Condition of (Indian) Affairs - Pages 29-58



Page 29

MR. SEGER'S ATTEMPT TO MAKE AN INDIAN SCHOOL SELF-SUPPORTING; HOW IT 
SUCCEEDED, AND WHY IT FAILED. 

SEGER COLONY, May 28th, 1887. 
PROF. C. C. PAINTER-- 

DEAR SIR:--As you wished to have me make a note of some of the results of 
my work in trying to civilize these Indians, I will state very briefly 
some of the methods used:-- 

In 1874, I was set to work by Agent J. D. Miles to show an Arapahoe how to 
plough and plant his field and fence it. I succeeded in getting him to do 
about half the work in ploughing, planting and fencing five acres of 
ground. At this time the Cheyennes were on the war path, and the Arapahoes 
were generally very insolent. While we were at work, there would 
frequently some bands of young Arapahoes ride up to us and try with taunts 
and jeers to get Curly (for that was the Indian's name) to give up his 
farming. At one time Curly bared his breast to them and showed a number of 
ugly scars and dared them to call him a squaw; he told them he was not a 
man with two hearts. When he was an enemy to the whites he procured his 
own food and blankets, and now as he was eating their food and receiving 
kindness from them he was willing to learn to provide for himself by 
cultivating the earth, as he was convinced that that was the road all the 
Indians would finally have to travel. 

This Indian was the only one that farmed that season. 1875. J. D. Miles 
placed me in charge of what was then called the Arapahoe Mission School, 
though it was run by the Government. When the first term closed it was 
called the Arapahoe Industrial School. With Indian boys belonging to the 
school we planted and cultivated 50 acres of corn and a garden, and cut 
the wood for the school. 

1876. The school building was enlarged to accommodate one hundred 
children, and then the Cheyennes put their children in school for the 
first time. The proceeds of the corn crop raised in 1875 was invested in 
cattle, paying for thirty-two head. In 1876 the school, under my charge, 
raised 100 acres of corn and a large garden. One-half of this crop was 
turned over to the Government, and the other half sold and invested in 100 
head of two-year-old and yearling heifers. The cattle were divided among 
the boys according to the work they were able to 

Page 30

do, and each boy's cattle were pointed out to him and branded, so he would 
know them. The boys herded the cattle. 

I bought forty-two head of cows at eleven and twelve dollars each, and 
placed them in the herd and sold them to the school children for the same 
that I paid. As a good deal of the work about the school was done by the 
children, for which they received small pay, I persuaded them to invest a 
small portion of their wages in the purchase of cows. 

The girls that worked in the laundry, sewing room and kitchen were soon 
the owners of a cow each. The forty-two head were soon closed out and paid 
for by the school. 

One young Indian woman that worked in the laundry paid for three head. One 
Cheyenne woman traded buffalo robes for twenty-five two-year-old heifers, 
and gave them to her daughter, who was in school. 

Agent Miles and myself, after considering the matter, concluded that this 
school herd and farm could, in time, support the school, so that the 
school would not only become a Manual Labor and boarding school, as we 
then called it, but it would be a Manual Labor and self-supporting school. 
With this end in view, with the Indian boys I hauled logs for a house, 
which, with the help of Agency carpenters, was built at Caddo Springs, 
three miles north of the Agency. The cattle were moved up to that place, 
and I detailed three boys to take care of the ranch and cattle. With the 
Indian boys I put up a stack of hay which was sold out to passing 
freighters at the rate of one cent per pound, an Indian boy selling the 
hay kept account of the money and turned it over to me, and it was used 
for a contingent fund for the school. 

The Northern Cheyennes who had been sent down to this Territory were not 
willing to put their children in the same school with the Arapahoes. Agent 
J. D. Miles had a temporary building put up at Caddo Springs, near the log 
house before mentioned, large enough to accommodate fifty children, and I 
moved into the log house with my family and undertook to run the school of 
fifty children with one white lady to assist, and the work was done with 
large scholars from the other school. The baking was done by a Cheyenne 
boy, and the sewing by an Arapahoe girl, the cooking by an Arapahoe girl 
assisted by the 

Page 31

baker and his apprentice. The dining room and the chamber work and laundry 
was done by details from the school. 

The school was taught by a Cheyenne girl who had got all her training from 
the other school. The primary school of fifty children was taught and 
cared for with only one white person, who went from one department to 
another and had a general supervision of all the children of this school, 
started new from camp, except those who were employed to work, and they 
were taught in the school room by an Indian girl. They left off at the 
close of a term of about four months with very few that could not read in 
the First Reader, and they could repeat many passages of scripture and 
sing hymns. I kept raising corn and paying Indians for work, when they 
could take the place of white employes, and got as many to invest their 
earnings in cattle as I possibly could. A few benevolent people donated a 
small amount toward the herd, and in one way and another we had a herd of 
400 head of cattle. Of these, 150 head belonged to the school as an 
endowment fund; the remaining 250 belonged to the school children 
individually. About this time an Indian Inspector came and looked over the 
herd and inquired into the plan and was pleased with the prospect. He 
recommended that 400 heifers be given to the school by the Government, 
which was done, and there is where our reverses set in. Before these 
cattle were given to the school the Government had no claim on the herd, 
as it had been earned mostly by the Indians themselves, and what little 
had been given was the property of the Indians as a school, not of the 
Government. The Agent did not have to account for this herd any more than 
he did for the Indian ponies and their lodges. 

But when the Government gave 400 head of cattle, the Agent had to take 
them up on his books and had to account for them and become responsible. 
The Indian boys now had to take care of double the number of cattle, and 
they did not know to whom half of them belonged. Their own cattle they 
knew how they came by--they had earned them, one at a time; some of them 
they had watched grow up from cunning little frisky calves until they had 
become cows and the mothers of other calves. The boys, when they were 
detailed on herd, could point out their own cattle to their fathers and 
mothers and friends and could 

Page 32

realize that they were the owners, and were taking care of their own 
cattle. When the new lot came in, they would naturally ask "To whom do 
these cattle belong?" The answer would be "They are given to the school." 
The next question would be "What for?" We might answer "To make the school 
self-supporting," but--did--it--do--this? Let us see how it turned out. 

The boys lost a great deal of interest in taking care of the herd, as 
there were so many cattle belonging to the Government, and so few 
belonging to the children. I lost my interest in the scheme, as the 
Government had jumped my claim, and I gave up the job. The Agent soon 
found it was necessary to hire a white man to take charge of the herd. 
This cost, I think, $75 per month. The herd being larger, it required more 
horses. The Government must buy horses to herd these cattle. The Agent 
must take them up on his accounts and be responsible for them. The result 
was, the Inspector came, recommended that the herd all be issued out to 
the school children, and their parents should take them to camp and take 
care of them. This was done, except the taking care of them. The majority 
of the children do not know what became of their cattle. I know many of 
them were eaten up the next winter; many sold for half price; some strayed 
away for want of care; a few of them were kept and the Indians have been 
content to kill only the increase. 

I am fully satisfied that if the Government had let that herd alone, that 
to-day, with the farming that could have been done by the children, the 
schools would cost the Government at least $10,000 less per year than at 
present, and the school children could mostly have been located near the 
schools by the Government helping them to improve a small place, and much 
of this help could have been furnished by the school. Oxen could have been 
taken from the school herd to break the ground, and as the school boys all 
knew how to plough, the cost of starting a home for each boy as he grew up 
would have been trifling. 

