plant colonies here that could have sustained themselves. They did not think proper to do so. By their toleration the white people poured in and increased in numbers until they became most numerous, and then commenced to dictate to the Indians; and the stronger we became and the weaker they became, the more illiberal and unjust was our policy toward them. It reached a point at a certain stage when it was adjudicated, I believe, by our supreme court, that we owned the whole territory and they were mere occupants. It is true we then treated them, I believe, as persons, but now the question is gravely considered in the senate and in the courts whether they are persons under the fourteenth constitutional amendment. The whole history of our dealing with them has, I think, been a history of wrong, mostly on our part. A distinguished officer of the United States army when approached on this subject on one occasion said he never knew the Indians violate a treaty, and he never knew the white men to observe one. This may not be literally true, but there is too much truth in it. I will not go into a discussion of the various outrages that have been perpetrated upon them. As our people have advanced farther west and found territory they desired occupied by the Indians we have soon found occasion to get up disturbances or difficulties with them that led first to war, then to victory on our part, then to negotiations and a cession of the territory on their part.

This has been the sad history of our dealings with them. We have grown stronger and stronger until to-day we number more than fifty million persons. They have been reduced all told as the last report shows, excluding Alaska, to 255,938.

At the first settlement of the country we were completely in their power, and they could dictate any terms they pleased to us. And when justly dealt by, they were kind and indulgent to us. Now they are in our power. We have a right, at least we have the power, to dictate any terms we choose. Have we dealt as liberally with them as they did with us? We have driven them back from time to time, from reservation to reservation. We have made treaties with them that they are to hold their reserves" as long as water runs and grass grows," but we always get rid of the treaty when we are dissatisfied with it or when we covet the territory and determine to have it.

The Bill now before us, as I understand, proposes to permit them to take in severalty lands in the proportion mentioned in the Bill within the reservations assigned to them. I favor that Bill. I believe they should have the same right that the white man has to take homestead on their reservation, and we should then give them a fee-simple title to it as we give to the white citizen or settler. What inducement have they now to labor to acquire property, to build houses, to clear lands, and to make homes comfortable for their future dwelling, when they know that they may be driven from it at any time when we choose to say they must leave? But when we have allotted the lands to them and each has his land in severalty, then he is entitled to the protection of the law; he can go forward and improve his homestead. If he knows it is his, he has a stimulant to industry, and there is something to induce him to make a good citizen and to bind him to good conduct.

The man who is a robber and desires to possess himself of the property of the Indian goes upon the reserve, steals his ponies or his cattle, and brings them away. Is it unnatural that the Indian should pursue? Is it unnatural that he should attempt to protect his rights of property? He would be less than a human being if he did not seek to protect them. The Indian follows the robber and the result generally is a collision; somebody is killed; and then war. Allot his lands to him in severalty; give him the right to build houses, to clear plantations, to raise stock upon it, with the guaranty of the Government that he shall not be driven from it, and we shall in a very

short time see the progress in the far West that we have seen in the Indian Territory.

We will soon find the Indians upon their homesteads advancing in civilization; and under the benign influence of the Christian denominations, we shall see Sunday schools and churches planted among them; and instead of roving bands without fixed habitations, goaded to desperation by injustice and wrong, spreading death and destruction in their pathway, we shall find them in the comfortable homes of civilized man, not only a Christian people, but many of them cultivated and honorable citizens.

But the question is, shall the Indian be a citizen? I have said it seems to me he is a citizen already under the fourteenth constitutional amendment as soon as he severs his tribal relation and takes the homestead that the law now allows him to take. The fourteenth amendment is very broad in its provisions. It reads thus:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Is the Indian a person? He is the original sovereign of this continent, who had the title to it by a possession that may have run back a hundred generations; who met the white man when he came here kindly and fraternally, who during the wars that we have had with him has shown gallantry of the highest order and oftentimes military genius unsurpassed-is he not a person?

