our hope that, being in Washington, he would be able to further this legislation, and I trust that may prove to be the case yet. In his still higher exaltation to the Presidency of the United States he will be able to further such legislation, and his study of this subject, albeit somewhat limited hitherto, will lead him to see that the same line of treatment is now needed for the Indians of the whole country—that is, the destruction of all reservations and the conversion of the Indians into citizens, and their absorption as members of the entire body politic of the United States. That is what we now want. In my estimation the Indians are all nearly ready for citizenship. I believe the great majority might safely be made citizens. Of course there are backward tribes, but I believe that even in those cases there would be less suffering from their conversion into citizens and the destruction of the present old and complex system than from the great expense to the people of the United States by the retention of that system. It would cause less injury to the country than we suffer all the time from a lot of rowdy, lazy, loafing white people in the western country. If it were not for the patronage system, I think the Indians would have made much further preparation for citizenship. Patronage is the curse of the United States. You can not get a reservation abolished because some member of Congress wishes to hold on to it for those to whom he owes his position in Congress. This is the principal source of the retardation of the Indians in their progress toward citizenship. The church may well add to her prayers, "From the evils of patronage, good Lord, deliver us; from the despotism of agencies, deliver us, good Lord."

The agent is an absolute autocrat on his reservation. The progress of the Indian toward civilization is blocked by the agency. Why can we not get rid of them? Toward that we should bend our energies. This question of the New York Indians is only a trifling illustration of the need of that. The reservation system is a hindrance to the advance of civilization. It is preposterous in a State like this. The Indians have made scarcely any progress in a hundred years, and yet some of them are as well prepared for citizenship as many of the farmers around them.

With Dr. Gates I enjoyed a visit to the reservations this last summer, and we were much interested to observe that among the best of the Indians there was manifest preparation for citizenship, almost equal to that of the white people about them. We visited a number of houses of farmers where the evidences of intelligence, of education, and taste for art were manifest. Some of them had pianos in their parlors, and their conversation indicated that they had been to schools and colleges, and it really seemed absurd to think of them on any theory as savages, and as though these reservations must be kept up.

I am inclined to believe that we have reached a time when we ought to look forward to the entire abolition of the Indian system at an early day. We want an emancipation proclamation which at a stroke can set free the Indian peoples and let them be self-dependent and subject to all the penalties, privileges, and immunities of the laws of the United States. I think we should do all we can to bring that about.

CONTINUING THE 'INDIAN SYSTEM" INDEFINITELY WILL DO MORE HARM THAN WOULD FOLLOW ITS IMMEDIATE ABOLITION.

The PRESIDENT. Each added week of attention to this subject convinces me that if the entire Indian Bureau could be speedily done away with we should risk vastly less than I used to think we should. I believe that we should risk less than we risk by perpetuating the present system if within the next five years the whole Indian system could be swept away. I doubt if there is a tribe now in any State or Territory in the Union which within the next five years could not be put under the operation of the laws of the State or Territory and the local administration of the counties where they now live, and have land allotted them, with better results upon the whole than will follow if they are left as they now are. We must certainly face the problem.

May I add a word about New York? I visited not only the Cattaraugus and Allegheny reservations, but also the Tonawandas and the Onondagas last summer. While on this trip I was interested in looking up a little mission church where a missionary whom I knew in my boyhood had earlier preached to the Indians, sixty years ago and more. Fully three generations ago there was a little Presbyterian church for Indians in that neighborhood. But you can still find pagan customs there. You will find there many Indians as well qualified to manage their own property as are the members of this conference. Still, they are herded together there as Indians, and paganism is perpetuated in the heart of the Empire State. Let in the law! Establish homesteads and homes! Allot land, and make self-respecting citizens of these people, too long "coddled" by a special system!

Beside the gospel, we need law. We need to make these men worth something

to the State, and to themselves as individual citizens. They need to manage their own property, and to learn to take their places as American citizens. Let the end

come soon.

