'A Word About Indians', Columbus Or Gazette Press?

, January 31, 1867 from Our

Indian Wards
[for those 'Oklahoma’s' and other Indians this is just after the Punitive Treaties of
1866 negotiated by Methodists Cooley and Harlan and and it wasn't the Indian
request that railroad lobbyists were brought to the table as well.]

To Public of Reports from Senate ; Sen. GEO. W. Manypenny:

In your issues of the 15th and 17th insts. You published some 'startling
disclosures' furnished by your Washington corespondent, “N.V.N.B.” in the nature
of extracts from a report made by a Commission consisting of Senators Foster,
Doolittle, and Nesmith, appointed in the spring of 1865 to visit the whole Indian
country and inquire into the condition and management of our Indian affairs in
general. Your corespondent states that the report of this Commission was
suppressed because of the disgraceful nature of the facts developed, and that it has
been lying in the Government Printing Office for more than a year, “carefully
withheld from all.” The statement of this fact is not very creditable tho the
American Senate, and it is amazing how a respectable commission of that body
could submit to such indignity, and quietly acquiesce in the suppression of a report
made by them, and containing such a narrative of 'robbery and General rascality,”
such gross frauds against the helpless denizens of the forest, involving, as they do ,
not only the honor of the government itself, but that of all its good citizens. …
...in all their acts backed up by the Washington lobby, whose pockets are
periodically filled with cash which flows in as the result of these “Indian
depredations,” “Indian Hostilities” &c., &c., produced by the body of men
referred to in their intercourse with the Red Men. ...Kansas Tribes... New England
colonists and those from the South in reference to the negro population...many
Indians could be domesticated and civilized...In Testimony to the senate
commission and which with the Gazette was supplied, General after General
Carlin, Hoffman, Sully, and R. B. Marcy, [stated] annuities...never reached some of
the Indians...Indian Agent Harlan [Methodist] says: ...less than one percent [paid]
to the Indians...influence of the lobby is even more potent in the Indian country
than in Washington.
...Scandalous depredations are committed on the Indians, and daily they are
despoiled of their property, and they obtain no redress. See the official proceedings
of Congress and the Congressional Globe where Harlan and others argue and
discuss and debate, one hundred thousand cattle rustled stolen and driven into
Kansas, “not impressing even one Senator with its enormity, or the obligation
resting on the U.S. To indemnify the Indians for their property.
With reference to the home of the Indian, it may be said he has none. A
reservation may, by solemn treaty, be set apart today for the use and occupancy of
a particular tribe “FOREVER”, and before the ink is scarcely dry upon the
parchment, the whole thing is abrogated, and the tribe compelled to seek a new
home. [ I might add that the illegal State of Oklahoma has taken the place of the
United States to proceed with the carceral apparatus of like nature, wrenching
peoples property,livelihood, dreams and aspirations from them in the courts of
inadequate justice] And even during the existence of a treaty, intruders pay no
attention to it , but habitually trespass, upon the reservation and despoil the Indian
of his property, and, if not submissive take his life. In fact, let him turn his face in
what direction he may, he finds the white man confronting him as an enemy.
Not long since I read an extract from the report of Major General
Hazen, Acting Inspector of the Platte Department – an officer holding a
distinguished position in the army of the United States – wherein he styles the
Indian of the plains a “dirty beggar and a thief, who murders the weak and
unprotected, but never attacks an armed foe.” This General then goes on for
quantity in the abuse of the Indian race. And concludes that the white man owes
the Indian nothing. He is in the way of natural evolutions and progress, and and
when government pays what is to him a reasonable compensation for his title to the
territory, or for privileges in it, the debt is perfectly canceled, as when a
corporation pays the assessed value of a public school.” Such sentiments as the
above, however common, are not creditable to a federal military officer, and the
fact that he is permitted to utter them without rebuke from his superiors is a sad
commentary on the times. [Even] eminent divines...[calling] Indians....low and
filthy and added that there was but one voice among the white people on that
coast, and that was for extermination... and failed to utter a single word in
condemnation of this horrible sentiment! What he stated was not only true of that
region, but is the sentiment of the whites within and bordering on the whole of
Indian country.
Moreover, let the reader ask himself what interest does the religious
world give at this day to the condition and prospects of the Indian Tribes? My
reply would be, let the emanations from the hundreds and thousands of Christian
pulpits in the land, in the various religious exercises from one end of the year to the
other, answer. How very, very, very seldom is the poor Red Man remembered and
how very, very, very often – forgotten? When all things are taken into
consideration, is it to be wondered at that the Indian is a degraded savage? …......
[discussion of Indian Bureau assigned to Interior Department vs. under the control
of the War Department]...........
If Congress were to go to work and make the Indian Bureau what it
should be – a full Department, with a secretary who should be a member of the
Cabinet, participating in the deliberations of the executive councils, and invested
by law to organize a military or police force sufficiently numerous to keep order in
Indian Country without reference to and independent of, the war department or
military commanders - …..The analogy for this would be found in the revenue
cutter system under the orders of the Treasury Department, and independent of the
Navy. The army should only go into Indian country on some great emergency, and
when called there by the Department of Indian Affairs.
Many of the ever recurring and never ending difficulties that happen in
the management of Indian affairs grow out of matters that are acted upon and
decided at the Cabinet councils, upon the representation of outside parties, (having
interests that are concealed from view,) who make their statements to the President,
or some one of his Secretaries, and in which the existence of the Indian Bureau and
its head are entirely ignored. …. Then let the country awake to its responsibilities
on this subject; let statesmen and divines, let all feel and realize that the Indian is
the ward of the government that he is a human being, having rights to be respected,
and that obligations rest upon the people of the United States in relation to him.
Let our law-makers understand that the Indian is entitled to and must have a fixed
and permanent home; and he is not to be driven from that home by any schemes,
pretexts or devices whatever. Let it be further understood, as an unalterable
sentiment among the people, that Indian stealing and oppression in all its forms is
odious; that a man cannot be a leading member of the Senate or House of
representatives in Congress and habitually – nay at all – dabble in Indian plunder;
that an individual cannot hold an Indian agency a few years and retire from it rich;
that sharp men on the frontier cannot with impunity rob and plunder the Indians
at their pleasure; but let the people be educated up to the point that they will
readily, and with one voice, denounce such men as scoundrels, and exclude them
from respectable society. When that day arrives, and whole country is awake to its
duty in the matter, the honest settlers in the frontier will have no cause of alarm or
fear, the Indians will have peace, and a new order of things will prevail.
This article is already too long for your columns. As, however, it is but
seldom that anything in behalf of the Indian appears, feeble as this is, I hope you
will give it a place.
Very respectfully,
GEO. W. MANYPENNY