University of Virginia Library

THE WARDS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

THAT the Indians should be called "wards" of the United States Government, would seem a natural thing, significant of the natural relation between the United States Government and the Indian. The dictionary definition of the word "ward" is "one under a guardian," and of the word "guardian," a "protector." For white orphans under age, guardians are appointed by law; and the same law defines the duties and sets limit to the authority of such appointed guardians. The guardianship comes to end when the orphan ward is of age. This is one important difference between the white "wards" in our country, and Indian "wards." The Indian "ward" never comes of age. There are other differences, greater even than this; in fact, so great that the term "ward" applied to the Indian, savors of a satire as bitter as it was involuntary and unconscious on the part of the Supreme Court, which, I believe, first used the epithet, or, if it did not first use it, has used it since, as a convenient phrase of "conveyance" of rights, not to the Indian, but from him; to define, not what he might hope for, but what he must not expect; not what he is, but what he is not; not what he may do, but what, being a "ward," he is forever debarred from doing. Among other things, he may not make a contract with a white man, unless through his guardian, the Government. He may not hire an attorney to bring any suit for him, unless by consent of his guardian, the Government. Strangely enough, however, though as an individual he cannot make a contract or bring a suit, he has, until six years ago, always been considered fit, as a member of a tribe, to make a treaty; i. e., if the treaty were with the United States Government, his guardian.

This relationship of "ward" and "guardian" between the Indian and the United States Government is of long standing, as is also the practice of treaty-making between them. It began more than a hundred years ago, when, oddly enough, the "wards" were more powerful than the "guardian." But even then, the object the United States Government professed to have in view was "to elevate, civilize, and educate" them "by furnishing them with useful, domestic animals, and implements of husbandry." This was the verbal phrase in the treaty made with the Five Nations, in 1791. There were treaties even earlier than this; notably, a treaty, "a perpetual alliance, offensive and defensive," which we made with the Delaware Indians in 1778. It is a matter of history how well the Delawares fought for us in the Revolutionary War. They were brave and efficient allies, and were inspired in their fighting not only by the sentiment of loyalty to the "alliance," but by the hope of the reward promised them, i. e., "the territorial right to a state as large as the State of Pennsylvania," and "a right to representation in our Congress." In 1785 the Delawares were moved to Ohio and Indiana; in 1818, to Missouri and Arkansas; in 1829, to Kansas. Here they were all gathered together under renewed promises of a permanent home. Where are they to-day? In Indian Territory,

all that are left of them; some are with the Cherokees; some on the Wichita Agency, where they are trying to farm, though last summer, were unable to cultivate as much ground "as was intended," "on account of loss of stock by horse thieves" [see Report of Ind. Com. for 1877, p. 112]; it is a little inconvenient for a "ward" at such distance from his "guardian," not to be able to bring a suit against a thief, without authorization from the "guardian."

There are not so many of the "wards" now as there were once. "We have, in two hundred and fifty years, wasted their numbers from 2,500,000 down to 250,000; or a waste of number equal to all their children born to them in the last 250 years," says the Minority Report of the Joint Com. appointed by the two houses of the XLIVth Congress, to consider the expediency of transferring the Indian Bureau to the War Department. Neither are they so well off as they once were, for they have been compelled to sell the greater portion of their lands to their "guardian." "The United States Government has taken absolute ownership of 3,232,936,351 acres of their lands, leaving to all the tribes collectively only 97,745,009 acres of ground," says the same Report. Nevertheless, they are not yet paupers, neither do they live entirely on the charity of their "guardian," as many people suppose, seeing mention made every year of large sums of money appropriated by Congress for supplies and payments to the different tribes of Indians.

When the "wards" have made "treaties" and "sales" to their guardian, the transaction has been thus: "Generally, the commissioners who made the treaty estimated the value of the right of occupancy of the Indians, and paid the consideration, either in a gross sum or in an amount of money or goods. The money is delivered to the agents, or chiefs, or more frequently deposited with the United States, invested in government securities, and held in trust for the tribe to which it belongs. The whole amount of these trust funds is $13,069,475, on which interest of four and one-half per cent. is allowed." [See "The Indian Problem, by Gardner Hubbard," p. 11.]

