not be unduly impeded. Such a consolidation
of the Indian tribes into one or two great bodies would leave all the
remaining territory of the United States open to settlement, without
obstruction or molestation.

Shall there be one general reservation east of the Rocky Mountains, or
two? This is likely to be the most important Indian question of the
immediate future. On the one hand, the recommendations of the executive,
contained in both the Messages of the President and the Annual Reports
of the Secretary of the Interior, for the past two or three years, have
strongly favored the plan of a single reservation for all the tribes,
North and South, East and West, who are not in a condition to become at
an early day citizens of the United States and take their land in
severalty. The reservation upon which it is proposed to thus collect the
Indians of the United States is at present known as the "Indian
Territory," although it actually contains but about one-quarter of the
Indian population of the country. This tract covers all the territory
lying between the States of Arkansas and Missouri on the east, and the
one-hundredth meridian on the west, and between the State of Kansas on
the north, and the Red River, the boundary of the State of Texas, on the
south; comprising about seventy thousand square miles, and embracing a
large body of the best agricultural lands west of the Mississippi. Upon
this tract, it is claimed, can be gathered and subsisted all the Indians
within the administrative control of the government, except such as are
manifestly becoming ripe for citizenship in the States and Territories
where they are now found. Computing the maximum number likely, on the
successful realization of this scheme to be thus concentrated, at two
hundred and fifty thousand, and taking the available lands within the
district, exclusive of barren plains, of flint hills and sand hills, at
an aggregate of thirty million acres, we should have one hundred and
twenty acres for each man, woman, and child to be provided for.

On the other hand, the original plan of Indian colonization, as
contained in the report of Secretary Calhoun, accompanying the message
of President Monroe, Jan. 27, 1825, contemplated two general
reservations,--one in the North-west for the Indians of Algonquin and
Iroquois stock, and another (being the present Indian Territory) in the
South-west for the Appalachian Indians. The ethnographical symmetry of
that plan