houses put upon their land, could have their ground fenced off and plows given them, and so have them encouraged in a small way to raise something to live upon, that would be an immense benefit to them. Perhaps, under the existing circumstances, that is the best thing that can be done for them.

The Kiowas and Comanches have made a contract with the Government for the division of their land and the cession of the residue. The Government has never approved that. When I was there many of the people were making commendable efforts to make houses, but there is much misdirected effort among those that try. The country is leased out, most of it, to cattlemen from Texas, and the Indian does not dare to have his house out on his land, for he must protect his family against the cowboys. So they are building houses close together where there will be too many on one allotment. They will have to be moved from there. If there could be somebody to direct them it would be better.

I talked with a subagent there about it and he told me that he had not time to give them the attention that they ought to have, and it was impossible, over such an extent of country, to direct them.

Now, about the Five Civilized Tribes. While allotment is ruin to the Indian before he is fit for it, there comes a time where tribal government, the holding of land in common, is the worst possible injury that can overtake him. The governments of the Five Civilized Tribes are utterly inefficient; they protect neither life nor property. The blood that is being shed by the whites and Indians, the robberies that take place and other crimes, are carrying these peopie back to barbarism, and undoing what people have been doing for them for fifty years. I have been there with Captain Kennan and Senator Dawes, and this is the conclusion that we have all reached.

We have been trying to effect a change. We have failed so far, and the prospect is discouraging. The country of the five tribes embraces about 20,000,000 acres of land. There are mountains and hills with black-jack groves, in which the land, except in small valleys, is worthless for cultivation. Here the real Indian settles, and raises hogs on the acorns; they find springs and wood convenient, and make their homes there. The balance of the country is one of the finest that the sun shines on, but it has been taken possession of by "intermarried citizens," as they are called; Senator Dawes calls them "squaw men.' They are white men married to Indian women, and their descendants. Some of them have married for proper purposes, and some are educated and accomplished men; I am not speaking of squaw men with disrespect, for many of them are estimable gentlemen.

A few avaricious and grasping men have taken possession of nearly all this valuable land, and are holding it in quantities of from 5,000 to 100,000 acres each. In the Creek country they pay 5 cents an acre for the use of it, and let it for 50 cents to $1 an acre. These half-breeds or mixed bloods and intermarried citizens do not treat the Indians as if they were human. You may say that is not speaking in a complimentary manner of them. It is true. There is a great deal of bribery, and they reconcile their consciences to this by saying, "That is the way with State legislatures and State governments." They say to the Indians, "Congress sells out, and if you do not do that you are not doing like white men.” When I have talked with them about this they say, "It is not a bit worse than Congress."

They have in various ways monopolized the whole country, and the Indian, who ought to enjoy the benefit of it, has to live in the barren, hilly part of it, with his house, a typical Indian house, a log cabin 14 feet square, with a cook stove, a deal table, and a rough bed; that is usually the extent of the furniture. But the Indian woman is a model housekeeper, so far as cleanliness is concerned. There is generally a shed on one side. The women take care of the house and do the little farming that is done. You will find that they pick out from 1 to 10 acres in some little mountain valley near the houses, where there is a bit of land that can be cultivated. Here the squaw and the children raise corn, beans, and sweet potatoes, and these, with an occasional acorn-fed hog, constitute the substance of the food for the family. The wealth of a family consists in a few hogs and sometimes a few cattle running over the country. The Indian man has perhaps a horse, saddle, and bridle, and in the morning he gets up and when the rations are short he rides out to a more favored neighbor and gets his victuals there, while his wife and children remain in destitution. Yet that man and woman and their children are owners of princely fortunes, but the white intermarried men have got it and are enjoying it.

The Choctaws and Chickasaws, as near as we can make out, will have about 700 acres of land each, as good as there is in the world; and yet the white man has got it and the Indian is living in such a way that it is impossible to force an existence out of the soil. The intermarried men chuckle and say, "We have got it, and what are you going to do about it?" We can not make those men give up the land. This conference will do very much if it can aid in extricating these poor people from this condition.

The Cherokees have two fine schools. There is not a full-blood Indian pupil among them. They have a fine corps of teachers in each. The children appear to 13276

-4

be white, but most of them have a little Indian blood, though you would never suspect it.

President GATES. Can the children of white citizens of the United States come into these schools?

Colonel KIDD. No; they are not allowed any privileges at all. There are neighborhood schools, but, as a rule, they are mere shams; most of their teachers are incompetent and take no interest in their work. They teach for a pittance, but they teach only for the sake of the money. That is one evil.

If you will help the Government to make these intermarried men let go, and restore to the Indian what belongs to him, you will perform a real service to the Indian.

We have said to them, "We will divide the land. We will not buy an acre of it. We will put the title into your own hands, so you can not sell it, and no man can take it from you. The land will be made inalienable during your life, or for fifty years if you want to make it so."