There are people — and their number seems increasing in our country every day — who hold that the Indian's "right of occupancy" was never any "right" at all — was nothing that he had the power to sell, or white men need have troubled themselves to buy. As a nation, however, we have recognized this right in hundreds of treaties, "confirmed by the Senate as are treaties with foreign powers," and recognizing the Indian tribes "as nations with whom the United States might contract, without derogating from its sovereignty."

The accumulated inconvenience, embarrassment, and costliness of making such treaties and purchases by treaty, — perhaps, also, some sense of the accumulating infamy of breaking such treaties and violating the terms of such purchases by treaty — so weighed upon the minds of the representatives of the American people, that on the 3d of March, 1871, it was declared by an Act of Congress, that:

Could it have been in satire that these law-makers added a clause to the effect that this Act should not invalidate any treaties made previous to that date? Was there one treaty left which had not been broken?

There is a certain sort of defiant outspokenness in this Act which compels a certain kind of respect. It openly and — if legality of phrase can make an outrage legal — legally takes away from the Indian his one semblance of legal right, and leaves him, at last, completely at the mercy of the untrammeled power of the Government. Nevertheless, I repeat, that for the Government to trick and break faith with the Indians now seems one shade less dishonorable than before; as to be a highwayman seems one shade less degrading than to be a pickpocket.

It is only a little more than fifty years

since the British envoys at Ghent charged the United States with "having reduced the Indians to the state of subjects living on sufferance within their limits, and threatened thereby with total extinction." To this accusation our commissioners, John Quincy Adams and Albert Gallatin, replied as follows:

This was in 1814. Before the first half of the century had gone, we had broken seven solemn treaties with the Creeks, eleven, equally solemn, with the Cherokees, and as many with the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, to say nothing of those with smaller tribes.

The experience of the Cherokees is a sad and infamous page of our history. A new treaty made with them, in 1828, begins:

Ten years later, the United States Government, at the request of the State of Georgia, compelled the Cherokees to give up the lands guaranteed to them by this treaty, and move to the Indian Territory. By this time, the Cherokees were a civilized people; and there were among them men who were sufficiently skilled in the use of words to insist upon the insertion, in the treaty, of this clause:

The opening words of this treaty are full of pathos.

And to-day a bill is before Congress to create a Territorial government over these "lands ceded to the Cherokee nation."

With the Winnebagoes the United States Government made five treaties between 1816 and 1855. The treaty of 1855 guaranteed to them a reservation in Minnesota, where they lived until 1862, "peaceably engaged in agriculture," and loyal to the United States, even when surrounded and threatened by bands of hostile Sioux. After the outbreak of the Sioux, the citizens of Minnesota were "so determined that all Indians should be removed beyond the limits of the State, that Congress passed an Act in 1863 providing for their removal. [See "The Indian Question. By Francis A. Walker," p. 178.] After the loss of many lives by exposure and starvation in Dakota, they were finally settled in Nebraska, on a reservation adjoining that of the Omahas. Doubtless, when Nebraska becomes as "determined" as Minnesota was in 1863, and as Georgia was in 1838, that "all Indians shall be removed" beyond her limits, Nebraska will plead "precedents," as Colorado to-day is pleading the long list of shameful precedents which have gone before. When Nebraska does this, then the Winnebagoes, the Omahas, the Sacs and Foxes, the Otoes, the Missourias, and the Santee Sioux, all living now on reservations ceded to or set apart for them there by the Government, will be added to the list of "Removed to the Indian Territory."

The stories of the sufferings, deaths, and massacres which come under the head of these "removals" would fill volumes; they can never be fully told, because the dead cannot tell them. From time to time the hearts of the American people are sickened and rent by sudden news of one more, such as the massacre of the Cheyennes at Fort Robinson, or the dying of the Nez Percés and the Poncas by hundreds in Indian Territory. It would seem as if the hearing of one of these tales were enough to arouse the whole American nation to a sense of the cruelty of thus oppressing the Indian. But too often the tale is told from the white man's side, and not

from the Indian's; the murders which are the only defense or retaliation left within the Indian's power, are held up to view as unprovoked acts of barbarous savages. And this, in spite of testimony upon testimony, given by men who best know the facts of Indian wars, and the real quality of the Indian nature.

