Interior Secretary Carl Schurz has carried out…

Interior Secretary Carl Schurz has carried out President Hayes's American Indian policy, beginning with preventing the War Department from taking over the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Hayes and Schurz have carried out a policy that includes assimilation into white culture, educational training, and dividing native land into individual allotments.

Hayes believes that his policies will lead to self-sufficiency and peace between natives and whites.

The allotment system is favored by liberal reformers at the time, including Schurz, but has instead proved detrimental to natives as most of their land is later resold at low prices to white speculators.

Hayes and Schurz have reformed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reduce fraud and have given natives responsibility for policing their understaffed reservations.

Hayes has also become involved in resolving the removal of the Ponca tribe from Nebraska to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) because of a misunderstanding during the Grant Administration.

The tribe's problems had come to Hayes's attention after their chief, Standing Bear, filed a lawsuit to contest Schurz's demand that they stay in Indian Territory.

Overruling Schurz, Hayes had set up a commission in 1880 that ruled the Ponca were free to return to Nebraska or stay on their reservation in Indian Territory.

The Ponca have been awarded compensation for their land rights, which had been previously granted to the Sioux.

In a message to Congress in February 1881, Hayes insists he would "give to these injured people that measure of redress which is required alike by justice and by humanity."