When I left the Indian work, I did not expect again to engage in it, 
though I remained in the country, and hired Indians to work for me. I have 
paid them thousands of dollars: have employed them to carry mail, make 
brick, put up hay, tend mason, excavate for cellars and cisterns, cut cord 
wood, herd 

Page 33

cattle and horses, chop and haul logs to the mill, and build wire fences. 
I did this when I was not an employe of Government and it was optional 
with me whom I hired. 

In the above statement I wish to show that Indians can and will work; that 
if their labor is properly utilized it will support them. The fault is not 
with the Indians that they are not self-supporting, but with the policy 
that tries to make men and women of them by feeding them as Indians. 

In the case of this school here, there was $10,000 worth of cattle thrust 
upon these Indians whether they wanted them or not. They had no corrals, 
no permanent abiding place: they were here to-day and there to-morrow, and 
were not ready to take care of cattle except in their way--which was to 
kill them and to eat them. 

In the case of the school herd there was $5,000 worth of cattle that had 
cost the Government nothing. They were purchased with the earnings of the 
school, and the natural increase of the herd: they were accumulated as a 
white man accumulates stock. The children valued them as a white man 
values his stock. 

With the above account of the school herd before you, need I tell you what 
the drawback was? If so, I will answer by using an old proverb, which is 
this--"Too many cooks spoil the broth." 

Yours truly, 
J. H. Seger. 

There stands a mournful monument, or rather several of them, at this 
Agency, of the power there is in the hands of the Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs to wreck the fortunes of those who have invested them in Indian 
trade. These consist of several buildings -- stores, dwelling-house, 
warerooms, etc., which belonged to the firm of Hemphill and Woy, recent 
traders at this Agency. These men swear that these buildings cost them $13,
000, and that they had other investments in the way of fences, appliances 
for drying and baling hides, wagons, unexpired insurance, outstanding 
accounts, etc., amounting to almost $15,000; and a stock of goods which 
inventoried, just before they were forced to leave the reservation, almost 
$30,000, making, 

Page 34

in all, between $55,000 and $60,000 of property. They had no reason to 
suppose they would not be allowed to continue in business, as no charge 
had ever been made against them, until after another man had been licensed 
to take their place. Mr. Woy, in his testimony before the Senate 
Committee, thought the Commissioner, when he saw what ruin must come upon 
them, was disposed to allow them to continue, but the Secretary refused. 
Mr. Atkins said their time should be extended if it cost him his office, 
and it was continued for a few months. 

They offered to sell their building to Mr. Baker, the new trader, for $5,
000, and the goods in store for 60 per cent. of cost, but were unable to 
get it. Their buildings are idle and empty, except that the Agent has 
stored some Agency goods in one of them; their goods they brought away at 
great expense, but have no sale for them; their outstanding debts are all 
lost; both partners are bankrupt, and their indebtedness, on closing up, 
is almost $21,000. 

ANADARKO, KIOWA AND COMANCHE AND WICHITA RESERVATIONS. The first 
noticeable fact of importance at this point is the need of a bridge across 
the Wichita River in place of the one condemned and closed to all except 
footmen. The river at the time of my visit was too high for fording, and 
but for the fact that the bridge, though unsafe, can still be used, it 
would be difficult to furnish supplies to the Wichita school, or conduct 
the affairs of the Agency, which are partly on both sides of the river. 

The Agent here is Capt. J. Lee Hall, of Texan Ranger fame. He is a native 
of North Carolina, but has been in Texas for a number of years, and did 
that State excellent service as Captain of a company of rangers engaged in 
the work of clearing it of outlaws. He is a man of nerve and reckless 
personal daring, and of untiring energy. I was prejudiced against him by 
reports from Lone Wolf and others, and was prepared to examine most 
critically both him and his work. On telling him, on my arrival, that I 
wanted to see all I could in a very short time, so that I could get back 
with the Post ambulance and outfit, he said I could not get back at the 
time I had named--that it was the first time any one representing the 
ideas of our Association had 

Page 35

come to see him; that he was rejoiced at my coming, and I must do him and 
his people the justice to stay long enough to look into the affairs of his 
Agency. Of course, as this was what I wanted, I sent the ambulance back to 
Reno, and remained a week with the captain. 

He had a council the next morning after I got there, to talk over some 
matters with the Indians. They were just sending delegates to Muscogee or 
Talequah, to consult in regard to matters with the other Indians of the 
Territory. It came out that one object was to talk over the Severalty Law, 
and no doubt the Indian Defence Association and the delegates of the five 
civilized tribes will use the occasion to work against the measure. 

I had a long talk with them, through three interpreters. A newly returned 
Carlisle Kiowa interpreted to his people, the Agency interpreter for the 
Comanches, and an Indian connected with the Wichita school for the 
Wichitas, Caddos and Delewares. It is very evident that they fear this is 
a scheme to unsettle their title to their lands. The Kiowas especially, 
through Sun Boy and Lone Wolf, have been made very much afraid of it by 
the Indian Defence Association. The Comanches were not represented in the 
council excepting by a few, and those present shared the feeling of the 
Kiowas. I explained to them fully the provisions of the Law, showed how it 
gave lands to those on Executive Order Reservations who have no title of 
any character which they fully appreciated; explained that it took none of 
the surplus lands which were protected, as theirs is, by a treaty--which 
relieved them, to some extent, of their greatest fear; but still it is a 
new thing which they cannot measure, and they know not what it may drag 
along behind it. They feel more secure of what they now have than of what 
this may bring them. Capt. Hall says the Comanches, who are the 
progressive ones on that side the river, who are near Sill and Mt. Scott, 
are in favor of the measure, and ready, many of them, for allotment. I 
went down there to meet them, but found they were south of Red River, 
having gone down into Texas to trade, as they were in a quarrel with their 
traders, and so I could not, by personal interview, learn their wishes. 
Mr. Jones, Post interpreter at Sill, who is a great friend of the Indians 
and has been among them for 25 or 30 years, also says the Comanches are 
ready for 

Page 36

it, and it would be the best thing for them to begin at once the allotment 
of their land, especially as this would settle the question of their 
removal. 

The Kiowas and Comanches are very unlike, and it is unfortunate that they 
are thus associated on the same reservation. The Comanches are 
intelligent, industrious, virtuous, and ready to go forward, are 
comparatively free from disease, and are increasing in numbers. They have 
a contempt for the Kiowas, and very reluctantly send any of their 
children--the girls they will not send--to school with the Kiowa children. 
The Kiowas are just the reverse of what I have said of the Comanches. I 
have never seen so many buggies and light carriages among Indians as these 
people have. Their horses are more than mere ponies, and are of good 
quality, and if furnished with a few blooded stallions, they would soon be 
well provided with herds of horses fit for market or use. Many of them are 
getting cattle, and if a wise policy was only adopted and adhered to, they 
would soon be able to care for themselves. Capt. Hall has now on hand, to 
their credit, some $60,000 or $75,000 lease money, and fines collected for 
trespass. He advised the Commissioner, so he informed me, that it would be 
the best possible thing to buy heifers with it. He authorized him to do 
so, and on reaching home he (the Captain) advertised for the cattle. The 
traders saw this money was going elsewhere than into their tills, and the 
cattle men saw that if the Indians became ranchmen and cattle owners, they 
would want their own land now occupied by them, and would become 
producers, and not mere consumers of beef. Immediately they made such a 
vigorous protest that the Commissioner wrote Hall that his proposed 
purchase was without authority, and he was forbidden to make it. Thirty 
thousand dollars of the $90,000 then in hand was paid over to the Indians, 
and went for things unnecessary, or that had little relation to their 
permanent improvement. 