Was King Philip, who swayed the sceptre over six powerful tribes, and who when he felt that his rights had been outraged, by his great genius and powers of organization and persuasion, formed a league of all the tribes of the Atlantic slope, in a cause which they considered sacred, not a person? Was Logan, the great chief who never turned away from his cabin a white man who asked his protection, and who never took an undue advantage of an enemy, not a person? Was Tecumseh, whose military genius was not surpassed by any American officer he met, and of whom the poet has said:

"And long will the Indian warrior sing
The deeds of Tecumseh, the royal,"

not a person? Are the educated leaders of the five civilized tribes, some of whom possess intelligence of the highest order, not persons? Was Sequoyah, the author of the Cherokee alphabet and dictionary, who reduced their language to a system as complete as any other written language, not a person? The idea is absurd. If they are not persons what are they? You hold that the meanest and most ignorant negro who comes from the deepest jungle of the darkest part of Africa and plants himself here is a person, and you prescribe naturalization laws by which he has a right to become a citizen.

"Every human being," said Governor Horatio Seymour, "born upon our continent, or who comes here from any quarter of the world, whether savage or civilized, can go to our courts for protection, except those who belong to the tribes who once owned this country. The cannibal from the islands of the Pacific, the worst criminal from Europe, Asia, or Africa, can appeal to the law and courts for their rights of person and property; all save our native Indians, who, above all, should be protected from wrong."

The Indian on the western plains who shows genius, and gallantry, and manhood, is denied even an existence as a person.

Note the language of the Constitution:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

We claim that the jurisdiction of this country extends to the Pacific ocean. Was the Indian born within that limit? No one questions it. He does not ask you for naturalization. He cares nothing about the uniform rules you may make on that subject. He claims his right as a birthright. He was born in the United States, and he is a person.

But is he subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? The amendment requires that he be born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. That question has been expressly decided by the supreme court of the United States in the tobacco case brought up from the Cherokee nation by Mr. Boudinot. The Cherokees claimed under their tribal relations and under an express section of a treaty between them and the United States that they had a right to sell or dispose of any of their property as they might think proper, without paying any tax to the government of the United States; and Mr. Boudinot and his partner established the tobacco factory in the Cherokee nation. The officers of the United States seized it for non-payment of internal revenue, and the question came before the supreme court of the United States for final adjudication whether the Indian Territory was subject to the jurisdiction of the Unite! States, and whether it had a right to collect the revenue. The Supreme Court held that the jurisdiction of the United States did extend into the Indian Territory, and that Congress had the power to annul the treaty and collect the revenue. Here then is the express decision by the highest judicial tribunal in the Government, that the Indians on their own reservation are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. They were born in the United States, they are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and if they be persons there is no escape from the conclusion that they are citizens of the United States whether the Government may choose for the time to extend its criminal laws over them or their reservations, or not. And being citizens of the United States, they are entitled to the protection of the laws of the United States.

Again:

"Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Why is the Indian not a person? Then, if he is a person, you have no right to deny to him the equal protection of the laws. It is absurd to deny that the Indian is a person. But it may be said that the next section of the fourteenth constitutional amendment disposes of this question. Let us see: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."

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Yes, in making up the representative population of the State you exclude the Indians not taxed; but you do more than that by this section. I read further.

"But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the num1 ber of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."

If the Indian is not a citizen because we exclude him in the count for representation on the ground that he is not taxed, then you must also exclude from the count the white citizens of any State who may be denied the right of voting. To illustrate: Suppose the population of a State be 1,000,000, and 100,000 of that number are Indians not taxed. When you go to make up the representative population of that State you would count it 900,000. Why? Because you exclude the Indians not taxed. Then suppose a State excludes from the ballot-box, for any cause, 10,000 of her male citizens over twenty-one, and the whole number of male citizens over twenty-one is 100,000; then you deduct one-tenth, or 100,000 of the whole representative population of that State, because 10,000 of the voters have been excluded. I apprehend that the 100,000 white people are still citizens, although you are not allowed in making up the representative population to count more than 900,000. Why? Because you have disfranchised enough of your citizens to exclude 100,000 from the count. So in the other case with the Indians. You exclude 100,000 of them not taxed in making up the count; but where, in what other part of the constitutional amendment, is there an exclusion of the Indian from the rights of citizenship? The Constitution does not exclude the Indian from the representative count, because he is an Indian or because he is not a citizen, but because he is an Indian not taxed. It is argued I suppose, that because he is excluded while not taxed from the representative count, therefore he is not a citizen. Then the 10,000 white people excluded in the other case are not citizens by the same parity of reasoning. Such reasoning is not sound.

