| Show tiie OF hue BUE INDIAN the follow following lil iri 9 is extracted from commissioner howards annual report on indian affairs the people of the united states can never without dishonor refuse to respect these two considerations first that this continent was originally owned and occupied by the indians who have on this account a claim somewhat larger than the privilege of acres of and and nind find himself in tools and stock which is granted as a matten matlen of course to any newly arrived foreigner who declares his intention to become a citizen that something in the nature of an endowment either capitalized or in in the form of annual expenditure expenditures 3 for a series of years for the benefit of the indians though at the discretion of the government as to the specific objects should be provided for every tribe or band which is deprived of its roaming privilege and confined to a diminished reservation such an endowment not being in the nature of a gratuity but in common honesty the right of the indian on account of his original interest in the soil second ahat nhat hat inasmuch as the progress of our industrial enterprise has cut these people off from modes of livelihood entirely sufficient for their wants and for which they were qualified in a degree which has been the wonder of more civilized races by inherited aptitudes and long pursuit and has left them utterly without resource they have a claim on this account again to temporary support and to such assistance si sistan ceas as may be necessary to place them in a position to obtain a livelihood by means which shall be compatible with civilization had the settlements of the united states not been extended beyond the frontier of 1867 1807 all the indians of the contin continent eng enu would to the end of time have found upon the plains an luex haus tible tibie supply of food and clothing were the westward courses courses of population to be stayed at the barriers of today notwithstanding the tremendous inroads made upon their hunting grounds since 1867 the indians would still have hope of life but another such five years will see the indians of dakota and montana as poor as the indians of neva nieva a and southern california that is reduced to an habitual condition of suffering from want or of food the freedom of expansion which is working these results is to us of local culpable cost every years advance of our frontier takes in a territory as large as some of the kingdoms of europe we are richer by hundreds of millions the indian is poorer by a large part of the little he has this growth is bringing imperial greatness to the nation to the indian it brings wretchedness destitution beggary surely there is obligation found in considerations like these requiring us in some way and in the best way to make good to those original owners of the soil the loss by which we so greatly gain can any principle of national morality be clearer than that when the expansion and development of a civilized race involve the rapid destruction of the only means of subsistence possessed by the members of a less fortunate race the higher is bound as of simple right to provide for the lower some substitute for the means of subsistence which it has destroyed st that substitute is of course best beet realized not not Dot by systematic gratuities of food and clothing continued continue a beyond a present emergency but by directing these people to new pursuits which shall be consistent with the progress of civilization upon the continent helping them over the first rough place on 11 t the white mans road and meanwhile supplying such sustenance as is absolutely necessary during the period of initiation and experiment |
