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Show Uncle Sam Reports on His Real Estate Deals With His Red Children; He Bought 2,600,000 Square Miles at Average of 48 Cents an Acre Fort Laramie treaty. General Sherman Sher-man (noted for his only-good-Indian-is-a-dead-Indian philosophy) issued an order that all Indians not actually on their reservations were to be under the jurisdiction of the army and "as a rule will be considered hostile." Then came the announcement announce-ment that the Northern Pacific railroad rail-road was to be built across the northern north-ern part of the Sioux hunting lands and soon afterwards the Great White Father sent surveyors, protected by soldiers, into this region without taking tak-ing the trouble to ask the Sioux i . By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. RECENTLY the department . of the interior issued a new colored map, the first of its kind, which shows how Uncle Sam since 1790 has acquired ac-quired the nation's public domain do-main from 66 principal Indian tribes by some 389 treaties and numerous acts of congress. A study of this map shows that these cessions by the red man constitute about 95 of the public domain, or something some-thing like 2,600,000 square miles. In so far as the aggregate aggre-gate cost of this land was approximately ap-proximately $800,000,000 that means a little more than $307 a square mile or approximately approx-imately 48 cents an acre it would mean that Uncle Sam certainly got a bargain in these dealings with his red children. In a statement issued at the time the map was released, Secretary Harold Ickes of the department of the interior declared that "while questions are still frequenUy raised as to whether the Indians received ors so vivid and language so terse that admiration and surprise would have kept us silent had not shame and humiliation done so. That which made this arraignment arraign-ment more telling was that it often came from the lips of men who are our friends and who had hoped against hope that the day might come when their wrongs would be redressed. Sioux Had to Like It. Since the Sioux didn't have much choice in the matter, they signed the treaty offered them. Here's what another historian says about it (not an Indian historian, but a white historian). his-torian). George E. Hyde, author of "Red Cloud's Folk A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians," writes: But the object had been attained at last, and under the cloud of war the government had taken the Black Hills, the Powder River lands and the Bighorn country. The pretense of formal agreement agree-ment and fair payment which Congress had devised to veil this act of robbery did not even deceive the Indians. The chiefs knew that they were being robbed and that they were forced to sign away their lands. Here are beef, flour and blankets blan-kets (said the United States) for your lands in Laramie Plains and between the forks of the Platte, which we took from you before 1865; and here (said the United Unit-ed States) are the same beef, flour and blankets for your lands In Nebraska which we took before 1870; and (said the United States, with an air of vast generosity) gen-erosity) here are the same beef, flour and blankets for the Black Hills, the Powder Pow-der River, and the Bighorn lands which we are now taking from you. In all fairness, fair-ness, that is very near the true meaning of the "agreement" of 1876, by means of which these last lands were taken from the Sioux. So the Sioux were finally settled on 1 : ;- 'C . J I ' 5 " I ' j t ' 1 a greatly reduced reservation within with-in the present states of North and South Dakota. But even then the Great White Father wasn't through with them. In 1888 another commission com-mission went to the Standing Rock reservation to swing the cession of 11 million acres of Sioux lands at a fixed price of 50 cents an acre ("an outrageous robbery," Stanley Vestal, Ves-tal, biographer of Sitting Bull, calls it) and break up the great Sioux reservation into smaller ones. Sitting Sit-ting Bull lined up the chiefs against it, then went to Washington where he succeeded in getting the price raised to $1,25 an acre. The next year another commission came to Standing Rock to bargain with trip Sinnx at the new Drice but fair prices for their land, the records rec-ords show that, except in a very few cases where military duress was present, the prices were such as to satisfy the Indians. Discussions of enhancement of land prices from original costs to the present estimated esti-mated value of nearly 40 billion dollars only lead to idle speculation. specula-tion. There is no equitable basis of value comparison then and now. "Some Black Pages." "While the history of our dealings with the Indians contains some black pages, since the days of the early settlers there has been a fixed policy based upon the principle of free purchase and sale in dealings between the native inhabitants of the land and the white immigrants. In no other continent has any serious seri-ous attempt ever been made to deal with a weak aboriginal population on these terms. "While the 15 million dollars that we paid to Napoleon in the Louisiana Purchase was merely in compensation compensa-tion for his cession of political authority, au-thority, we proceeded to pay the Indian In-dian tribes of the ceded territory more than 20 times this sum for such lands as they were willing to sell. Moreover, the Indian tribes were wise enough to reserve from their cessions sufficient land to bring them an income that each year exceeds ex-ceeds the amount of our payment to Napoleon." It is true, as Secretary Ickes says, that in the majority of cases the Indians probably received a fair price for their lands since there is no equitable basis of value comparison, compari-son, but it is doubtful if the Sioux, the Nez Perces, the Modocs and the Poncas to name only a few would agree with Mr. Ickes that the "principle "prin-ciple rJt free purchase and sale" had been observed in their dealings with the Great White Father. Louisiana Territory. Since Mr. Ickes mentions the Louisiana Lou-isiana Purchase, it might be