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Show ,- 1 ' . 1 ,.: REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRB. 39 " It is not uncommon to find Indians who exercisea sort of ownership over vast bodies of land and who have in their own right extensive herds and flocks. There are among them, as among us, the rich and the poor. I When, therefore, it is proposed to divide their land among them indi- I vidoally, giving to each the earne amount, the argument for it is, in , . many cases, very mucll the same as if it Mere proposed to take all the real estate of New York City and diride it equally among its several inhabitants. It is not surprising, therefore, that there should he, on the part of the more aggressive, able, and prosperous Indians, very serious objections urged against the policy of an equal distribution of the ' . landed estate of the tribe. It is indeed quite surprising that the gen- 1 eral policy of allotting the tribal lands in equal quantities to all indi- 1 viduals has been received with as much favoras it has. Another hindrance to the xuccessfl~l operat.ion of the 1and.i~-sev- I ! eralty law arises from the fact that there are among the Indians a 'large number who, for one reason or another, are incapable of managing I , snccessfully alauded estate. Many of them know little of farming and care less, and the children, the widows, the diseased, the infirm, are incapable of making any use of the wild, uncultivated lands which are i oEered them. Multitudes of them haveno true conception of the value of good land, '1 and moreover a large proportion of that which i t is proposed to divide np among them is practically worthless. In some instances it consists of vast tracts of sandy plain, absolutely sterile and unfit for cnltivatioh without extensive and costly irrigation; in others, of mountainous tracts fit only for grazing purposes and suitable for this only when enced and guarded from the encroachments of the cattle of the white man; in other cases it is heavily timbered and valuable only for its lumber, which too frequently the Indians are ur~ablet o utilize. In a large number of instances, therefore, giving an Indian 80 acres of land and asking him to make it his hnme and gain from it a subsisteuce, when he has no farming implements, no horses or cattle, no house but a. tepee, no knowledge of ?arming, no ability to bring the wild land under cultivation, seems but a mockery. Another very serious matter to consider in this connection is that when they have reoeived their land in severalty they become thereby citizens of the United States and have thrust upon them the obliga-tions of citizenship for which they are often absolutely unprepared. They are brought under the operation of lama which they do not under-stand; are taken largely from the care and gnardianship of the Gen-eral Govgrnment, upon which they have been accustomed to lean for protection ; are thrown upon their own resources and subjected to the fierce competitions of border civilization, for which they have little or no preparat.ion. Land in severalty has in it Lithe promise and the prtency "of great things, but only the promise and the potency. Very much depends |