Department. A summary of it would be too extended for this place. I ask
your careful attention to the report itself.

Prominent among the matters which challenge the attention of Congress at
its present session is the management of our Indian affairs. While this
question has been a cause of trouble and embarrassment from the infancy
of the Government, it is but recently that any effort has been made for
its solution at once serious, determined, consistent, and promising
success.

It has been easier to resort to convenient makeshifts for tiding over
temporary difficulties than to grapple with the great permanent problem,
and accordingly the easier course has almost invariably been pursued.

It was natural, at a time when the national territory seemed almost
illimitable and contained many millions of acres far outside the bounds
of civilized settlements, that a policy should have been initiated which
more than aught else has been the fruitful source of our Indian
complications.

I refer, of course, to the policy of dealing with the various Indian
tribes as separate nationalities, of relegating them by treaty
stipulations to the occupancy of immense reservations in the West, and
of encouraging them to live a savage life, undisturbed by any earnest
and well-directed efforts to bring them under the influences of
civilization.

The unsatisfactory results which have sprung from this policy are
becoming apparent to all.