Oak Flat Quotes

“We earnestly desire the speedy settlement of all our territories,' reads an 1868 Office of Indian Affairs Annual Report. 'None are more anxious than we to see their agricultural and mineral wealth developed by an industrious, thrifty, and enlightened population. And we fully recognize the fact that the Indian must not stand in the way of this result. . . If the savage resists, civilization, with the Ten Commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate extermination.'

But extermination, as a policy, proved to be inefficient. An educational system designed to destroy native culture was proposed as an economical way to solve the Indian Problem. The 1868 report concluded, 'It costs less to civilize than to kill.”
― Lauren Redniss, Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West