A Noted Congregational General/Missionary’s Views On The “Indian Question” – An 1883 Perspective “Reservations are merely places for herding Indians; temporary, necessary experiments, that, after a given time, may become growing evils. Herding negroes in like manner would have been a curse to both white and black races. There has been more sentiment than sense in treating the Indian as a separate people. It was kindly meant but a cruel plan in its results. This part of the red race has suffered most from the whites; their comfortable eastern homes have been broken up, their thrifty farms and fruitful orchards abandoned for a western wilderness where thousands have died from exposure. Their record has been the saddest part of the ‘Century of Dishonor.’ ++++++ The quote above appeared in an article by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, which appeared in the January 1883 edition of The American Missionary, 19-22. That magazine was issued by the American Missionary Association (AMA). ++++++ The AMA originated in 1846 and came to be one of the six independent societies which were strongly supported by Congregationalists in the latter part of the 19th century. On the threshold of the 20th century, the AMA was described as having 656 missionaries, 103 schools and 230 churches. It gave training in industrial, intellectual, moral, and religious leadership to Blacks in the South, Whites in Southern mountains, Indians in the West, Chinese on the Pacific Coast, Eskimoes in Alaska, and people of different races in Puerto Rico. It did evangelistic work almost entirely among the poor and aided their churches. ++++++ General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the author of the article below, was born on Maui in 1839. He was the son of Presbyterian missionaries in Hawaii. Armstrong graduated from Williams College in 1862 and then served as a Union officer in the Civil War. He was captured at Harpers Ferry, then paroled. He subsequently fought at Gettysburg and commanded regiments of Black soldiers, which led him to be concerned about the welfare of Blacks in America. After the war, with the help of the American Missionary Association, Armstrong founded an educational institution for Blacks in Hampton, VA, which became known as Hampton University. One of Hampton’s early graduates was Booker T. Washington, who described Gen. S. C. Armstrong, this way: “the most perfect specimen of man, physically, mentally and spiritually the most Christ-like…” [DS note: I assume that modern readers with modern sensitivities will find both comments to criticize and comments to affirm in the following article by Gen. Armstrong in 1883. Nonetheless, I present it here on “Explore,“ as it gives one the perspectives of a very well thought of individual in Congregational circles in that period. I will note that Gen. Armstrong is listed in the obituary database of Congregational ministers and missionaries which currently appears on The Congregational Library website. To my knowledge Gen. Armstrong was not ordained, but was a significant figure in the American Missionary Association.] ++++++ The Indians Statements Respecting Indians and their Necessities By Gen. S. C. Armstrong Besides the 59,000 Indians in the Indian Territory, there are about 200,000, of whom 55,000 are wholly supported by the government; 45,000 are partially maintained, and 100,000 receive little or no aid. They occupy 250,000 square miles of land, nine-tenths of it grazing land, the rest suitable for agriculture. The constantly increasing value of this domain from its mineral wealth and the building of railroads presses hard upon its thriftless occupants, who stand right in the line of progress, and must either change or perish. Meanwhile their source of subsistence, game, is disappearing, and, more and more, they will depend either on public charity or on stealing their food unless taught to take care of themselves. The Indian question is upon us as never before. Those in the Indian Territory and the few thousands in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, North Carolina and other States, say 75,000 in all, are remnants of tribes who formerly lived east of the Mississippi River, are inclined to agriculture and domestic life, and have been considered superior to the nomadic tribes of the West. They long since ceased to trouble us, and are, at some places making commendable progress in education, stock raising and crops, besides generally holding their own in numbers. Still, to a large extent, they seem fixed in a half civilized, half pagan state, lacking their earlier manliness for the want of hardship and discipline in their lives, keeping up their heathen rites and dances, living in poverty, without law, demoralized more or less by annuities and destitute of the conditions that create character and self reliance. They need practical education. A few are already at Hampton and Carlisle; five hundred should have such an opportunity. More than this, their tribal relations should be broken up, homesteads inalienable for at least twenty-five years should be assigned, and they should be left as citizens of the several states in which they are, to vote and be voted on. Reservations are merely places for herding Indians; temporary, necessary experiments, that, after a given time, may become growing evils. Herding negroes in like manner would have been a curse to both white and black races. There has been more sentiment than sense in treating the Indian as a separate people. It was kindly meant but a cruel plan in its results. This part of the red race has suffered most from the whites; their comfortable eastern homes have been broken up, their thrifty farms and fruitful orchards abandoned for a western wilderness where thousands have died from exposure. Their record has been the saddest part of the “Century of Dishonor.” The Wild Tribes The destruction of the buffalo has been more trying to the Indian than sudden emancipation was to the Negro. The latter changed the relations rather than the realities of life; the former the realities rather than their relations. The one remained on its old foundation of land and of labor—any shifting was voluntary. Game, the support of the other, has gradually failed and they have been roughly pushed from place to place till pauperism seems the only fixed fact of their life. The human machine after running for centuries does not readily reverse itself; the strain on the Indian is tremendous. Was greater ever put upon men?