The story of the Nez Percé war, consequent on the attempt of the United States Government to "remove" this tribe from their homes, is still fresh in the minds of the American people, and is not yet complete on the official records of the Government. It is one of the few cases in which the Indian's side of the story has been told, and it is, therefore, one of the few cases which can be cited with anything like fairness.

The three chief sources of information in regard to the experiences of these Nez Percé "wards" of the United States Government are the official reports of Commissioners of Indian Affairs, a remarkable paper written by Chief Joseph of the Wal-lam-wat-kin band of Nez Percés, called "An Indian's Views of Indian Affairs," and published in the "North American Review" for April, 1879, and a reply to that article, written by General O. O. Howard, called "The True Story of the Wallowa Campaign," and published in the "North American Review" for July, 1879. It seems an oversight on the part of General Howard to call his paper "The True Story of the Wallowa Campaign," when, in fact, it speaks only of the events preceding the battles of that campaign, of the councils, agreements and final decisions in the matter of the removal of the Nez Percés, and only alludes in a few words, near the close, to the fact of the fights and the surrender of the Indians. He says that some of the Indians "treacherously escaped after the terms of surrender had been agreed upon," and thus did "break and make void the said terms of surrender." Is this the law of nations at war? If a few soldiers contrive to run away, after an army has surrendered, does that invalidate the conditions on which the generals of the two armies had agreed? General Howard expressly omits to state what those "terms of surrender" were; and by this omission, he gives the strongest proof that Chief Joseph, in his article, did not misrepresent them.

The beginning of the Nez Percé trouble was in the appointment, at Washington, of "a commission to visit the Nez Percé and other roving bands of Indians in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington Territory." [See Report of Ind. Com. for 1877, p. 211.] This word "roving" is one of the many current phrases of misrepresentation about the Indians. "Roving bands," "nomadic tribes," are catch-words for popular contempt and popular fear. In the true sense of the word, there is no such thing among our Indians as a "nomadic tribe."

Of these same Nez Percé Indians, this same official report (p. 80) says, they "seldom leave their homes except when called away on business. * * They do their trading semi-annually, in the spring and fall, returning home as soon as they have got through with their business!" and in the Report of the Indian Commissioner for 1874, p. 12, we find this statement:

Between the accounts given by General Howard, and by Chief Joseph, of the events preceding the Nez Perce war, there are noticeable discrepancies.

General Howard says that he listened to the "oft-repeated Dreamer nonsense of the chief, 'Too-hool-hool-suit,' with no impatience, but finally said to him:

"Twenty times over I hear that the earth is your mother, and about the chieftainship of the earth. I want to hear it no more."

Chief Joseph says:

"General Howard lost his temper and said 'Shut up! I don't want to hear any more of such talk.' Too-hool-hool-suit answered, 'Who are you, that you ask us to talk, and then tell me I shan't talk? Are you the Great Spirit? Did you make the world?'"

General Howard, quoting from his record at the time, says:

"The rough old fellow, in his most provoking tone, says something in a short sentence, looking fiercely at me. The interpreter quickly says: 'He demands what person pretends to divide this land, and put me on it?' In the most decided voice, I said, 'I am the man. I stand here for the President, and there is no spirit, bad or good, that will hinder me. My orders are plain, and will be executed.'"

Chief Joseph says: "General Howard replied, 'You are an impudent fellow, and I will put you in the guard-house,' and then ordered a soldier to arrest him."

General Howard says: "After telling the Indians that this bad advice would be their ruin, I asked the chiefs to go with me to look at their land. 'The old man (Too-hool-hool-suit) shall not go. I will leave him with Colonel Perry.' He says, 'Do you want to scare me with reference to my body?' I said, 'I will leave your body with Colonel Perry.' I then arose and led him out of the council, and gave him into the charge of Colonel Perry."

Chief Joseph says: "Too-hool-hool-suit made no resistance. He asked General Howard, 'Is that your order? I don't care. I have expressed my heart to you. I have nothing to take back. I have spoken for my country. You can arrest me, but you cannot change me, or make me take back what I have said.' The soldiers came forward and seized my friend, and took him to the guard-house. My men whispered among themselves whether they should let this thing be done. I counseled them to submit. * * Too-hool-hool-suit was prisoner for five days before he was released."

