| Show 1 I. I a f i rt t p f c ri i 1 i r F 1 c 1 TI I C H E S T PE 0 P LE p in the wo rid M Charles H. H Burke r Commissioner o of Indian n Affairs Tells e Us j f y Red e Men en m in America men ca Are re Worth o ot and a Half Dollars I t I 2 an vera Estate of a Greater rea to r Per Capita Wealth r Tha i Is Enjoyed by the to Average v White American ca Citizen j e i w wt t y 1 Chief Chef Sky of the V j j t I 2 r Klamath tribe of j J 4 4 T Oregon wearing wearing robes of n his i 0 4 authority y r 4 J r s i 4 q T j I 1 RA v 3 1 f Y 3 s G Y Ce a r f e Y 1 Y y S. S iJ fr tt k w f i Cr 1 x iL i 1 Osage Indians visit President Cool Cool- i- i ai edge idge and present him with a feather feathera luck token Some of the t as a good luck good s r women tir wore o re native garb Others By William 1 lam Atherton DuPuy U u t tv X h J p preferred referred fur 4 coats 1 and gold cloth t THERE HERE was the case of Maud Lee Leel Mudd the Commissioner of l a k Indian Affairs I was saying was a n simon pure waif of the reservation without with with- out a single earthly possEssion that l would contribute to her support By Byr 4 Y r r some m mi acle she came to the age of 14 Then though th the fact is' is not a matter of Government record a fairy must have app appeared ared and waved a magic wand Otherwise how how could so wonderful a ai thing have hav happened t to Maud Lee Mudd i It was suddenly discovered that the little Indian girl was heir to certain rights that vere were her rights fathers in limitless oil that flowed from the lands i of f the Osage Indians This not being l enough she inherited lik likewise wise from an J 1 Osage aunt It worked out that another y i aunt had become a member by marriage f. f of th the Quapaw tribe The Qu paws own r r V- V lands land on on which very rich zinc mines are h located Maud was part heir to this r aunt also Altogether the waif child of r yesterday is today an heiress with an 4 t income of a month if As As head of the Indian Office responsibility L for administering the estate estat of this L. L child child- was mine She was one of the tr wards of this office We did the y b best st we ve could by her We obtained the F. F appointment o f one of our own own attorneys ys as s her guardian perform performing ng his dutIes without fee A reliable woman was 3 selected as custodian The went to tor r L live with her Overnight she became an ani c civi civilized i heiress with all the advantage of i living f But the possession of wealth b by t this is 1 r r s time one waif aroused the cupidity of s. s others The local courts gave h her r Indian mother possession of the child The S il State Supreme Court ordered her return j. j to the guardian There was a great ii squabble in in the he midst Pf of which th the fled with h to another State mother r There the child was immediately marX mar mar- 7 X red ried Soon afterward she disappeared for a time Later she reappeared with withy y I out her husband and we suspect t that nt y some scheme e for getting hold of h her herl r l money money is back of her disappear disappearance nce The money is in possession of the Gov- Gov It accumulates with the passing pass pass- ing months f for r none of it is being drawn out The guardians guardian's task in the circumstances circum- circum t stances however is hard L. L THIS HIS Commissioner of the Indians was trying to give a picture of the task he faces Charles CharlesH H Burke is his name t and ana he administers what looks like the toughest job in the Government service He is in charge of the program which has as its object doing justice to the Indians who remain as remnants of the f people who once owned all that is J America His is an administrative task with a human and sentimental back back- look after he g g round He must u Uon tion of Indian children the health of a and finally the J Y iA HOTL tl of the estates of individuals and i f tribes An active elderly gentleman is this w x Ii Indian i n Commissioner somewhat weather weather- b beaten te fro from li I-li life on the plains b blue ue i c l i li t J 1 c J of eye genial of mien His l is bureau is part of the Interior Department is' is lodged in ili a hugs huge Government building 1 in the heart of the Capital City looks looks- out toward Washington Monument and anu Lincoln Memorial is skirted by such sister bureaus as the Land Office the Reclamation Service the Geological Survey Survey Sur- Sur vey all nerve neve centers of the administration tion of the affairs of a great nation It was there that I I went to to see see this Com Com- missioner Just how many of these native Americans are left I asked Mr Burke and h how v far are they along toward assimilation tion There are of them he ex- ex Of these only half are full bloods Of the mixed bloods some are more than half Indians and are less than half Isolated tribes like the in Arizona are still pure Indian while the aboriginal fragments in such Eastern States as New York have only a trace of the native blood In the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma most populous of the Indian groups there ther are full bloods whose blood is more than half Indian India and whose Bose blood is more than half white Oklahoma heads the list Jis of States in Indian population having having hav- hav ing of them Arizona is second with