ADDRESS OF MR. A. K. SMILEY.

I think Mr. Garrett has struck the right chord-the great danger from a continuance of the reservations. The men in office in Washington, in the Indian Bureau, and in the Indian agencies want this system to be perpetual, and the politicians want it so that they can distribute positions for political work, for there are many offices to fill. We are going to have a tremendous struggle to get rid of the Indian reservation and of the Indian Bureau. We recommended last year that ten or more agencies should be given up, but we got rid of only three. I had a letter from Mr. Murray, who says the question has come up in Oklahoma. If an Indian has taken up land in severalty he has become a United States citizen, and can vote or do anything that any other citizen can do; yet in Oklahoma the agent takes those Indians and manages them as in the old times. He takes charge of their property, leases their land, prevents them from going off the reservation; they are not allowed to vote, and they are treated exactly as in old times, so that the Indians are worse off than before. That ought not to be. These Indians lease their land and go off and live in a tent, putting their children into boarding schools, and live themselves like savages. Such Indians should be thrown into deep water and left to swim. I wish the moneys that the Indians got from the sales of land could be lost this year, every penny, and let them work or starve, those who have able bodies. This pampering of Indians is an error. I am more and more convinced of it. You can never civilize the Indians until they work for their own living. Colonel Pratt is right. The more I see the more I believe this. The tendency of benevolent people is to give them land. How many of our poor white people have land and homes? Why should they be treated in a different way? A man who can earn $1.25 a day and will not do anything but smoke and drink and gamble and lean against the fence in summer, then when winter comes let him starve; he deserves it. You will never make the Indian worth anything so long as you pamper and feed him. I don't believe in their renting their land. It ought to be stopped. Then there is the question of land for which there is no title. Out of 800 allotments to the Pawnees, over 300 are now vacant. The United States must find some way of disposing of that land. I repeat that I believe in throwing the Indian into deep water and letting him swim.

The CHAIRMAN. When you see this state of mind produced on this man of peace, you can imagine how deep the evils must be.

Mr. SMILEY. If we had such women as Miss Collins, with her kind heart and good sense, all over the land, we should have little difficulty. The trouble is, we have to deal with politicians.

He was followed by Rev. H. B. Frissell, D. D., principal of Hampton Institute, Va. Rev. H. B. FRISSELL, D. D. I think the wisdom of Mr. Smiley in opening this conference to the consideration of the needs of other peoples besides the Indian is evidenced by this morning's session. Certainly what has occurred in Hawaii ought to help us in our dealing with the negro and Indian races of our own land. My illustrious predecessor, General Armstrong, gained this thought through long years of experience, and the wisdom of his method of education was due very largely to the fact that he knew this Hawaiian child race, and understood the needs of similar races. I am glad of the last word that was spoken, that we can not do these things all at once. We speak of the Hawaiians as a nation born in a day. They were, in a sense. They were easily converted to Christianity, but we must realize that the civilization of a race is a long, long process. One of the most difficult things which we have to deal with in trying to civilize a race is the condition of our own people. We need to be a great deal more civilized than we are. A little Indian girl was once asked by a Hampton visitor, "Are you civilized?" "No," said she, are you?" And it is very questionable which had the most civilization. With all these undeveloped races we feel that we have not got to fight against their barbarism so much as against the barbarism of the Anglo-Saxon.

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A great deal has been said here in regard to the matter of religion. I feel that not too much has been said. I believe that the awful crime that has lately been committed in this country has emphasized the fact as never before that our religion has got to go into every part of our life. We have fought in this country for the separation of church and state, and, I believe, rightly. We must understand, however, that there is to be no separation between religion and state; that religion has got to go into every part of the state, into all our life. I believe that to-day our Government Indian schools ought to have more of the religious life. I am sure this is the feeling of our superintendent, Miss Reel. I believe, from my observations at the

conference in Detroit, that that is the feeling of almost all the superintendents. Religion ought to go into our common schools, too. When Mr. Sherman's Indian committee came to Hampton, one of the committee said to me when he left, "I like Hampton because there is so much religion here." We are most of us Protestants, but I do think that we teach the religion of Christ just so far as possible. We at Hampton, with our undenominational church, are trying to show what can be done along the line of Christian undenominational teaching.

