Speech #450026281

As the Senate will remember. this bill was under consideration some time ago and was made the special order for a day which has passed. and itnow comes up as a regular order. When this bill was last under consideration I made hurried objection to itspassage. because it contained. as it seemed to me. features so repugnant to what I supposed to be the traditional policy of the United States in its dealings with the Indians. It appeared to be a proposition to naturalize. by special process. persons who belonged to other "nations" and incorporate them into the body of American citizens. while at the same time it allowed them to retain in part their tribal relations and hold interests in common with the nation from which their allegiance was to be transferred. something entirely at variance with that "uniform system of naturalization" which by the Constitution Congress is empowered to establish. I had not forgotten in general the light in which our revolutionary fathers held the Indians. but I had overlooked what a recent perusal of Rome essays of Professor)Valker on the "Indian question" has developed. that the colonists had so far exalted them in the scale of cooperative manhood as in their treaty with the Delawares in 1778 to contemplate the "formation of a league of friendly tribes under the hegemony of the Delawares. to constitute the fourteenth State of the confederation. then in arms with Great Britain. with a proportional representation in Congress." This was au exaltation of the Indian of which I confess that I had been ignorant. The executive. judicial. and legislative departments had always recognized the Indian tribes as "nations." capable of making treaties. and 1 was under the impression that any legislative act which contemplated the admission of individual Indians to citizenship should conform to the "uniform" system of naturalization applied to the subjects or citizens of other foreign nations. The reference to the opinion of ChiefJustice Taney in the Dred Scott case. made by me on a former occasion. sustained this view. But while this is the true principle of naturalization there seems to have been no settled policy of the Governmentin carrying it out as regards the Indian for the last forty years. nor. indeed. since the beginning of the civil war. has it been observed with reference to other people. The special privileges granted to soldiers in that war and to seamen since illustrate this departure from uniformity. The general policy in regard to the Indian has been most confusing.