The Agent is now much discouraged by the action of the Department in the 
matter of the new contract for beef. In the first place, the amount 
contracted for the new year is 500,000 lbs. below the issue of last year. 
Last year the contractor made a weekly delivery, the cattle being weighed 
at time of delivery. This year they go back to the plan of the previous 
year, the 

Page 37

viciousness of which Hall had fully discussed with the Commissioner, and 
of which he seemed fully convinced, and the cattle are to be delivered on 
the 1st of November, for six months' issue. They are to be weighed when 
they are at the fattest, and must be held by the Agent for his weekly 
issue. The loss to the Indians by death, straying and loss of weight will 
vary from 30 to 60 per cent., according to the cattle delivered and 
according to the weather. The contractor, while I was there, had already 
purchased in Mexico, a large number of old cows--which he can get for 
$6.00. These cannot stand the colder winters of the reservation, and will, 
in all probability, bring disease among the cattle of the Indians. 

The difference between the bid of this contractor and of the old company, 
who would have furnished a weekly issue of cattle raised in the Territory, 
is the difference between $2.39 and 2.44--a small showing to the credit 
(?) of the Commissioner, but a heavy loss to the poor Indians, out of 
whose stomachs, or out of whose little herds, which they are beginning to 
raise, it must be made good. It is already reported, before the winter is 
more than half gone, that there is a deficiency of beef. 

The Agent is making great progress in getting his Indians to raise corn. 
He estimates that they will have from 40,000 to 50,000 bushels of this 
cereal to sell next autumn if the season continues favorable; but where 
can they sell it? No white man would raise that amount of corn in this 
country unless he had the cattle or the hogs to consume it. It seems that 
all efforts to push the Indian along must be expended in directions 
blocked by nature or circumstances. If this effort at corn raising had 
been expended in cattle raising, it would be more hopeful. To raise a vast 
crop of corn, more than the Indian needs (having his rations, he needs but 
little), which he cannot convert profitably into money or its equivalent, 
is a mistake; for the more he raises, the more discouraged will he be. 

There are several hundred acres of wheat also on the reservation, some of 
it looking very finely, but scattered as it is over this great 
reservation, it will be difficult to harvest and thresh it with out a 
large percentage of loss. Whatever may be said about the advantage of a 
diversified agriculture, of which everything favorable can be said, yet 
until a market for civilized products is 

Page 38

brought nearer than it now is, these people must, if they do anything 
successfully, raise such things as can be driven to a distant market. 

Corn can be safely counted on about once in three years, because of 
drought, but grass is a constant and almost unvarying quantity. It would 
certainly seem as if we might take nature into our confidence and have her 
for an ally in the work of Indian civilization, rather than fight against 
her and attempt to force her to come to our foolish plans. 

I went down to Fort Sill, some 40 miles from the Agency, through a fine 
country and past some very fine corn and wheat fields. Col. Pierson, of 
the post, very courteously entertained me, and furnished an ambulance, 
interpreter, and Indian scout to go with me. Capt. Hall and I, thus 
accompanied, drove about the reservation, and selected a site for the new 
Comanche school, bids for the erection of which will soon be advertised 
for. We selected the crown of a beautiful hill, about 2 3/4 miles from the 
post, in case sufficient water can be developed in a spring near it--of 
which we had no doubt. 

Sill is a beautiful post, built mostly of blue limestone, of which there 
is an abundance near the site selected for the school, with accomodations 
for quite a number of troops, with stone corrals for horses and necessary 
stock. This post will undoubtedly be abandoned before many years, and 
would leave empty buildings for a splendidly equipped industrial training 
school. We had this possibility in mind when we made selection of the 
school site, though deeming it the suitable point independently of this 
possibility. 

This school is greatly needed at once, and would be immediately filled by 
the Comanches, who live mostly in this part of the reserve, and who will 
not allow their children, especially their girls, to go to the same school 
with the Kiowas: and there is no room for them in that school, even if 
they had not this objection. 

On Sabbath morning, I officiated on the bridge at a marriage ceremony, the 
bridal party being unable to ford the river or drive over the bridge; 
visited the Sabbath School of the Wichita School and spoke to the 
children. Attended the white Sabbath School at the Agency in the P. M.; 
baptized a little child and made a small sermon at the close of the 
school. In the evening 

Page 39

held a service for the whites, about 35 or 40 being present, and saw the 
need of a missionary among these people, white and Indian, for whom 
nothing is being done in the way of missionary effort. 

Next day visited the Kiowa school. The Industrial teacher is doing good 
work with his Indian boys. His corn was very fine, excepting where he had, 
unfortunately, planted some worthless seed sent out from the Department. 

I was first introduced into the main room of the school, where an Hon. 
Judge from Texas, who has deserted bench and bar in behalf of these 
people, teaches the young Indian ideas how to shoot. The Judge, I was 
informed, was the most distinguished lawyer in the county from which he 
hails. It is well that he has attained distinction in some field of labor; 
he certainly would never achieve it in the field of pedagogy. He is a 
little mite of a man--sallow, spiritless. He had two boys and a girl 
droning away at reading. He sat with one hand in the depths of his pocket, 
and about once a minute he would pronounce the word the pupil had been 
hung on since he pronounced the last. He never rose to his feet without 
feeling for his knee-pans by way of his breeches pockets, using the stove 
for a spittoon. He looked as if he had gotten out of his grave to find "a 
chaw of terbacker," and had lost his way and could not find his 
restingplace. I never have seen such a perfect picture of the old field 
schoolmaster, and I have seen a number. 

He had about 6 or 7 children in his room--all he could do justice to in 
the practice of expert expectoration. 

In another room presided the wife of the Superintendent. I have seen 
grace, beauty and intelligence in various proportions before, but never so 
combined as in this case, all of which were devoted to the problem of 
Indian Education. She is a "fearful and wonderful maid," as the Psalmist 
would say. And her teaching was worthy of the teacher. She said, as also 
did the Hon. Judge, that she had the greatest difficulty in correcting the 
children in regard to the pronunciation of " the ," they having been 
taught to call it " the ." Both she and he had worked at it long, and 
well, I suppose, but so far had failed in this, as in all else they had 
attempted in the way of teaching. 

From this room I then went into that of Miss Davis, of Texas 

Page 40

also. She was better--very much better, indeed. She has conscience and 
purpose in her work, and was doing the very best she could, and if she 
only had a little training under some competent Normal teacher, would do 
good, first-rate work. She is doing good work. She was the one partially 
redeeming feature of that school. 