Gen. JOHN EATON. What will you do in the Government schools with that constitutional clause that forbids Congress to appropriate money for the establishment of any religion?

Dr. FRISSELL. We are not establishing a religion. Religion comes in as part of our life there; we are not establishing it; we are trying to live it out.

General EATON. It was on that ground that they tried to exclude Hampton from receiving Government aid, on account of that clause in the Constitution.

Dr. FRISSELL. Senator Pettigrew did try to fight it, but we have conquered. We have said that it was right that an undenominational school should have help from the Government, and I believe the principle is right. Senator Pettigrew has brought up year after year what we have done at Hampton in our Sunday-school work, and in our missionary work, and we have been glad to say, "Yes, we have done it all, and more than you have said, but we are undenominational, and it is right that we should have the help of the United States in our Christian work for the Indians."

I am sure that we were all grateful for the word said to us last night by our illustrious friend, General Morgan. I think that the system of Indian schools that he established is of great advantage to us. These schools have much to do with everyday life. General Morgan said that all this educational work ought to be adapted to the people for whom it is carried on. He did not mean to say that the Massachusetts high school ought to go to Porto Rico, or the Philippines, or even to the Indians. We have got to study these various races, and meet their individual needs. We have got to teach them how to live, how to get out of the old ways into the new. I am very glad of the words spoken by the ladies in regard to native industries. Each of these races has something to bring to us-something in art, something in religion, something in life, and something in native industry. One other thought. If we are going to encourage these native arts we must have more freedom. The man in the store at the agency has control of everything. We want to open up these industries on all the reservations. A little while ago even the Government found that it could not get hold of certain baskets because they were all in the hands of a single man. We want freedom to buy and to sell. We must have more freedom for the Indian that he may be more of a man.

LETTER FROM SENATOR DAWES.

The following letter from Hon. Henry L. Dawes, who was unable to attend the conference, was read by Dr. Foster:

PITTSFIELD, MASS., October 15, 1901.

MY DEAR MR. SMILEY: I had anticipated much pleasure in meeting at another of your delightful conferences coworkers in the cause, and in renewing most valuable friendships there formed, but an unexpected delay in business connected with the Indian Territory compels me to remain at home. I can not, however, keep out of mind the range of discussion and the importance of questions likely to come before that body for discussion. Since I can not listen, I venture to put on paper briefly some few words expressive of my views of what has been and what is yet to be done before the work shall be complete.

In the first place, permit me to congratulate the conference upon the most gratifying evidence, coming from all quarters, of healthy progress and important results attendant upon efforts that have been put forth in recent years for the care of the Indian race in our midst. Results are the best test of wisdom in all effort. A retrospect of less than twenty-five years covers the entire period since the work in which you are engaged. of making a self-supporting citizenship of the Indian race in this country, was begun. And history nowhere records more gratifying results. It was in 1877 that the nation took from its own money in the Treasury the first dollar and applied it in aid of this work for Indian education. It was but $20,000, but it was a beginning; and every year results have stimulated an increase of the amount, till last year there was appropriated for the support of Indian schools $3,184,250. That first appropriation of $20,000, with the help of benevolent contributions and the interest on a few Indian funds that could not be otherwise used, maintained 48 small boarding schools, 102 day schools, with 3,398 scholars all told. There were a year ago 148 well-equipped boarding schools and 295 day schools engaged in the education of 25,202 Indian children, with an average attendance of 20,522. This does not

include those outside institutions of Carlisle, Hampton, Haskell, Genoa, and others like them, which send forth yearly large numbers of young men and women fully equipped to take their places and discharge the duties incumbent on the average citizen. This, in a total Indian population of less than 250,000 all told, approximates very nearly to the school facilities in the newly-organized Western States.

