CHAPTER VI 

 OUR INDIAN WARDS 



TWO hundred reservations, altogether equal in 

 area to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 

 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New 

 York combined, scattered widely among twenty- 

 four states from New York west to California, and 

 Michigan south to Florida, are owned and occupied 

 by 3S5,ooo wards of the nation. These properties, 

 together with annual appropriations of ten to twelve 

 million dollars, are equivalent to conscience money 

 in compensation for the half continent we took by 

 force from its original Indian possessors. What- 

 ever the score against us, and it is heavy, two elo- 

 quent facts are written to our national credit. One 

 is that we have cared far better than any other na- 

 tion in history for a remnant of savage aborigines 

 conquered and replaced. The other is that our con- 

 quered wards, now citizens, not only are steadily in- 

 creasing in number, health, and education, but aver- 

 age also the wealthiest people in the world. 



Occupants of reservations by no means consti- 

 tute all the Indians in the United States. Of the 

 total of 354,940 reported by the Secretary of the In- 

 terior on June 30, 1927, 101,506 belong to the Five 

 Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma, namely the Cherokees, 



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