The school was very small, most of the children being out, either in the 
field or in the laundry on detail; but it is small when all are in, not 
having recovered from the break-up which occurred a few weeks since. After 
Lone Wolf came back from Washington and his conference with Bland, he set 
up to be a bigger man than old Hall or any one else; said he had a letter 
from the Commissioner, which no white man was to see. The Agent was to do 
business for his people through him, the sun dance was to be restored, 
etc., etc. Of course, the Agent had to reduce him to some order, and it 
made things glum among the Kiowas. The medicine man came to the front, 
said it was time to kill the white man, break up the schools, restore the 
old ways, and so the buffalo would come back. Runners were sent down to 
the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, to join them. The Kiowas gathered about the 
school house, some distance away; the squaws came down near the house and 
told the children to get out, for the house would be burned that evening; 
the children made a break (the Comanche boys did not go), the girls ran 
for their shawls, and the matron locked most of them in. The 
Superintendent took his wife and fled to the Agency. Some soldiers were 
sent up to protect the building, and after a time the Indians went away; 
the medicine man's medicine did not work. The school is just beginning to 
pick up again, but is still small. 

In going about the building, I noticed that the floors and stairways 
seemed clean, and I was anxious to see the matron, Mrs. Loper. Whatever 
else she may or may not be, there are things said about her. She, Miss 
Davis, Miss Murphy, the seamstress, and Miss Gee, a Cherokee half-breed, 
her assistant, are the grains of salt which save this school from absolute 
stench. The Superintendent himself is a nice, well-meaning man; 
industrious, honest, and all that, and would make a good farmer, but has 
no faculty for managing a school. The building is in 

Page 41

fearful repair, the cistern accessible to all the dirt the children may 
choose to throw into it or the wind may blow into it, and the water can be 
drawn out only as you let a bucket down by a rope lowered and raised by 
hand. The well is near by and in such situation it must be fouled from the 
building. The boys have a tub, which stands under the front piazza, in 
which they perform their ablutions, so far as they do ablute . The girls' 
bedroom is small, croweded, non-ventilated, and almost surrounded by the 
boys' rooms. In the store-room I saw great quantities of baby hose, too 
small for any but babies of a year old, part of which has been issued to 
children almost grown. The building is badly constructed, badly arranged, 
and fearfully out of repair. It needs to be cleaned out , beginning with 
and including most of the teaching force, and all the rubbish of the 
school-stores, for which there is no room. The bread--better, I was told, 
than it had been--is of very black flour and is not well made. 

The Wichita School, on the other side of the river, where the old Agency 
stood before it was combined with the Kiowa and Comanche, moved up from 
Fort Sill, under Carl Schurz's administration--a thing that ought never to 
have been done--is in better hands and is doing better work. The 
Superintendent, Mr. H., is from one of the Carolinas, is a Christian man, 
and has some Christian desire to benefit the children. He is a Christian--
a tobacco-chewing, nicotine-spitting one indeed--who throws his feet over 
the desk in front of him, and squirts away with the grace and precision 
which long practice can give alone to a true son of the South; but still, 
a wide-awake, earnest man is Mr. Haddon! 

Miss Collins, of Illinois or Indiana, is a clean-cut, level-headed, 
Christian lady of culture and refinement; Miss Thompson, of Texas, is a 
Catholic girl of good sense and considerable vim, perhaps a better teacher 
even than Miss Collins, who is good. The second assistant teacher, wife of 
one of the farmers, is one of the better class of no-accounts. Her husband 
when he came on, a brother-in-law of one of the traders, informed the 
Agent that Commissioner Atkins was a very near and dear friend of his 
father. He had the idea that there was considerable pay and no work and 
his duties consisted chiefly in taking 

Page 42

up the quarrel of the traders, and the situation generally, and giving his 
friend Mr. Atkins the exact facts of the case. He was but a boy, though 
married. The Agent had a very plain talk with him; told him if he attended 
to his duties he would have no time for taking up such matters as seemed 
to interest him, and that if he ever heard of his meddling where he was 
not concerned he would fire him out of the Agency. The young man meditated 
with profit to himself, came and thanked the Agent for his talk, took up 
his work, and bids fair when he has learned how to farm, to become a 
fairly good man for his place. 

The school house is a miserable, thin, brick shell, which threatens 
perpetual collapse. There is not a closet in it. It needs to be torn down 
and a much larger one built in its place. 

The Agent has for clerk a Mr. Campbell, of Texas, if I remember rightly. 
He can talk to you by the day, embellishing the talk with all varieties of 
expletives, of the Jeffersonian Democracy of his boyhood. He can use up in 
various ways as much tobacco as most men; but to keep the books, make up 
the returns, do the work of a clerk, this he can no more do than he can 
fly. His record as collector in kind of taxes in the days of the 
Confederacy, and as prison inspector in post-bellum days, as given and 
supported by affidavits, does not show him to be the kind of man into 
whose hands should be put the property interests of an Agency. The Agent 
does not say he is dishonest, but says he has such a fatal faculty for 
confounding meum and tuum, that it takes time to unravel and find the line 
of right cleavage. Until the issue clerk and Agent can make out the first 
copy of their returns, so that he can make the duplicate and triplicate 
copies, he has nothing to do whatever. 

When I first saw the doctor, I was struck with him. I took him to be a 
wood sawyer out of a job. He is one of the roughest-looking customers you 
will find in a month's search; but on better acquaintance, judged him to 
be a kind-hearted man, and he was said to be a skillful physician; that 
never refuses the dirtiest squaw whatever attention she needs, and is 
ready to go night or day when called to go. His name is Graves, from 
Texas. Before coming here he was at the Ute Agency, at $1,200 per annum. 
The doctor who was here got into a scrape, and had to 

Page 43

marry a girl out in Kentucky on short notice or short shrift. He did not 
want to come back here, under the circumstances. An exchange was proposed 
and agreed upon between him and Graves. Commissioner Atkins approved, and 
promised Graves' salary here should be the same as at the Ute Reservation. 
He was to resign and be appointed here; the other man should also resign 
and be appointed there. Graves came on, in answer to a telegram from the 
man here, who wanted to go on after his wife. When Graves got here the 
fellow refused to resign, got leave of absence for 30 days, while his 
salary ran on as usual. This was finally adjusted by the Agent, who gave 
the fellow a few hours in which to resign, divide his two months' salary 
with Graves, and get out, or take the consequences of an expose of his 
character. He divided and resigned. Graves was appointed and the salary 
was put at $1,000. His commission was signed by Deputy Commissioner 
Upshaw. Graves wrote back, calling attention to an inadvertent mistake 
made by Mr. Upshaw. He received a most insulting letter from Mr. U., and 
his salary is still $1,000. This is the story as told me by the doctor, 
who is very strong and emphatic in his denunciations of the Bureau and its 
treatment of those holding positions under it. 

In coming back from Anadarko to Darlington, we came through the Wichita, 
Caddo and Delaware Country. I have never seen so good fences in any 
farming country as these Wichitas have; their corn is splendid, and free 
from weeds or grass. Some of them have large herds of cattle and horses. 
They build grass houses, the first I have seen; these are large, 
ingeniously made, warm, dry, neat. These people are very religious, have a 
church of their own building, have a minister, and are great shouters. All 
who join the church take part in praying and exhorting. They are, as they 
claim, the original owners of the land they occupy and of much other. 
Their title has never been extinguished. When the Chickasaws were brought 
west, we went up to Kansas and treated with the Quaw-paws for this land, 
which they never owned. We say they (the Wichitas) have no title except an 
unratified treaty. The Secretary and President wanted me to consider the 
propriety of moving them over into Oklahoma, and so stop the clamor for 
that land, while this 

Page 44

should be opened up. This would be to commit as great an outrage as if 
they should remove the farmers of my town from their homes by violence; a 
greater, more infernal outrage could scarce be committed. They have 
splendid lands, well watered, well timbered--though the military are 
robbing it of timber and paying no stumpage. 

