PLAIN WORDS ON THE INDIAN QUESTION. By Elaine Goodale. HE new method of dealing with the Indian, not as an Indian, but as a man, is better understood in the form of a general proposition than as applied to the details of administration. Our national policy in this regard, as recently formulated in the President's message and in the Report of the Secretary of the Interior, must now be familiar to every intelligent citizen, even though he had overlooked the declarations of the two strong Indian associations, the statements of thoughtful missionaries, and the platform of the famous Mohauk Conference. We have undertaken, as a nation, to put every Indian child in school, and every Indian family on a homestead; to abrogate all "Indian rights," and to invest the red man with all the rights and the privileges of an American citizen. It is unfortunate that the avowed policy of the government does not, in this case, strictly govern its official action. It is my purpose to call attention to the actual dangers of a timid and conservative administration of Indian affairs, of course including Indian legislation. These dangers are chiefly connected with reservations and Indian agents. The Indian Reservation is a part of the superannuated segregation policy, which was long pursued by our government with deplorable results. The Reservations were originally set apart for a perpetual heritage for the Indians, and I suppose that the men who made the first treaties really believed that we should never need those vast tracts of wilderness, or perhaps that the aborigines would conveniently "die out" before we did need them. It is quite possible that they promised in good faith to feed and clothe and protect the savage from the encroachments of the white man to the end of time, and that they honestly saw no other practicable method of securing peace. The event has proved their unwisdom, although not their insincerity. The rapid growth of our great country has com pelled us to tamper with their solemn obligations, -it has apparently necessitated a succession of frauds, cruelties, and deceptions. In the meantime this race of involuntary prisoners and paupers has become as demoralized as we should expect from the conditions, and has lost to a great degree its pristine courage, patriotism, independence, and honor. This is the saddest result of the Reservation system. These facts are admitted to-day, not only by advanced thinkers, but by the rank and file of citizens. It is surprising that these admissions could not have prevented the passage of such a retrogressive measure as the recent act to divide the Sioux Reservation, and throw open 11,000,000 acres to settlement, an act which, under the cloak of a progressive piece of legislation, endorsed by the "friends of the Indians," creates six separate reservations for the six subdivisions of the Sioux tribe, and solemnly pledges the government anew to the old policy of setting apart and letting alone. At the very moment when everybody is condemning this Reservation policy, when nobody believes in it or wants it, a commission appointed by the President of the United States is concluding a fresh treaty of precisely the same nature as those which have been systematically broken, and had better never have been made, is gravely promising never to disturb the Indians upon their newly created reservations, and never to allot their lands to them in severalty without their formal consent. And this piece of policy is supposed to have been committed "for the benefit of the Indians," because, forsooth, it contains a few compromises in the shape of appropriations for education, already promised in former treaties, and provision for voluntary acceptance of allotments, already better provided for in the general Land in Severalty bill, passed nearly three years ago! This Sioux bill was not passed "in the interest of the Indians," but in the supposed interest of the whites and it is not to the real advantage of anybody. It is a temporary makeshift, unworthy of our national Indian policy. We have committed ourselves anew to the recognized mistakes of the past. I have next to say that, in my opinion, the Indian agent is at the present moment the greatest single obstacle to Indian civilization and citizenship. This is not saying that there are not good agents, who are trying to "civilize" the Indians. The proposition is wholly independent of the question, whether a specified agent is a good or a bad man. He is in either case an obstacle to progress, because he is an Indian agent; in other words, because he is a despotic ruler. It is not easy for the average American to realize that a United States Agency is an absolute monarchy on a small scale, a little Russia in the midst of republican America! Let him live in an Agency for a few years, as I have done, and he will realize it only too clearly! It may or may not be brought home to him personally in an unpleasant way that depends entirely upon whether or no he makes himself obnoxious to the agent, and it is in any case a minor consideration. But he will see, if he have eyes, that the one-man power is in its way supreme, and held in check only by entirely inadequate government inspection, and somewhat, of late, by the