In this way drunkenness is common among the men, with ruinous effects. This is their greatest existing curse. Lately, after ages of oppression and abuse by the Japanese, Christian influence has begun for them and with them an upward movement. There is now an Ainu Improvement Society in Sapporo, the capital of the Hokkaido. Not long before leaving Japan, I was told that twenty Ainu families have recently asked, and had granted to them by the authorities, land in severalty. They have, in consequence, little farms of 124 acres each, on which they can live. Let us hope that their rescue from extinction may yet be one of the triumphs of Christianity. Mr. PHILIP C. GARRETT. The business committee has directed me to report several resolutions, apart from the platform, which will be offered for adoption by the conference. These are resolutions which have been referred to the business committee. "Resolved, That it be referred to a committee to be appointed by the chair to inquire whether any adequate official compilation of the laws and decisions affecting Indians exists suitable to aid the duties of judges, attorneys, commissioners, and Indian agents, and to report whether anything further would be useful to that purpose. "Resolved, That the same committee be requested to arrange for the preparation of a short code of laws for Alaska, or to report on the expediency and the method of procuring such a code." On motion this resolution was adopted. "Resolved, That a committee of five be appointed by the chair to consider and report what legislation is necessary to effectuate the foregoing resolution. Resolved, That said committee shall ascertain what rules and regulations, if any, have been adopted by the Secretary of the Interior under and pursuant to the authority conferred on him under the recent act of Congress in reference to selling and leasing Indian lands, with power to recommend to him such revision, alteration, or additions as said committee may deem advisable. "Resolved, That the alienation by sale or otherwise of lands held in severalty by Indians should be regulated and governed, as far as practicable, by the same rules and principles that are applicable to the alienation of lands held by whites under age, and not otherwise." On motion this resolution was adopted. "Resolved, We urge upon Congress the necessity of such legislation as shall secure to Mr. Duncan and his colonists on Annette Island in Alaska the benefits of a townsite law so framed as to secure to them each a title to the land upon such town site as shall be adapted to their present circumstances, and without impairing their rights of possession in the island under existing laws." Adopted. The platform was then read, and after an hour's discussion, during which some verbal changes were made, it was, on motion, adopted seriatim and as a whole. It is as follows: THE MOHONK PLATFORM. The Mohonk Conference has now completed twelve years of work in the Indian reform. In this period a large advance has been made. The interest of the nation in the condition of the Indian has been greatly increased. Legislation has been secured of great value, culminating in the severalty law, the happy result of which will be to break up the reservation system and make the Indian a citizen. Great principles have been established. This conference regards it as settled that the Indian is to be treated as a man, and ought to be put on the footing of other men. The unfortunate relation which he has held as a ward of the nation is a relation which is incompatible with his manhood, and should be brought to an end as soon as possible. We believe the Indian has all the natural qualifications necessary for his education, civilization, and Christianization; and we are satisfied that, while we must be careful not to deprive him of his rights, we must be equally careful not to pauperize nor enervate him by undue paternalism. New needs are constantly arising; and there is undoubtedly work still for all friends of the Indian in carrying out the principles already established to their logical results. We find that, in the actual condition of the Indian, much yet remains to be done to secure him his rights, and to give him a proper place in the land as a man, a citizen, and a brother. The widespread corruption existing in the Indian Territory, as the result of its present autonomous reservation system, should excite alarm and indignation in the minds of all good citizens. We earnestly hope that the measures now being taken by the Government to induce the Five Civilized Tribes to take land in severalty and exchange their tribal governments for a Territorial