The President had better violate treaty obligations touching empty 
territory than to violate all principles of right and justice as touching 
living men, in order that he may silence a clamor for land. There should 
be no removals into this country from that west of it, but let an 
agreement be reached with the Seminoles and Creeks and then open that 
vacant land. 

I found in Capt. Hall the best Agent in this part of the Indian field, so 
far as his work among and for the Indians is concerned. He is not a class 
leader nor is he a teetotaler. I suspect he quietly sips his strong tea 
oftener than is good for him, but do not think he gets drunk. I never 
heard him swear, but am confident that he is an expert in that line. He 
came here, as he told me, not for his salary, but to get rich. He would 
not be mean enough to rob the Indian, but hoped to be on hand to get a big 
grab when these Indians were either bounced, or the country opened in some 
way. He fought the unruly elements among them at the imminent peril of his 
life. He has disarmed their hatred of him, except in a few cases. He has 
heartily espoused their cause, as against cattle men. He fights their 
battles for them on every hand: perhaps obeys orders in regard to keeping 
cattle off more perfectly than is desired by the Bureau--he sometimes 
thinks so. He has driven out some of the most worthless appointees, and 
will keep it up until he or they go. 

I am satisfied that either this Agent will have to go, or the Department 
will have to reform its management of affairs; for he is too independent 
to submit to the conditions imposed, and, as I believe, too earnest in his 
efforts to advance his Indians, not to protest most vigorously against the 
character of the employes sent out to him. He says they are taken largely 
from a class of people in the South who know nothing either of teaching or 
of business, and are too lazy to do anything, even if they knew how to do 
it. The difficulties under which all Agents of 

Page 45

the Bureau labor are almost fatal to any successful efforts on their part, 
even when the Bureau will give them all the help and encouragement it can; 
but when it is quite otherwise, when, seemingly, all obstacles are thrown 
in their way, when incompetent, insubordinate, hostile and obstructive 
favorites of the appointing powers are sent out, who feel they have the 
support of the office as against the Agent, and when protests against 
either appointees or methods are met with insulting letters or orders from 
the office, it is difficult for any man to hold the position with comfort 
to himself or profit to the service. 

After visiting a number of Agencies, proof, both positive and negative, 
forces the conviction that there is a system of terrorism operated by the 
Department, which seeks to enforce absolute approval of all its men and 
methods as the price to be paid for continuance in office, and that 
dissent will be regarded and treated as proof of insubordination and 
unfitness for the service. 

Gen. Phifer, who was in the Wichita School, a drunken and profane fellow, 
who abused the children, insulted the teachers, and over whom the Indians 
held a council, some of them imitating him by crowding their hands in 
their pockets, spitting profusely and swearing most fearful oaths; this 
Phifer, the Agent fired out. He was ordered to find some place for him, if 
he would not do for the school; but Hall would not have him. The General 
was ordered to Washington to have the matter investigated, got into the 
calaboose for drunkenness, and then Mr. Lamar's confidence in him was 
shaken and he was dropped. 

I was not able to get down to the Osage Reserve, but hear from many and 
reliable sources the condition of things. They have just had a new Agent 
sent them, an army officer. They have had two Agents, then an Inspector in 
charge for some time, and now this army officer. The changes there have 
been frequent and without improvement to the service. A special Agent from 
the Department of Justice, who has been down there, says the whole 
management has been most disgraceful. 

I was unable to accompany Mr. Platt's Committee to this Agency, though 
invited to do so. They went down on Saturday, and there went out an 
associated press despatch immediately after their visit, that these 
Senators and the Deputy Commissioner witnessed a dance on Sunday, which 
was led by some of 

Page 46

the graduates of Hampton or Carlisle, much to the discredit of these 
schools and of Eastern education. I happen to know that the Special Agent 
in charge, and the Deputy Commissioner of Indian Affairs were arranging 
for such a dance before the Committee left Arkansas City, and was told 
that if I went down, I could see it. 

From independent but concurrent witnesses I heard that the Superintendent 
of the Kaw School is a profane and vulgar fellow, and that his wife is 
more fit for a companion to him than for a teacher and example for the 
children. 

There will be many changes, it is to be hoped, after the first of July, 
and a report made on the condition of things as they are would not have 
the same value as if made late in the autumn. 

It is of great importance that we shall give particular attention to many 
things down here. This Territory has been made the especial harvest field 
for the Tennessee and Mississippi cormorants, and it must be cleaned out 
before we can hope for any improvement in the service. The battle for and 
against severalty will have to be fought here chiefly. The head men and 
chiefs of the civilized tribes, in league with Washington obstructionists, 
will do all they can here to defeat the measure, and prevent those in the 
Territory who are not excepted from its operation from accepting it. 

Two illustrative facts showing the calibre of the men employed to teach 
the Indians our Christian civilization, came to my attention. The 
Superintendent of the Kaw School allowed the cook and laundress to 
continue on for a full month after the school year 1886, under the 
impression that they were still in the service of the Government, doing 
the work for his family, and then refused them compensation. 

Mr. Young, the clerk in charge at Otoe, employed the woman who was cook at 
the time of my visit, and insisted that she must be on hand July 1st, 
which she was, at some considerable inconvenience, but though she did the 
work, she was allowed no compensation for it for the months of July and 
August: her wages commenced with the opening of the school in September. 
As the school reports show that salaries for these employes run for the 
whole year, and not for the ten months of the school 

Page 47

year, it is an interesting question whether these gentlemen exacted this 
service for their own advantage, and also pocketed the compensation, or 
simply saved it to the Government. 

One comes back from an inspection of these various Agencies and an 
estimate of the men engaged in the work of civilizing the Indians with the 
conviction that there is a deterioration in the personnel of the force, 
and a retrogression in the work. This strong conviction is fully borne out 
by the report of the Secretary of the Interior for the year ending June 
30th, 1887, compared with the report for the year ending June 30th, 1884, 
as in the following figures, which do not embrace the five civilized 
tribes of the Indian Territory:-- 

                                             1884.         1887.
Acres of Land under cultivation, .......... 229,768 ..... 238,000
Bushels Wheat raised, ..................... 823,299 ..... 750,000
Bushels Corn, ............................. 984,318 ..... 950,000
Bushels Oats and Rye, ..................... 455,526 ..... 470,000
Bushels Vegetables, ....................... 497,597 ..... 514,000
Feet Lumber Sawed, ...................... 4,416,935 ... 1,552,079
Horses owned by Indians, .................. 235,534 ..... 392,000
Mules, ...................................... 3,405 ....... 3,000
Cattle, ................................... 103,324 ..... 113,000
Swine, ..................................... 67,834 ...... 46,000
Sheep, .................................. 1,029,869 ... 1,120,000
Tons of hay cut, ........................... 71,828 ..... 102,000
Indians who wear citizens' clothing, ....... 82,642 ...... 58,000
Speak English for ordinary purposes, ....... 25,794 ...... 25,000
Families engaged in industrial pursuits, ... 31,191 ...... 31,000 

Assuming that the Agents are equally trustworthy in their estimates--it is 
evident that those for 1887 are given simply in round numbers--the showing 
is not creditable to the present administration, but more favorable than 
one acquainted with the condition of things on many of the reservations 
would anticipate. Entire candor will force the confession that all such 
figures and estimates might be classed as "fictitious literature," but 
there is no reason to suppose the present Agents will average more 
accurate or moderate in their guesses than those who guessed three years 
ago. 

