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Show Domestic Unde 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 Problems to Test Trumans Mettle Harmonious Relations on Foreign Policy Soon To Give Way to Contention Over By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. DECENTLY the department of the interitor issued a new colored map, the first of its kind, which shows how Uncle Sam since 1790 has acquired the nations public domain 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 Difficulties of Reconversion. By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. Service, Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C. The political armistice in Washington will end shortly after the Presidents return from Berlin. The followed so closeBig Three meeting of the San Francheels the on ly that conference foreign affairs isco wNU have dominated the scene almost to the exclusion of domestic matters, which sooner or later must test the the new administration. reason, perhaps, why President Trumans honeymoon has been extended is the fact that the main issue before the country, the United Nations charter, has been robbed of its partisan flavor. This is largely due to the long and ardumettle of Another ous efforts of former Secretary of State Hull. He built up a working understanding on foreign affairs be- tween the administration and the which resulted in the congress, Vice only a former senator, but a former Supreme court justice. Byrnes an understanding link with the judicial branch as well as with the legislative. The secretary of the treasury, Fred Vinson, is a former member of congress as well as an Secretary of Agriculture of the public domain, or someAnderson is not only a former thing like 2,600,000 square miles. member of congress, but was head In so far as the aggregate cost of the house food committee, which of this land was directed some of the most serious approximately criticism against the former admin- $800,000,000 that means a little istrations handling of the food situ- more than $307 a square mile or ation. This committee is now workapproximately 48 cents an acre ing closely with the new cabinet it would seem that Uncle Sam pro-vid- es ex-jud- President Truman shortly before his elevation to the presidency artillery shells with Baukhage. of most the leaders of both parties, sturdily supported by public opinion. Secretary Hull was able to achieve this harmony because of the confidence in which his former colleagues held him and also because of his experience as a member of the legislative branch of the government. Roosevelt could never have been as successful in this endeavor and, because he realized that fully, he left ed of ganization of the department and so is not a source of friction. In his secretary of labor, President Truman has a man who was exceedingly popular in the senate another judge Lewis Schwellenbach. - Fear Influence Of Party. Bosses Of course, when it comes to quesand the fair tions like the poll-ta- x employment practices act or any the matter largely in Hulls hands. other measure in which the race question is involved, the old friction Chief Still arises with the southern congressOne of the Boys men and any .Republicans they can attract to their cause. Also, while In the first place, President Truman stepped directly from the up- there are those who say that the per house to the vice presidency, President is steering a course much farther to the right than President and ever since he left the legislative branch for the executive, he Roosevelt did, he nevertheless is has been acting as liaison between committed to a number of the New Deal reforms, both bethe two. cause of his record in the senate and Shortly before President Rooseinbecause of his natural leanings. velts death I had occasion to I owever, since Truman is known tc terview the then vice president. e a strong party man, it will be talked about the forthcoming San asier for him to keep the southern Francisco conference with him (as )emocrats in line. well as the field artillery, of which Of course, some of the radical we are both alumni). He indicated lew Dealer are doing a lot of eye-rothat he was holding aloof from any raising behind the bushes and public participation in the discus, d international affairs but was attempting to carry on and to complement the work of Secretary Hull in promoting a sympathetic discussion of the Dumbarton Oaks agreement with members of the senate foreign relations committee, the house committee on foreign affairs and others. One of his first unorthodox acts was to take lunch with some of his old colleagues at the Capitol. This was almost as if the king of England were to attempt to enter the City of London without first having a formal parley with the lord mayor. But it was a perfectly natural act on Trumans part like his spontaneous remark to the effect that there was a certain Chinese restaurant where he would like to eat while he was on the West coast. On second thought he realized that, as President, he couldnt do such a thing and admitted it with a smile. The Presidents informal visits to the Capitol havent hurt him. Nor his formal ones. After his last appearance, when he delivered the charter, he lingered so long in the senate chamber, shaking hands and Patting backs, that an aide had to hint gently that he wasnt a senator sny more and must hurry back to sions of remark (perhaps written with in ongue in cheek) which appeared he Wall Street Journal sent shiv-r, down some spines. That which hardly depends or Jemocratic support for its circula-ionsaid recently: Not since th administration of Warrer d there been the prosped has larding s news-iaper- , hort-live- I teamwork as exists today. If the results of the Berlin meet ng are such that they reveal i narked improvement in Big Three elations and a harmonious settle nent of some of the difficult problems, the Presidents irestige will be greatly increased lowever, by that time domestic dis :ontent will be crystallizing, the wane anc loneymoon will be on the all the need will he President teamwork he can muster. bj If the Japanese war should, before my chance, end suddenly mother year it would mean tha econversion, threats of inflation ane inemployment and a hundred othei jroblems will be upon us and Presi his lent Truman will be stripped of Commander as jrotective authority Then the slings and ar rows which even Roosevelts ene nies were wont to deflect to con ress and other government agen thi ies will be aimed squarely at wil his work. Peace House. are nan in the White His cabinet appointments iot be too peaceful at 3200 Penn secrehighly significant. Trumans tary of state, James Byrnes, is not sylvania avenue. i Sioux Had to Like It.