possibility of outside criticism. He will see that justice is practically administered or set aside at the will of the agent; for although criminal cases may be brought before state or territorial courts, it usually depends upon the agent whether this is done and it seldom is done; and although so-called "Courts of Indian Of fences," with a bench of Indian judges, are organized in many instances, not only does the agent appoint the judges, but he sets aside their decisions at his pleasure! I will not recount the miscarriages of justice which I have witnessed under these circumstances, for it is my object merely to point out the anomalies of the system, which speaks for itself. The schools are equally at the mercy of the agent, who largely controls the appointment of teachers, the issue of school supplies, and the business of supervision. It is easy to see that by the discreet use of his unlimited power to issue or not to issue supplies, tools, horses, etc., to individuals, and to notice or refrain from noticing particular misdemeanors and crimes, the Indian agent can largely influence any ex pression of opinion or concentrated action among several thousand human beings. It is also obvious that all white men living upon an Indian reservation, as subordinate employés of government, missionaries, teachers, etc., or any who are travelling through it for purposes of observation and study, may not displease the agent on any account, at the risk of losing their positions, or their influence, or of finding the situation intolerable in one way or another, -and this without being able to fix the responsibility or obtain redress. Lastly and chiefly, it is a vital mistake to place the difficult task of leading the Indians up and on to a plane of self-support and citizenship in the hands of a man who has a personal stake in the existing order of things. Of course, it is official suicide in an agent to admit that the Indians are able to do without him, — it is to his interest to defer as long as possible the final withdrawal of rations and annuities, or their payment in money, or any step towards complete independence of his sway. I trust I have made it plain that there exists in our country one notable exception to republican rule, and that the Indian agent, be he the best and ablest of men, is an anomaly in free America, and an almost insuperable obstacle to Indian progress. The best agent is perhaps really the worst, because he does not lead people to look too closely into a system which may appear to work well enough. He may be, for the present, a necessary evil; but the wise statesman will use every right means to define and limit and curtail his absolute power, especially in the true lines of administration of criminal law and control of the school system. United States courts should be at once extended over all the reservations, and the Indian schools should be conducted by a body of teachers and superintendents responsible directly to the Indian bureau, and thus removed wholly from the sphere of Agency affairs. They would then be, not local, disconnected, almost personal concerns, but the correlated parts of a great system. I have a final protest to make on behalf of the natural right of the Indian parent to have his child educated at home. One of the strongest advocates of the theory that the Indian is at bottom a man like other men, and is to be treated accord ingly, is the veteran Indian educator, Captain Pratt. He says all this in one breath, and in the next breath he adds that the way to educate Indians is to place half the continent between them and their homes, to bring them up in a climate and a country entirely unlike their own, and then to keep them there! He seriously proposes to us to break up families wholesale, to leave the old people to die childless and forsaken, and to compel the younger generation to enter the highly organized society and compete with the oversupplied labor markets of the East, instead of "growing up" with the great West, as they would easily and naturally do, as soon as the barriers of the Reservation are broken down. Would any class of American citizens submit to such treatment as this? Has not every parent in the country a right to elementary instruction for his children at primary schools near his own home, - at day schools, in a word, which the child can attend and still remain at home? It is right that the Indian father should be given the opportunity which is not denied to other fathers, of sending a capable, ambitious child away from home for the "higher education," for the benefits of travel, and the advantages of a great school or university. It is not right that he should be required to do this, or given the alternative of district schools, or none. It is unnecessary to waste words upon the chimerical scheme of permanently disrupting the family tie by obliging those young men and women who have been educated in the East to find a home and earn a livelihood there. It cannot be done; and if it could, it ought not to be, for the reasons already suggested. On the other hand, the establishment of a primary day-school system, on a large scale and under competent direction, is an urgent practical need. This is no menace to the really fine