government may prove successful. Recent laws permitting Indians to lease their lands are widely resulting in dispossessing ignorant Indians of their property rights, without an adequate return, to We recom their great disadvantage and the enriching of designing white men. mend, therefore, that the law be so modified as to render it possible for Indians to sell or lease their lands only by permission of a judge of the United States district court, upon the same principles which protect the lands of minor heirs among the whites from alienation. We regard it as of the utmost importance that the Indian be encouraged to support himself and his family by work. On this account we depreciate present conditions tending to make the Indian a pauper, such as issuing rations and annuities, and the lack of work and of markets for Indian productions. We commend the efforts of organizations and of individuals to provide work and markets, and we believe that rations and annuities should be discontinued as rapidly as proper equivalents can be provided. We reiterate the affirmation of our platform of 1893, that, from funds now held by the United States or hereafter created for the benefit of the Indians, provision should be made by law for their fair share of the expense of local improvement and taxes, that these burdens may not rest unjustly on the communities and States which include in their territory the lands of Indians who hold under a protected title and are exempt from taxation. We are glad to learn that the Secretary of the Interior has expressed his purpose to suggest to Congress at the coming session the passage of an act to define the duties, powers, and duration of office of the superintendent of Indian schools, thereby removing the office from the crippling influence of the spoils system, and securing men of the highest educational ability. Such a law would tend to place the Indian schools in a condition of efficiency equal to that of the best public schools in the land. The salary of this office should be commensurate with its importance. We regret that it has been recently reduced to a point wholly inadequate. The severalty law, and other reforms inaugurated for the benefit of the Indians, are effective chiefly as they are executed by fit men. It is of the utmost importance at this juncture that Indian and allotting agents be men of stanch integrity and high character. Their tenure of office should not be subject to political changes. We therefore urge, in order that the best men possible be secured, that larger salaries be paid, and that the administration select these agents, in accordance with the spirit of the civil-service law, for their fitness only. We further respectfully urge the President of the United States to extend by Executive order the operation of the civil-service law to the positions of disciplinarian, assistant matron, farmer, and industrial teacher, in the Indian service; also, that agents' clerks and those of bonded superintendents of schools should be selected by the agents and superintendents themselves. Our attention has been called to the needs of Alaska. This part of our country is peculiarly endangered from the introduction of intoxicating liquors among the Indians. We earnestly hope that the Government will appropriate a larger sum for the enforcement of law. A further appropriation is also essential to provide the natives with reindeer. We also urge larger appropriations for schools, and we recommend that the advantage of appropriations for agricultural stations be extended to Alaska as to the other Territories. Indian matters are now in a period of transition. The operation of the severalty law is steadily breaking up the reservation system and scattering Indians on individual holdings. The Indians are rapidly becoming citizens, with local rights and duties. In view of these facts some of the Indian agencies should now be discontinued, the district-school system should be introduced as rapidly as possible, and the time is coming when the Indian Bureau, as a distinct department of Government, may well be abolished, and the education of the Indian be placed where it naturally belongs in connection with the Bureau of Education, until it shall ultimately be relegated to the individual States. This conference unhesitatingly disapproves the continuance of all appropriation of public moneys for sectarian schools for the Indians, and it rejoices that several denominations have withdrawn their requests for such appropriations; and it earnestly expresses the hope that all other religious bodies now receiving aid will follow this example, and so affirm the