FIFTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF INDIAN COMMISSIONERS, FISCAL YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1926

WASHINGTON, D. C., September 1, 1926.

SIR: We beg leave to submit the following as the Fifty-Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1926. During this period members of the board visited and inspected the following units of the Indian Service

Blackfeet, Rocky Boy, Flathead, Fort Belknap, Fort Peck, and Crow Agencies, Mont.; Fort Hall Agency, Idaho; Northern Pueblos Agency and Santa Fe School, N. Mex.; Shoshone Agency, Wyo.; Five Civilized Tribes, Okla.; Fort Berthold, Fort Totten, and Turtle Mountain Agencies, N. Dak.; Consolidated Chippewa Agency, Minn.; Menominee and Hayward Agencies, Wis.

Special reports on the investigations and surveys made by board members have been transmitted to you from time to time and, in abridged form, are appended to this report.

In addition to these inspections the board made a special study of the affairs of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma at your request and has reported thereon.

At the annual meeting in Washington, January 26-27, 1926, George Vaux, jr., Bryn Mawr, Pa., was reelected chairman, and Malcolm McDowell, of Washington, was reelected secretary of the board.

THE NEW FIELD SERVICE

The rearrangement of the Indian field service and the organization of a real Indian medical service were the important happenings in the Indian Bureau during the year. In our opinion they are the most advanced steps in the direction of increased efficiency and of a long-needed coordination of administrative functions that have been taken in many years.

The lay-out of what might be called the "new" field service is as follows: The office of General Superintendent of Indian Affairs has been established, which, under the supervision and control of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, has charge of all educational, agricultural, and industrial activities, and of the personnel of field units. The Indian country has been divided into nine districts, each in charge of a district superintendent who is held responsible for the efficient administration of all of the field activities, excepting medical, in his district. Through him all of the functions which have to do with the educational, economic, and social conditions of the Indians in his district are coordinated. This is bringing the Indian Office much nearer the Indians than it has been, for many matters which have been taken up by superintendents with Washington can

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now be handled by the district superintendents. This new arrangement ought to go far toward removing much of the cause of the complaints against what has been termed "long distance" administration of Indian affairs.

Up to the beginning of the allotment period Commissioners of Indian Affairs dealt with Indians in a wholesale fashion-by tribes. Tie general allotment act of 1887 individualized the Indian problem and the Indian Office took on itself the nature of a retail establishment. Since then each year has seen the mass of details brought to the Washington office grow larger and the bulk of these details were loaded onto the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs. In 1901 there were but 67,376 communications of all sorts received by the Indian Office. In 1920, the last published statistics, the Indian Office received 261,486 communications. This increase in mail alone serves to indicate the enormous growth in the number of reservation details which have been coming to Washington for consideration and determination.

Under the new arrangement the greater part of these details will be taken care of by the general superintendent (Mr. Hervey B. Peairs) and his associated district superintendents. This should enable the commissioner and assistant commissioner to give more time to the larger problems and the weightier things concerning the affairs of the Indian wards of the United States.

For some time it has been apparent to close observers that there are too many individualistic tendencies in the Indian field service; too many superintendents who seemed to believe that their own ideas on administration, education, agriculture, etc., are the only ones worth considering. Too often a superintendent, succeeding another, at once changes his predecessor's methods and plans to substitute his own. These changes, in some instances radical, puzzle the Indians, retard progress, and make for inefficiency.

Of course, anyone who is at all familiar with our Indian people knows there are many things which are not and can not be made common to all tribes, for each tribe, in many ways, is peculiar to itself. But there are the broader policies and underlying principles of administration that can be applied to the handling of the affairs of all Indians. The diversity of opinions and the varied views held by superintendents have operated, in many cases, to hinder the carrying out of tested policies.

The new arrangement which groups superintendencies into districts under district superintendents ought to bring about a unity in service that would develop an esprit de corps that can only grow out of cooperation and discipline. The consummation of this desirable condition can be hastened, we believe, if reservation superintendents are given more initiative and final authority.

Whenever this suggestion has been made it was met with the expression of a fear that if superintendents were given more freedom of action many of them would go too far in exercising their augmented authority. With nine district superintendents, the picked men from a group of seasoned veterans in the field service, on the job, traveling over their jurisdictions, constantly in touch with the agencies under their charge, there need be little apprehension that any superintendent will get very far in mishandling any additional

authority in the minor matters which are exclusively local in their nature.

