1898: "We smoked our pipe of peace and put our cross mark on the white man's paper and thought all was well, but now our eyes are open."

In 1898, Cuba was finalizing their independence from Spain - in what is now known as the Cuban War of Independence. 

Carlos Montezuma was an "Educated Indian," 

Reservation A Mistake

Parallels Between the Indian and the Cuban Situation

Influences of Education

(Written by an American Indians)

                                                             [Carlos Montezuma M.D.]

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1898, November 6. The Chicago Tribune 

          From the standpoint of humanity the condition of the Indians is much worse than that of the Cuban before the war. What have you done for the Cuban? You have spent millions and sacrificed many lives, and I hope the result will be a better civilization for them. They are our neighbors, but right here in our eyes is a nation -- the original Americans -- struggling, starving, and dying.

          When you seclude, feed, clothe, and pauperize able-bodied men and women, you make of the Indian an American reconcentrado*. The Cuban reconcentrado is a hero, or at least a martyr. His Indian analogue is an artificial wretch. Will the republic better the Spanish instruction, or will it deserve its reputation for humanity by making my people free?

          The indelible line of hatred, mistrustfulness, and their present ignorant, degraded condition can only be attributed to your misdirected zeal to elevate them.

          The government has constantly surrounded my people with soldiers, cowboys, bayonets, missionaries, bowie-knives, and revolvers.   

          An Indian can do without any of these things. One mortgage on a white man's house would be worth more than any amount of absolution.

1911, Oct 1 The Anaconda Standard 

          When you turn these tides of your civilization towards them, do you wonder they shrink, and continually live in fear? Do you ask why they repudiate such a well-meaning government? You remember the butcher who had just got religion, or thought he had, and wanted to gather the souls of all his customers for the kingdom. The first victim who came to his market was a small girl. He waved his butcher-knife and shouted: "Are you prepared to meet your God?"

          A good many Indians would rather meet their God, than to carry on business with an Indian agent.

Cannot Comprehend the Law.

          The Indian cannot see why he is arrested for buying whisky when the white man goes free. He does not disturb the peace any more than his white companion. He does not comprehend why he is suddenly confronted with soldiers and civil authorities saying "You must go," or "You are my prisoner."

          If the ground of his father was promised to him as long as nature held its course, why is it taken away from his now? Do you understand it any better than he does?

          We smoked our pipe of peace and put our cross mark on the white man's paper and thought all was well, but now our eyes are open. We see our mistakes and your rascality. These cross marks are truly symbolic of the bars that keep us from civilization. I saw more -- they have forced us into the dark and we can never struggle out until you open the way for us our of the vile reservation into the same environment which you yourselves enjoy.

          We must have the sunlight of civilization. We cannot improve as paupers and dependents. You may take some care of us if you choose, but make us go to work. If we enter competition with the white race the contest will be unequal, and many of us will die, but, like Phaethon of old, who undertook to drive his father's horses, we shall perish in great undertakings. Those who survive will at least be good for something. Confine two or three hundred thousand white men, women, and children of your lower classes in the limits of fifty-two reservations, give them just food and clothing enough to keep them alive. What would happen? I do not expect to be contradicted when I say that they would rapidly become worse than any reservation of Indians.

          Indians have educated Indians long enough. In Chicago there are between two and three hundred thousand children in the public schools. There is not one Indian to answer the roll call! This vacancy is sufficient to stir the blood of every lover of that which is noble and true for the cause of a downtrodden race. Let us rise up and say "Down with the reservation schools." Let the Indian children be brought East and put into our public schools, and when they have been reasonably educated let them take care of themselves. Deprive the Indian children no longer of the civilizing influence of your public schools. Delay is ruin.

Attitude of the Educated 

          They are peaceable citizens, and all are seriously in earnest on the subject of Indian education. It is interesting to know these few will not accept rations from the government, such is the pride of independence characteristic of an educated Indian. Truly all good Indians are not dead Indians. Do I hear you say, "The live good Indian is an exception"? Then make them all exceptions by education of the children. This and personal liberty are the means that made the few exceptions.

          Who would advocate the reservation plan for the negro? You know that such a plan would be fatal to his advancement. It is quite as fatal for the Indian. By confining him you have blunted the man; he is a monstrous child, with childish propensities. From the prison into freedom is the cry of 250,000 souls.

          Tepeeizing civilization has been a dear failure. To civilize the Indians you must surround them while young with civilization -- not for a few years, as the government has been doing, but all of their lifetime. Let them continue among white men and in this environment work out their own salvation.

          Let them, in the midst of your churches, schools, art, and commerce, use their eyes and minds. The faculties that baffled the wild game of the forest would, if properly directed, make for civilization. The Indian boy or girl, after three or four years of schooling, should not return to a reservation, for there he steps back into barbarism. A white child would do the same. The great truth is that the Indians are not barbarous so much because they are Indians as because they are corralled. Many white children who go away from their parents to school and never return permanently to their former homes gain self-reliance and power. So would the Indian. You can make of the savage Indian a man --- of the pauper Indian a citizen. 

                                                                                                    Carlos Montezuma M.D.

*Reconcentrado: n. 1. Lit., one who has been reconcentrated; specif., in Cuba, the Philippines, etc., during the revolution of 1895-98, one of the rural noncombatants who were concentrated by the military authorities in areas surrounding the fortified towns, and later were reconcentrated in the smaller limits of the towns themselves. - Source thefreedictionary.com

1898, Nov 6  Chicago Tribune