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Show 48 EEPORT OF THE ~OMNI8BIONER OB INDIAN AFFAIRS. MARRIAGE. For many yean agents, missionaries, the Board of Indian Commis-sioners, and others engaged or interested in the uplifting of the red man have begged that something be done to regulate marriages among Indians. Tribal authority was long ago weakened or destroyed. There has been substituted for it the shifting anthority of a procession of all sorts and conditions of agents, from the hungriest spoilsman to the man of judgment, energy, and philanthropic spirit, who uses his best endeavors to helpupward those confided to his care; but in either case the ''ward" and the guardian hardly become acquainted with each other before the latter is supplanted and a new man put in his place. Indian tribes had their own codes of domestic virtue, some of them fairly strict, even when judged by twentieth-century standards, and the Indian community lived up to its ideals quite as faithfully as do our white communities to-day. But subvert tribal standards and restraints, familiarize the Indian with the characteristics of white morality on the frontier, subject him to erratic authority, with a large admixture of indifference as to his personal ethics, and a most deplorable result might naturally be expected. On the whole, morality among Indians to-day is probably at a lower level than it was before the arrival of the white man,and this in spite of wise, faithful, andcomparatively exten-sive missionary work among the various tribes. Even the Indian allottee, who before the law is technically a United States citizen, is practically outside of it9 operation as to his relations within his family or his tribe; for, on account of the expense, courts and county and State officials are loath to recognize misdoing among people who do not pay taxes, unless white people are the immediate sufferers from the misdeeds. Hence polygamy exists to a considerable extent, the mar-riage relation is broken off and reassumed at will, wives are "thrown away," children abandoned, and general moral laxity prevails. Aside from existing evils, such demoralization and degeneration lay up a store of incidental evils for the future in the way of uncertainties, disputes, and suits in court over the inheritance of the estates of deceased allottees, especially as no general system of recording mar riages among Indians has ever been undertaken. In 1883, when the " court9 of Indian offenses" were established on Indian reservations, the rules for their guidance contained the fol-lowing: Any plural marriage hereafter contmcted or entered into by any member of an Indian tribe under the supervision of a Unit4 States Indian agent shall be consid-ered an "Indian offense," cognizable by the court of Indian offenses; and upon trial and conviction thereof by said court the offender shall pay a fine of not less than $20, or work at hard labor for a period of twenty daya, or both, at the discretion of |