as to
make them of substantial benefit; or, better still, the amounts would
have been capitalized, and a permanent income secured. As it is, many
tribes now see approaching the termination of annuities which have for
many years been paid them with the very minimum of advantage, and have
no prospect beyond but that of being thrown, uninstructed and
unprovided, upon their own barbarous resources.

Let us illustrate. A tribe makes a treaty with the United States, ceding
the great body of their lands, and accepting a diminished reservation
sufficient for their actual occupation. In consideration, it is
provided that there shall be maintained upon the reservation, for the
term of fifteen years, at the expense of the United States, a
superintendent of teaching and two teachers, a superintendent of farming
and two farmers, two millers, two blacksmiths, a tinsmith, a gunsmith, a
carpenter, and a wagon and plough maker, with shops and material for all
these mechanical services. This "little bill" is presumably made up
without much reference to the peculiarities in character and condition
of the tribe to be benefited by the expenditures involved. As soon as
the treaty goes into effect, the United States in good faith fulfil
their part of the bargain. The shops are built, the employees enlisted;
and the government, through its agent, stands ready to civilize the
Indians to almost any extent. But, unfortunately, the Indians are not
ready to be civilized. The glow of industrial enthusiasm, which was
created by the metaphorical eloquence of the commissioners in council
dies away under the first experiment of hard work: an hour at the plough
nearly breaks the back of the wild man wholly unused to labor: his pony,
a little wilder still, jumps now on one side of the furrow and now on
the other, and finally settles the question by kicking itself free of
the galling harness, and disappears for the day. The Indian, a sadder
and wiser man, betakes himself to the chase, and thereafter only visits
the shops, maintained at so much expense by the government, to have his
gun repaired, or to get a strap or buckle for his riding-gear. But still
the treaty expenditures go on: the United States are every year loyally
furnishing what has been stipulated; and the Indian is every year one
instalment nearer the termination of all his claims upon the government.
Meanwhile, population is closing around the reservation: the animals of
the chase are disappe