distinctively American principle of separation between church and state. We strongly urge the religious denominations of this country thus released from the demands of the secular education of Indian youth to redouble their efforts in distinctively religious and moral work on behalf of the Indians. To recapitulate, we ask: (1) That the Five Civilized Tribes of the Indian Territory be persuaded to accept a Territorial government. (2) That the laws be modified so as to render it possible for Indians to sell or lease their lands only by permission of a judge of the United States district court. (3) That, as far as possible, work and markets be provided for Indians by organizations and individuals, and that rations and annuities be stopped as rapidly as a proper equivalent is provided. (4) That provision be made by law for meeting, from Indian funds, the expenses of local improvements and taxes which would naturally fall on Indians now made untaxable by law. (5) That the duties, powers, and duration of office of the superintendent of Indian schools be defined by law, and his salary be made adequate. (6) That the spirit of the civil-service reform should be applied in the appointment of Indian agents as well as other officials. (7) That larger appropriations be made to enforce law in Alaska, and also to provide reindeer for the natives. (8) That the work of transition be expedited by discontinuing some of the Indian agencies and introducing the district-school system among the Indians; while we look forward to the eventual abolition of the Indian Bureau and the relegation of Indian schools to the care of the individual States. (9) That all religious bodies now receiving Government aid for contract schools follow the example of other denominations in withdrawing their request for such aid, (10) That the religious bodies redouble their efforts in distinctively religious and moral work on behalf of the Indians. After the adoption of the platform, on motion of Judge Arnoux, it was voted that the chair should appoint a committee to wait on the President of the United States, and present to him a copy of the platform, and call his attention to its several features. The committee was afterwards appointed as follows: Gen. John Eaton, Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. Herbert Welsh, Dr. Lucien Warner, and Prof. C. C. Painter. The committee on changes in Indian laws was appointed as follows: Austin Abbott, Justice William Strong, Hon. Philip C. Garrett, Hon. Darwin R. James, and Judge Arnoux. On motion it was voted that Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows and Mr. Frank Wood, of Boston, should constitute a publication committee. The business committee announced that Miss Kate Foote, of Washington, would speak. Miss KATE FOOTE. We are about three hundred guests in the hotel this week, the majority of whom are invited here by Mr. Smiley. We all feel a deep sense of the favors extended to us, and I have been requested by the business committee to draw up a resolution which should be hard and soft, long and short, which should have no flattery in it, and yet should express the feelings of three hundred people for the time we are here. I have endeavored to do that. You will remark that the resolution is a solid little chunk in the middle, and I have to make remarks before it and after it, and then our president will read the resolution for your action. "The Twelfth Annual Conference comes to its close-golden, glowing, glorious in the matter of weather, of open fires, and the hospitality of our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Smiley. We can not include the clerk of the weather in our vote of thanks, because his office is beyond our reach; but we can think of him with gratitude as we remember how the clouds rolled away on Wednesday afternoon, and we were able to see how Mr. Smiley holds an elevated position in the world, and likes to draw others up to the same plane with himself. Therefore "Resolved, That we desire, as we think of the hospitality that has been given us, to thank our host and hostess-to say how comfortable we have been made, and that we appreciate the manner in which we have been ministered to, both mentally and physically, so that we go away full fed both in our inner and outer man.” Is that a sufficiently bald, unfulsome statement of the fact that we have been entertained like princes, and that the only thing we have listened to with sorrow is that Mr. Smiley was obliged by vote, in the early days of the conference, to limit the meeting to three days, instead of giving it the week he desired? The resolution was seconded in a witty