individual did not appear earlier in our legislation. Large reservations
held in common and the maintenance of the authority of the chiefs and
headmen have deprived the individual of every incentive to the exercise
of thrift, and the annuity has contributed an affirmative impulse toward
a state of confirmed pauperism.

Our treaty stipulations should be observed with fidelity and our
legislation should be highly considerate of the best interests of
an ignorant and helpless people. The reservations are now generally
surrounded by white settlements. We can no longer push the Indian back
into the wilderness, and it remains only by every suitable agency to
push him upward into the estate of a self-supporting and responsible
citizen. For the adult the first step is to locate him upon a farm,
and for the child to place him in a school.

School attendance should be promoted by every moral agency, and those
failing should be compelled. The national schools for Indians have been
very successful and should be multiplied, and as far as possible should
be so organized and conducted as to facilitate the transfer of the
schools to the States or Territories in which they are located when the
Indians in a neighborhood have accepted citizenship and have become
otherwise fitted for such a transfer. This condition of things will be
attained slowly, but it will be hastened by keeping it in mind; and in
the meantime that cooperation between the Government and the mission
schools which has wrought much good should be cordially and impartially
maintained.

The last Congress enacted two distinct laws relating to negotiations
with the Sioux Indians of Dakota for a relinquishment of a portion of
their lands to the United States and for dividing the remainder into