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Show X REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. the United States, except in polygamous Utah, and a few inconsiderable and wiilely scattered villages, is there a white community that pretends to hold property, and especially lands, in common. This is the funda-mental error from which proceed the troubles which afflict the five nations. The practical operation of this system of holding creates an aristocracy out of a few wealthy and powerful leaders, while the poor, a.lthough equal owners, are so impoverished as not to be able to assert their equal rights of property and manhood. I am not recommending that Congress shall undertake to do any-thing with reference to these five civilized tribes which is inhibited by the treaties. But I do advise the nations themselves to awake to a true appreciation of their own situation, and to have respect for that public opinion in this country which makes laws and forms States and which has thus far protected them in their treaty rights. I do advise our red brothers, whose interests I desire to see promoted, to advise with each other and to act wisely by passing just and equal laws for the division of lands in severalty, allotting to each member of the tribe his own birthright. The treaties I hope to see observed. But where the continued observance of those treaty obligations works an injury to the Indians by,alienating from them the mass of the people of the United States, who are by instinct opposed to all monopoly, or where it does great injury to the Indians themselves, it seems to me it is the duty of the Indians to agree among themselves to a modification of tbose treaties-to remodel all such laws an(\ customs as give a monop-oly to a few (or even to many), and to place themselves abreast the times and in accoril with the ideas of free and equal citizenship which prerail in this great country. l'erritorial governmei~t.-If the Indians of the five cirilizeil tribes moulcl then put away tribal relations, and adopt the institutions common to our Territories or' States, they would no longer be subjected to the jealousy, contention, and selfish greed of advonturous land-grabbers who now seem to regard the Indian a legitimate object of prey and plunder. These adventurers do not attemptto dislodge and drive from their clomieiles the peaceful white settlers in their distant homes. Let these Indians once assume all the responsibilities of citizens of the Uiiited States, with its laws extended as a protecting agis over them, and the day of their fear and apprehension of marauding whites will be forever ended. When this is done then will the fire civilized tribes, and perhaps other tribes.of the Inclian Territory, be ready to form a territorial government and pass. as other Territories, under the protec tion of our Constitution and laws and be represented in Congress by their own delegate. The great objection that is urged by the Indians to dissolving their tribal relations, allotting their lands, and merging their political form of government into an organized Territory of the United States, arises out of their excessive attachment to Indiau trailition and nationality. I |