APPENDIX C.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF INDIAN COMMISSIONERS AT THE NINETEENTH LAKE MOHONK INDIAN CONFERENCE.

[Addresses and proceedings which concern the Indians are included in this appendix.]

First session, Wednesday, October 16, 1901.

The Nineteenth Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian was called to order after morning prayers, which were conducted by Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, at 10 a. m. Wednesday, October 16, 1901. The guests were welcomed by Mr. A. K. Smiley, the generous host of the occasion, in the following words:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The time has arrived for the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Friends of the Indian. I am not sure but we shall have to change that name. These friends are friends of other peoples besides the Indians. I can not begin to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to welcome you here. To see a company of men and women, with earnest hearts and clear brains, coming together to discuss the elevation of different races of people, and the best way of doing it, is to me an intense delight. I believe all good causes can be best promoted by the friendly, earnest, open discussion of people holding different views, comparing notes, and then arriving at some conclusion. We have always had open and free discussion here, and at the end we have come to some conclusion in which we could agree, owing to the fact that there were peacemakers as well as wise heads among us.

I have great hopes for the success of this conference. There are here this morning just an even hundred invited guests, with about fifty yet to come. There are two hundred and thirty-one regular guests of the house also here an unusual number at this time of the year. I am afraid that we may have to put our conference off later another year, because we do not like to turn away people who want to attend it.

It has been thought best that the Indian question should not monopolize the whole three days of the meeting. A great many matters which needed attention eighteen years ago have been settled now, so that the need of an Indian conference is not so strong as it was; but other questions have come up which are very important, such as Porto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii, about which we ought to confer, and time will be given for that.

It is important that we have a good presiding officer, and I have always assumed the privilege of nominating one. We have had one man who has served us admirably for some years, and I have no doubt that it will meet with your full approval when I again nominate as our presiding officer Dr. Merrill E. Gates, secretary of the Board of Indian Commissioners.

The motion was seconded, and Dr. Gates was unanimously elected.
Dr. Gates took the chair and called for further organization.

On motion of Mr. Philip C. Garrett, the following secretaries were elected in the order named: Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, Mr. Joshua W. Davis, Mrs. George H. Knight. On motion of Mr. Charles F. Meserve, Mr. Frank Wood, of Boston, who, as was said, has served the conference faithfully for eleven years in that capacity, was elected treasurer.

On motion of Mr. James Talcott, the following-named persons were elected a business committee: Dr. Lyman Abbott, Dr. Addison P. Foster, Mr. Daniel Smiley, Mr. Lucien C. Warner, Mr. D. W. McWilliams, Mr. Philip C. Garrett, Mr. Darwin Ř. James, and Gen. T. J. Morgan.

On motion of Hon. W. W. Beardshear, Mr. William H. McElroy was elected press reporter.

On motion of Dr. H. B. Frissell, the following publication committee was elected: Mrs. I. C. Barrows, Mr. Joshua W. Davis, and Mr. Frank Wood.

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The following address was delivered by Dr. Gates, the presiding officer:
THE NEXT STEPS TO BE TAKEN.

Aadress of the President, Merrill E. Gates, LL. D., of the Board of Indian Commissioners. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FRIENDS OF THE INDIANS, AND MEMBERS OF THE MOHONK CONFERENCE: Once more, in response to the hospitable invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, we are met at Mohonk to take counsel together for the welfare of the Indians. The beauty of the autumn time renews itself no more unfailingly than does the gracious and hearty welcome of our host to his annual guests. The beauty of the autumn does not pall with added years; but all the glories of the autumn time are suggestive of fruit, and our conferences here, beautiful as they are in their setting of natural scenery, and gracious and delightful as they are in their social intercourse and their ennobling friendships, do not exist primarily and chiefly for these social and aesthetic delights. The rich colors of autumn and its falling foliage bear witness to a period of life which has been used in producing fruit and enriching other lives; and so it passes in serene beauty, its mission accomplished. And all our conferences here, to those of us who have known them for almost a score of years now, are valued and have become beautiful in memory not chiefly for the gracious charm which has marked our intercourse here, but by the fruitage of ennobling friendship in our united helpful effort to uplift and enrich the life of the less favored and belated races of our country.

PROGRESS ALREADY MADE.