We therefore recommend that the general superintendent and district superintendents be directed to suggest revisions of rules and regulations which would have the effect of permitting reservation superintendents to handle entirely all local matters of a character that, as matter of fact, need not be referred to anyone outside of the reservation. We have every confidence that the experienced men now directing the field activities know just what matters should be handled exclusively by agents and what should go to higher officials. Under present conditions we believe the adoption of this recommendation will be most helpful in further bettering the Indian field service.

A POLICY OF ACCELERATION

If we have rightly caught the underlying purposes of this reorganization of the field service are we not justified in the conclusion that there has been put into operation what might be called a policy of acceleration; that is, a policy looking to hastening the termination of Federal supervision over the population class known as restricted Indians, the wards of the United States?

The annual reports of Secretaries of the Interior and Commissioners of Indian Affairs for the past 20 years indicate that the executive officers of the Federal Government, upon whom Congress has laid the weighty responsibility of handling the affairs of our Indian people, have kept in mind the idea of accelerating the progress of the Government's wards. The Board of Indian Commissioners gave expression to its favorable attitude toward a policy of acceleration in its annual report of 1923, as follows:

Congress can hasten the day when Federal supervision of Indian affairs will end and necessary calls on the National Treasury will cease by heartily cooperating with the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in speeding up the working out of the Government's Indian policy. This would, of course, for a time, require augmented appropriations, the enactment of some legislation, and the repeal of some laws which the department has requested.

The members of this board have been given unusual opportunities to study the Indian question at close range. As one result of our investigations and surveys, we are of the opinion that increased appropriations at this time for schools, for medical service, for added hospital equipment, for larger salaries and better living conditions for field employees, for the stricter enforcement of law and order in the Indian country, for increased activity in the development of natural resources, and for the stronger and more effective protection of Indians in their property and legal rights would be sound business policy and practice. The result, we believe, would be such a speeding up of administrative activities that the progress of the Indian people toward their complete absorption into the citizenship of the United States would be accelerated to such a degree that the need of Federal supervision of Indians and their affairs, and appropriations for such supervision would disappear in a comparatively short time.

Since 1923 all Indians have been made citizens of the United States (act of June 2, 1924); the salaries of all Government employees have been increased (under the reclassification act); Congress has increased its appropriations for educational and medical activities; there has been an improvement in bettering the living conditions of Indian Service people on a number of jurisdictions; and Congress, at last, has taken up seriously the problem of law enforce

ment on reservations. We, therefore, with stronger hopes than were entertained in 1923, beg leave to restate the conclusion just quoted from our 1923 report, concerning the speeding up of administrative activities, assisted by augumented appropriations from Congress, in the practical working out of Indian problems.

CIVIL SERVICE STATUS FOR COMMISSIONER

In common with many other friends of the Indians who have seen the injurious effect of partisan politics in the administration of their affairs upon them and their property we are strongly of the opinion that the officials and employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, from the Commissioner down, should be placed within the protection of a civil service status. Under the impression that this highly desirable condition might be brought about by an Executive order of the President, the board adopted a resolution at its annual meeting in January, 1926, reading as follows:

Whereas throughout the existence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs its activities have been hampered and its usefulness impaired by the injection of polities; and

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Whereas recent investigations of the Board of Indian Commissioners have served to emphasize the importance of eliminating so far as possible this source of difficulty, and have shown the acute embarrassments caused by political pressure upon officials of the bureau everywhere, and particularly in the handling of affairs of the Five Civilized Tribes; Therefore be it

Resolved, that we, the United States Board of Indian Commissioners, urge upon the President of the United States that he extend to the officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as has already been done to those under them, the protection of a civil service status. We respectfully recommend that this protective status apply to all, beginning with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; and we especially urge this action in the case of the office of the Superintendent for the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma.

We find that special legislation will be required to bring about the purpose expressed in this resolution. Therefore, we earnestly recommend that a bill be introduced in Congress providing for a 100 per cent extension of the civil service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the end that all of its officials and employees will be given a civil service status. As justification of this recommendation we beg to submit the following:

By mandate of Congress and under the general oversight of the Secretary of the Interior, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs is the delegated agent of the National Government to carry out its functions as guardian and trustee of nearly a quarter of a million of American Indians.

These Indians are the wards of the United States by reason of happenings which began even before the Declaration of Independence was written, 150 years ago, happenings for which the present legislative and executive officials of the Government and the Indians can neither be blamed nor commended.

The situation in which our Indian people find themselves is the result of many decades of beneficent and injurious congressional legislation and Federal administration. Some 240,000 are now the supervised wards of the United States of America, a unique people whose relations to the National Government are different from those held by any other population class of our country. Rightly or