CO-OPERATION WITH THE GOVERNMENT IN
INDIAN AFFAIRS.

REMARKS OF MISS CLARA D. TRUE

It is the fate of the ages that the weak succumb. The spread of the Anglo-Saxon over the earth to possess it to the uttermost boundaries has been attended with much that is revolting in a personal sense, yet poor would be the historian who would write us as merely a people of blood. Peace reigns throughout the world because the sturdy men from the northern seas have forced issues and settled them in our own masterful way. What a picture the Civil War would present were we to dwell only upon its scenes of slaughter, yet out of the conflict came liberty more abundant and the perpetuation of the Union.

The disinheritance of the Indian in his own native land from the personal side is one of the tragedies of history yet it was inevitable that he yield his place as central figure in a continent to a higher type of human life. The pity of the case is that the Indian became a victim to progress instead of a participant in it. For the crimes of our fathers to the weaker race we must too often blush. Our only excuse is that the men and the times were alike unsettled.

But deplore as we may our method in obtaining mastery, we must admit that all which is worth while in the world's achievement is due to the domination of the Saxon. No doubt the warwhoop of the painted savage once echoed from cliff to glen about Lake Mohonk. No doubt but dusky warriors once gathered about the council fire to plot the extermination of a weaker band. The fate of nations decreed wisely that the yell of primitive hate should make way for the deliberations of the International Arbitration Conference and that the wild council should give place to the members of a succeeding race gathered to plan the protection of the weak of all the earth, including the Indian our fathers dispossessed. As generation follows generation, it is certain that men and women who gather here for conference in the times to come will be men and women of finer thought and braver deed than we.

But what of the coming generation of the Indian? Does the Star of Hope beam for them also? I answer yes, as it has never beamed before. Our good intentions to the Indian are coming out of swaddling clothes. America is becoming celebrated for righteousness as well as for riches. There are few of the best citizens of the United States who do not sincerely wish to give the Indian a "square deal" as a man and a brother. The only

troubles with most of the better class to-day is to know what a "square deal" to the Indian is.

Individual effort in keeping the Indian upon the public conscience has largely brought about the public willingness to give the Indian consideration. A few persistent men and women year in and year out have labored to bring to pass the present sentiment in favor of Indians. Groups of individuals here and there have associated themselves for the relief of certain groups of suffering Indians. The church has made occasional efforts to Christianize the native races. Much good has been accomplished by all of these agencies for good. Men and women of genius have wielded powerful pens in behalf of the disinherited derelict of an earlier age.

Yet powerful as are all the means used by individuals and by associations for the advancement of Indians, these means cannot accomplish the salvation of the Indian race. Our duty as a race to a race can be discharged in but one way and that is through our national, or, I might say, racial government. To demand of that government wise and humane policies and their vigorous execution is the duty of the friend of the Indian. The demand has been made with telling insistence in many cases. Our national policy toward the Indian is now well settled and settled well. He is to be given as nearly as possible a man's chance in God's country, not more.

The details of the policy the Bureau of Indian Affairs must arrange as best the conditions permit. To lend your support to those in charge of the carrying out of details is to befriend the Indian in the most effective way. It is well to feed the hungry Indian but it is better to go a step further and give your aid to the official who would remove the conditions which cause the hunger. It is well to demand land and water for the destitute Indian but it is better to go deeper into the situation and demand that the Indian be made man enough to use the land and the water.

This man-making policy now the recognized one of the government is a policy of recent times. In our effort to restore to the Indian the material wealth of which we robbed him we lost sight of the fact that the greatest theft we can commit is a moral one and in the very process of restoration itself we too often unknowingly committed this theft, the robbing the Indian of the spur of necessity, God's own means of human development.

While our California Indians from some points of view present the most pitiable feature of robbery ever yet practiced by man; they have not been robbed of their manhood by the unwise gifts which have been the ruin of a great number of Indians in other places.

The average busy man and woman lack the time to master the details of a wise treatment of the Indians in the discharge of our racial duty and much evil has resulted from unwisely distributed charity. An old lady said of a dead baby, "I can't imagine why the poor little thing died when I gave it every medicine I knew the name of." Her interest in the baby would have been better manifested by her support of a good physician. If the Indian is to be saved racially, we must as individuals cease giving him every form of charity we know the name of and apply our support to the man who knows what the trouble is and what to do about it. The specialist in the Indian case must of necessity be the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Your first duty as a nation to the Indian is to see that this office is filled by the best man obtainable. Your next duty is to lend a hand in the execution of his directions. While you may as an individual open your purse and save one or a dozen Indian families from starvation, you may by opening your heart to intelligent co-operation with the government save a whole race from a starvation worse than physical.