Then I hold that the Indian is a citizen of the United States when born upon the soil of the United States, and especially so when he severs his tribal relation and takes his allotment of land and settles down under the laws of the United States and pays taxes. It is true you exempt his land from taxes by this bill for a certain length of time. During that period you would have to exclude him from the representative count, but the moment you tax him, then how does it stand? He is a person; he was born in the United States, and is subject to its jurisdiction, and he pays taxes as a citizen. Why is he not a citizen, and why is he not then counted in the representative apportionment? I should like for some senator to give a reason why. But we cannot truly say that the Indians are not now taxed. We have established trading stations among them, and all Administrations have appointed political favorites to conduct this business. We do not permit any one, under heavy penalties, to go into their territory and trade with them as the competitor of the political trader appointed by the Government. They are compelled, therefore, to sell their produce to those favorites who are put there by our Government to make money off of them, and they are compelled to buy the goods they use from the same persons. The larger part of the money raised to support this Government is raised by a tariff upon imports. Almost every Indian tribe purchases from these favored traders certain amounts of imported goods, and every time he purchases a yard of cloth manufactured in a foreign country, or pound of sugar or any other article made abroad, he pays a tax to this Government. Then why is he not a citizen, entitled to the protection of the laws made by this Government? Why is not his life sacred, and why should not the assassin who takes it wantonly suffer the extreme penalty? Why is not his property entitled to the protection of the law, and why is not this protection extended to him on his application? And if he is illegally imprisoned, why is he not entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, which have recently been extended to him by an able Federal judge in one of the Western States?

Let it be borne in mind, furthermore, that this fourteenth amendment de

clares that they "are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." I know in some minds there is a difficulty about State rights just here, about Congress declaring anybody a citizen. I think we are simply making a declaration here in a statute of a right that is already secured by the Constitution, that he is a citizen whenever he has complied with these

terms.

Under the amendment we may declare him a citizen, but may not be able to count him in the representative population until he begins to pay taxes upon his land. But when he does he is then a person born in the United States, and a tax-payer; and has all the rights of a citizen under the Constitution.

As I do not care to stickle about the shadow of a question of State rights here, and as I hold he is a citizen whenever he has adopted the rules and conformed to the plan laid down in this statute any way, I am willing to say in the statute in express terms that he is a citizen with all the protection and duties of any other citizen. Why give it to every person of every race and every color on the face of the earth who will come here and comply with our laws and not give it to the original inhabitants of our own country? He is "to the manor born," and you have no right to drive him into the Pacific Ocean or to slaughter him with his women and children because he will not submit to the imperious dictates of any officer of the Government. When you make a treaty with him and assign to him certain limits and say, "This is your land, Mr. Indian," he has a right to stay there and be protected, and when he conforms to the laws conformed to by other citizens and is made a tax-payer he has a right to claim citizenship, in the broadest sense, and you have no right to deny it to him.

Our mode of dealing with the Indian is in very striking contrast with that adopted by the British Government. Why are they not always engaged in war with the Indian in Canada? Why is it that they live in peace and har mony there? It is because the British Government has dealt justly and fairly with the Indians. It has not driven them from post to pillar, but has assigned them reservations, where they have made their homes and built their houses and cleared their fields and raised their stock and erected their schoolhouses and churches. They have the rights of British subjects, and those rights are protected. They are treated humanely and kindly, and hence they are peaceable and loyal to that Government. Let it be borne in mind that the British Government has not driven them to her remotest boundary to be located. They have permitted them to take reservations on the spots where they were born, where they have always lived, and where their fathers are buried. I recollect, a few years ago, on a visit to Quebec, that I admired the valley of the Saint Charles as one of the loveliest I ever saw, and one that the white man might well covet. But in going ten miles from the city, I found in that beautiful valley on the river Lorette, which took its name from the tribe, the remnant of the tribe of the Lorettes living on the territory of their birth, and protected as British subjects, and they were as loyal as any other subjects that the British Government had in Canada.

I visited the residence of the chief in the midst of that magnificent valley, where I was received kindly, and among other curiosities I was shown what were called the "crown jewels," prominent among them a bronze medal presented to the chief by Prince Albert, and a silver medal presented by the Prince of Wales. These were regarded as treasures of the nation and the tribe blessed the names of the donors. Their hearts swell with pride when they say, "I am a British subject." How marked is the contrast between that state of things and what we witness in our own country! There the Indian has been justly and kindly treated and is a willing subject to the Gov