Much has been accomplished in these eighteen years. In the autumn or 1884, when I was first present at a Mohonk Indian conference, the only original Americans had no rights before the law. They were without citizenship, and they could not possibly become citizens. They had no homes. No way was open to them by which they might enter into the life of our people. There was no door of hope for the Indian. A severalty bill to give them homes, which had been outlined and urged by the Board of Indian Commissioners as early as 1870, did not become a law until 1886. There was no adequate system of Government schools; and the mission schools and contract schools of the different denominations reached but a small fraction of the Indian children of school age.

But

Now about 60,000 of the Indians have become citizens under the severalty act. If we except the 20,000 Navaho, there is almost enough of opportunity at Indian schools for all the Indian children of school age. The average of attendance at Indian schools is approximating that of the average schools for whites in our country. The number of Indians who are dependent upon rations is decreasing from year to year, and should be still more rapidly diminished. Wars between Indians and the United States Government are at an end, as we believe. And we dare to hope that there will not be much more even of bloody rioting on the part of Indians against the authorities. The regulations of the civil service have removed from the problem many of the evils connected with inexperience and incapacity on the part of teachers and employees in the service. There is no longer a "clean sweep "for partisan reasons after each general election. The service still suffers terribly from the appointment of incapable and worthless agents by local and political influence, and purely from partisan considerations. we remember that in 1892 Theodore Roosevelt, then Civil Service Commissioner, and an interested participant in this conference at Mohonk, said that the President of the United States, while he could not by his own act put Indian agents under the civil-service law, could, if he chose, put an end to many of the evils attaching to the present system of appointing agents by declaring that he would not nominate as Indian agent any man whose fitness for the service had not been tested and approved by examination or by some competent commission; and we have confidence that Theodore Roosevelt, as President of the United States, knowing the actual condition of affairs upon our Western Indian reservations by personal observation as no other President has ever known them, in some way which shall commend itself to his sound judgment and his high principles, as President will carry into effect the reforms which, as Commissioner, he saw were so much needed in order to secure well-qualified and effective men as Indian agents, and to keep in positions where their experience will be of service to the nation and the Indians, the agents who show themselves capable.

REGULATIONS TO PROTECT THE FAMILY.

During this last year decided progress has been made in more than one line of effort that looks toward the solution of the Indian problem. Those of you who were present

at this conference a year ago remember how strongly your chairman insisted at that time upon the crying need of regulations for the licensing and solemnizing of Indian marriages, and for the making and keeping of a permanent record, at every agency, of family relations, and of births and deaths, as well as of marriages. If any others felt, as your chairman certainly felt (at the close of the session, in which the Commissioner of Indian Affairs had spoken to us in a way to command so fully the interest and the esteem of all who heard him make that address), that the chairman of the conference went to the extreme limit of the allowable in urging upon the Commissioner of Indian Affairs his personal responsibility for taking immediate action to carry into effect such a system of family records, we may say, in the circle of this conference, that the friendly challenge to act at once was taken up most cordially by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; and before your chairman and the Commissioner reached Washington, steps had been taken to prepare the necessary papers and blanks. The experienced head of a division in the Indian Bureau, Miss Cook, was named by Commissioner Jones to give especial attention to this matter. Members of the conference will be gratified to know that the entire system of instructions, forms and regulations requiring the licensing and solemnizing of marriages between the Indians, forbidding polygamous marriages, providing for the immediate registration of all families at each Indian agency, and for a permanent record of all births, marriages, and deaths, has gone into effect in the Indian service within the last two months. To Commissioner Jones (and to Miss Cook, of the Indian Bureau, to whose manifold duties the preparation and supervision of forms were added), belongs the credit for immediate and effective action along this important line. The Secretary of the Interior has given his hearty approval to the plan. We are anticipating with pleasure the presence of Commissioner Jones to speak to us at a subsequent session of this conference; and from him we shall hear in detail of the progress of the year in Indian affairs.

THE END OF "THE INDIAN SYSTEM" IS IN SIGHT.

Among the many matters connected with the Indian problem which interest us, and to which true friends of the Indian and lovers of their country must still give thought and steadfast effort, one or two subjects are so centrally, so supremely important, that I want to impress them especially upon your thought. I want to ask you, as leaders of public thought and shapers of public opinion, through the press, the pulpit, and the ever-widening influence which belongs to the intelligent womanhood of our land, to do all that lies in your power to stimulate thought, and to secure legislative and administrative action along these central lines.

CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCE OF TRIBAL FUNDS.