This co-operation in the discharge of our national duty is not a thing of dollars and cents. In fact very little private charity is needed by the Indian race. Its most immediate need is the protection guaranteed it by our own statute laws. Where the Indian is not receiving this protection public sentiment must be aroused to demand it. Ten months ago it was predicted in a southern California newspaper that in ten years' time there would not be a sober Indian left in that part of the state. This, I believe, was not an overdrawn picture. The drunken Indian throughout the land is the butt of the joke writer and the cartoonist. This reflects not so much upon the weakness of the Indian race as upon our own, for the most sacred and highest law-making body in the land, the Congress of the republic, has decreed that no man shall sell or give intoxicants to an Indian. We present the sorry spectacle of being so pitiably weak as to allow the vicious foreign peddler of vile liquor to become powerful enough in our home towns to cast defiance at our highest institutions. Our national lofty intention to the Indian is made the subject of ridicule by the cheapest of all criminals, the whiskey peddler.

Your duty in this particular is plain and easy. Demand of your local officers their support of the efforts of the Indian Bureau. When your local officers extend this support, reward them with your appreciation and with your votes. When they fail, let them be made fully aware of your disgust. A public officer cannot afford to ignore public sentiment.

One serious trouble with the good citizen is that he allows the

curbstone politician a monopoly on good fellowship and in consequence he musters a larger voting force than the decent man. There is no reason why there should not be good fellowship in righteousness.

To the aroused public sentiment of the people of southern California the Mission Indians owe largely protection from extermination by debauchery. Unsupported by the people the government officials were powerless, but when they were "backed up" by the best people, the degradation of the Indian from the use of intoxicants became a comparatively easy thing to prevent. From early times large bodies of Mission Indians have gathered for periodic festivities. The occasions were times of wild indulgences so far reaching in effect that the clergy considered the morals of several tribes almost hopeless in consequence.

Recently the same Indians gathered in even larger numbers for their celebration which was continued for a week without the occurrence of a single unpleasant incident except a severe booting of a drunken Mexican by a government official. It was even suggested before this feast that troops be called out to control it.

What caused the difference? There were the same Indians and the same possibilities and apparently there was no reason why last year's episode should not be repeated. The difference lay in the fact that the whiskey peddler was afraid to ply his trade this year because the San Bernardino jail was full of their kind under sentence. The people demanded the execution of the law and it was forthcoming. Unsupported by the people working through their local officers and their public press the government officers would have been even more powerless this year than they were previously because last year the Indians drove the officials from the ground, even depriving some of weapons and in consequence of escaping any punishment for this, the lawless and even the good Indians had a great contempt for authority.

If you wish to help the inmates of a hospital, you do not rush to the bedside of the inmates with donations of food. The intelligent well-doer gives to the institution through its recognized worthy officers or with their approval. To inspire in an invalid a distrust of effective treatment is a crime against the invalid. To pamper an Indian unwisely and to sow in his mind the seeds of disaffection to those in authority are the basest of crimes against the Indian.

Since our national duty to the Indian can be discharged by the national government only and since the national government is proving its ability to perform the duty by the execution of the policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, good citizenship, no less

than philanthropic spirit, demands our unceasing support of those who minister to our weaker brother in behalf of the race to which we belong. (Applause.)

Mr. LEUPP: We have finished with our Amazonian contingent. Now we come to the "mere men." A young man presented himself to me about the time I became Commissioner of Indian Affairs and applied for the office of a private secretary. He admitted that he had never mastered the seventeen arts which I considered essential, but modestly inquired, "May I try for it?" Later I tested him and ordered him appointed. I have never had one moment's regret for the appointment; and of all the people in the service, no person has stood more splendidly by my side, in season and out,-resourceful, industrious, indefatigable, when it came to pursuing a trail which I gave him to follow, than this same private secretary, who is now a Supervisor of Indian Schools. I have great pleasure in presenting Mr. ROBERT G. VALENTINE, of Washington.

INDIANS AS WORKERS

REMARKS OF MR. ROBERT G. VALENTINE

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I should like to have you go with me just for a moment down on the lower stretches of the Colorado River at Yuma. There you will find a bit of philosophy which will show you that the Indians, like the white man, have known the right a long time before they have followed it. The Yuma Indians in the old days had a god who gave them only tools. In the Yuma language the emphasis is very plainly on the only, only tools, and the particular tools which the god emphasized were bows and arrows.

I am sure if you were to go with me to the twenty-six states of this union in which there are Indian reservations you would find one universal sentiment, and that is that the present Commissioner, Mr. Leupp, is the true descendant of that Yuma god. There is no one key, I think, to his policy which will lead you always nearer right than to remember that he is trying to give the Indians only bows and arrows-but they are the bows and arrows of present learning and present industrialism rather than those of the ancient times. He has taken the three great environments of the Indians-their land, tribal and allotted; their money, tribal and allotted; the system of education he found among them; and picked out of these three the parts that are tools. You have seen this morning how he has applied that selective principle to persons. No better examples of that could come before you than the ladies who have just spoken. Of all the tools which the Commissioner has endeavored to put into