When you go down there-as Senator Dawes can attest-you fall into the hands of these wealthy gentlemen, who are all along the railroads and in the towns; and they will take you out riding, and tell you all about the thing, and how well the Indians are getting on, and how wonderful it all is. When we first went down there we thought it was so; butby and by an Indian came in and asked if we would talk with a common Indian. We said, "Yes, of course," and he came up. He was a Cherokee. We talked with him, and then we began to find that there was something beneath the surface that we had not expected, and we learned some facts about the situation. We said to him that if any others wanted to come and talk to us, he was to tell them to do so, even the freedmen. Then they came, and our office was literally filled for days and weeks with those people who came there to tell us the true situation. We asked them why they did not make these representations to their governments, and let them know what the people wanted. One of them replied, "It is not healthy to advocate allotment in this country. It frequently lightnings from behind a tree." It is treason, in the constitution of the Cherokee Nation, for any man to hold communication with a "foreign government," and there is a tradition in the Cherokee tribe that any man who advocates allotment shall be held guilty of treason, and executed by any Indian who meets him. They do not dare to say anything there in favor of allotment.

Another thing: There are 250,000 white people in that country, 60,000 white children without any schools. All the education most of them have is daily association with criminals who go unwhipped of justice. They are trained in such a way that they will become criminals and a curse for generations to that and surrounding States.

Now, these evils can only be reached by the organization of a Territorial government that will establish schools. But these gentlemen stand back and point to the treaty and say, "Did not you solemnly promise that you would not establish a Territorial government without our consent?" Yes; but it was also agreed that the white men should be kept away. They have invited the white man in until there are 250,000, while there are only from 50,000 to 60,000 Indians in the five tribes. But they fall back upon the treaties and insist that those treaties protect them, and the Government ought not to violate its treaty. But there has been no attention paid to these treaties through all these years; they have disregarded them. We have disregarded them, too; there is no question about that. And the Government has the right always to repeal or abrogate a treaty when, in its judgment, it deems it desirable to do so, being answerable to its conscience in disregarding treaties to the other party.

The Secretary of the Interior has been trying to establish courts that should stop the perpetration of crime there. When we first went down, and found the situation, I wrote to a Senator from my State, suggesting changes in the judiciary for the benefit of these people, and he offered it as a memorial in the Senate, and they have been trying to drive me out ever since. Here to-day in Congress you can not get a judicial bill passed that will reach the evil. Why? The United States district courts at Fort Smith, Ark., and Paris, Tex., have jurisdiction of offenses committed in the Indian Territory, and we spend $200,000 on each of these courts. That is a rich find for the criminal lawyers of those towns, and for the saloons, and for the boarding houses. They do not want to give that $200.000 up. Now, the Government made a law long ago that there should be no intoxicants brought into the Indian Territory, but they take the Indians right to Fort Smith and to Paris, away from home and the restraints of home, and keep them idle in these towns, and the fees that they receive are poured into the saloons. Judge Culberson lives in that district, and so far as I can see, for a purely selfish purpose, fights this change in the judiciary, and he is aided by the cattlemen of Texas, who want this region as a grazing ground.

I am talking plainly, but I am talking about what I know, and what I say will be

verified by every disinterested and intelligent man in that region. I have said, perhaps, more than I ought but the first thing that we ought to try to do is to give the Indian in the Indian Territory his land and establish a home for him. If he gets his money he will have abundance to make a house for his family to live in, and have suitable stock. He may then establish his home there. Then you may Christianize him, and if you have made a Christian of him you will bless him and perhaps be able to keep him a Christian.

Adjourned at 1.15 p. m.

SECOND SESSION.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, January 16.
Dr. W. N. Hail-

The conference was called to order at 2.45 p. m. by the chairman. mann, superintendent of Indian schools, was invited to speak.

ADDRESS OF DR. W. N. HAILMANN.

I find in my work, wherever I go, that progress in Indian educational work is due chiefly to friends of Indian education, and on that account I feel, when I address you, that I speak to those who, if my suggestions are of any worth, will help the realization of these suggestions.

One of the questions which has presented itself to me as of the utmost importance within the last few months is that of the relative value of reservation schools and nonreservation schools. There are powerful parties, in and out of Congress, who hold that the nonreservation school has scarcely legitimate work to do in Indian education; that the nearer we bring educational work itself to the reservation the more efficient will the work be; that it would be a wise thing to reduce the nonreservation schools gradually and to substitute for them schools on the reservations. The chief argument brought in favor of this proposal is that those who graduate from the nonreservation school, when they return to the reservation, are not prepared to enter into the tribal life upon the reservations; that, nevertheless, they soon lose whatever the nonreservation school has given them and become, to all intents and purposes, again savage Indians. On the other hand, they hold, boys and girls brought up in the reservations, upon their return home to their parents, from whom they have never been very widely separated, who have seen them again and again during the time that they have been at school, and are still identified with their tribes and agencies, with their home people, and their interests--when such boys and girls return to take up their residence on the reservations there is less danger of their losing what they may have acquired than in the former case.