General Howard, it will be observed, does not use the word "arrested," but as he says, later, "Too-hool-hool-suit was released on the pledge of Looking Glass and White Bird, and on his own earnest promise to behave better," it is plain that Chief Joseph did not misstate the facts. This Indian chief, therefore, was put under military arrest, and confined for five days, for uttering what General Howard calls a "tirade" in a council to which the Indians had been asked to come for the purpose of consultation and expression of sentiment.

Does not Chief Joseph speak common sense, as well as natural feeling, in saying,

I turned to my people and said, 'The arrest of Too-hool-hool-suit was wrong, but we will not resent the insult. We were invited to this council to express our hearts, and we have done so.'"

If such and so swift penalty as this, for "tirades" in council, were the law of our land, especially in the District of Columbia, it would be "no just cause of complaint" when Indians suffer it. But considering the frequency, length and safety of "tirades" in all parts of America, it seems unjust not to permit Indians to deliver them. However, they do come under the head of "spontaneous productions of the soil"; and an Indian on a reservation is "invested with no such proprietorship" in anything which comes under that head. — [Annual Report of the Indian Com. for 1878, p. 69.]

Chief Joseph and his band consented to move. Chief Joseph says:

"I said in my heart that rather than have war I would give up my country. I would give up my father's grave. I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people."

It was not easy for Joseph to bring his people to consent to move. The young men wished to fight. It has been told that, at this time, Chief Joseph rode one day through his village, with a revolver in each hand, saying he would shoot the first one of his warriors that resisted the Government. Finally, they gathered all the stock they could find, and began the move. A storm came, and raised the river so high that some of the cattle could not be taken across. Indian guards were put in charge of the cattle left behind. White men attacked these guards and took the cattle. After this Joseph could no longer restrain his men, and the warfare began, which lasted over two months. It was a masterly campaign on the part of the Indians. They were followed by General Howard; they had General Crook on their right, and General Miles in front, but they were not once hemmed in; and, at last, when they surrendered at Bear Paw Mountain, in the Montana Hills, it was not because they were beaten, but because, as Joseph says, "I would not bear to see my wounded men and women suffer any longer; we had lost enough already." * * "We could have escaped from Bear Paw Mountain if we had left our wounded, old women and children, behind. We were unwilling to do this. We had never heard of a wounded Indian recovering while in the hands of white men. * * I believed General Miles, or I never would have surrendered. I have heard that he has been censured for making the promise to return us to Lapwai. He could not have made any other terms with me at that time. I could have held him in check until my friends came to my assistance, and then neither of the generals nor their soldiers would ever have left Bear Paw Mountain alive. On the fifth day I went to General Miles and gave up my gun, and said, 'From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more.' My people needed rest — we wanted peace."

The terms of this surrender were shamefully

violated. Joseph and his band were taken first to Fort Leavenworth and then to the Indian Territory. At Leavenworth they were placed in the river bottom, with no water but the river water to drink.

"Many of my people sickened and died, and we buried them in this strange land," says Joseph. "I cannot tell how much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth. The Great Spirit Chief who rules above seemed to be looking some other way, and did not see what was being done to my people."

Yet with a marvelous magnanimity, and a clear-headed sense of justice of which few men would be capable under the circumstances, Joseph says:

"I believe General Miles would have kept his word if he could have done so. I do not blame him for what we have suffered since the surrender. I do not know who is to blame. We gave up all our horses, over eleven hundred, and all our saddles, over one hundred, and we have not heard from them since. Somebody has got our horses."

This narrative of Chief Joseph's is profoundly touching; a very Iliad of tragedy, of dignified and hopeless sorrow; and it stands supported by the official records of the Indian Bureau.

"After the arrival of Joseph and his band in the Indian Territory, the bad effect of their location at Fort Leavenworth manifested itself in the prostration by sickness at one time of 260 out of the 410; and 'within a few months' in the death of 'more than one quarter of the entire number.'" — [Annual Report of the Indian Commissioner, for 1878, p. 33.]

"It will be borne in mind that Joseph has never made a treaty with the United States and that he has never surrendered to the Government the lands he claimed to own in Idaho. * * Joseph and his followers have shown themselves to be brave men and skillful soldiers who, with one exception, have observed the rules of civilized warfare. * * These Indians were encroached upon by white settlers, on soil they believed to be their own, and when these encroachments became intolerable, they were compelled in their own estimation to take up arms." [Same Report, p. 34.]