Statistics also make it plain that 76 per cent of the pupils who yearly leave these schools to take upon themselves the duties of practical life do, in the language of the present broad-minded and devoted Commissioner of Indian Affairs, "Go forth equipped for the part of good average men and women, capable of dealing with the ordinary problems, and of taking their place in the great body politic of the country."

The next step was the severalty act. Up to 1887, less than fifteen years ago, there was not an Indian on a reservation who owned the hut he lived in or a foot of the land over which he had raised a tepee for a night's shelter. That act, made possible by aid of these conferences, has called into being a home and a farm of 160 acres for each of 55,457 allotted Indians, aggregating 6,708,628 acres of farms. Each farm is set apart to its Indian owner, with a title warranted to him by the United States, and which he can not part with, if he would, for twenty-five years. These thus become so many home centers, where all the forces of future character and influence must take root and bring forth the first fruits of civilized life. Before the passage of that act not an Indian on a reservation had any defined legal status among his fellow-men. He was in law an incompetent ward of the nation, incapable of making a binding contract, to whom the very courts, open to you and me, were closed; and he could neither maintain nor defend any right secured by the Constitution to us. He had no voice in the making of the laws he was bound to obey, or in the choice of those who were to enforce upon him their penalties. There is no human being so helpless and at the mercy of irresponsible selfishness as such a ward under a guardian no one can call to account for his stewardship. Instead, under this law each one of those 55,000 allottees stands up among his fellow-citizens clothed with all the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizenship of which you and I boast and are proud. Each one of them walks to the polls side by side with the proudest of us, and to him are open, equally with haughtiest millionaire, every court of justice in the land. Every door of opportunity in all the pursuits of active life is as wide open to him as to every other citizen of the United States.

Thus much of the past, if there were nothing more to record, is sufficient for encouragement and continuance with renewed zeal in the still unfinished work. But that indirect influence upon the Indian still on the reservation, undisturbed as we all were before the work you are engaged in was begun, has been no less marked and is no less hopeful. I can not now do more than allude to the changes which have come over Indian life on the reservations themselves, traceable directly to the policy your conferences have done so much to promote. We no longer hear of bloody Indian wars, of the slaughter of warring clans, or the scalping of women and children fleeing from burning wigwams. The pioneer can now go forth to trade with the red man as safely as he does with his white neighbor, and return at night to his defenseless home with less apprehension of peril to those within than when scouts and sentinels mounted guard over it. The Indian no longer doubts and mistrusts. It is dawning upon him that he is made for something, and he is beginning to care for the morrow. He is daily growing more and more sure that the hand held out to him is for his guidance and help, and not for betrayal and spoliation.

There can be no more striking proof of this great change than the touching tribute to a life consecrated to the elevation of their race by forty Sioux Indians and sixty Chippewas journeying on foot a hundred miles, that they might walk beside the bier and sing hymns of praise in their own language over the grave of the late Bishop Whipple, whom they had trusted, and who had trusted them. It was a tribute to a noble life work worth more than all the pomp and display of a royal funeral.

But you will not assemble to contemplate the rich legacy of the past alone. The work is not yet finished, and new demands upon zeal and energy confront you to which what has been already gained will incite to still more untiring effort. Mistakes of the past are to be corrected, and new needs developed by its experiences are to be provided for. As tribal organizations are dissolving into individuality, tribal funds now amounting to many millions in the Treasury must be used. Great care should be taken that these funds be devoted to those needs of that higher civilization for which tribal organizations are being exchanged, and which call for new expenditures hitherto unknown. These should, as far as possible, be in lieu of local taxes for these necessities, from which all allottees are exempt for the first twentyfive years. Any distribution of such funds per capita would be worse than waste. Allottees should not be permitted to barter away all the educational and preparatory teaching for self-supporting citizenship, derived from occupancy alone, for a mere

mess of pottage in the form of a lease to a white man. The process of leasing now so alarmingly prevalent is sure, if persisted in, to work the ruin of the lessor, turning him back in the end to that barbarism from which his only sure rescue is the preparatory school of personal occupancy.

