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The policy of the government in past years of selecting a few Indian youths from each tribe and removing them to distant schools, there to be given, free of cost to the Indian, all the advantages that American youths pay for, either in money or work, seems in the end to turn out unfortunately for the Indian himself. The youth is weaned from his old associations, and accustomed to a life of luxurious ease. After his education is completed, there remains no course open to him but to return to his old tribal relations, the very life that his training has unfitted him for. The government does not provide a career for him as it does for graduates of West Point and Annapolis. All he can look forward to must come from his tribe. He returns to the reservation, where he is not even given land in severalty, in case be should wish to support himself by tilling the soil. He is not given any occupation or office; even his rations are dependent on his being recorded on the family ration ticket. To live in peace with the tribe, he must not appear to put on airs. If be tries to adopt the customs of civilization he is a subject for ridicule and ostracism, until he submits and falls back into the old, filthy life of the tepee. The miserable condition of the Indians on some of the reservations is a reproach to the American people. In some cases, the school facilities are not sufficient for more than one in ten of the children of school age. No churches or missionaries are provided, and on Sundays the Indians play cards and the troops at the post play baseball as well as cards. Sometimes very anomalous conditions exist, as when a troop of infantry is stationed on an extensive reservation to keep in control thousands of mounted braves; or when a cattle company pays pasturage for ten thousand head of stock on a reservation, and actually pastures forty thousand head; or when the rations are reduced in a year of drouth to half the quantities issued in previous years, or when white settlers have taken out irrigating water from above the reservations, thus depriving the Indian irrigators of the means of raising crops. Many more of the Indians are able and willing to become self-supporting if given land in severalty, and provided with means of irrigating it. As common laborers on railroad construction, they have proven superior to the laborers from Europe.
CHOCOLATE MAKING IN AMERICA |