If we turn to the Hon. Secretary's report of schools for the past year, 
and compare this with the report for 1884, we shall find facts which 
militate somewhat against the claim made for greater economy, as the 
figures above do against the claim for 

Page 48

greater efficiency in school work. The Secretary reports 227 schools in 
all, with an average attendance of 10,520 pupils, and a total expenditure 
on these schools of $1,170,000. This is an average cost of $5,154 for each 
school, and $111 per capita for average attendance. In 1884 there were 162 
schools, with an average attendance of 6,100, for which $650,000 was 
expended, which is an average cost of $4,012 for each school, and an 
average cost per capita for average attendance, of $106. I have not run 
the figures out into the fractions of dollars. From this it appears that a 
school costs $1,142 more than it did three years since, and a pupil costs 
$5.00 per capita more, and yet there has been a decrease of 794 in the 
number able to use the English language, and of 191 in number of families 
engaged in agricultural pursuits, notwithstanding the appropriation for 
additional farmers has been increased, I think, from $10,000 to $50,000. 

That these schools cost so much more is a matter of surprise; that they 
are doing less is not, to one who has visited a large number of them, and 
need not be to one who, though he has no chance to see the quality of the 
average teacher employed, learns that twenty-five of the seventy 
reservation boarding-schools had two or more, seven of them three, and the 
seventy had in all one hundred and two superintendents during the past 
year. In these 70 schools there are, in all, 560 positions to be filled, 
and they had appointed to them, in all, 1182 incumbents. One school in the 
Indian Territory was blessed with fifty appointees to the 14 positions to 
be filled, and several of these were vacant when the year closed. It had 3 
superintendents, 6 teachers, 4 industrial teachers, 4 matrons, 4 assistant 
matrons, 4 seamstresses, 4 laundresses, 6 shoemakers and the position 
vacant when the year closed, 3 cooks, etc., etc. If every change had been 
for the better, the changes, of themselves, would prevent any other result 
than that shown by a comparison of the figures given by the Hon. 
Secretary. It seems strange it did not occur to him to make the comparison 
I have made; perhaps he assigns the reason for not doing so when he says, 
"I have no pleasure in contemplating or stating any unpromising features 
of our work among the Indians," though this was said in view of the fact 
that perhaps we may not always be able to depend upon the attractions of 
our civilization to win these people from a 

Page 49

savage life--a suggestion which the most ardent advocate of Indian Rights 
may, at no remote day, be compelled to ponder. That these civilizing 
agencies which the Government is liberally supplying, and which will be 
furnished to whatever extent they may be demanded, shall be honestly 
applied and used by such Agents and employes as are capable of benefiting 
the Indian, is our first duty; that all honorable efforts shall be 
exhausted to persuade the Indian to break up his treaty-guarded 
conditions, which so hinder as effectually to prevent his progress; this 
they ought to insist shall be done; but the gentle hint of Mr. Lamar, in 
the sentence from which I have quoted, is one which we may have to 
enunciate as a definite proposition, and declare that pauperism and 
savagery have no rights, treaty or other, that we can recognize as 
standing as a perpetual guarantee of their continued existence. But before 
we violate such obligations as we are under to have the Indians consent to 
become civilized, we must exhaust legitimate efforts, put forth by able 
and competent Agents, for the work we are professedly attempting. This we 
cannot plead we are doing so long as the whole Indian Service is so 
largely subordinated to other and quite incongruous purposes. 

MISSION INDIANS. I reached Deming Friday, June 10th, from Albuquerque, via 
San Miguel, where we breakfasted, and Rincon, where we dined, at 3.45 P. 
M. It was exactly two years ago that I breakfasted here, on my first trip 
to the Mission Indians. At that time Gen. Crook was here, dispatching 
troops in all directions to intercept the hostile Apaches. It was my plan 
then to visit the San Carlos Reservation, but I was advised not to attempt 
it without a sufficient escort. Reaching here, after two years, with the 
same purpose, I was quite disconcerted when met with the same report. A 
number of young men--how many no one seemed to know--were on the war path 
again, and said to be operating directly along the road over which I was 
to pass. This fact had its influence upon my decision not to go to the 
reservation, which, however, turned chiefly on the fact that my trunk, 
with necessary papers, had gone astray, and the time set for me to meet a 
member of the Mohonk Committee on Legal Defence of 

Page 50

Mission Indians at Los Angeles, had come. I therefore went on the next day 
to Colton, where I stopped to see the Agent for the Mission Indians, by 
whom I was introduced to Major Jno. T. Wallace, Special Inspector from the 
Department of Justice, who had been sent out to investigate reports and 
charges that men were selling liquor to the Indians and that the Agent was 
not prosecuting them as vigorously as he should. Mr. Wallace was a great 
help to me in my subsequent journey and investigations. 

Immediately after my return from California, just at the opening of the 
last session of Congress, I called the attention of the President to the 
three classes of these Mission Indians--those whose condition required 
Congressional action, those whose rights must be protected in the courts, 
and lastly, those who had been driven from the reservations set apart for 
them by the President, and urged that it was wholly within his power to 
remedy the wrongs under which the last class is suffering. The President 
gave interested attention to the history of these cases, and said the 
remedy, so far as these were concerned, should be applied, and an order 
was issued for the removal of intruders from the Capitan Grande 
Reservation, which was to be enforced by the military, if necessary; and 
from the Reservation at Banning, on the 1st of September. The purpose of 
my present visit was to learn to what extent the order had been carried 
out; to learn, by personal inspection, what the capacity of the several 
reservations to support the Indians already upon them, or who must be 
brought to them in case the courts should decide they had no right to a 
home on the grants on which some of them are living; to explain to the 
Indians the provisions of the Severalty bill, through which those on these 
reservations might now secure a permanent home; to see what the character 
of the lands on the old grants, from which the effort is making to eject 
the Indians living on them--whether sufficient in quantity and quality to 
justify the effort to defend the Indians' title; to see what nooks and 
corners of public land are still unoccupied, on which individual Indians 
might still find homes, under the homestead laws; and to learn, generally, 
the whole situation, so that whatever action may be taken by the friends 
of these people shall be taken intelligently. 

Page 51

With Agent Ward, I went out to see the situation on the Maronge 
Reservation, at Banning. When cleared of the fifty-seven intruders on it, 
and some $50,000 or $75,000 has been expended to develop the water, there 
could be put upon it nearly 200 families, with abundant land for their 
support. There are now on it some ten or twelve Indian families, who have 
land and water, so that without the use of the above-named sum, some 
seventy or eighty families could be located in good shape, if the 
intruders are removed and the lands occupied by them given to those for 
whose use they have been set apart. In company with Mr. John T. Wallace, 
Special Examiner from the Department of Justice, who was looking after 
violators of law in regard to selling liquors to Indians--the first one 
who has ever been sent out to these people--I made an extended trip among 
the Indians of San Barnadino and San Diego counties. 

