64 Sketches of an Excursion to Southern Alaska. 



ness excited only contempt or hostility among the whites. They, like other 

 Indians, would not work, except when hunger compelled them. A great 

 change has taken place. Now the men are continously employed in various 

 departments ; and the farmers and hop-raisers in the valley testify that they are 

 a better dependence than the ordinary run of so-called white laborers. The 

 women are useful in kitchen and laundry work ; and the children are as busily 

 employed as the boys and girls of white settlers. Gen. J, W, Sprague, Sup- 

 erintendent of the Northern Pacific Railroad, formerly skeptical concerning the 

 improvement of Indians in general, takes pleasure in stating the results of his 

 own observations on this point. In constructing the railroad through the 

 Puyallup Valley, he favored the employment of these Indians and watched 

 their habits. The uniform testimony of the overseers was without any equivo- 

 cation, delivered in favor of the Indian workmen, in points of diligence, 

 promptness, and endurance. They justly attributed their ability to do hard- 

 work to their temperate habits. But I remember when they were a drunken 

 set, besotted by brutalized '"white" men. At the camps and mills, in fishing 

 and on their own farms, or in the fields of others, they are as usefully employed as 

 any class of white men in the same circumstances, and their habits of industry 

 and average morality will bear compjtrison with that of any class in the country. 

 All this has been brought about by two or three causes: first, ftindanietttal. 

 Instruction in common school branches, in moral and religious duty, and in 

 the most useful manual arts. Second, auxUiaiy. The Government's just and 

 humane policy culminating in the land endowment, a homestead for each fam- 

 ily, thereby encouragmg thrift, economy, and provision for the future, with the 

 near prospect of citizenship. 



Here is the solution of the vexed Indian Question. It is expressed in a few 

 words, but they contain all that is vital, like the oxygen in the air we breathe. 

 This plan, faithfully executed, provides a safe, speedy, adequate and economical 

 remedy for all the difficulties, and removes them out of the way forever. Let 

 intelligent and benevolent men and women study it, and then make their influ- 

 ence felt in supporting it; Other once-promising plans for managing the 

 al)origines have been tried, and without due effect. An opportunity unem- 

 barassed by many of the occasions which create disturbances and provoke 

 hostilities in the States, now offers itself in Alaska. 



May we not ask for the introduction of the new plan, which will conserve 

 all interests, and maintain the national honor? It is very simple. It provides 

 first of all for the introduction of law, and courts to execute it. And in this 

 provision every inhabitant of Alaska should be treated with equal justice and 

 held equally amenable. This will exact upon the administrators of the law a 

 due regard for equal rights, in the admirable language of the Constitution of 

 the United States, without regard to race or color, or previous condition of 

 servitude. The faithful execution of this simple provision will destroy the most 

 fruitful source of difficulties between white settlers and the Indians. 



The sense of wrong embittered by injustice, without hope of legal redress, 

 in the Indian mind, and emboldening the "white" transgressor, has led to 

 many an Indian outbreak, and expensive and bloody war. The facts upon 