—force to control them, charity to weaken them. Justice demanded help, but wisdom demanded self-help as its condition. Exigency is mans best teacher. Necessity is the mother of invention; it makes men creative. The facts of human nature, and of experience, have been ignored in our treaties with the Indians, probably because we never really conquered them, but purchased peace on the best terms we could make. Carrying the Indian from, helplessness to self support is the most difficult administrative problem of our country. The Negro has taken care of himself. The forty acres and a mule method would have ruined the race. He was thrown on himself and given a vote; dangerous as it once seemed, who would now have it otherwise? He struggled, suffered and succeeded. The Indian is fed till he shall become self-supporting, which gives him a motive for not becoming so. He alone of all men on the earth, finds in industry not reward but a penalty. The Shoshone farmers, when a reduction of rations was suggested, threatened to stop cultivating their fields. A few may go to work, but the whole line will not move forward while rations and other gratuities are issued, as now, to lines of ragged, wretched-looking mendicants who are helped for the asking. Treaties must be kept, but the treaties contemplate ultimate self-support and the necessity of education to that end. It is, I believe, quite within their spirit to withhold supplies from the lazy and intractable. At Yankton, Devils Lake, Cheyenne River and at other points, efficient agents kept the schools full, and the Indians busy by the argument to the stomach, which is their weak point. It is, I believe, the starting point of Indian civilization. The plan is as excellent as it is unusual. On the Fort Hall reservation, in Idaho, I recently saw fields of wheat, oats and potatoes; two-thirds of the tribe had become farmers, besides owning herds of cattle, because a former agent had issued the coffee and sugar rations, which the red man dearly loves, only as each one successively staked out, plowed and planted his allotted little farm. The nations gratuities may do the Indian as much good as they are doing him harm, if wisely administered, especially the luxuries, which afford the best leverage. He is managed now by a class of men whose title, in spite of shining exceptions among them, is a byword and a reproach. Decayed clergymen, hungry politicians, and the broken of every profession, are not the ones to make citizens of the red man. Fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars a year will not secure first-class men, who must travel far with their families, at their own expense, and be liable at any day to discharge and disgrace. By refusing adequate salaries, Congress (and Congress means the people) decides that the Indians greatest need shall be unsupplied, for lack of a trifling comparative cost. Millions for fuel and dry goods, but not one or two hundred thousand dollars more that men of repute and of capacity may go to the Agencies. Good beef and flour and shoes, but second-rate men, whose average official life is less than two years, is the present provision for them. The tender mercies of the Government to the Indian are cruel; the much-talked of treatment of the slave owner was tender by comparison. The self-interest of the Southern barons was humanity itself, in contrast with the course of men sent in the name of a high duty, many of whom have been tempted, if not forced, into corruption. I would throw no slur on the better class among them, of whom the country is not worthy. The Indian is a child and needs a Father ; physically mature, he is mentally an infant. He stands proud but helpless on the track of a locomotive. He will not heed the advice of whites inferior in natural force to himself, and such, as a rule, he has to deal with. No wonder the young prefer their own leaders. In the school of civilization only object lessons are good for anything. What lessons we have given the Indians! Recent agitation has chiefly concerned the education, lands and rights of the race, and progress has been made in the way of opportunities offered, but the Indian has not moved. He must be touched; the high and low must come together. Virtue will go out of the one into the other as it entered into her who touched the hem of a sacred garment. There is no salvation in acts of Congress; it is from the springs of action within. To awake these in the bosom of the Indian and consummate it in Christian character is the work of individual men by their contact and by their personal influence. The Indian question is, first, one of organization, second, one of executive duty; of conditions and of action. In the former, of late years, there has been much progress. Respecting the latter there has been little. Crops and herds have somewhat increased and education has advanced, especially in the East; but the executive work drags, because there is nobody to do it. Men are the need of the hour, and money to provide for their wants. At the northern frontier outposts, this summer, for the first time, the soldiers remained in their barracks. At the forts in Montana and Dakota which I visited, there was general respect for Indian prowess, and belief in his capacity and in his wrongs. Were I an Indian I would fight seemed the feeling of all. So far as army officers are gentlemen of character, force and experience, and of humane ideas (for there are opposing views), I believe they are better fitted than any others to settle the Indian question. Their destructive work is nearly over: it has fitted them for the constructive work to be done. As officers they have peculiar advantages over civilians of the same capacity and worth, far less temptation and far stronger standing ground for the control of Indians. One-half of the sixty agencies might well be put at once under selected officers; not that it is strict military duty, but it is not an old womans work, as one of high rank said of Capt. Pratts effort. The latter is doing, indirectly, more than any two regiments for the pacification of the Indians —the armys special business. Railroads are doing the work of pioneers and of soldiers, peace is not far off. There will soon be need of the army only as a national police, and half of the 15,000 troops at the West may be dispensed with. What better service can a few of its accomplished officers undertake than building up a civilization at its weakest point! The Indian can be rescued from a sad fate only by personal devotion; that has, under God, created the great results of missionary work throughout the world in recent years. The labors of the Riggses, Williamsons and of Bishop Whipple and others during the past half century, in the western wilderness, has been a seed-sowing of which the results are now appearing. The men they have touched and taught are those who are now breaking from the old superstitions and asking for light, while official dealings have scarcely a moral result to show for armies of agents and vast annuities. Only the light of Christian truth and example steadily shining can lift men up. Mission work among the Cherokees and others, and for the Sioux at Sisseton and Fort Sully and Santee agencies in Dakota, where wild Indians are settled on so peaceful prosperous homes that a stranger traveling through the country would not believe that he was on an Indian Reservation, attest the complete success of the Congregational, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian societies. Peoria Bottom, which I visited in 1881, is a charming village of twenty Christian families, on thrifty homes, the result of the efforts of the Rev. Thos. L. Riggs. In proportion to the aid and means employed no missions since the apostolic age have been more successful than those to the American Aborigines, declares one of these bodies. There have been, however, weak and disappointing missions. Such work cannot be inspired from Washington, though it may supply many of the conditions of it. A purified civil service would do more for the Indian than for any class in the country. Good agents would create a morale, like a favoring tide, for the Christian teacher. The gist of the Indian question I believe to be honesty and capacity in dealing with them. Given these and the rest will work itself out. ++++++
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 03:31:33 +0000
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