6o 



RECREATION 



game wardens entirely, with the result that they 

 have almost ceased to fear them. 



It would seem from Captain Hall's report that 

 he has acted wisely and promptly in the matter 

 of restraining the Indians so far as within his 

 power from committing the annual depredations on 

 deer referred to, and that he would have no legal 

 authority to restrain allotted Indians, who are 

 citizens of the United States, from leaving their 

 homes and going into Colorado for the purpose 

 of hunting. The office considers that his sugges- 

 tion that the game wardens give their timely 

 and hearty cooperation to this matter, is a good 

 one, and it is thought that if this suggestion be 

 carried out, it will reduce to a minimum the 

 annual slaughter of deer by the allotted Utes. 

 Very respectfully, 



C. F. Larrabee, 

 Acting Commissioner. 



The deductions drawn by Acting Commis- 

 sioner Larrabee are significant. 



The process of ruining the Red Race is 

 so nearly completed that perhaps it is not 

 worth while to lament over the final stroke, 

 delivered upon the Five Tribes in the Indian 

 Nation by the Curtis Act, with the enthusi- 

 astic approval of Indian Commissioner 

 Leupp. 



Is it really necessary to break up the 

 tribal relations of the Indians, to give them 

 citizenship and individual ownership of 

 land; that is, to destroy the social system 

 of a race and cast it helpless as a prey to 

 the wolves of that perfected organization 

 of greed which we call "civilization"? 



To set up the Indian as a landowner and a 

 capitalist, the benevolent aim of our new 

 Indian policy, is to destroy him, or in other 

 words, to civilize him. The Indian Com- 

 missioner admits that swindlers probably will 

 get away with the Indian's land and money, 

 but he consoles himself with the philosophi- 

 cal reflection that if the new-made capitalist 

 falls a victim to sharpers, it "should teach 

 a valuable lesson." 



Teach it to whom? The Indian? What 

 good will the lesson do him when he is a 

 pauper, an outcast, a bit of civilization's 

 wreckage more helpless than the tramp? 

 Is it to teach it to Indian Commissioners 

 and other benevolent meddlers? Why, it 

 has been taught to them a hundred times 

 already, and they have instantly and invari- 

 ably forgotten it. They are incapable of 

 learning it because they have not learned 

 how to think, but imagine that the horrible 

 scramble for wealth in which mankind is 

 engaged is the ideal condition of human 

 society. 



In "Civilization — It's Cause and Cure," Ed- 

 ward Carpenter describes what we are doing 

 to the Red Race by introducing to it the idea 

 cf individual ownership of land. He says: 

 ''With the advent of a civilization founded 

 on property the unity of the old tribal so- 

 ciety is broken up. The ties of blood rela- 

 tionship, which were the foundation of the 

 gentile system and the guarantees of the old 

 fraternity and equality, become dissolved in 

 favor of powers and authorities founded on 



mere possession. The growth of wealth dis- 

 integrates the ancient society; the temptations 

 of power, of possession, etc., which accom- 

 pany it, wrench the individual from his moor- 

 ings ; personal greed rules ; 'each man for 

 himself becomes the universal motto ; the 

 hand of every man is raised against his 

 brother; and at last society itself becomes an 

 organization by which the rich fatten upon 

 the vitals of the poor, the strong upon the 

 murder of the weak." 



Lewis Morgan, in his "Ancient Society," 

 says : ''The dissolution of society bids fair 

 to become the termination of a career of 

 which property is the end and aim; because 

 such a career contains the elements of self- 

 destruction." 



Civilizations have lasted, on an average, 

 about a thousand years, and then have died 

 of corruption or been swept into the rubbish 

 heap of history by healthy barbarism. Our 

 modern disease has afflicted the world for 

 about that period, and is approaching its cli- 

 max — or its cure. The tendency toward a 

 return to nature is already showing itself, 

 promising a cure. And yet we persist in 

 communicating ithe disease — along with 

 others more specific and readily recogniz- 

 able — to_ the only people among us who 

 would live a natural, healthy life if we would 

 let them. 



All our interference with the Indian, no 

 matter how benevolent its motive, has re- 

 sulted disastrously to him and failed utterly 

 to work out as designed. We have tried the 

 reservation system, and pauperized tribes by 

 making them our "wards." We have "given" 

 them their own land in severalty and cheated 

 them out of it individually. We have tried 

 to make landlords of them and produced only 

 landless men. 



The only Indians who retain their native 

 moral and physical virtues and live the sim- 

 ple, contented, peaceful, life are the Pueblos 

 or town-dwellers. We have not despoiled 

 them or contaminated them with our ideas 

 of individual ownership. A few of them 

 have been permitted to maintain the tribal re- 

 lation and the community of possessions, and 

 they have been wise enough to reject the 

 glorious privileges of citizenship and tax- 

 paying when urged upon them. It is true 

 that we meddle with them all we can, insist 

 on educating them our way and trying to 

 break up their ancient customs, but their 

 power of passive resistance is great, and to- 

 day the Pueblos are the only human beings 

 in the United States living natural, healthy 

 lives, to_ the _ great scandal and horror of 

 the missionaries, the commissioners, the ed- 

 ucators, and all the other meddlers in our 

 bedeviled system of greed founded on the 

 worship of the golden calf. 



Civilization — plug hats, bald-faced shirts 

 and frenzied finance is human society run- 

 ning down a steep incline into the sea, and 



