secure the Indians in their possessions and to prevent them from becoming forever a race of homeless paupers and vagabonds, is to transform their tribal title into individual title, inalienable for a certain period; in other words, to settle them in severalty and give them by patent an individual fee-simple in their lands. Then they will hold their lands by the same title by which white men hold theirs, and they will, as a matter of course, have the same standing in the courts, and the same legal protection of their property. As long as they hold large tracts in the shape of reservations, only small parts of which they can make useful to themselves and to others, the whole being held by the tribe in common, their tenure will always be insecure. It will grow more and more so as our population increases, and the quantity of available land diminishes. We may call this an ugly and deplorable fact, but it is a fact for all that. Long experience shows that the protests of good people in the name of justice and humanity have availed but very little against this tendency, and it is useless to disguise and unwise to overlook it, if we mean to do a real service to the Indians.
For this reason I attach much more importance to the passage of legislation providing for the settlement of the Indians in severalty and giving them individual title in fee-simple, the residue of their lands not occupied by them to be disposed of for their benefit, than to all the efforts, however well intended, to procure judicial decisions which, as I have shown, cannot be had. I am glad to say that the conversations I have had with Senators and Representatives in Congress on the policy of settling the Indians in severalty have greatly encouraged my hope of the success of the “severalty bill” during the present session.
I need not repeat here what I said in a letter to Mr. Edward Atkinson, which you may possibly have seen
