Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1903 — INDIAN ASKS NO AID. [ARTICLE]

INDIAN ASKS NO AID.

He Is Now Able to Support Himaelf by WorkingAccording to officials of the Interior Department, the Indian is giving a better account of himself now than he did a few years ago. formerly he accepted tne rations the government provided and spent his days in idleness and in riotous living. Now he works, makes money and pays his own way. If the government will not give him work, he looks for it elsewhere —on a railroad, or in building roadways, where he makes fair wages. He will not be dependent on Uncle Safai any longer than is necessary. “The lmlian is improving.” said Commissioner Jones, of the Indian bureau; “An indication of liis willingness to work is found in the fact that the government is abolishing the practice of serving rations on tome of the reservations. Several old treaties providing that the Indians must be supplied with rations are expiring, nnd they will not be renewed. “A large number of Sioux Indians in North Dakota have just decided that they would rather work and support themselves. They find employment on work the government is doing on the reservations," such as road building and the construction of water tanks for irrigation purposes, and when there is no work of this kind for them they get jobs as section hands on the railroads. An agent has just reported that about 300 Navajoes are at work on the Santa Fe, in New Mexico, and that superintendent * who employ them say they do far better work than the Mexicans, who were formerly employed almost exclusively on that kind of work. Another agent has reported that 120 Indians from the Standing Ilock agency have been employed for railroad work in North Dakota. The government encourages them to go to work. They make fair wages and become independent and more self-respect-ing than they did under the former conditions. Of course, all of the Indians not going to work. Some of them are receiving the interest on their tribal funds, nnd never 110 a day’s work from One year’s end to another, but the Indians, as a rule, seem to aspire to something better than eating and loafing."