Speech #480056395

I know. very little land assigned to him which he is permitted to call his own. very little land in the United States which a white man by processes of cultivation could gather enough from for his own support. In the mean time the game upon which he was to live when he was set in these great reservations has been rapidly disappearing. till within the last two years more suddenly than any one dreamed of it has disappeared. it has absolutely disappeared. and we are confronted with the Indian in a new aspect. We have abandoned making treaties with him. we have given over the idea of gathering the Indians upon the Indian Territory as a cruel impossibility. we have found it utterly impossible to establish nonintercourse with him. we have driven him by degrees. as I have said. upon the barren and inhospitable portions of his own reservations. and taken up the rest in that irresistible tide of immigration which has characterized the history of our country. and he remains today just about the same number of Indihns that our fathers found here when they came to this country. and up to this change of policy in just about as barbarous a condition. He can not speak the English language. he has learned only of the white man and of civilization that to come in contact with them was to lose something every time. But we came to understand that we had upon our hands two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand paupers. and we were to settle the question whether we should continue as heretofore in our treatment of the Indians as an insoluble substance that we can not digest or assimilate. but an always present and disturbing influence in our health and a charge upon us. and we found in addition that he was increasing in number. and the charge was growing more and more serious upon the Treasury of the United States.