114 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLE11Y. 



seen that white men who have lived all their lives in a farming community, but who 

 have never put their hands to the plow, are very awkward when, a little late in life, 

 they turn their attention to farming. How then could we expect the Indians to 

 change their life in a day, so to speak ; and especially in a country that is not a farm- 

 ing country because it needs irrigation ? It is true that some of the Indians might 

 have done better — they should have done better even with the little assistance I have 

 been able to give them with my limited force of employes — but when we come to sur- 

 vey the whole work for a twelve-month or for the past two years we are compelled to 

 admit that they have done well. * * * 



I believe the time has arrived when there should be a decided change in the man- 

 agement of the Indians. I believe the Government ought never to make another 

 treaty or agreement with any Indian tribe, but that it ought to go ahead and do 

 what is right and best for the Indians, regardless of whether the Indians are pleased 

 or not. They are but grown-up children, and are incompetent to enter into an agree- 

 ment or to keep the agreement after they have made it. They do not know what is 

 best for them, and are sure in most instances to want their matters arranged in a way 

 that is not best for their future, even though it may please them at the time. There 

 is not much hope for the Indians until the Government has determined that it will do 

 what is right without consulting the Indians any further than to explain to them 

 carefully what it is going to do for their good, why it is done, and what it expects 

 them to do. After the experience of a lifetime, I give it as my candid opinion that 

 our Government has never had a plan of managing the Indians that was worthy to be 

 called a policy, from the fact that it has never attempted to govern them. What little 

 eont.i j1 it has exercised over them has been done by coaxing, pursuading, and bribing 

 them with presents to be good, or at least not to be too bad. We have the spectacle 

 of a great and powerful Government paying tribute to these petty little tribes. In 

 some respects it has been too kind to the Indians. In other cases it has done them 

 great wrongs. But the greatest of all wrongs has been in forever breaking them up 

 and removing them to the wilderness after they had made a start to live rightly, as 

 it has done with nearly every tribe, and in some instances two or three times. 



We'have an example of this at the present time in the case of the Indians at the 

 Great Nemaha Agency, in Kansas. The Government has been laboring with those In- 

 dians for many years, and expended thousands of dollars upon them, until it has 

 brought them up to a condition where they are self-supporting, and each family has 

 a home, although the laud is held in common. The only thing in the world the Gov- 

 ernment needs to do for them is to secure to each Indian his allotment of land, mak- 

 ing it inalienable; pay them for the balance of their reservation aud throw it open 

 for settlement; bring the Indians into competition with white labor, and make them 

 subject to the laws of the country. But instead of doing this, as any individual 

 would who desired to do right, it is about to remove that tribe to the Indian Terri- 

 tory, contrary to the wishes of at least one-half the Indians— the best half— locating 

 them alongside the wild Indians in the Territory; and in doing this it will set them 

 back many years. Did anybody ever hear of anything more unjust or more ridiculous 

 for a powerful Government to do with a weak people whom it called its wards? 



Heretofore in patenting lands to Indians the Government has made the great mis- 

 take of not making the homesteads inalienable. It would be. better to maintain res- 

 ervations of limited size for the Indians forever than to give them lands in severalty 

 without providing that they should be iualienable. This is the only protection the 

 so-called civilized tribes require at the hands of the Government, and is the chief pro- 

 tection needed by the wild tribes. 



In general there are but two things the Government should do for the Indians — all 

 Indians. The first is to secure to each and every Indian in the United States a home- 

 stead immediately (even though all might not take possession at once), and in such 

 a way that he cannot dispose of it and it cannot be taken for debt. The second is to 

 throw open for settlement every square mile of Indian country not needed to provide 

 homesteads for Indians, expending the money that would fairly be due them for suck 



