Fifty thousand Indians receive every day from the Government a pound and a half of fresh beef, with flour and coffee and sugar and tobacco to match, and a fair outfit for all purposes of decent living and good farming, and the number will increase. An agency warehouse is a huge store filled with utensils of every kind, from which the ex-warrior draws gratuitously at the agent’s discretion. There is no treatment like this in any other country on the globe—a stupendous wholesale charity to a people, of whom a large portion are thus hired to keep the peace.
When first fed they are modest and satisfied, gradually they get importunate, and finally become most grievous beggars. There is an unevenness of treatment in this matter, based chiefly on the varying difficulties of settlement; the strong and wicked Sioux getting the maximum in return for their good behavior. The quiet and thrifty Fort Berthold Indians, who are doing as much, if not more _per capita_ than any others, complain; for Indians visit much and discuss things; they have not yet discovered that virtue is its own reward.
Yet I have seen and heard of agencies where, notwithstanding gratuities, there has been steady improvement in houses, crops and herds. Good management on the one hand and the good sense of the better class of Indians on the other hand, at certain points led to remarkable results; but a forward move along the whole line of the Indian population is not to be looked for till they shall have the same motives to industry that other men have and that all men need. Agencies, reservations and rationing are and long will be a necessity, lessening only as by wise use of public bounty, and by proper legislation and care, the Indians shall approach self-support and citizenship. The persistently indolent should not remain as they are now, unless the nation has pledged itself, by solemn treaty, to feed forever the savage who squats on his haunches and refuses to work.
First-class men, and no others, can settle the Indian question. The want of them is the bottom fact in our Indian troubles. Government pays the market price for good beef and sugar and tobacco, but will not pay for good men. There is only one answer to the question, “Can a superior man afford to be an Indian agent?” No! There are excellent Indian agents, thanks to their noble impulses, but Government should buy and not beg what it is bound to get. Salaries are from $900 to $2,200, depending principally upon the number of Indians under the agent’s care. Hence, the more liberally he feeds, the more the roving bands of the plains seek his care and swell his income. Pressing self-support upon them may scatter them and lessen his salary.