The 'Lazy' Reservation: A White Settler's Rant Against Indian Farming

THE RESERVATION IMPOSITION.

A correspondent of the Intelligencer writes to correct a mis-statement to the effect that there were 3,500 Indians on the Suckley reservation, Yakima valley, engaged in agricultural pursuits and that last year they raised 40,000 bushels of wheat, and other products in proportion.

In answer he says: "I make this statement and challenge investigation. The Indians on the Suckley Reservation have not raised that amount of wheat in the last ten years." And his conclusion is: "There are at present between six and eight hundred square miles of excellent farming land on this reservation, the face of which has never been near a plow, and never will be as long as it is held by this lazy, rambling worthless race."

There is undeniable cogency in this writer's implied protest against the enforced sequestration of the best lands in this Territory ostensibly in behalf of the Indians—a namby-pamby pretense of philanthropy and serving no end in the world but the encouragement of idleness and vagabondage. It is unnatural and it is wrong. It is a hardship and injustice upon our own citizens and no corresponding good to the Indians.

By all means let these lands be laid open to improvement. There is no rational hope of regenerating the Indian race and making a manly, useful people of them, except by throwing them upon their own resources of industry and skill, with fair play and just the same rights and opportunities as their white neighbors. No more indulgence and social privileging was wiped out of our political system as regards Caucasians, by the revolution. The effects upon the Indians of such a policy would only be to spoil them.

GIVE IT A TRIAL.

The high price of agricultural produce, induced by the owning of the Eastern war, and the relatively low price of other commodities, will have one beneficial effect, in forcing a recognition of the intrinsic value of fertile land, hitherto overlooked in the mania to realize fortunes rapidly out of stocks and kindred speculations. Says an Oregon paper:

"Mr. Hans Anderson of Mishawaka, one of the pioneers of the Nehalem valley, informs us that when that section has 1,000 enterprising families, more available land for another 1,000 families will be seen, than the few now see. Like Tillamook, the more settlers there are, the more land there will be found."

This is just the case in our district of Puget Sound. When industrious frugal men commence to take up the unimproved lands that lie fallow by whole townships almost in every county and to improve them in earnest, they will awake to their enormous extent and value. It only remains to dispel the fallacy that Puget Sound is not adapted to agriculture. Occupy the best and easiest cleared lands first, and then the poorer and more impetuous grades will be rapidly encroached upon until the croakers will someday be astonished to find it demonstrated that we have no absolutely worthless lands to throw away at all.