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Show I 10 REPORT OF THE COMMIBSIOXER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. a condition of complete dependence and submission, the plan to be adopted in dealing with thell~ must be substantially t,hat which is now being pursued in the case of the more tractable and friendly Iiidians, as described in the port'ions of the report which .follow. This is the true permanent Indian policy of the Government.. TBE CLAIMS OF THE INDIAX. ! The people of the United States call never rrirhout dishouor rcfilse to respect tltrsc two e~~i~ai~l~:r;~lariro. Tnhs:a t r l ~ i tcj ol~tineutw 3a o r i ~ i ~ ~ a l l owned and occupied b j the Indians, who have on this account iclai& somewhat larger than the privilege of one hundred andsixty acres of land, and LLfinhdi mself7'i n tools and stock, which is granted as a matter of course to any newly-arrived foreigner who declares his intention to become a citizen; that something in ttie nature of an enclowment, either / capit,alized or iu the, forin of annual expenditures for a series of years ! for the benefit of the Indians, though at the discretion of the Govern-ment as to the specific objects, should be provided for every tribe or ; band which is deprived of its roaming privilege and contined to a I diminished reservation: such so endowment being not in the nature nf ~ ' ~~~- .~ a C.rht~~ibtlyrt, in cummon lioncsty tilt, right of r l r c~~~r loiu: ~;tene nllnt of ( his orlgi1r:cl ilitcrcst in the soil. 2~1.T Lbi~t inariinucl~n s thr progress of our i!~(li~striealll terl~rineI tad en1 tl~rscl~ eovleI IW fiuni 111o1lk.u3f lireli-for rbrirw:~uts:,I ; I ~ ;or which thcj nt!n:cl~~aliti&l, been tlie worid(.roi iilorr (tivilized rare*, lty iuller-i te~al i~t~tilrltX.sI I ~b IOIIZ ~~ursuiilri1, 11h as left 1l11.~1 iltt~rlv~ i t l ~ o l - tion. Had the settlements oE the United States not been extended beyond the frontier of 1867, all t.he Indians of the coutinent would to the end of time have fourtd upon the plains an inexha.ustible supply of food and clothing. Werethe westward course of population to be stayed at the barriers of to-day, notwithstanding the tremendous inroads made upon their hunting-grounds since 1867, the Indians would still have hope of life. But another such five years will see the Indians of Dakota and Montana as poor as the Indians of Nevada and Southern California: that is, reduced to an habitual condition of suffering from want of food. The freedom of exp:msion which is working these results is to us of incalculable value. ' To the Imdiatr it is of incalculable cost. Every year's advance of our frontier takes in a territory as large as some of the kingdoms of Europe. We are richer by hundreds of millioi~s; the Indian is poorer by a largepart of the little that he has. This growth is bringing imperial greatness to the nation; to the Iudian it brings wretchedness, destitution, beggary. Surely there is obligation found in considerations like these, requiringus in some way, and in the best. way, to make good to these original owners of the soil the loss by which we so greatly gain. Can any principle of national morality be clearer than that, when the expa~tsion and development of a civilized race involve the rapid de-struction of the only means of subaistenoe possessed bythe members of a less fortunate race, the higher is bound as of simple right to provide for the lovcr some substitute for the means of subsistence which it llas destroged? That substitute i8,of course, best realized, not by system- |