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Show COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 49. Furthermore, positive injury has come to the Indian Service from not enough free and general discussion of Indian policies. Indian affairs are, even under the best possible adminiitration, peculiarly a field for the grafter, and all other wrongdoers. The lands and the moneys of the Indians offer a bait which the most satiated fish will not refuse, and frequently a whole local community will get on the wrong track toward the Indians. I have heard gendiely respectable members of a community say that the best thing that could happen to the Indian was to lose all his lands and all his money, and have to go to work; they say this notwithstanding the fact that by such a time the Indian would have no physique left, for drink and disease are allies of those who seek to prey upon him. To offset all this, not only publicity as to Indian affairs, but the freest discussion of all divergent views with regard to them is essen-tial. I have felt it a distinct loss to my administration that many persons who are accustomed to think and write on Indian subjects have never paid the Indian Office a visit, and sought to learn first hand here what we are trying to do, and how. If things of any sort are going wrong, every officer in the service, on behalf of his own reputation, is the most concerned in righting them, and no man who is doing his duty can have anything to fear from any kind of an investigation. While some of the reservations are what might still be technically called closed reservations, I pre-fer to handle them all as open propositions. The day has gone by, even if it were still desirable, which I do not admit, to run them from a closed administrative point of view on the theory that "too many cooks spoil the broth." They mmt be run to-day, and I am glad that it is so, in the light of critical publicity, and the Indians, however incompetent', must, like the rest of us, to some extent run their risks from interested or dishonest advisers and learn for themselves to choose sound counsel. The number of people now settling around all the reservations, and even on most of them, makes this course inevitable. The fact that this is so makes the work of every superintendent a vastly di5cult one. While he must listen to all and suppress noth-ing, it is still his duty to act as he t h i i right, only, of course, being careful to see that his reasons are clearly stated for the public to con-sider. If any superintendent feels that this is too difficult s, task, he should be somewhat comforted by the fact that the commissioner has even more of such difficulties to encounter. Respectfully, ROBERT G. V ~ N T I N E , Co&sione~. The SECRETAROFY m INTERIOR. |
