oceedings were
published as a part of its annual report.

The platform adopted each year at Lake Mohonk is widely circulated, and
has had much influence; although, as it represents only the unanimous
vote of a body among whom there actually exist wide differences of
opinion, it is not always as satisfactory as it might be. It has seemed
to some who attended the early conferences that those of late years have
been less fruitful, owing partly to less novelty in the subject-matter
and to the sharing of the time with problems of Hawaii and the
Philippines, and partly to a desire for unanimity and good feeling that
has kept unpleasant facts from the light. It is certain that the debates
are more carefully pre-arranged and therefore less spontaneous.

The Mohonk Conferences have consistently recommended larger
appropriations for Indian education; the extension of the laws of the
land over Indian reservations; the gradual withdrawal of rations; the
allotment of communal land to individuals, and more recently the
breaking up of the tribal trust funds into individual holdings. Emphasis
has been laid upon the need of greater care in selecting men of
character as Indian agents and superintendents. The thirty-first
conference urges a vigorous campaign against tuberculosis, trachoma, and
other diseases among Indians, also against the liquor traffic, and
mescal habit, and declares that the proposition to control Indian
affairs through a non-partisan commission to serve during long terms is
"worthy of serious consideration." It also makes special recommendations
in behalf of the Pueblo, the Navajo, the Five Civilized Tribes of
Oklahoma, and the New York Indians, looking toward their present
protection and future citizenship.

These "Eastern sentimentalists," as they have often been called by
persons interested in depriving the red man of his heritage, have
pursued their ends steadily, though not without severe setbacks. The
opposition to Indian schools in Congress was for many years very strong,
but it has now almost ceased, except in sporadic instances. One seldom
hears it said nowadays that "the only good Indian is the dead Indian,"
and the Western Senator who declared that "you could no more civilize an
Apache than you could civilize a rattlesnake" would rather shock than
convince his hearers in the light of present-day progress. The greatest
enemy to Indian civilization has been the return of the "spoils system"
in the eighties