Harper's Weekly/Secretary Schurz and the Poncas

by Harper's Weekly

SECRETARY SCHURZ AND THE PONCAS.

Our Indian policy has been a series of wrongs and blunders. This has been the result of various causes, and it is certainly not due exclusively to the natural depravity of Americans, or to hatred of the Indians. Perhaps the chief indirect cause has been the languid indifference of the public mind to every aspect of the question. The Indians have been so uninteresting and so remote that a popular military estimate of them as “vermin” has been often accepted as conclusive, and they have been left to the tender mercies of swindlers and desperadoes, until, turning upon their enemies, they have been reduced to submission by the army. Next to slavery, the Indian chapter of our history is probably the one most unworthy of our national character and principles.

During the last two or three years the Ponca question has excited a great deal of attention, and the conduct of the Interior Department has been bitterly condemned. Secretary Schurz, in his annual reports, has treated the subject fully and candidly, but he was still held to be guilty of permitting gross wrongs, and a recent meeting in Boston, at which the Governor of Massachusetts presided, and the Mayor of the city and Mr. Wendell Phillips and other distinguished citizens made speeches, severely criticised the Secretary for the sufferings of the Ponca Indians. This was too important and responsible an indictment to be disregarded, and Mr. Schurz has addressed to Governor Long a frank and full statement of the Ponca case and his relation to it, which will satisfy the most captious that his conduct has been thoroughly conscientious, and that the course pursued is certainly very defensible. The Secretary's explanation frees him entirely from any suspicion of inhumanity or injustice, and it is curious that the attack should have been made upon a public officer whose character and course in public life are the earnest of upright conduct. Had a similar assault been made upon some of his predecessors, it would have been less surprising. The Secretary, of course, could not become familiar with the details of the situation in his large and miscellaneous department until some time after his entrance upon office, and the details of the Ponca case were not fully known to him until the autumn of 1877, when the chiefs came to Washington and told their story.

Secretary Schurz inherited a very grave difficulty. The old policy of careless wrong toward the Indians had ceded the Ponca reserve to the Sioux in 1868. The Poncas had been removed, after an alleged consent upon their part, and upon their journey to the Indian Territory, and during their early residence there, they had suffered greatly. Then came the question of redress. The Poncas wished to be returned to their reservation in Dakota. The subject was carefully considered, and with the sole desire of doing what seemed to be best under the actual circumstances, the late Mr. William Walsh, of Philadelphia, one of the most faithful and experienced friends of the Indians, was consulted, with other counsellors, and it was decided that for all interests, including that of the Poncas themselves, it was desirable to avoid the new Indian war that would follow the dispossession of the Sioux. The Poncas consented to select new lands in the Indian Territory, and are now settled upon some of the best of them. To attempt to right the Ponca wrong now by returning them to Dakota would not only open the possibility of a Sioux war, but their withdrawal from the Indian Territory would involve a more determined invasion of it than that now pending, and injure the Indians incalculably more than anything which has yet befallen them. The Secretary has never concealed anything upon the subject. The fullest details have been laid before Congress and the country, and he has not withheld his opinion that it was good policy in the actual situation to see if the Poncas could not be made comfortable and contented upon their new lands. Secretary Schurz certainly gives good reasons for his opinion, and he seems to us to defend himself conclusively against all charges of remissness or injustice. Indeed, the country and the Indians will be exceedingly fortunate if his successor in the Interior Department unites so much ability, integrity, intelligence, and devotion to the public interests and to the welfare of the Indians as Secretary Schurz has shown. If we have sometimes differed with him upon details, it has been always without the least question of his patriotic and humane purpose, and with the highest sense of his admirable conduct of an exceedingly difficult office.

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