MORGAN.] OWNERSHIP OF LANDS IN SEVERALTY. 81 
mischief to the Indian tribes. The Indian is still, as he always has been, 
and will remain for many years to come, entirely incapable of meeting the 
white man, with safety to himself, in the field of trade and of resisting the 
arts and inducements which would be brought to bear upon him. He is 
incapable of steadily attaching that value to the ownership of land which 
its importance deserves, or of knowing how far the best interests of himself 
and family are involved in its continued possession. The result of individ- 
ual Indian ownership, with power to sell, would unquestionably be, that in 
a very short time he would divest himself of every foot of land and fall 
into poverty. The case of the Shawnee tribe of Kansas affords a perfect 
illustration of this pernicious policy. The Shawnees were removed to 
Kansas under the Jackson policy, so called, and occupied a splendid 
reservation on the Kansas River, where they were told they were to make 
their home forever. But after a few years of undisturbed possession, our 
people, in the natural flow of population, reached Kansas, where they found 
the Shawnees in possession of the best part of what has since been the 
State of Kansas Our people at once wanted these Indian lands, and they 
determined to root out the Shawnees in the interest of civilization and 
progress. They accomplished this result in the most speedy and scientific 
manner, using as their proposed lever this identi ral plan since adopted by 
Mr. Schurz. First, the government was induced to re-purchase a part of 
the reservation on the ground that they had more land than they needed 
for cultivation ; and, secondly, the government induced the Indians to have 
the remainder divided up into farms and conveyed to heads of families 
in severalty, with power of alienation. In 1859, when this scheme was 
being worked out, I visited Kansas, and found the Shawnees cultivating 
and improving their farms, some of which embraced a thousand acres, 
and owning them, too, like other farmers. When next in Kansas, ten years 
later, the work was done. There was not a Shawnee in Kansas, but 
American farmers were in possession of all these lands. It was this indi- 
vidual ownership with power to sell that had done the work. 
In managing the affairs of our Indian tribes, we must apply a little 
Gommon sense to their condition. In their brains they are in the same stage 
of growth and development with our remote forefathers when they learned 
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