This argument is very plausible. Yet when we look at it in the light of the general tendencies and policy of the Government with reference to the Indian problem, of so managing Indian education and the treatment of the Indians generally that as soon as possible the tribal relation shall be broken up; that as soon as possible reservation life shall cease, then it appears that it would be the opposite of prudence to do the thing that will maintain and strengthen reservation life, and that we ought to welcome all influences that will have a tendency to break up tribal reservations and reservation life. Consequently nonreservation schools, in taking Indians from reservations and bringing them within the influence of white civilization, letting them feel the influence of white civilization, leading many of them to yearn for this white civilization-that is, to get away from the reservations and become to all intents and purposes citizens of the United States like the rest of us— must in due time exert upon the Indians on the reservations a salutary pressure in the right direction.

At any rate this problem needs much unbiassed study, careful collection of facts, and deliberate sifting of these. At present many exaggerated statements are put out on the scantiest foundations of facts. This tendency should be consistently discountenanced by the true friends of Indians and of Indian education, and by all who are laboring to free our nation from this great curse of the Indian reservation. Every agency should be employed that will remove the Indian man from the tribes into homes, so that the power of the reservation, with its tutelary influence upon the Indian, separating him from the white, may be steadily lessened.

On the other hand, I ask you to give to the Indian Office every support that you can possibly give it, every help that it is in your power to give it, in its efforts to bring Indians in all the border States into the ordinary American public district schools. In this direction the office is engaged in a very interesting experiment. It is proposed in some of the States to colonize Indians in the existing white public schools. There is considerable prospect of success in this. It is proposed to make, in Minnesota, an educational boarding house-not a school-in the midst of the cul

tivated, prosperous, thrifty white community, and to send the Indians to board in this boarding house and to attend the public schools of this town. The citizens are perfectly willing; they propose to charge the Government no more than they would charge other nonresident pupils. The schools of the town are far advanced, they have an excellent manual training department, and much attention is paid to industrial training. It is hoped that by this experiment much good may come in time. With regard to the present movement for doing away with contract schools, may I be permitted to say a word. Of course I am in favor of having the contract system, which is a constant source of dissension, changed; but on the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the contract schools have done and are doing a great deal of good in educating the Indians. In very many respects they have advantages over the Government schools which it would be difficult to supply. And not the least weighty of these is the fact that the contract school is more at liberty to develop the religious instinct than is the Government school. I hold that the development of the religious instinct is fundamental in education, and it is probably one of the most difficult problems to meet and solve, how to supply the Indians in Indian schools with some measure of religious training or the development of the religious instinct without offense to the various denominations that are interested in this phase of the work. Yet the advantages to accrue to our work from the transfer of the contract schools to the Government are so great that I think it is proper to do this. However, I do not admire the method proposed by Congress of killing the contract schools by inchesreducing them 20 per cent a year. Before the fifth 20 per cent shall be removed the schools will die by inanition. It is a false way. As long as they are allowed to exist they should be strongly and warmly supported. If there is to be a 20 per cent reduction it must not be applied to the schools in such a way that certain contracts may be wholly abandoned, but that full support may continue to be given to those with which contracts are still continued.

President GATES. How is it being applied in the Department?

Mr. HAILMANN. It has not been applied yet, because it is not yet the law.

I think the precedent established by the school of the Unitarians, their transfer to the Government, offers a most excellent precedent. The plan is to place at the disposal of the Government the continuance of the school. The Government purchases, if it sees fit to do so, the equipment of the school, and engages to continue that school on the same plan and with the same pupils and teachers and the same employees so long as they are competent for the work. In this way there will be merely a transfer of the control of the school; the school would remain as it is; the Indians would not suffer; we should still have a school for the Indians there. In the other case, where we take out of these schools 20 per cent of the scholars, what shall be done with them? Either it becomes necessary to establish a new Government school to put with this school or to remove these children to some other agency, away from the surroundings in which they should have been brought up, so that there are evil consequences. A similar proposition to that of the Unitarians has been made by one of the schools in New Mexico, which I hope will be accepted. But to discontinue the contract school without at the same time, either by the transfer of the schools or the erection of new schools, providing educational facilities for the children would be, I think, pernicious.

I am more and more impressed, as I study my work, with the great difficulty that comes to the schools by a sort of reaction when the students, boys and girls, leave the schools and return into practical life under conditions that are poorly calculated to give them an opportunity for properly using their educational advancement. They are given an education in the schools, they go back among the Indians, and they have few facilities for making use of their educational development. Their friends do not see that there is much value to be attached to this school education, and they lose confidence in it. People around them do the same, and designing men use this as an argument against the extension of school facilities to the Indians.