speech by Mr. W. H. McElroy, of New York, who expressed the warmest feelings of gratitude on behalf of the conference to Mr. and Mrs. Smiley. Dr. CUYLER. Mohonk is an irresistible magnetic mountain. It is a very favorite resort with me, and I do love that man (Mr. Smiley) as if I were his very twin brother. And it is sweet and delightful to have two or three days of fellowship with the choice spirits that gather round this council board. "Many are called, few are choice;" that is the right reading of that passage. I do not believe that in our land there are any more thoroughly unselfish hearts than throb together here right around this table. Bear in mind that you gather here simply as the executors of the Lord Jesus Christ, to act in reference to that legacy which he has committed to you, of those far-away, vanishing children of his out yonder on the plains and prairies. The Indian gives you no retainer. No Indian voice has ever yet been heard in the halls of Congress, and the political bearing of the Indian vote weighs In this short address I say that "no Indian voice has been heard in Congress." Mr. Curtis, of Kansas, had an Indian mother; but his father was a white man. So he is not really an Indian, in the proper sense of the word.-T. L. C. less than nothing. Yet here you come, beloved ones, year after year, just to put up a lightning-rod towards heaven, to avert the righteous vengeance of Almighty God for the wrongs and humiliations and outrages exercised on his children. That is what calls you here. And the reward comes from Him who saith, "Inasmuch as you do it to these my poor, tawny-faced children, you do it unto me." And so, beloved friends, in God's name I bless you with such benediction as I can give you. Seventy-eight years ago, in the valley of the Mohawk, my father helped to bear a part in the funerai of Skenandoa, a famous Oneida chief, who was known as the "white man's friend." The boot was on the other leg then. It was the white man that needed the Indian as his friend; and it was old Skenandoa who uttered that exquisite bit of eloquence by the council fire when he said, "I am an aged hemlock. The winds of nearly a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I am dead at the top." My native county of Cayuga contains the only monument ever reared on American soil to an Indian. In that cemetery of Auburn, a few yards from the grave of William H. Seward, is a tablet on a monument, "Who mourns for Logan?" Not one. My native county has erected a solid obelisk in memory of the man who was also "the white man's friend." As I look at these blessed white heads and at that grand old Senator to whom the red men of the land would build a monument if they had the opportunity to do it, I say to you, "Come back again, come back again every year, brethren, friends of the Indian and of Jesus Christ.' Don't go home, Whittlesey, for I feel about you as old Father Taylor did when he was brought near heaven, and was worrying a little on his dying bed, and some one said to him, "Don't you be worried; you will soon be among the angels." "What do I care for that?" said the old man, "I would a great deal rather be here among folks." And so, good friends, let us not be in a hurry to go there. It is good to stay down here among folks, such folks as our beloved brother Smiley welcomes with his great heart to his hospitable hearthstone year after year. So let our hearts throb together as we say good night. Miss Foote's resolution was then unanimously passed. Mr. A. K. SMILEY. I thank you most cordially for your kind words, but especially do I thank you for coming here. I hope that you may come year after year until this whole Indian question is settled, until all the Indians have their full rights, as we have. I propose to keep up these conferences so long as I live, and, if I am taken away, they will be continued after me until the Indians are put on a firm, solid basis. Sometimes I take command of this house, and I propose to do it now. I think that the gentleman who has so successfully presided over you is entitled to our warmest thanks, and also that business committee who have kept at work so many hours to make this conference a success is also entitled to thanks, to our gratitude. I would move, therefore, that the thanks of the conference be given to the president, to the business committee, and to the secretaries. The motion was put by the Rev. Dr. McArthur and was unanimously carried. The president acknowledged the courtesy in a few words, and the evening's exercises were closed by the recitation by Miss Edna Dean Proctor of a poem called The Captive's Hymn, written by herself