training-schools already in existence, of which none stands higher than Carlisle. Far better than another Carlisle, however, would be the application of Carlisle methods to a vast series of elementary schools scattered all over the Indian country, ready to become, at the earliest possible moment, an integral part of our common school system. These, then, are some of the obstructive fragments of the old which threaten our Indian policy, the reservationmaking treaty under the specious guise of a progressive act of Congress; the Indian agent, invested with autocratic powers, and expected to "civilize the Indians"; and the great boarding-school as a substitute for not a supplement to the primary home day-school. The people should be on their guard against these illegitimate offsprings of anomalous conditions and a progressive theory. THE ASTOR LIBRARY. By Frederick K. Saunders, Librarian. UBLIC libraries exert a potent influence upon the intellectual development of society, not only in their immediate vicinity, but throughout the land. It has been well said that "moral and intellectual light is all-pervading it cannot be diffused among one class of society without its influence being felt by the whole community." The public library is destined to prove, in our country, the great educator of the popular mind. In a republic of such free political institutions as ours, intellectual and moral culture is a necessity, for it is the palladium and guarantee of our national greatness, if not of our existence. Public libraries present many claims upon our grateful regard, since they not only educate and elevate society, but also conserve and perpetuate the intellectual wealth of past ages. It is one of the ennobling characteristics of our age that so many endowed institutions of learning deck our broad domain. founders of such beneficent establishments, whether they be colleges, universities, or visitor to the British Museum Library, and he has told us what his estimate of it was in these words: "I have seen all sorts of domes, of Peter's and Paul's, Sophia and Pantheon, and have been struck by none so much as by the catholic dome in Bloomsbury. What happiness for all, what generous kindness for you and for me, are here spread out! It seems to me we cannot sit down in that place without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for this, my English birthright, thus freely to partake of those bountiful books." It seems almost superfluous to adduce such testimony to the benefits accruing from such institutions, so patent are they to every reflective mind. As we have, however, cited one from an eminent British authority, we may refer to another, which is quite in point, - from an American of note. Charles Sumner, who also petent to speak on the subject are not, therefore, to be regarded as the rhapsody of a bibliomaniac. They may with equal propriety be adopted by all who know how to feed upon "the dainties that are bred in a book." In most human lives there are odd intervals of leisure and some spare half-hours; and where could they be spent to greater advantage than in the companionship of books or in these great treasurestores of learning? Would it not, indeed, be a sad self-neglect to suffer these multitudinous oracles of wisdom to remain dumb to us, when simply by our appeal we may make them vocal? Who may compute the high benefits that are often conferred by such institutions as a panacea for life's disappointments and trials? The alchemy of a good book makes us oblivious to all save its own sweet enchantment. The principal libraries amongst us are those known as lending or circulating libra Vestibule of the Astor Library ries and those called reference libraries. There are broad distinctions between them. In the former may be found a liberal supply of the literature of fiction and works of passing or popular interest, but in the other, works of permanent reference and John Jacob Astor. THE BUST IN THE ASTOR LIBRARY. accredited value in the various departments of art, science, history, and general literature. To this order the Astor Library belongs, and it is generally conceded to occupy among its class a very prominent position. In a cosmopolitan collection like that of the Astor Library, comprising not only very many of the best obtainable authorities of past times in all branches of human learning and among them many a curious "antique tome of long-forgotten lore," but most of the representative modern works in literature, science, and art, of both the Old World and the New. It is not venturing too high an estimate, therefore, to designate it by the term cosmopolitan. Although bearing the name of the family of its founders, it has also been claimed to be the most national collection of books in America. Considering its age, about forty years, it presents the foundation of a great future library, and it may therefore fairly merit that distinction. In preferring such high claims for this institution, - the scholars' library, - it should not be forgotten that the mission of the lending or circulating library is a no less important one, and that, like the public school, its influence has become almost ubiquitous. Each has its appointed sphere of beneficent service; the one con |