Chief Joseph and a remnant of his band are still in Indian Territory, waiting anxiously the result of the movement now being made by the Ponca chief, Standing Bear, and his friends and legal advisors to obtain from the Supreme Court a decision which will extend the protection of the civil law to every Indian in the country.

The Nez Percés who escaped after this surrender took refuge in the camp of the Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull, in Canada, and no doubt they were able to add sarcastic emphasis to the assurances given by General Terry to Sitting Bull that if he and his band would return to the United States, they should be "treated in as friendly a spirit as were other hostile Indians who surrendered to our military forces."

This council must have been a dramatic spectacle. Three men were sent by the United States Government into Canada, to hold converse with some of the "wards" who had run away; empowered to offer them, if they would come back, pardon and cows in exchange for their horses and rifles. General Terry said:

The phrase "his and your country" seems a strange one, in a paragraph of this sort. It did not impress Sitting Bull very deeply, and the allurements mentioned — the giving up all arms, horses, etc., and the certainty of being "assigned" to "agencies" here and there, even with the prospect of "cows," did not entice him away from Canada. His reply is full of satire. It would seem that even the officers to whom it was addressed must, in spite of its affront to their dignity, have enjoyed the speech. He said:

Another chief said:

So great was the scorn felt by these Indians for this embassy that they even permitted a squaw to address it.

After the Indians had finished speaking they asked if the Commission had anything more to say, to which the Commission answered that they had nothing more, and the conference closed. "The Commission returned," says the Report (p. 413), "and Sitting Bull and his adherents are no longer considered wards of the Government."

It is not strange that the Indians prefer Canada to the United States. There has been no war with or upon Indians there, since the Revolution. There are 100,000 Indians in Canada. They are called "the Indian subjects of her Majesty," and are held in every respect amenable to the law and are in every respect protected by the law. Says Bishop Whipple:

The latest "removal" of "wards" and seizure of their lands is that of the Poncas, who were removed from Dakota to Indian Territory two years ago. Their lands in Dakota had been ceded to them by treaties in 1817, 1828, 1858, and 1865. Article II. of the Treaty of 1865 says:

There follows a description of certain townships and sections. The title is as strong a title as the Government can give. No man, no chartered railroad, has one any stronger. These Poncas, it is admitted, —

In three months after the arrival of the Poncas in the Indian Territory, over one hundred and fifty out of the seven hundred were dead. Then, one of the chiefs, named Standing Bear, ran away with thirty of his people, and tried to return to Dakota. He carried with him the bones of his eldest son, who, when he was dying, had asked his father to promise to bury him at home — a strange request for a "nomadic" Indian to make! The Government sent troops after this band, overtook them, arrested them. More than half were women and children. On their way back to the Indian Territory, they were camped near Omaha. Here they were visited by A. F. Tibbles, an Omaha editor, who resolved to test the question of the legality of their confinement as military prisoners. The case was tried in the Supreme Court of Nebraska, and by decision of Judge Dundy, the Indians were set free. They are the only free Indians in the United States to-day, except a few who are under State governments. The first use Standing Bear made of his freedom was to journey to the Eastern states, to endeavor to raise money to bring suits for the recovery of the Ponca lands, and also suits in the Supreme Court of the United States, to determine for all Indians, as Judge Dundy had determined for him, that an Indian is a "person," and has all the rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This movement has been responded to with great enthusiasm in some of the Eastern cities, and all that money and public sentiment can do will be done to help the cause of the Poncas, and in theirs, the cause of all the other "wards of the Government." Arrayed on the other side are the colossal forces of selfishness, greed, love of power; and

allied to these, the subtlest and most despicable of allies — our national lack of a sense of honor. These words sound harsh, but what other words are truly applicable to a nation which, for one hundred years, has broken every treaty it has made with a people too feeble to punish its bad faith?

Even since the first words of this article were written a United States representative has angrily argued in Congress that it is very hard if the Government will not, for Colorado's advantage, break a few treaties, when it has broken so many for the advantage of other States — has said this in so many words, and there was no man to interrupt him with the cry of "shame!"

What a logic of infamy! Because a nation has broken treaties, violated pledges, committed injustices and cruelties, for a hundred years, it may as well go on breaking treaties, violating pledges, being unjust and cruel? Because we have had one century of dishonor, must we have two?