We have thus named, in order, from the north, the various native tribes, till we have come to the reservations of the Indians removed from the east by the general governThese fragments of tribes have been already de

ment. scribed.

West of them, around the forks of Kanzas river, is the hunting-ground of the Kanzas tribe, from whom this river and territory have their names. This name is spelled by different writers in many different ways. Cansas, Conzas, Konsas, Kansas, and Kanzas, are the most frequent. The tribe has always existed in this vicinity.

The Santa Fé road passes through their country, and the temptation which the emigration gives to their stealing propensities seems to afford their principal occupation. They are a wild, roving people, wholly careless of civilized arts. "I am unable to say whether they have been improved by the efforts of the missionaries," is the bitter report of the government agent, "who have labored for them for the last thirty years, or not; if they have been, I am inclined to think they were a miserable set of beings when the missionaries began." They have a school, but will not send their daughters to it, and take the boys away as soon as they are old enough to hunt.

Some years ago the government had three hundred acres. of land prepared for planting. Early in the spring, a few Indians began to plough, under the direction of their teachbut the chiefs sent out their braves, cut up the harness,

ers;

broke the ploughs, and whipped the men away, saying that the women should do all the work, as they had done. The nation numbers one thousand three hundred, and there are but two log cabins among them all. The rest prefer the lodges of their savage life.

The Kanzas Indians intermarry with the Osages, having been at peace with them for most of the last fifty years. These two tribes speak the same dialect of the Dahcotah.

The Osages inhabit the southern line of the territory of Kanzas. This, also, is a tribe spoken of by the first explorers. They are still in the savage condition of their fathers. They go, twice a year, six or eight hundred miles into the grand prairie to hunt, and to trade with the still wilder Indians of the west and north-west. These hunting expeditions occupy three or four months each. In the spring they plant a little corn, which they attempt to harvest in the fall, before the fall hunt begins. They live in lodges covered with mats, made out of the flag that grows in the swamp lands of their prairies. Their land, except along the streams, is generally poor. The low lands are subject to annual inundations.

Besides these tribes, which have some settled habitations, roving tribes of Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and sometimes Camanches, infest these territories. Their customs are those of all wandering Indians, and their incursions dreaded, if they are in considerable numbers, by all the settled tribes. A small band of Munsee or Moravian Christian Indians

reside on the Delaware lands. They are represented as rather a dissipated set, with a few good and intelligent men. Their number in all is about one hundred and forty. About twenty-five Stockbridge Indians, half civilized and somewhat educated, live in the neighborhood of Fort Leavenworth.

We have thus attempted a rapid review of the emigrant Indians, and of those native to the region now found within the territories of Nebraska and Kanzas. We have spoken, in detail, only of those tribes whose present position offers anything of special interest. The review is anything but agreeable. It seems fair to say, however, that a careful view of the Indian character and history does not wholly bear out the charges, constantly made, that these tribes are reduced to poverty and misery by the advance of civilization. Poverty and misery are, in fact, their normal and original condition. They are their own worst enemies. As Lewis and Clarke found them, when there was almost no trade, when they had not fire-arms, liquor, nor the diseases of civilized life, they were suffering, as they suffer now, under the wretchedness which will follow childish improvidence and indolence. Lewis and Clarke supposed that there might be one hundred and fifty thousand Indians east of the Rocky Mountains, west of the Missouri and Mississippi. On that estimate, they occupied the finest country in the world, in as scanty a proportion as one man to ten square

CONDITION OF THE INDIANS.

55

miles. Its valleys and prairies were the most fertile known. Its wild game, alone, is enough to feed a vastly greater population. Yet, even then, these tribes knew the agonies of starvation, and were not increasing in number. Their constant wars kept down their population, and their distaste for settled habitation made any sort of civilization impossible. The Mandans were the only exception. And the Mandans were diminishing in number under the attacks of the wandering tribes.

Of the Emigrant Indians the history is more sad. The government of the United States has assumed a responsibility with them. It pays large sums to them, annually, in annuities; it supports teachers of agriculture and of religion among them; it supplies smiths, tools, stock, salt, and the necessities of farming, and attempts to call them to the habits of civilized life. These efforts are not wholly without success, as has been seen. The great obstacle in the way of them is the passion of the Indians for spirits, and the difficulty in checking the introduction of spirits among them.

The agents and missionaries agree in pointing this out as the greatest of evils to the natives. They acknowledge that they fail in keeping the fascinating poison from the people of their charges. If the whites do not bring it, the Indians go for it. Where traders do not sell it, emigrants do.

The only success that has been achieved in any of the Indian agencies of the West, in calling the natives into civ

ilized life, has been in cases where the "tribe" system has been wholly broken up, where each family has its own freehold, and lives under the same responsibilities, and with the same stimulants for useful labor, as civilized men.

The little community of Ottowas and that of Chippewas, described above, under Mr. Meeker's truly Christian care, increasing in numbers, by a happy exception to the almost universal law of Indian annihilation, illustrate the success of this system. It is understood that in the treaties now pending, by which the general government attempts to release for settlement some of the lands now held in Indian reservations, this principle is to be tested.* Each head of a family is to select his own homestead, and, when the rest is sold, the proceeds are to be given, not to the tribe, but to the several families of the tribe. Side by side with this effort is to be ranked a petition of the Wyandots, that they may be admitted to the privileges of American citizens. There is no reason why, if they assume the habits and the culture of civilized life, they should not be so admitted. They will soon learn that their application should be made, not to the general government, but to the local government of Kanzas. If the hopes entertained of civilizing the Indians, by giving each man his own home, be gratified; if the Indian settlers show the manliness which the little companies of Chippewas and Ottowas alluded to have shown,

* As this book is passing through the press, it is understood that these treaties have been ratified.