OCR Text |
Show DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTR'IES. But the great desideratuk in this matter is m h an entire change of the industrial situation on reservations as will create work and offer compensatiug employment to all who are willing to labor. Where the lauds have been allotted, the surplus sold, and a white community has been brought into immediate contact with the Indians, as is the case, for instance, among the Omahas and Sissetons and more recently among the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, it is believed that such an entire change in the situation will be brought about in the course of a, comparatively short time that every competent Indian, man or wo-man who desires employment can have it either at good wages work-ingfor whitepwpleor in remunerativereturn whenworkingat their own homes. This is a matter that must of necessity be determined largely by individual effort, by the gradual development of the knowledge of civ. ilized ways, and a desire for the benefits that grow from steady, con. tinaous, intelligently directed personal effort. One great result of educating the younger Indians is the creation in their minds of a desire to work. When they are trained in a school, such as Carlisle or Haskell, situated in a civilized commnnity, the pupils have constantly before them an object lesson of a very impres. sive character, which, quite as much as the school room does, serves to awaken a desire for the comforts and privileges of civilization. They realize the poverty of their reservation life and wish for something better. They become dissatisfied. Discontent is the mother of prog. ress. If the schools can give them a command of English, awaken among them a nniversal dissatisfaction with their present state, show them something better, innre them to industry, and teach them to use tools and machinery, they will find employment and make for them-selves places in life. The policy of allotting lands and the breaking up of the reservations will, in many cases, solve the problem here presented in perhaps the only satisfactory way in which it can be solved by the Government. In other cases the solution does not lie, for the present certainly, in auotments, but rather in the development of a system of industry among the Indians themselves which shall facilitate, by judicious help, the owth of their native industries. The Navajos, for instance, esti g ated to number from 16,000 to 18,000, are almost wholly eu-gaged in pastoral pursuits, owning and succe8sfully caring for large numbers of sheep, goats, horses, and a few cattle. By some judicious help in the development of water through some carefully planned scheme of irrigation, such as is suggested on page 126, it is believed that the,rese'rvation can be made abnndantly capable of supporting in comfort, if not in affluence, all the Navajo Indians eutitled and desir-ing to reside upon it. In addition to the care of ilockspnd herds these |