OCR Text |
Show IQOO] FUTURE OP THE INDIANS 269 progress in culture, in devising means of dealing with the Indian problem of the day. The reservation method of handling the Indians was probably the only feasible one, but it has entirely changed the distribution of linguistic families. The disturbance has been much more marked in the east, where white immigration quickly crowded the territory, than in the west, where the Indians could be allowed to remain at least in the general neighborhood of their former seats. Most of the southeastern tribes were transferred bodily to Indian Territory, though in some cases small reservations were established near their old homes. In the west, reservations were formed at many different points; and are being kept up as far as Indian necessity demands and political pressure will permit. Of the Algonquian group, most of the eastern tribes have disappeared entirely. The Canadian tribes of this family have not suffered as did the representatives in the United States, and still remain fairly numerous. The great Ojibwa division has bands both in Canada and in several of the northern states of the middle west. The western representatives, the Blackfeet, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, are all on western reservations or in Indian Territory and Oklahoma. The remnants of the eastern and the central Algonquians are, for the most part, in the last- named territories. The Iroquoians, with the exception of theCherokee, are divided between the United States and Canada. |