Another question involved in the allotment system not contemplated in the beginning has grown in importance till its solution has become imperative; and that is the disposition of the lands fit only for grazing, now occupied in large quantities by the Indians, not as yet allotted. These lands are unfitted for small holdings for ordinary farming purposes, but are a great source of profit to large herders of cattle, who have heretofore rented them in large areas from the Indians for small rentals, usually effected through agents, who make more than the Indians by the transaction. Much of this has, unfortunately, been already allotted, to the great injury of the allottee, unable as he is to utilize it except by subrental, leaving him without other means of support-a citizen of the United States whose contracts are as binding as those of any other citizen, but who knows no more how to make a contract than a puling infant. Independent individual ownership and occupancy of such lands, so as to be a school of preparation for an independent life, makes some change in the allotment system necessary to save the land and the allottee alike from ruin. I am sure that it will not escape your attention.

A situation for immediate and honorable employment for those who go out yearly from those institutions which are doing so much to fit the Indians under their care for their part in the multiplied activities of actual life is another great need of that work. It will do much to protect them from the taunts and jeers of those they have left behind, from discouragement sure to come of waiting for employment, and temptation to return to the companionship they have left. Every day that witnesses increasing numbers of the unemployed, calls louder on the friends of the Indian to take care of their apprentices in the ways of civilization.

I would gladly dwell at more length upon the work of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory, in which I am more especially engaged of late. It will suffice to say that work is progressing satisfactorily along the lines I had the opportunity to present at your last meeting, though very slowly, in consequence of new and complicated questions arising there, as among the other tribes. The most difficult of all these proves to be the discovery of natural oil and gas in different parts of the Territory. The conditions of land there make altogether different methods of allotment necessary from those on the reservations. There unoccupied and unimproved lands of comparatively equal value, by a list of Indian names furnished at the agency, were to be allotted, a given number of acres to each one. The Indian Territory, however, has been occupied for seventy-five years by a people considerably advanced in civilization when they came there. They have taken in since 300,000 white residents. Almost all business enterprises common to civilization have been carried on there. Towns and railroads have been built, and coal and other minerals discovered, disadjusting and destroying relative values till there are scarcely 2 acres of equal value side by side. To allot equally among the Indian owners to whom it belonged-to one as much as to any other, the same number of acres to each-had to be displaced by equality of value. The commission has been compelled, therefore, to acquaint itself with the value of every acre, so that the allotment to each when it is done, whether it be 10 acres or 50, would be worth as much as that of any other. That work, covering an area as large as the whole State of Indiana, was drawing to a close when, during the past year, oil and natural gas were discovered in different parts, overthrowing all relative values and appraisements yet made. Ten acres in one place are deemed worth a thousand in another. The law does not provide for the allotment of an oil well. Other parts of the work are approximating a close, and the people are fast adjusting themselves to the new order of things awaiting them.

There is, however, here, as well as on the reservations, much to be done in clearing away entanglements and pitfalls from the way leading to the goal of self supporting citizenship, now opening so auspiciously to the race.

But that work will not be complete till self-respecting manhood shall stand guard over and modest womanhood adorn every Indian home in the land. H. L. DAWES.

Truly, yours,

Mr. A. K. SMILEY. I should like to have the secretary to send a letter to Senator Dawes, expressing our hearty approval of this fine paper.

Mr. GARRETT. I move that the paper be referred to the business committee, that it may be used in connection with the platform.

It was voted that the thanks and appreciation of the conference should be sent to Senator Dawes for his paper, and that the paper should be referred to the business