Mr. Ward, the Agent, who had planned to go with us, changed his mind and 
did not accompany us. On the day we were to start he telegraphed the 
Department his resignation of his office, asking that he be relieved at 
the end of the month. He did this in answer to a telegram which, under all 
circumstances, he regarded as insulting; he said this action was forced 
upon him by letters, telegrams, and a varied treatment of which no 
official could, under a decent administration, be made the subject. 

Into this history I will not go now; but am fully satisfied that his 
removal was determined upon immediately after I reported, on his 
authority, the utter incompetence of a teacher sent out to have charge of 
the school at San Barnadino. A war was begun at that time and never ceased 
until he has been forced, as he says, in self-respect, to resign his 
position. 

COHUILLA. Leaving Colton on the 21st of June, by the Cal. Southern 
Railroad, a Mr. Bergmann met us at Temecula, with a fine span of horses, 
and drove that P. M. some twenty miles to Radec, to Bergmann's house, on 
our way to Cohuilla. Next morning we drove fifteen or twenty miles to this 
reservation. It is pretty well up on the mountains and contains some 17,
420 acres of 

Page 52

good grass land, 640 of which has been added during the past winter, by 
executive order. 

This addition I secured, through Mr. Lamar, from the S. P. R. R., but was 
not aware how good a thing I had done, until my visit. The old reservation 
line ran through the hot spring, and near the school house. A squatter had 
built a house on this unsurveyed R. R. section and was giving the Indians 
trouble, and ground for considerable anxiety. The addition of this section 
settles all dispute as to the spring and pushes the squatter off the 
premises. 

It is most excellent grass land, has always been used by the Indians as 
pasture, and is of itself, aside from the results above mentioned, a 
valuable acquisition, in fact, was vital to the Indians, who are very 
happy over it. 

A Mrs. Parks and her two sons have built a number of houses along the 
western end of the reserve, hoping to secure all the land adjacent to that 
end of it, while they can also have free use of the reservation itself for 
pasture. They have not cultivated the land, but keep several hundred head 
of cattle, which give the Indians much trouble and consume much of their 
grass. They have put their best house so near the line that it is believed 
the porch is on the reservation. 

The spring they use, and which they have fenced in, is on the reserve, as 
is also a very good barn. There are on this reservation about sixty men, 
and in all--many of them off at Riverside and other places, at work--about 
340 Indians, who claim this as their home. They have some crops of barley 
and corn which are doing well this year, but the elevation is high and 
cold, and frosts are apt to catch their crops. Cattle raising must be 
their chief dependence, and it can be made a source of ample competency, 
if not of wealth. 

It will be seen that there is land to give nearly fifty-one acres to each 
man, woman and child, or more than 250 acres to a family of five, which is 
a large farm in California, but it is grazing and not farming land. 

The school here has been taught since it was started, some five or six 
years ago, by a Mrs. Ticknor. The school house is about 24x14 feet. Mrs. 
T. has curtained off the rear end, a 

Page 53

space some 5x14 feet, in which she lives. It sometimes grows very cold 
here, and there is more or less snow every winter. The walls of the school 
house are made of one thickness of board, sun-cracked and wind-warped, 
with openings through which the rats can escape. When it rains the teacher 
sits with an umbrella over her, and protected by gossamer cloak and rubber 
shoes. Some winters ago, one fearful night, the snow drifted in until it 
covered the tops of the desks, despite the desperate effort of Mrs. 
Ticknor and her daughter to carry it out in a blanket, in which they spent 
the night. There are about forty pupils for this school, twenty-four being 
present the day I was there. Several of these were men. One of them, 
Leonilia Lugo, deserves special mention. He is twenty-seven years old; is 
married and has two children. He supports his aged parents, a widowed 
sister and her daughter, and in part his wife's mother and her children. 
He has twenty-two head of cattle, and with his cousin, Roman Lugo, a young 
man near his own age, an almost inseparable companion, who was also in 
school with him, he has fenced in and commenced to cultivate a field of 
some five acres, to which he has brought water by a long ditch. Their corn 
was late and small, but our driver said it would make a fair crop. This 
field is near Mrs. Parks' house and the boys are much annoyed by her 
cattle. 

There has recently been a change of Captains in this village. Pablo has 
been elected in place of Juan Lugo, who kept whiskey in his house, and 
when drunk, came into the school house threatning the teacher with his 
pistol. 

The present Captain is a bright, intelligent man, who has great interest 
in his people and in the school. The Captain, if he does the work expected 
of him, ought certainly to have a ration issued to him by the Government. 
His duties are more clearly defined than is his authority, which is 
sometimes exercised with more pomposity and arbitrariness than wisdom. 

These Indians, so far as I saw them and could learn their wishes, are very 
anxious to have their lands allotted to them. 

I called on Ramona at her little hut, and gave Alessandro some coin in 
memory of that morning when his mother fled down the trail, which I could 
trace a part of the way over the 

Page 54

mountain, to her home, with him in her arms, leaving the body of her 
murdered husband where it lay after Temple's deadly shot. 

This Temple, called Farrar by Mrs. Jackson in her story of Ramona, came 
from Tenn., and has been associated with a man, another scoundrel, named 
Fain (Mrs. Jackson spelled it Fane), also from Tenn., who murdered an 
uncle for his money, but was acquitted for lack of proof, one witness 
being his confederate, and an Indian, whose testimony would probably have 
convicted him, was found dead, hung up in his room, before the trial came 
on. Both these men belong to most excellent families in East Tennessee. 

It must be confessed that Ramona impresses one more favorably, as to 
beauty and intelligence, as she is described in the book than as seen 
standing by her hut. She is full-blooded, very homely, and uninteresting. 

AQUA CALIENTE. We took an early start the next morning, and made the 
twenty-five miles to Warner's Ranch--Aqua Caliente--by eleven o'clock, 
stopping at Puerta De La Cruz, one of the five Indian villages on Warner's 
Ranch. Our driver and the Indians told me that twenty-five or thirty years 
ago there were about eight hundred Indians in this village. The ruins of 
one house, once lived in by Valentine Mechuc, a very old, blind Indian 
whom I saw, is all that is left of quite a long street, once lined on both 
sides with houses. The graveyard near by, filled to overflowing with 
graves, contains "the great majority." Four families, occupying as many 
houses up on the hillside, overlooking the site of the old village, and 
with but one child in the four, is all that now remains of this once 
thriving village. A negro, named Oliver, had just proved up on a section 
of Government land on which the Indians had a corral for the pasture of 
their cows. They admitted that they had let the fence go down, and had no 
improvements on it, and did not so occupy it that they could claim it. 

After our long dusty ride a bath in the waters of the hot spring at Aqua 
Caliente was most refreshing. Miss Golsh has been teaching here since the 
school was first established, and was spoken of by Mrs. Jackson, with 
great enthusiasm, in her report. 

Page 55

She had never seen this report until I showed it to her, and was pleased 
with the compliments paid herself; but quite displeased with what was said 
of her brother, saying that she did him an injustice. What this was I did 
not learn, as Golsh's case, whether right or wrong, is one of those which 
are determined and settled, and it would avail nothing, so far as the 
Indian is concerned, to open it. 

