There is still a third body of Indians, about 55,000 in number, occupying chiefly the regions known as the Indian Territory, and representing the tribes which were the subjects of the colonization policy of Pres. Monroe, to whom the United States have plighted their faith that no foreign authority shall ever be extended over them without their consent. These are not beggarly and vagabond Indians, to whom the offer of subsistence would be sufficient to obtain the relinquishment of their franchises, or the cession of their lands. They are self-supporting, independent, and even wealthy. Their cereal crops exceed those of all the Territories of the United States combined. In the number and value of horses and cattle, they are surpassed by the people of but one Territory; in expenditures for education, by the people of no Territory.[Q] If these people ever relinquish their autonomy, it will be because they desire the privileges of American citizens. This may well be in the immediate future, and surely will be, sooner or later, unless they are made to fear the violence and greed of their white neighbors. Meanwhile, they should be honorably protected in the enjoyment of their treaty rights. They have already advanced so far in civilization as to secure their own future, as against any thing but squatter and railroad rapacity; and their fate does not properly form a part of the Indian problem of the present day. Excepting thus the present inhabitants of the so-called Indian Territory, who ought to be excepted from any scheme that embraces the half-civilized and the wholly savage tribes, we have practically a clear field for any policy which Congress shall determine to be best suited to the serious exigency of the situation; for, however easy to dismiss the subject for a time with ridicule, the task of so disposing a nomad population of 200,000 to 240,000, as to reduce to a minimum the obstruction it shall offer to the progress of settlement and of industry, without leaving the germs of lasting evil to a score of future States, and at the same time to secure the highest welfare of that population,--this task is a most serious one, to which the best statesmanship of the nation may well address itself. In characterizing the classes of persons who will naturally be found among the advocates of the policy of an immediate bestowal of citizenship upon the Indian tribes, whether they be willing or unwilling, whether for good or evil, we have in effect stated all the arguments in favor of that policy; for it is not probable, that, aside from those who would properly be placed under one or another of the classes indicated, there are a score of persons reasonably well informed in Indian affairs, who would so much as affect to believe that such a course would have other than disastrous consequences to the natives.