Changes of the Past 100 Years

Address of the President to the Indians of the United States, dictated to the Phonograph, the White House, May 24, 1913.
My Brothers

:A hundred years ago, President Jefferson, one of the greatest of my predecessors, said to the Chiefs of the Upper Cherokees:“My Children, I shall rejoice to see the day when the Red Men, our neighbors, become truly one people with us, enjoying all the rights and privileges we do, and living in peace and plenty as we do, without any one to make them afraid, to injure their persons, or take their property without being punished for it according to fixed laws.”This I say to you again today; but a hundred years have gone by, and we are nearer these great things then hoped for now, much nearer than we were then. Education, agriculture, the trades are the red man’s road to the white man’s civilization today, as they were in the day of Jefferson, and happily you have gone a long way on that road.
There are some dark pages in the history of the white man’s dealings with the Indian and many parts of the record are stained with the greed and avarice of those who have thought only of their own progfit, but it is also true that the purposes and motives of this great Government and of our nation as a whole toward the red man have been wise, just, and beneficent. The remarkable progress of our Indian brothers towards civilization is proof of it, and open to all to see.
During the past half century, you have seen the school house take the place of the military post on your reservations. The administration of Indian affairs has been transferred from the military to the civil arm of the Government. The education and industrial training the Government has given you has enabled thousands of Indian men and women to take their places in civilization alongside their white neighbors. Thousands are living in substantial farm houses on their own separate allotments of land. Hundreds of others have won places of prominence in the professions and some have worked their way into the halls of Congress and into places of responsibility in our State and National Governments. Thirty thousand Indian children are enrolled in Government, State and Mission schools. The great White Father now calls you his “brothers,” not his “children.” Because you have shown in your education and in your settled ways of life staunch, manly, worthy qualities of sound character, the nation is about to give you distinguished recognition through the erection of a monument in honor of the Indian people in the harbor of New York. The erection of that monument will usher in that day which Thomas Jefferson said he would rejoice to see, “when the Red Men become truly one people with us, enjoying all the rights and privileges xx we do and living in peace and plenty.” I rejoice to foresee the day.
It gives me pleasure as President of the United States to send this greeting to you and to commend to you the lessons in industry, patriotism, and devotion to our common country which participation in this ceremony brings to you.