There are some 175 Indians here, and about twenty-two children in school. 
The hot spring is a valuable property, or would be in the hands of men who 
could develop it--worth, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of dollars. The 
flow of water is very large. It is almost boiling hot, and affords relief 
to all but the most stubborn cases of rheumatism. It is a source of income 
to the Indians; it is also a source of great corruption to the people, as 
it draws many corrupt men here who hire Indian houses and debauch the 
women. 

Miss Golsh is a very remarkable woman, the daughter of an Austrian 
nobleman, I hear; very earnest in her efforts for the people. She lives in 
the school house, and spends most of her salary in her efforts to relieve 
and help. If it were not for the springs, this village would be very poor 
indeed. 

The grant belongs to Ex-Gov. Downey, who, I believe, is under a guardian, 
and no movement is now making to eject the Indians. There are yet doubts 
as to the title, and from what I hear, a white man might squat on it with 
impunity, as the claimant would be loth to bring the title to the test of 
a trial. How long this quiet may last no one knows. 

The man Helm, spoken of by Mrs. Jackson as annoying the Indians at the San 
Ysidro Canon, is still fighting for his land, his case being now in court. 
Further up the canon, where Jim Fain, when Mrs. J. was here, was 
attempting to get a foothold, a Mrs. Ayers has also filed on another 
section of land, but has not been able to prove up; and between Helm and 
Fain, a Miss Ayers has had the same want of success, but all are holding 
on, hoping in time to establish their claim. 

Along the foot of the mountain on the road to San Ysabel I counted some 
sixteen or eighteen Indian houses, with little fields in the canons. I 
doubt whether any Agent or Commissioner 

Page 56

ever visited them. They belong to the village of San Jose, one of the 
Warner Ranch villages. 

In the afternoon I visited the school, and after school had a long 
conference with the men of Aqua Caliente. I explained to them at length 
the Severalty bill, how it opened up a chance for them to go to the 
Banning Reservation and find good land, and make a home of their own. 
Explained how we were trying to defend the Saboba Indians' claims to the 
San Jacinto Ranch, but had fears that we might not succeed; that their 
title was in the same doubt; that it was a title, at best, only to 
occupancy and use; that they could, at best, only make a poor living on 
it, and hold it by a tribal patent, etc., etc. To all this they only said, 
this had always been their home, and they wanted to stay here. Mr. Wallace 
gave them a strong lecture on the liquor traffic, which is destroying so 
many of them, and tried to get the Captain and others to furnish proof 
against men who were selling; but they were all "know nothings." 

The school house here is adobe, and the most comfortable one we found in 
our whole trip, excepting the one at San Jacinto, but sadly in need of 
repair. Mr. Wallace slept on the blackboard, I on a sort of box-bed, and 
our driver on the floor. Miss Golsh did the best possible for us, and we 
came away with a very high opinion of her character and ability as a 
teacher and woman. 

SAN YSABEL. The next morning we went over to San Ysabel Ranch, which has 
recently been sold by Mrs. Willcox to three men who have opened up three 
dairies on it. The Agent had authority from the Department to build a 
school house here, and hauled his lumber for it, but was forbidden by 
these men to erect it. He kept a guard over the lumber for some time, and 
then hauled it away to Mesa Grande. Whether he applied for instructions to 
the Bureau, and got no answer, and was unwilling to enter upon what seemed 
to him a personal combat, as one of Mr. Ward's sons, who hauled the 
lumber, says, or whether he was ordered by the Department to take it away 
and avoid the contest I cannot say, but this is certain, the point was 
surrendered, the house not built, and the claimants scored a victory. Mr. 
Ward then hired from an Indian an old adobe house for a school, and put in 
a 

Page 57

teacher, who, after a short time, got married. He then employed the 
daughter of a man with whom I spent the night, living six miles from the 
school. This man is charged by his neighbors with making a poor liquor of 
his grapes and selling it to the Indians. This charge is made by a woman 
who wanted the school, either for herself or daughter; was mad because she 
could not get it, and wrote to Mr. Atkins that Ward was favoring the 
liquor sellers, as against honest, law-abiding citizens. This letter 
called forth from the Commissioner the telegram which caused Ward to 
resign. 

When I was there the teacher had the measles and the school was not in 
session. The school house was not fit to be used for such a purpose. These 
Indians live in a rincon, or round valley, and have had some six hundred 
acres under cultivation. Their houses were all on one side of the valley, 
near the foot of the mountain, and their fields in the centre and on the 
other side of the valley, extending up into the little canons that open up 
from it. A fire broke out some months since and burned their fences down, 
and they were forbidden to rebuild them. A wire fence was then run between 
their houses and their fields, and they have not a foot of their land for 
crops, excepting one man, who is outside of this fence, and he pays half 
his crop for rent. These men even built their fence across the county 
highway, and had a gate on it, which was locked, so that we were compelled 
to make a long detour to get around their fields. 

Shirley Ward reasserts what he said last autumn, that it was understood 
between him and counsel for these parties, that the situation was not to 
be disturbed by them until a decision was reached in the Saboba case, 
which should be regarded as a test case, and was entirely ignorant of the 
fact that every foot, or any part of their lands, had been thus taken. 

The Indian title is good, if at all, only during their occupancy and use 
of their land, but as they have vacated these lands and the white man is 
in possession, it will require aggressive action to restore the status. 
Ward, the Agent, either under instructions from Washington or by his own 
pusillanimity, yielded the contest in regard to the school building, and 
Ward, the counsel for the Indians, has allowed himself to be deceived by 
the counsel for these parties. Immediate steps must be taken 

Page 58

to put them back in possession, until the question of their rights shall 
be passed upon by the courts. If these were white men I would advise them 
to tear this fence down at once and hold their land vi et armis , until 
the courts decided what their rights are; but I hesitate to do so unless I 
was in a position to stand by and protect them. 

There are here about 150 Indians, and twenty-two children of school age. 
Up on the mountain, near by, lies the San Ysabel Reservation, containing 
14,705 acres of land, set apart for these Indians, by executive order, in 
1875, and all they have to do is to take themselves up there and hunt up 
such places as the squatters on it have left them, and make new homes. The 
foolish sentiment that this valley has always been their home, that it 
contains the bones of their fathers, that they have cultivated these 
fields, and all that sort of sickly sentiment, having only Indians for its 
object, deserves, at least receives, no consideration whatever. The fact, 
also, that these 14,705 acres are, almost every foot of it, steep 
mountain, is one of no moment whatever. Two squatters on the reservation 
having appropriated about all the available land on it. 

I have no doubt there are nooks and corners on this reservation where many 
of these Indians could find a better place than the small patch of land 
they claim on the grant, but the general said: "I will sooner lie down 
here and die than go from it," and this expresses the general feeling. 

MESA GRANDE. From here we climbed six miles up to Mesa Grande, a small 
reservation of 120 acres. All the way up we passed old fields which had 
once been cultivated by the Indians, but, having been left by them, have 
passed, beyond recovery, out of their hands. The land is mostly very good 
and well watered; and is really a part of the San Ysabel Reserve, but cut 
off from it by interjected ranches. There are on it some fifteen or 
eighteen families and 142 Indians, under Captain Narcisse, a rather 
important fellow. They have three plows and one wagon. The seed furnished 
last spring was very poor, and consequently their crops are bad this year. 
They make their living chiefly by sheep-shearing and working for the 
whites.