Chapter VII · (continued 2)

The United States Government by treaty with certain of the tribes, as the Sioux, for example, has agreed to pay definite annuities and issue to each individual a certain amount of clothing and food each year. Other tribes placed on reservations were also granted clothing and food sufficient to keep them from want, although no agreement to that effect was entered into, the theory of the Government being that the Indians deprived of their hunting-grounds should receive aid until they could adopt the ways of civilized men sufficiently to be self-supporting. The number of Indians assisted in this way each year during the past decade has been about 85,000. The food issued, usually twice a month, consists of meat, either beef or its equivalent in bacon, flour, coffee, and sugar. The ration supplied each individual is sufficient to maintain a person, or at least keep him from starving, but is not intended to meet all his wants. The desire on the part of the Government that want should compel the Indian to work, has been still further pressed by a gradual decrease in the ration issued in certain instances where definite agreement has not been made and where a tendency to self-support is manifest. In general, however, this assistance, instead of stimulating industry, and, as would seem natural, gradually leading the recipient to desire and obtain more and more of the comforts and luxuries that may be had as a reward of exertion, served but to enhance his inherited aversion to all forms of labour. The issuing of rations even to the extent of insuring the Indian against starvation has to a great extent removed the incentive to industry, and the Indian, being an Indian, has remained thriftless and indifferent. The reservation system, so far as attaining the main aim in view, namely, the civilizing of the Indian and encouraging him to work, has, to a great extent, been a failure.

In addition to the issuing of food and clothing, the Government, with the view of extending still further encouragement, has in a large number of instances provided the Indians with tools, horses, agricultural implements, etc., and aided in irrigation and other schemes tending to the improvement of the lands comprised in reservations.

Besides the direct material aid just referred to, schools have been established, and an earnest and widely extended effort made to educate the Indians and make them worthy of citizenship. The result of this effort, while highly encouraging in many individual instances, has on the whole fallen far short of what was expected in view of the large expenditures incurred. The sum thus employed during the past thirty-three years is about $240,000,000. The total appropriation made by the Government for the care and education of the Indians, inclusive of the aborigines of Alaska, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1901, was over $9,000,000. Of this sum, over one-third was expended in the maintenance of schools. In addition to this provision there are a number of mission and other schools, supported mainly by religious or benevolent organizations, and certain public schools not receiving aid from the General Government which were wholly or in part for the benefit of Indian pupils.

In the case of the larger of the Government Indian schools the Indian children are removed from their homes and placed in institutions where they live for a period of four years under military discipline. In these schools literary is subordinate to industrial training. The majority of the schools are equipped with shops for shoe- and harness-making, carpentry, blacksmithing, wagon-making, etc., and in several instances the girls are taught cooking and house-work. The largest of these schools is situated at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at which the average attendance during the year 1900 was 961. The extent to which education is spreading through the Indian tribes and its rate of increase are indicated by the fact that the attendance on the Government schools has increased from 3,598 in 1877 to 21,566 in 1900.

While the benefits received by the Indians through the issuing of clothing, rations, and by education has been great and the seed for future progress sown broadcast, the results, so far as lifting the recipients into an atmosphere of refinement and civilization and making them self-supporting are concerned, are far from encouraging. The Indians in general are still wards of the Government and not worthy of citizenship.

The aim of the Government is not only to educate the Indians, but to induce them to adopt the ways of industrious and progressive white men, build homes on land ceded to them and which they may hold as individuals, thus breaking up their long-established practise of communal or tribe ownership, and finally become citizens of the republic. To this end land has been divided among the heads of families of several tribes and titles in severalty granted, with restrictions in most, if not all instances, in reference to the sale of the land within a certain period. In many instances this plan has been productive of good results, and the Indians have become industrious and to a large extent citizens. The numerous successes that have followed the allotment of land in severalty, accompanied as it is with responsibilities and the necessity of self-support, is encouraging and leads to the hope that in the course of a few generations all the Indians will have passed from the condition of barbarism to one of civilization.

In Mexico since 1824 the Indians have been on the same political basis as the whites, although to a great extent they have failed to profit by their advantages, and so far as legal restrictions are concerned are eligible to any office of the republic. The brightest example of the wisdom of this policy is furnished by the fact that in at least one instance a man of pure Aztec blood has occupied the highest office in the gift of the people. In general, and in fact almost universally, the position of the Indian in Mexico is that of a farm labourer, but although nominally free, owing to a prevalent system of debt, he is really held in vassalage by the owners of the large plantations or haciendas. In many ways his condition is but little better than that of a slave. Unlike the roaming tribes of the more northern portion of the continent, where the food supply fluctuates greatly with the seasons, the natives of Mexico early became sedentary, and, owing no doubt in part to the density of the population, became horticulturists, and have continued to cultivate the soil to the present day. They are now essentially agriculturists, wedded to their place of birth, and not only do not desire change, but repel by passive resistance the invasion of civilization and the use of new and improved tools and machinery. They are non-progressive, and on account of their great numbers, constituting about 38 per cent of the entire population, serve to retard advancement in a manner that is highly detrimental to the enlightened and progressive members of the ruling class. Education in nearly all parts of the republic is compulsory and the schools free. With both political and educational advantages, however, but indifferent progress towards civilization has been made.

The present condition of the Indians throughout Central America is similar to that of the descendants of the Aztecs and other tribes in Mexico both politically and socially. They are a disheartened race, living in a region where exuberant nature supplies their small wants with but little exertion on their part, and incentives to activity either of body or mind are, to a great extent, lacking.

