“The division line between the present policy and the past is drawn here; in the past the government tried, by fair means or foul, to rid itself of the Indian. The present policy is to make something of him. That policy had its origin almost in an accident. Eight or nine years ago the government sent Captain Pratt with warriors, covered with the blood of a merciless war, from the Indian Territory down to Florida; and Captain Pratt, in the discharge of his duty, undertook to relieve himself of the labor of keeping these warriors in idleness, no matter if the work was of no service to anybody if it would keep them out of idleness. With this end in view he got permission to let them pick stones out of the streets. Then he enlisted ladies to teach them to read. Out of that experiment of Captain Pratt’s has come all the rest. Behold what a great fire a little matter has kindled!” Senator Dawes further says the following pertinent words on the Indian question; no American can fail to realize the force of his remarks: “If St. Paul was here and had 250,000 Indians on his hands, whom the United States had sought for one hundred years to rob of every means of obtaining a livelihood, and had helped bring up in ignorance, he never would have said to them, ‘He that will not work, shall not eat.’ You did not say that to the poor black man; you did not say that to the little children whom you sent by contribution out into the country for fresh air, and you ought not to say it to this poor, helpless race, helpless in their ignorance, and ignorant because we have fostered their ignorance. We have appropriated more money to keep them in absolute darkness, and heathenism, and idleness, than would have been required to send every one of them to college, and now we propose to turn them out. We did not relieve ourselves of the responsibility by that indifference; we have got to take them by the hand like little children and bring them up out of this ignorance, for they multiply upon our hands, and their heritage is being wrenched away from them, and good men as well as bad are devising means to take it away.