South Dakota h has s New v Mexico Minnesota Montana and so down the list ti Men of Indian blood have taken high place in the life of the nation Senator Curtis of Kansas was born a Kaw Indian Former Senator Owen of Oklahoma Oklahoma Okla- Okla homa has haa Indian status Representatives tives Catter and Hastings of Oklahoma are enrolled Indians All these men had rights in Indian pr property perty Senator Curtis and his two children still appear as restricted Indians on oft the rolls of the Kaw t tribe ibe OF F THE Indians third one have been declared competent and now handle their own affairs as do you and I. I They have been absorbed As the the- mill grinds grinds' it comes to pass that more Indians Indian are every d day y gaining a status status' of competence When I asked will all the Indians have been been absorbed When will there cease to be Indians that are wards of the Government When will they all have gone over In another fifty years Mr 11 Burke replied there will be no Indian problem of importance The Indians of Oklahoma Oklahoma Okla- Okla homa for instance will have ceased to exist as a people apart So will those of the Dakotas Minnesota Montana There may be a few fragments left in inthe the Southwest where Indians live on undesirabLe undesirable un- un desirable lands in isolated communities But the blood of the mass of them will have been merged with that of of the rest of us Property owned by Indians in the United States the Commissioner continued continued con con- is now estimated as being worth wortha a billion and a half dollars There are 22 Indian till Government ft f i tt f 1 I. I Z al f. f q i a r I 5 N tir 1 M v L LS' LS S' S r I S I- I care who are heirs to that property The average Indian estate therefore is about This is much greater than the estate of the average white man manThe man The American Indians are arc the richest people in the world Members of certain tribes have wealth far beyond the average The individual individual in- in Osage Indian for example hasan has hasan an income of a year jear or better A family of six may have or a year to spend It sometimes happens that an individual has inherited from a number of deceased Indians and had or a year in his own right Maud Lee Mudd I is such an Indian 1 NO PEOPLE in the world has ever approached the per capita wealth of the 2229 officially recorded members of the Osage tribe They are mostly educated live as white people do have all the rights of citizens A friend of mine dining in a fashionable resort hotel in Colorado Springs f fr r instance describes describes de- de scribes the entrance of a party of un- un usual looking peculiarly men and women elegantly dressed in evening clothes They created a bit of a stir were warmly greeted here and there Inquiry at the desk elicited the fact that these were Osage Indians people of wealth living on their means The oil of the Osage Indians the Commissioner explained is tribal oil This means that all the returns from all ll of it go into tribal funds and is equally divided among accredited members members mem- mem bers Of the Not so with the oil the Five Civilized Tribes That oil belongs belongs be- be longs to the individual Indian on whose allotment it is found So there are very rich members of these tribes and others who have h ve little TN IN THE administration of Indian estates in Oklahoma there is often conflict of authority as between the local lo al courts and the national Government The viewpoints of the tw two agencies are different The lo local ai authorities want Indian money mone released It is thus put into circulation The community gets it Local authorities want Indian lands released rele sed Citizens s of the community ii l F l r rI i I 11 ha have v opportunities iti s to profit thereby The development of the comm community is speeded up The National Government on the contrary contrary con con- wants to protect the Indian in the possession of his property It does not want him despoiled It plays the role of the careful guardian of an incompetent ward It goes slowly In doing so it arouses the opposition of the local com com- It is likely to antagonize the Indians themselves and their friends who want their moneys released It is certain to be accused of denying the Indians their rights But it has the advantage of holding the It releases Indian funds piecemeal in accordance wit with h the seeming development of the individuals individual's capacity for handling them But it has no control over guardians appointed by the local courts and is sometimes unable to prevent waste or aV avert rt tragedy There was the case of the guardian of Duffey Morrison of Jenks Okla for instance who received received re- re In n his name during a period of seven years no less than Yes Duffey was an Indian despite his white whiteman's whiteman's mans man's name Most l of them have such names these days Duffey did not seem to have got much fun out of his money He was in fact bedridden and helpless He never went out of the house Despite this fact a man man- collected for intermittently driving a car owned o by Duffey In the Indian boys boy's strongbox were found many looking formal bits of paper They were notes signed by citizens of Jenks promising to repay loans The money mORey had been passed by Duffey's guardian who was likewise