The Indian Question [pp. 438-447]

187s.] THE INDIAN QUESTION. 441
themselves can be persuaded to join with their enemies in
crying out against the policy of reservations.
The reservation is the best earthly blessing now secured
to the Indian. It assures to him a home guarded against
all invasion. It brings him into a position in which
the church can give him schools and Christian influences. It
protects him from those who would pollute, rob, and murder
him. It is more to him than the fold is to the sheep, when
hungry wolves are swarming around it. ~Vhile "Chickasaw'
cries out against it, he forgets that all which makes him to
differ from his brother Comanche is due to the reservation.
Until these Comanches, and kindred tribes, can be confined on
reservations, and taught, they will be roving, predatory b~nds,
destroying themselves in destroying others.
The writer quoted above happily closes his article thus: "A
great many persons will ask, Is an Indian capable of being an
American citizen? I can only answer, that the Cherokees,
Choctaws, and Chickasaws, and thousands of other Indians, are
as good citizens to-day as many of our best white citizens, and
the same state of civilization can be attained by all Indians."
A little too strong. Yet the writer, against himself, thus bears
strong testimony to the value of the reservation; for, b~ it, the
Indians named have become what they are. Only there could
the church do for them the work it has done.
The present Indian policy aims to gather the entire Indian
population into the Indian Territory. This, if accomplished,
will secure for them the very best conditions of the reservation
policy. There is ample room. Its 65,ooo square miles, much
of it of unsurpassed fertility, would feed ten times the present
Indian population. There is in all our broad, beautiful country, no finer region than this. Its climate is so genial and
mild that cattle and other stock require but little winter care'
and the peach, grape, fig, and all the finer fruits are raised
with little toil. It is rich in broad, fertile prairies; yet quite
as rich in extensive, heavy forests; rich in many pure mountain streams, well stocked with fish, and which water the whole
land as a garden; rich in quarries of building stone of the
finest quality; rich in vast deposits of coal. Its river bottoms
yield the finest crops of cotton. Its prairie and timber lands
produce the finest crops of wheat and corn. In short, it might