It seems to me one of the chief works of the friends of the Indian and missionary societies would be to provide facilities for returned Indian youth to make use of what they have learned at the schools; facilities for work; for pursuits in which they can use the things they have learned at the school; facilities on the reservation or among the white people in their respective States. All this should be done; and it can be done much better by these societies than by the Government. It is a natural task for missionary societies, especially if the schools are to come wholly under Government control.

During my late visit to the Cherokee Reservation I was impressed with the desirability of such a movement. There are many who, if they could have small loans of money given to them to buy a plow or a couple of steers, could lift themselves into comparative affluence and pay back the money in a short time. Surely that would be a beneficent work for philanthropic men and women.

The desirability of bringing the white population and the white schools of Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Minnesota to take an active interest in putting Indians into

the public schools is manifest. I find in some schools that a great proportion of the children are practically white, not Indians. They are the children of white fathers, who in many instances are well to do and who could easily send them to public schools. They prefer to send them to Government schools, because then the children are supplied with clothing and food. In some cases really deserving Indians, with a higher grade of Indian blood in their veins, are kept out of such schools for lack of room in the dormitories. All such cases would be removed if the Indian school and public school could come more nearly together than they now do.

Since the time when I entered into my present office we have been engaged in establishing the office chiefly. We have not yet had an opportunity to do aggressive work in the way in which we ought to do it. I have been compelled by surrounding conditions to do largely defensive work on every hand. Fortunately at present, with the help of Providence and the Secretary of the Interior, the superintendent of Indian schools has his work made as easy as possible, so far as the Indian Office is concerned. But there are hindrances upon hindrances in other directions; he is hampered by things that it seems can not be removed except by Congress. Congress could do it, and Congress is the servant of the people, and you who represent the people should take the deepest interest in this matter and free the hands of the superintendent of Indian schools, so that he may be enabled to do aggressive work.

Here is an instance: the superintendent has had given to him for the fiscal year 1895 a thousand dollars to travel over this vast continent from time to time, inspecting schools. That appropriation was exhausted by the 1st of December, so that henceforth he is tied to his seat in Washington, unless Congress sees fit to add to the appropriation a sum which can enable him to inspect the schools. This parsimony is unworthy of our great nation. If a work is to be done at all it should be done well; and those who are charged with the responsibility of this work should not have their hands tied by such paltry considerations as the inability to travel from Washington to St. Paul.'

Dr. RYDER. In the passing of these schools over to Government there is always the practical objection that many of them have been built with money pledged to carry on religious work. We have no right to surrender it. Then, again, I remember Dr. Hailmann suggesting that ultimately the schools should all be made over to State control. How will the Government pass them over?

Dr. HAILMANN. In the States where it is possible, as in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, it would probably be well for the Government to pass the care of the Indians over to the State, and have the education of the Indians cared for by the States. But while this is desirable, and while I should exert myself to the utmost to bring this more and more fully to the front, I may say that it is still so far from us that we can postpone the consideration of the method of transfer. Yet such transfer is desirable.

I hold that the most desirable thing would be for the Indian Rights Association, or other societies, to establish in the various States branches or committees who should exert themselves to convince the State authorities that the control of the Indians within the borders of their States is one of the responsibilities of the State, and to urge upon the legislatures of those States the necessity of demanding of the Government that all persons within their borders should be transferred to their control. Yet, while it seems to me just and equitable that State control of Indians should become established, I do not think this should be forced upon the States. Each State should first be brought to see that it is neglecting its duty in not caring for the Indians. It should be aroused to a realization of this, and stimulated to demand of the General Government full restitution of the right to manage its own affairs with reference to Indians as well as with reference to all other inhabitants of the State.

Capt. Wм. H. CLAPP. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: I fear that my ideas may clash with the ideas of others who have spoken.

President GATES. There is nothing we welcome more than a variety of ideas. We like to hear both sides.

Captain CLAPP. I recognize the efforts of the Christian people of the country to elevate and Christianize the Indian races, and only fear that in some respects they have taken hold of the subject by the wrong end. It seems to me that while the old adage "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is true, I may be permitted to suggest it is next before it. It goes first. Right and proper living, with some observance of the decencies of life, must precede the knowledge of doctrinal points. Something has been said about the impiety of the pious; that has led me to think of the cruelty of those whose hearts are full of pity and kindness to humanity. That cruelty lies in returning children to the reservation after they have been educated away from it. I know and acknowledge the great work that my friend Captain Pratt, whom I have known for twenty years, is doing. He has gathered together probably thousands of children, and taken them more quickly into civilization than has been done in any