OCR Text |
Show THE INDIANS. Commissioner Adkins has made his report re-port on the Indian question. The report is quite broad and comprehensive, and shows a trust in the Indian, and a belief in his capacity for civilization. The Indian In-dian question has simmered itself down to the question of the best method of advancing ad-vancing him and conforming his ways to the ways of the white man. J 'For this purpose, General Adkins re-I re-I commends that the Indians be allotted land in severalty, but that their power of disposal of such land be curtailed by .. issuing to them trust '. patents. The object of this is to protect the Indians in their rights and' to prevent them becoming be-coming the prey of unscrupulous men. If the Indians shall make the progress that is looked for, many of them would find such trust patents a hindrance to their improvement, as they would be a restraint re-straint upon trade. This could easily be avoided by inserting a provision in any act that might be passed authorizing the holding of lands in severalty providing provid-ing for cases when a trust patent would but retard the advancement of the Indians. In-dians. It would be unwise in the extreme to force the Indians to sever their tribal relations, and if they were to be rudely severed, it would only retard their civilization. civil-ization. The cultivation of the earth is gradually spreading among the Indians, and those who have engaged in agricultural agricul-tural pursuits rarely leave them for the chase, while the returns which their labor in the fields brings them are far superior to the returns of the chase. The Indian loves comfort as well as the white man, and when he becomes used to it and sees that it can be had by the labor of his own hands, he will perform the labor for the reward it will, surely bring him. The various tribes will not all so readily take to the ways of civilization as some in Indian Territory have, and particularly is this so of some tribes in Arizona and New Mexico. But everything is encouraging. |