In the West Indies the native Caribs were nearly exterminated by the Spaniards early in their occupation of the islands, their places as labourers being supplied by the importation of negro slaves, and at the present time but few, if any, Indians of pure blood are to be found. Throughout Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies amalgamation of the Indian with both Europeans and negroes has taken place, and a mixed race, consisting of a large percentage of the total population, has resulted. In Mexico these mestizos, as they are termed, number about 5,000,000, or about two-fifths of the entire population. In the Central American republics the supplanting of the aboriginal race by the same process is thought to have progressed at about the same rate as in Mexico.

To the student of geography a comparison of the state of the aborigines of North America before peoples from other lands came among them, with reference to the influence of environment, is full of significance. The highest degree of culture and the greatest advance towards refinement was in Mexico and Central America, where a uniform climate prevails and bodily wants are few and easily supplied. It was there that skill in architecture reached its highest development, and what is worthy the name of art, and we may almost say letters, but in truth picture-writing, reached a high degree of advancement.

This marked progress in a tropical country beyond what was attained by the Indian tribes in the temperate and cold portions of the continent seems to be an exception to the general rule that intellectual progress is stimulated by changeable climatic conditions, and reaches the highest development in cold, temperate climates. Apparently the degree of stimulation needed for the Caucasian and the Indian differs, and the latter thrives best where the obstacles to be overcome are least. This is in harmony with the oft-repeated statement that the Indian is but a child. The struggle which would discourage the boy is but zest to the man. Among the Indians themselves, however, we find an exception to the rule suggested in the fact that the Iroquois or the Six Nations of New York, in their tribal organization and alliances of offence and defence probably surpassed even the Aztecs and Mayas. In physical strength and endurance, and in mental powers, so far as government and oratory are concerned, the Iroquois probably surpassed all other Indians; but in architecture, art, picture-writing, etc., they were far the inferiors of the Mexican and Central American Indians. Thus, intellectual strength and vigour seem to have been most markedly a product of the colder and more changeable climate, while the highest attainment in architecture, etc., was reached at the south.

It is in the temperate region also that the best results have been reached in attempting to civilize the Indians. This, however, cannot be claimed as a result of climate simply, since the aid that has been extended to them in Canada and the United States is far different from the influence exerted on their relatives at the south by men of Spanish blood. The results of the efforts of Canada and the United States to civilize the Indian and make him worthy of citizenship, although costly and slow in reaching the desired end, are full of promise. By the methods referred to in the last few pages a strong effort is being made to counteract the harsh treatment the Indians received during the earlier years of French and English aggression, and to give them a fair chance to advance. One important result of the present firm control is the total cessation of intertribal warfare. Seemingly the aborigines throughout North America, with the exception—and it is hoped this is but temporary—of the Alaskan Eskimos and the still uncared-for Indian tribes of Alaska and Canada, should increase in numbers as well as in enlightenment. In reference to numbers, the enumerations that have been made in recent years, although not exact, seem to indicate a diminution in the rate of decrease, if not a positive advance. In the case of most of the Indian tribes north of Mexico the change from a free life, passed to a large extent in tents or temporary homes, to an inactive, sedentary existence, mostly on reservations, and the influences of house-life without a knowledge of sanitary conditions was a most severe one. The adverse results of this change, it is probable, are not yet past, but the rate of decrease in numbers resulting from it appears to be diminishing. Aside from the comparative suddenness with which the Indian has been forced to change his ways of thinking and living, it must be confessed that there is something inherent in his mental qualities that makes him unduly resistant to progress. As a race it is not to be hoped that he can ever be placed on really equal terms with the white man.

The total aboriginal population of North America in 1900, as nearly as it is now practicable to ascertain, is shown in the following table:

Eskimos. Canada, Arctic coast 1,000

Newfoundland (Labrador coast) 800

United States, Alaska (1890) 14,000

————

Total Eskimo population, about 15,800

Indians. Canada 99,010

United States, exclusive of Alaska 270,544

United States Alaska 15,500

Mexico (1895) 5,000,000

Central America (largely estimated) 1,600,000

————

Total Indian population, about 6,985,054

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Total aboriginal population, about 7,000,800

In this enumeration no account is taken of the Indians of the West Indies, for the reason, so far as can be learned, that there are few, if any, of pure blood remaining.

LITERATURE

Vast stores of information concerning the aborigines of America have been published by the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.; the Peabody Museum of Archæology, Cambridge, Mass.; the American Museum of Natural History, New York, N. Y.; the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, Ill.; and in the American Archæologist, a monthly magazine now printed by Putnam's Sons, New York.

Readily accessible books relating to the Eskimos of Alaska are:

Dall, W. H. Alaska and its Resources. Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1870.

Petroff, Ivan. Reports on the Population, Resources, etc., of Alaska. In the reports of the tenth and eleventh censuses of the United States.

The condition of the Indians in the United States during the past half century is recorded in the annual reports on Indian affairs published by the Department of the Interior, Washington, D. C. Similar information concerning the natives of Canada may be found in the reports on Indian affairs issued by the Canadian Government at Ottawa.

Of the numerous books on ethnology in which the relation of the aborigines of America to other peoples is discussed, perhaps the most useful to the general reader is A. H. Keane's Man Past and Present, printed at the University Press, Cambridge, England.

Of the many attractive books of travel in which the Indians of Mexico and Central America and the ruins, etc., of the same region are described, the most readily accessible are: John L. Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 2 vols., and his Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 2 vols., published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1867-'68; and W. H. Holmes's Archæological Studies among the Ancient Cities of Mexico, published by the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, 1897.