You know the intensely conservative force of vested funds in maintaining an established order of things. Many who are eager and strenuous in their efforts to influence men toward new and wiser courses of action seem to be struck with paralysis of awe when they contemplate millions of dollars which have been used in certain ways, and therefore, in the minds of many, always should be used in precisely the same way. When vast tracts of land and great sums of money are united in their force of inertia to perpetuate great abuses, all hope of change seems to die out of the hearts of many. The history of "mortmain," and its deadly conservative effect upon the life of certain European nations, is a notable case in point.

By the old system, in Indian affairs our National Government palavered and treated with the so-called "tribal governments" of Indians. This evil old system was based upon the idea of isolated reservation life for savages, while we pauperized them by feeding them rations in their laziness; and thus we cut off from civilization (not for the use of Indians, but merely as vacant "roaming ground," no longer hunting fields) vast realms of our territories, larger than States. Twenty years ago this system seemed solidly intrenched behind the conservative bulwarks of landed interests and great tribal funds.

The inertia and opposition to all reform which was inherent in the land system of the undivided reservation for the tribe we have successfully attacked by the severalty act. Nearly six thousand homestead farms and holdings have been carved out of a small fraction of the reservations. And the land still held by the Government for Indian reservations is greater in extent than the area of all the New England States, New York, New Jersey, and half of Pennsylvania. But by recognizing the individual Indian (instead of the tribe) in his right to hold and use land, we are steadily making of Indians self-supporting and home-loving citizens; while we are at the same time doing away with many of the evils of the reservation, and opening vast tracts of land to settlement and to the influence and example of American homes and civilized families.

TRIBAL FUNDS PREVENT PROGRESS.

The conservative influence of the vast tribal funds held in trust by the Government of the United States for Indians remains intact. Only those who watch attempted legislation and the efforts of claim agents for Indian tribes, can properly estimate the dead weight of inertia which often crushes attempts at reform in methods of dealing with the Indians, or the constant temptation to perversion of justice, which the maintenance of these unused funds inevitably stimulates. The influence of these funds is always felt in favor of perpetuating the worst abuses of the reservation system, with its issue of rations to able-bodied idlers, its favored and too often exorbitant agency traders, its long-perpetuated "annuity payments" in goods and in cash, its indefinitely prolonged period of helpless tutelage for Indian men and women who are not taught the proper use of money and property, by themselves using it, but become sadly familiar with its abuses by having it doled out to them in ways which render them still more helpless. When this conference and other friends of the Indian unite in asking that agencies pronounced by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to be no longer needed, and worse than useless, be abolished, the selfish interests of the localities where money from the tribal funds has been spent come to the front. Intense pressure is brought to bear upon Senators and Members of Congress to continue the agency with all its evils. This is not the place to recount_in detail the history, even of the last year, in respect to such recommendations. But here, as everywhere, the conservative force of these tribal funds in keeping "things as they are" and at their worst, in our Indian service, can hardly be overestimated. When Dickens satirized the delay-the "red tape," the deadly conservatism of "the circumlocution office"-in attacking the evils of chancery practice in England a generation ago, Americans used to feel thankful that in America such things were not possible. But those of us who at Washington watch the skill with which a system of "how not to do it" can be perpetuated by department methods, under the influence of the conservatism of great tribal funds, at times are tempted to feel that the worst enemy of reform for the Indians is the (sometimes unconscious) combination of well-meaning employees, who stand for doing things precisely as they have always been done, and shrewd intriguers-Indian and white-who wish tribal funds and Indian claims to be indefinitely perpetuated, that they may profit by the "system as it is."

(Here the speaker related incidents to illustrate his position.)

I ask you, then, how can the Indian take his place as an American citizen among American citizens, if the Government is to perpetuate indefinitely a system which holds him in tutelage (for his alleged interest), and administers vast tribal funds for him "as a ward?" Let the Government, as guardian, prepare to "give a final accounting" of what it has done with these trust funds of its ward. As fast as they come to years of discretion" let these so-called "wards" be intrusted with the management of their own property. And because the Indian tribe is neither a sound social group nor a political entity, let us cease to keep up the pretense that the Government can do good to Indians by dealing with the little groups of half-breeds, Indians, and "squaw men" (I use the term with an apology, but purposely, to indicate the whites who for interested reasons marry Indian women), whose corrupt and selfish use of the funds which come into their hands has been proved in so many cases and has brought "tribal councils" into contempt.

WHAT IS THE REMEDY? BREAK UP TRIBAL FUNDS.