well to examine briefly the record of our government's dealings with one of the aboriginal occupants of that region, re-gion, the Sioux. For generations CALICO IN PERPETUITY An important provision of the treaty of 1794 whereby the United States acquired ac-quired lands from the Iroquois Confederacy Con-federacy was that there should be an annual distribution of calico among 5,000 members of the Six Nations. This provision is still carried car-ried out each year with appropriate ceremonies in observance of perpetual perpet-ual "peace and friendship" with the Iroquois. Shown here at a typical ceremony is Florence Printup, a descendant of old Iroquois chiefs, who received the rolls of calico for distribution. for permission to "pass through the same." In 1874 Gen. George A. Custer and his Seventh cavalry were sent to explore ex-plore the Black Hills again without asking permission of the Sioux to whom Pah-sah-pah (the Black Hills) was almost sacred soil. Then a newspaper man who accompanied Custer flashed to the world the electrifying elec-trifying news that gold had been discovered dis-covered in the Hills and Custer's official of-ficial report not only confirmed this but it was also an ecstatic description de-scription of the beauties of that region. re-gion. The result was inevitable. 'Justified' Treaty Breach. Prospectors and miners flocked to the new El Dorado. For a time the government went through the motions mo-tions of expelling the intruders, then gave it up as a hopeless job. Having Hav-ing failed to keep the whites out of the Black Hills, the government's next step was to find some way to justify this violation of the. Laramie treaty. A good excuse came when several bands of the Sioux, notably Sitting Bull's Hunkpapas and Crazy Horse's Oglalas, who were hunting in the Powder river country (as they had a perfect right to do) failed to return to their reservations within the time limit set by the Indian bureau bu-reau January 31, 1876. (The fact that it was almost physically impossible im-possible for the Sioux to obey this order within the time allowed didn't make any difference to the Indian bureau!) found themselves blocked at every turn by Sitting Bull. Finally by making various promises (many of which were never kept, incidentally) incident-ally) they managed to get enough chiefs to agree to the sale. So, in the words of Vestal, "the cession was signed, the great Sioux Reservation Reser-vation was only a memory. It was the death of a nation." Among the promises that were not kept was one about supplying rations to the Sioux, penned up on their reduced reservations, reserva-tions, and in the winter of 1890-91 that broken promise bore bitter fruit. For the Sioux, suffering from hunger and disillusionment, became easy victims to the apostles of the Ghost Dance and before that excitement excite-ment was over the shameful story of the massacre at Wounded Knee had been written on one of the "black pages" which Secretary Ickes mentions. As indicated previously some of the other "black pages" bear the stories of our dealings with the Nez Perces, the Modocs and the Poncas. That is why it is likely that any member of those tribes, as well as the Sioux, who reads the secretary's statement about "a fixed policy based upon the principle of free purchase and sale in dealings between be-tween the native inhabitants of the land and the white immigrants" will probably smile and there won't be much humor in that smile! these Dakotas had occupied a vast empire along the Missouri river, including in-cluding most of the present states of North and South Dakota and parts of Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. Mon-tana. Gradually their territory had been reduced by a series of treaties until they held only their choicest hunting grounds in the Black Hills, the Powder river country and the Big Horn mountains. That was guaranteed to them, by the Fort Laramie treaty of 1858, as a "permanent reservation" and, besides, be-sides, they were granted, for as long as there were buffalo on the plains, "the right to hunt on any land north of the PJatte." This reservation was to be considered "unceded Indian territory" in which "no white person per-son or persons shall be permitted to settle or occupy any portion of the same or. without the consent of the Indians first had and obtained, to pass through the same." Moreover, it was agreed that no subsequent treaty should be considered valid "unless executed and signed by at least three-fourths of all the adult male Indians occupying and interested inter-ested in the same." The government kept its promise less than a year. Four months after the President had proclaimed the On February 1 the Indian commissioner com-missioner proclaimed all Sioux who wre not on the reservation "hos-tiles" "hos-tiles" and called on the army to round them up. Then followed the campaigns of Generals Crook, Terry, Ter-ry, Gibbon and Miles against these "hostile" Sioux and Cheyennes in 1876-77 which either compelled the surrender of the Indians or drove them across the border into Canada. Even before the campaign was over, a commission was sent to treat with the Sioux and arrange for the cession ces-sion of lands which the Fort Laramie Lara-mie treaty had guaranteed to them "forever." Concerning this 'commission, which began its work in August, 1876, Doane Robinson in his "History of the Sioux Indians" (South Dakota Historical Collections) writes: The commission says: "While the Indians In-dians received us as friends and listened with kind attention to our proposition, we were painfully impressed with their lack of confidence in the pledges of the government. gov-ernment. At times they told their story of wrongs with such impressive earnestness earnest-ness that our cheeks crimsoned with shame. In their speeches and recitals of wrongs which their people had suffered suf-fered at the hands of the whites, the arraignment ar-raignment for gross acts of injustice and fraud, the description of treaties made only to be broken, the doubts and distrusts dis-trusts of our present profession of friendship friend-ship and good will, were portrayed In col- |
