyoming and Montana, could be induced to remove to the Indian Territory.”
He adds “that the Indian sentiment is opposed to such removal is true,” but he thinks that, “with a fair degree of persistence,” the removal “can be secured.” No doubt it can.
Later in the same report, under the head of “Allotments in