Let the Government recognize the individual Indian in his right to his divided share of the tribal fund, as the Government has already recognized the individual Indian in his right to his divided share of the tribal land. A law can be and should be devised (and such a law should be speedily enacted) by which a date should be fixed (for each tribe) after which no more children shall be born into such tribal relations as will give them the right to an undivided share in tribal funds. Let no Indian child born after that date have any share in tribal funds, except as he may inherit, under the laws of the State or Territory in which he resides, the right to a part of his father's or his mother's individual holding of a share of those funds.

The system of family records at agencies, for which the Board of Indian Commissioners has earnestly called for the last two years, within the last three months has been put into operation. Wherever the Government has sought to divide tribal funds in the past, the first great difficulty has been to secure a trustworthy list of those who were entitled to a share in such division. The system of family records at each agency, this year inaugurated by the Department, if faithfully carried out, will at once give a basis for such a complete list in the case of each tribe.

OUTLINE OF THE NEEDED LAW.

My idea of a general plan for breaking up tribal funds is something like this: Let a list of all those in a tribe who are entitled to a share in such a tribal fund at a given date be prepared and filed; and let a general law provide that, on that date, the whole fund for that tribe (possibly with such reservations for educational and tax-paying purposes as may be wise and consistent with the equities of the spirit and intent that governed the treaty) be divided into individual holdings, and let each member of the tribe who is entitled, on that date, to a share in the fund, be credited with his divided and individual share. Let no children born after that date have any share, save as they inherit from their parents or older relatives, under the laws of the State or Territory in which they reside. Let these individual holdings stand to the credit of individual Indians upon the books of the agency, and upon the books of the Department and the Treasury. This means some increase in clerical force at Washington, but the expense in salaries for such an increase of clerical force for a short time would be as nothing compared to the money that is annually wasted in "keeping the system as it is." Let authority be given by law to the Secretary of the Interior, upon recommendation of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to fix a date for each tribe at which these individual holdings shall be paid to the individual Indians in whose name they stand on the Treasury books. Such a date might be fixed for the entire tribe in numerous instances, and payments might be made to all immediately. The Indians of several tribes are now prepared to use well such payments. In the case of other tribes it might be wiser to fix a date on which all Indians who can meet certain prescribed tests of intelligence, and so manifest a fitness to manage their own affairs, should be paid each his own individual share, while the other members of the tribe should receive each his own share as rapidly as he might be able to meet similar tests. In this way we should soon see "the beginning of the end" of that injurious system by which the United States Government holds and administers great sums of money for a peculiarly pampered, exceptionally favored body of native Americans. Of course, some Indians would at once waste the money they received. But added years of observation are bringing friends of the Indian to the unanimous conviction that Indians can not learn to swim successfully in the tides of civilization if they "never go near the water." We are all settling into the conviction that there is but one way for people to learn how to use property, and that is by using it. The Government may deem it best to make some provision by which Indian holders of allotted lands may have at least a portion of the regular county, State, and Territorial taxes upon their lands paid for them during the period of protected title, so that there may no longer be a harsh division of interests between Indian settlers untaxed and the neighboring white settlers, who alone are now taxed for local government and local improvements which are of benefit to Indians and whites alike. Is there any wiser way to fit the Indian for citizenship than by intrusting to him (with such limitations as have been indicated above) his own money, to be used in his own way? When the few years needed to inaugurate such a system shall have passed, there will be comparatively few Indians under 40 years of age who have not had some instruction in our schools. The process of education by contact with whites, melancholy as are some of its results, goes forward, and must go forward, and upon the whole does good. We are entirely convinced that the Government should break up tribal funds into individual holdings, and should bring the Indians as rapidly as possible under the civilizing influence of our American public schools, where Indian and white children can mingle, and of local government and good fellowship in neighborly interests. This participation in our American life will fit Indians for citizenship more rapidly and better than any other instrumentality which could be devised.

CHECK THE LEASING OF INDIAN LANDS; STOP RATIONS FOR THE IDLE.

Certain groups of Indians who ten years ago were working upon their own land are now leasing their lands, securing enough yearly rental to supply them with the mere necessities of life, and not doing a stroke of work for the last few years. We are thus sending them back to barbarism, by allowing them to lease their lands. We had lifted them a little way by land and labor; we are letting them fall back again. From the issue of rations, from a share in "annuity payments," and from leasing their lands they get enough to enable them to live in idleness. The necessity of working if one would eat-the great fundamental discipline of civilized life— we deprive them of. While you seek to inculcate sound ideas as to the breaking up of tribal funds, will you not in these next months use all your influence to direct public thought to the danger and evils which attend that reckless leasing of Indian