| OCR Text |
Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 47 No attempt was made to present any Indian school individually, but those schools whose work was represented there were Carlisle, Genoa, Haskell, Oneida, Phoenix, Pine Ridge, and Seger Colony. POPULATION. As pertinent to the matter of Indian civilization, the question of . whether the Indian tribes are dying out becomes of considerable impor-tance. The generally accepted theory, popularly held, is that by contact with the white man, taking on a portion of his civilization and agreater portion of his vices, the extinction of the Indian is only a mat-ter of time; that given conditions of existence wholly different from those to which his ancestors were accustomed, the Indian question wonld be solved by his extinction. Had the United States Government adopted the same policy with reference to these people as that of other nations dealing with savage tribes the probabilities are that the abo-riginal races wonld no longer exist within the bounds of the United States. It is true that upon the statute books and in modern discus-sions of these races the names of many tribes known to the early his-tory of the country are noticeably absent, and this leads to the popular conclusion that the Indian is fast dying out. This is a misconception of historical data and is based largely upon the hypothesis that the country now known as the United States was, on the advent of Columbus, popnlated very densely. At the time of the discovery of America the explorers from the Old World were prone to exaggerate every unusual occurrence which was presented to them in the unknown world upon which they had landed, the few being magnified into the many, and tho dark, mysterious forests were peopled by fancy with myriad hosts of red men guarding the secrets to untold mines of golden wealth. Lured by fanciful imaginings and heroic tales, the hardy warriors of the age, penetrating these sylvan retreats and finding not the gold they sought, glorified their prowess by the multiplicity of aborigines they met and conquered. It must be remembered that the domain of the United States is of wst extent; that the original inhabitants seldom lived in villages; that the women tilled the soil and the men were engaged in almost constant strife with other tribes and rival bands with each other in the same tribe. Agriculture being neglected, or pursued only by the weaker sex, the chase principally provided for life's urgent necessities, and &me in su5cient quantities to support a large popnlation must have vast ranges of unoccupied land. Hence, taking the concurrent facts of history and experience into consideration, it can, with a great degree of confidence, be stated that the Indian population of the United States had been very little diminished from the days of Columbus, Cor-onado, Baleigh, Capt. John Smith, and other ertrly explorers. |
