The Indian Dispossessed
One cannot read the Indian records of the past fifty years without being impressed by the persistent denial to the reservation Indian of civil law, or of laws necessary to take the place of the tribal control which he was compelled to surrender. Year after year good men in the service filled the record with appeals for adequate Indian law, but every attempt to secure congressional action was effectually blocked by the interested few in Congress.
And why? For no other reason than that the reservation Indian, as one of a herd, without permanency, without organization or legal recourse, lent himself more readily to the successive removals which were compelled by successive demands for the best of his remaining land. Deny this as they may, or seek to excuse it on the ground of the Indian's incompetence, it is to their lasting dishonor that for their own personal gain a people boasting the equality of all men should have steadily denied to the Indian the one thing by which he might hope to come into an advantageous relation with the superior race,—recognition under the law. And once more, here is the deadly parallel; in the Declaration of Independence, this is set down as first in the arraignment of King George:
"He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."
The history of oppressed peoples is much the same in all ages, and among all nations; and this
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