wise his mother and likewise an Indian Indians are alleged to to lack lack money sense and maybe this Indian woman shared sh that weakness Yet she was authorized by bythe bythe the local court to expend this a year That court passed on her acts Here is an another thel case that worked out differently and ended more tragically was a year old Cherokee girl who lived d in abject poverty with her grandmother and finally died Yet all the time she had in cash on ont t f. f 0 i. i Charles harIes H. H Burke Commissioner Commissioner Commis- Commis of Indian Affairs i deposit with the Government She had hadan ad adan an Oklahoma guardian That guardian had demanded dem possession of all her money The demand had been denied The neglect of the guardian was held to be a part of a program to force the Government to yield to his demands Federal Federal authorities did not learn of of this situation until it was too late I Mn R. R BURKE explained that there is isan an accumulation of something like a hundred million dollars to in cash and Government Government Gov- Gov bonds which belongs to Indians His office is custodian of that hundred million The cash is put pub out at interest with the banks that m make ke the highest bids for it and furnishing adequate se- se It brings around 4 per cent An attempt is made to so release this money or the income from it as to do the owners owners own own- ers of it iJ the greatest possible good orthe or orthe the least possible harm The Indians of the United States Mr Burke pointed out own acres of timberland It is estimated to tobe tobe be worth There arc the Klamath Indians in Oregon for instance instance in- in stance nestled back of the Cascade Range in those magnificent timberlands of the North Pacific Coast The world has known no better lumbering country than that provided by this Western yellow p pine There are only 1241 of these Klamath Indians Every year they split among themselves that results from the sale of timber Then there are the Quinault Indians up on the coast of Washington where the salmon run There are only QU ll-aults ll but they own acres of magnificent timberland It is estimated estimated esti- esti mated as s being worth or to the Indians The lumber being sold off it now now- brings in about a year THE Indian is not money The heritage that comes down to him is not that of saving but of throwing away Indians been nomads The wanderer must not accumulate does not accumulate Whatever the wandering Indian has at moving time he gives away or throws away The Government hesitates to turn large sums of over to individual Indians It is inclined to dole it out sparingly Yet it doubts the wisdom of even this method I it gives their patrimony patrimony patri- patri mony to these people they will be separated separated sepa- sepa rated from it with promptitude and dis- dis patch If it d doles les it out to them in remittances re- re it pauperizes them The Th y k arr LUI ans Indian who has a few hundred a year without effort is unlikely to become a worker which is what he ought ought to be Even the white man with a remittance rarely amounts to anything Take the Indians of the Klamath for instance there in the big timber They get their remittances There is consequently no reason why they should work worl at lumber lumber- ing Yet if they did id not have this money they might grasp the opportunities opportunities with which they are surrounded to become an industrial people The Indians who furnish the least vexing problem Mr Burke concluded and his his eye wandered to a picture of a brave with a blanket over his shoulder standing ag against a huge pine in a solitude solitude soli- soli tude are those who have least They can be be provided with opportunities for becoming industrious and support self ing There are the Navajos for instance and he waved to this picture They have a huge area of wasteland in Arizona Arizona Ari- Ari zona and New Mexico They are famous for their flocks of sheep Everybody is familiar with the unusual quality of Navajo blankets There in their solitudes they have gone far toward becoming a sturdy and supporting self people YET ET even the Navajos are threatened threat threat- ened with an intrusion of wealth that may pauperize them Oil of a very peculiar quality has been struck on their lands It can can can-be be put into an automobile direct from the well and the machine driven off Nowhere else in the world has crude oil of so high quality been found Already a hundred miles of pipe line has been constructed to lead it down to the railroad We will try to so handle the yield yi ld of this field as to help rather than injure injure in- in jure the Indians The money belongs to th the tribe as a whole It will be expended expended ex- ex for the improvement of conditions conditions condi- condi on the reservation There are possibilities possibilities pos pos- of developing irrigation projects projects roads ranges quality of livestock that would help the Navajo Merely giving them money would of course tend to paralyze their present comm commendable commend commend- nd- nd able industry These are our prize In- In We do not want to spoil them Obviously there are few more complicated guardianships than this There are few with h greater human The Tho responsibilities United States Government is is |