- Since the Sioux didnt have much choice in the matter, they signed the treaty offered them. Heres what another historian says about it (not1 an Indian historian, but a white historian). George E. Hyde, author of Red Clouds 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 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 (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 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) here are the same beef, flour and blankets for the Black Hills, the Powder River, and the Bighorn lands which we are now taking from you. In aU fairness, that Is very near the true meaning of the agreement" of 1876, by means of which these last lands were taken from the Sioux. While Secretary of Commerce certainly got a bargain in these Wallace does not bring to his de- dealings with his red children. In a statement issued at the time partment the close associations of the men over whom he presided as the map was released, Secretary president of the senate, the scope Harold Ickes of the department of and function of his office has been the interior declared that while considerably reduced by the reor- - questions are still frequently raised as to whether the Indians received discusses politics and whole-heart- and distrusts of our present profession of friendship and good will, were portrayed In colors 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 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. less than a year. Four months after the President had proclaimed the Fort Laramie treaty, General Sherman (noted for his 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 that the Northern Pacific railroad was to be built across the northern part of the Sioux hunting lands and soon afterwards the Great White Father sent surveyors, protected by soldiers, into this region without taking the trouble to ask the Sioux for permission to pass through the same. In 1874 Gen. George A. Custer and his Seventh cavalry were sent to explore the Black Hills again without asking permission of the Sioux to member. inter-lationa-l fair prices for their land, the records show that, except in a very few cases whfere military duress was present, the prices were such as to satisfy the Indians. Discussions of enchancement of land prices 'from original costs to the present estimated value of nearly 40 billion dollars only lead to idle speculation. 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 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 Tor his cession of political authority, we proceeded to pay the Indian 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 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, 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 of free purchase and sale had been observed in their dealings with the Great White Father. Certainly they have reason to regard his treatment of them as some of the black pages which the secretary mentions, in which military duress was very definitely present. Louisiana Territory. Since Mr. Ickes mentions the Louisiana Purchase, it might be well to examine briefly the record of our governments dealings with one of the aboriginal occupants of that region, the Sioux. For generations these Dakotas had occupied a vast empire along the Missouri river, including most of the present states of North and South Dakota and parts of Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. 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 1868, as a permanent reservation and, besides, they were granted, for as long as there were buffalo on the plains, the right to hunt on any land north This reservation was of the Platte. to be considered unceded Indian territory in which no white person 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 of all the adult least three-fourtIndians male occupying and interested in the same. The government kept its promise hs ! settled on reduced reservation within the present states of North and South Dakota. But even then the Great White Father wasnt through with them. In 1888 another commission 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 Ves-tal, biographer of Sitting Bull, calls it) and break up the great Sioux reservation into smaller ones. Sitting 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 the Sioux at the new price but found themselves blocked at every turn by Sitting Bull. Finally by making various promises (many of which were never kept, incidentally) 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 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, and in the winter of 1890-9- 1 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 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 secretarys statement about 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 will probably smile and there wont be much humor in that smile! So the Sioux were finally a great . An CALICO IN PERPETUITY important provision of the treaty of 1794 whereby the United States acquired lands from the Iroquois Confederacy was that thefe should be an annual distribution of calico among 5,000 members of the Six Nations. This provision is still'car-rie- d out each year with appropriate ceremonies in observance of perpetual 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. whom (the Black Hills) was almost sacred soil. Then a newspaper man who accompanied Custer flashed to the world the electrifying news that gold had been discovered in the Hills and Custers official report not only confirmed this but' it was also an ecstatic de- -' scription of the beauties of that region. 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 of expelling the intruders, then gave it up as a hopeless job; Having failed to keep the whites out of the Black Hills, the governments 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 Bulls Hunkpapas and Crazy Horses 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 January 31, 1876. (The fact that it was almost physically impossible for the Sioux to obey this order within the time allowed didnt make any difference to the Indian bureau!) On February 1 the Indian commissioner proclaimed all Sioux who were not on the reservation hos-tiland called on the army to round them up. Then followed the campaigns of Generals Crook, Terry, Gibbon and Miles against these hostile Sioux and Cheyennes in 1876-7- 7 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 of lands which the Fort Laramie 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: Pah-sah-p- ah es The commission says: While the Indians 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 At times they told their story of wrongs with such impressive earnestness that our cheeks crimsoned with shame. In their speeches and recitals of wrongs which their people had suffered at the hands of the whites, the arraignment for gross acts of injustice and fraud, the description of treaties made only to be broken, the doubts v . Forty Tribes Celebrate Festival at Gallup, H. M. Indian drums are sounding in the far places of the Southwest, and the Navajos, Zunis, Hopis, Utes, Apaches, Lagunas, Acomas and a score of other tribesmen and their families are trekking to the place by the bridge, Gallup, N. M. Here each year 7,000 Indians from nearly 40 different tribes join forces to produce Americas most colorful and spectacular Indian show, the annual Inter-TribIndian Ceremonial. For four days they dance, chant, compete in sports and engage in weird pagan rites before capacity audiences made up of their white brothers. The Gallup Ceremonial is the largest and most authentic Indian spectacle of its kind in the country. Usually the Ceremonial is held the last part of August. A special attraction each year is the unusual display of Indian arts and crafts in the Exhibit Hall where thousands of articles are shown. A score of native craftsmen will be at work showing the technique of Indian handicraft al |