upon an incident that occurred at the close of the French war, about 1764. The conference adjourned sine die, after the singing of "God be with us till we meet again," and the benediction. With reference to monuments to Indians the editor has collected the following facts: On the council-house grounds at Glen Iris there is a monument to Mary Jemison, a white woman, who was captured by the Indians when she was a little girl, and adopted by them. She was twice married, each time to an Indian chief. Her home was on the Gardeau Reservation, a tract of 17,927 aores, which was deeded to her by the Indians in 1797. There is a monument to Logan (Tah-goh-jute) in the cemetery at Auburn, Cayuga County, N. Y., a plain, pyramidal shaft of rough stone. In 1891 a monument was erected to Red Jacket (So-go-ya-wat-ha) at Canoga, Seneca County, N. Y., which is claimad to be his birthplace. A monument was also recently erected to Red Jacket in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, about which lie his remains and those of five other Indian chiefs. LIST OF MEMBERS. Abbott, Mr. and Mrs. Austin, 16 East Sixty-fourth street, New York City. Abbott, Rev. Dr. Lyman, editor Outlook, New York City, and Mrs. Lyman, 110 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, N. Y. Arbuckle, John, 315 Clinton avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y. Armstrong, Miss, Hampton, Va. Arnoux, Hon. and Mrs. William H., 110 Madison avenue, New York City. Austin, Mrs. L., 891 Prospect street, Cincinnati, Ohio. Avery, Miss Myra H., 137 Academy street, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Avery, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel P., 4 East Thirty-eighth street, New York City. Bailey, Mrs. Hannah J., superintendent World's and National W. C. T. U., Department Peace and Arbitration, Winthrop Center, Me. Barrows, Mrs. Isabel C., Christian Register, Boston, Mass. Beard, Rev. Dr. A. F., corresponding secretary American Missionary Association, Bible House, New York City. Behrends, Rev. Dr. and Mrs. A. J. F., 131 Herkimer street, Brooklyn, N. Y. Bourke, Capt. John C., United States Army, Fort Ethan Allen, Vt. Browning, Mr. and Mrs. E. F., 18 West Fifty-first street, New York City. Bruce, Rev. James M., associate pastor Memorial Baptist Church, New York City, and Mrs. James M., Yonkers, N. Y. Bryan, Rev. C. B., Hampton Normal Institute, Hampton, Va. Bullard, Mrs. Elizabeth L., president Massachusetts Indian Association, Boston, Mass. Burke, Mrs. William L., 61 Prospect Place, Brooklyn, N. Y. Capen, Dr. Frank S., principal State Normal School, North Paltz, N. Y. Carter, Miss Sybil, 22 Bible House, New York City. Chickering, Prof. J. W., National Deaf-mute College, Washington, D. C. Cleaveland, Miss Abby E., first vice-president Poughkeepsie Indian Association, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Cornelius, Miss, Indian nurse, New Haven, Conn. Cornell, Miss Amy, Clifton Springs, N. Y. Crannell, Mrs. W. W., president Albany Indian Association, 9 Hall place, Albany, N.Y. Crawford, Mr. and Mrs. Hanford, Atlantic Highlands, N. Y. Cumings, Misses H. P. and M. E., New York City. Cuyler, Rev. Dr. Theodore L., Brooklyn, N. Y. Davis, Mrs. Joshua W., Newton, Mass. Dawes, Hon. and Mrs. Henry L., Pittsfield, Mass. Dawes, Miss Anna L., Pittsfield, Mass. Dennison, Rev. Dr. and Mrs. J. H., Williamstown, Mass. Dewey, Miss Mary E., corresponding secretary Massachusetts Indian Association, Boston, Mass. Donaldson, Col. Thomas, Washington, D. C. Dorchester, Dr. Daniel, Washington, D. C. Dowling, Rev. Dr. and Mrs. George Thomas, Brookline, Mass. Dunning, Rev. Dr. A. E., editor Congregationalist, and Mrs. A. E., Boston, Mass. Eaton, Gen. and Mrs. John, Marietta, Ohio. Fetterolf, Mr. A. H., president Girard College, and Mrs. A. H., Philadelphia, Pa. Field, Mr. Franklin, Troy, N. Y. Field, Rev. Dr. Henry M., editor the Evangelist, New York City. Fisk, Mrs. Clinton B., president Methodist Women's Home Missionary Society, New York City, Seabright, N. J. Fisk, Mrs. James C., corresponding secretary Cambridge Indian Association Cambridge, Mass. Folsom, Miss Cora M., Hampton, Va. Foote, Miss Kate, president Indian Association, Washington, D. C. (Guilford, Conn.). Foster, Hon. and Mrs. John D., Bangor, Me. Foster, Rev. Dr. A. P., Eastern editor the Advance, Boston, Mass. Fountain, Mr. and Mrs. Gideon, 34 East Sixty-fourth street, New York City. Foxcroft, Mr. Frank, editor Boston Journal, and Mrs. Frank, Boston, Mass. Frissell, Rev. Dr. H. B., principal Hampton Industrial School, and Mr. H. B., Hampton, Va. Frye, Mrs. Myra E., president Maine Indian Association, Woodfords, Me. |