Description:

Native American



Native Americans Supporter Urges Trial of Carl Schurz’s Plan for Assimilation

The unidentified author of this manuscript clearly condemns former U.S. policy toward Native Americans and urges that Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz’s plan be given a fair trial.

 

[NATIVE AMERICAN.] “The Indian Problem,” Manuscript Document, [c. 1880]. 6 pp., 7.625" x 12.5". Expected folds; browning on first page, otherwise very good.

 

Excerpts

“The Indian problem, or what is to be done with the Indians is a question that has occupied the minds of the most eminent of our statesmen and legislators for a long time in the past, and it will continue to be agitated for a long time in the future, unless our government speedily changes its policy towards the Indians.”

 

“In the past, the treatment of the Indians by our government has been simply outrageous. They once occupied the whole continent but step by step they have been driven to the far west, and in many cases forced to abandon their cultivated farms which were of course seized by some of the unscrupulous whites.”

 

“The speech of Standing Bear before the committee of the Senate is a sufficient comment upon the actions of the whites. he said ‘The white men tell us one thing and write another.’ While this method of treatment is carried on what can we expect but wars with the Indians, who in many cases have right on their side.”

 

“In many other instances they have been removed from fertile lands to the Indian territory and there left to die either by starvation or disease, then if they attempt to leave their reservation and return to their lands it is only to meet Death in a swifter and quite as deadly a form. They are regarded as outlaws, the troops are ordered out and they are either compelled to return to their reservations, some of their leaders perhaps being executed, or they may wage hopeless and unavailing battle against the whites until the last one of their number falls.”

 

“I should think that the Government would perceive that they have followed the old course long enough, and that it is time some new method be proposed, and the negociation carried on with the Ute Indians by Sec. Schurz comes about as near the solution of the problem as any that have been brought forward.”

 

“The plan of Sec. Schurz is to give to each head of a family 320 acres of land and 160 acres to each single person. This land is to be selected by the Indians in certain named locations, patents for these lands are to be issued by the government to the Indians severally, this doing away with the old system of giving to the whole tribe.”

 

“Then in order that they may not be cheated out of their lands by the whites, they are not at liberty to dispose of their lands for 25 years, neither are they to be taxed for that period. This will bring the Indians under the protection of the laws and at the same time render them subject to them. The Indian becomes a property holder and rightly a citizen of the United States. In time it will render the Indians self supporting, instead of being objects of charity, as they are at present.”

 

“harsh measures with the Indians are always productive of evil results.”

 

“This plan of Sec Schurz is a grand one and he deserves great credit for it and if it can only be carried out successfully, the same method should be tried with the other tribes and this will probably settle the long discussed question, ‘What to do with the Indians.”

 

Historical Background

In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed German-born Carl Schurz (1829-1906) as Secretary of the Interior. During his tenure, Schurz successfully resisted attempts, supported by General William T. Sherman, to return the Office of Indian Affairs to the War Department, where it had been from 1824 to 1849, to simplify the “pacification” program preferred by many military officers.

 

In July 1881, Schurz published “Present Aspects of the Indian Problem,” in the North American Review. Schurz began his article with the assertion, “That the history of our Indian relations presents, in great part, a record of broken treaties, of unjust wars, and of cruel spoliation, is a fact too well known to require proof or suffer denial.” In the article, he addressed the question, “What is to become of the Indian?” and proposed a system of “civilization” or assimilation. Some of Schurz’s ideas about deeding land to individual Native Americans who would become American citizens found expression in the Dawes Act passed by Congress in 1887.

 

 



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