740 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



responsible for their suppression. There are persons quite conversant 

 with the Indian question, who are tied to the view that the dual juris- 

 diction over the Indian exercised by the Interior and War Departments 

 was and is not of service to the Indian. The outbreaks occur under 

 civic administration, and the Army, which has nothing to do with their 

 origin, is held responsible for their suppression, and its means and 

 measures receive the criticism of the friends of civic control.* 



The results of fifteen years of army movements, from 1867 to 1882, 

 against the Indians in the Military Division of the Missouri, viz, in 

 the States and Territories west of the Mississippi liiver and to the Pa- 

 cific Ocean, are given in a publication of Lieut. Gen. P. H. Sheridan's, 

 entitled U A Report of Engagements with Hostile Indians within the 

 Military Division of the Missouri from 1888 to 1882," made in August, 

 1882. Speaking of the action of the army under his command, in ac- 

 tions against hostile Indians, he says : 



GENERAL SHERIDAN'S SUMMARY. 



In connection with the operations of the army within the Military Division of the 

 Missouri many important changes have taken place during the fifteen years em- 

 braced by the foregoing narrative. Much of the country, which at the beginning of 

 that period was monopolized by the buft'alo and the Indian, has now been opened to 

 the settler, to the railroad, and to civilization. With a loss to the troops of more than 

 a thousand officers and men killed and wounded, and partly as the result of more 

 than four hundred skirmishes, combats, and battles — not including many pursuits 

 and surrenders of Indians when no actual fighting occurred — the majority of the 

 wasteful and hostile occupants of millions of acres of valuable agricultural, pasture, 

 and mineral lands have been forced upon reservations under the supervision of the 

 Government ; some have been gradually taught a few of the simpler useful industries, 

 Indian children have been placed in schools under instruction in a better life than 

 the vagabond existence to which they were born, and the vast section over which the 

 wild and irresponsible tribes once wandered redeemed from idle waste to become a 

 home for millions of progressive people. 



Following behind the advancing troops, who protected the hardy pioneer engaged 

 in breaking the soil for his homestead, came the Kansas and Union Pacific Eailways, 

 racing through Kansas and Nebraska to gain " the hundredth meridian." Guarded 

 by the soldiers, the surveying and construction parties completed the main lines of 

 those roads during the earlier years covered by this narrative, and later their branches 

 and connections have extended into many fertile valleys, which now support not 

 only a thick local population, but supply, also, material for the bread of this nation 

 and the Old World. Subsequently the Atchison, Topeka and S anta F6 railway opened 

 to the stock-raisers the rich cattle ranges of the Arkansas Valley, and carried into the 

 drowsy regions of New Mexico the implements of a new era. Across Dakota and 

 Montana to-day the working parties of the Northern Pacific, escorted by the troops, 

 are rapidly adding another complete transcontinental highway, and over all the 



* " In the treatment by the National Government of the Indians, the military and civil officers of the 

 Government have generally been diametrically opposed. The former (the military) believing the In- 

 dians to be as children, needing counsel, advice, and example, coupled with a force which commands 

 respect and obedience from a sense of fear. The latter (the civilian), trusting mostly to moral sua- 

 sion and religious instruction. The absolute proof produced by you [Col. R. I. Dodge, in his work, 

 Our Wild Indians] that the Indian has a strong religious bias but is absolutely devoid of a moral sense 

 as connected with religion, more than ever convinces me that the military authorities of the United 

 States are better qualified to guide the steps of the Indian towards that conclusion which we all de- 

 sire — self-support and peaceful relations with his neighbors- than the civilian agents, most of whom 

 are members of some one of our Christian churches."— General "W. T. Sherman, January 1, 1882. 



