by honest and judicious management
be realized; so that, taking these eighty thousand Indians as a body,
they may be regarded as having a reasonable assurance of funds yielding
an annual income of twenty dollars a head. Their general character and
condition being considered, this may be accepted as an amply sufficient
endowment, placing their future in their own hands, giving them all the
opportunities and appliances that could reasonably be asked for them,
and securing them against the calamities and reverses which inevitably
beset the first stages of industrial progress.

Unfortunately, the same wise provision for the future has not been made
in the case of other Indians who have ceded or surrendered to the
government the main body of their lands. There is a painfully long list
of tribes that have to show for their inheritance only a guaranty on the
part of the United States of certain expenditures, more or less
beneficial, for a series of years longer or shorter, as the case may be.
The Report on Indian Affairs for 1872 (pp. 418-430) states the aggregate
of future appropriations that will be required during a limited number
of years to pay limited annuities at $15,819,310.46. The annuities
covered by this computation have from one to twenty-seven years to run
(the average term being about seven years), and embrace almost every
variety of goods and services which human ingenuity could suggest. Many
of the things stipulated to be given to the Indians, or to be done for
them, are admirable in themselves, but far in advance of the present
requirements of the tribes; and the expenditures involved are therefore
perfectly useless. Other things would be well enough if the Indians
could have every thing they wanted, but are absurd and mischievous as
taking the place of what is absolutely essential to their well-being.
Of other things embraced in the schedule of annual appropriations, it
can only be said that the Indians need them no more than a toad needs a
pocket-book. For such waste of Indian moneys the responsibility rests in
many cases upon the commissioners, who, on the part of the United
States, negotiated the treaties under which these appropriations are
annually made. Had they been half as solicitous for the future of the
Indians as they were for the attainment of the immediate object of
negotiation, the government would have been left free to apply the
amounts, to be paid in consideration for cessions, in such manner