APPENDIX

The field work of the Board of Indian Commissioners took members into the Indian sections of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, and Mississippi. The special reports on conditions in the reservations inspected are presented in this appendix in abridged form.

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FORT HALL INDIAN RESERVATION, IDAHO

Commissioner SEYMOUR

Following is a part of Commissioner Seymour's report on this jurisdiction: 'The reservation, in southeastern Idaho, is shaped like an inverted pipe whose rounded bowl is outlined by the confluence of the Snake and Blackfeet Rivers. The eastern part of the reserve is mountainous and chiefly grazing land and in the lower sections of this district some irrigated tracts lie along the banks of the streams. The southern end of the Indian lands is a strip 10 miles wide extending 30 miles south of the Snake River. The interest of the reservation centers in the northwestern districts bordered by the Snake. Here lies most of the irrigated lands. In this section are the Government boarding school, the agency headquarters, and the Episcopal mission church and school. And here, along the marshy Snake River bottoms, lies a portion of the huge area that is to be flooded when the American Falls Dam, now nearing completion, 25 miles down the river, is in full operation.

When the stored waters have reached the final depth the engineers have estimated there will be submerged one of the most notable spots in the history of America-old Fort Hall, the fur trading post founded in 1834 by the young American, Nathaniel J. Wyeth, from Boston. With his party to the building of the fort traveled Jason Lee, earliest American missionary to the Oregon country, and on this site in August, 1834, preached the first sermon in English the West had heard. A plain granite shaft commemorates this event, near where the melted-down adobe still dimly outlines the plan of the walls of the old fort. The patriotic ladies who raised the memorial chose to commemorate this occasion rather than the raising of the flag over the completed Fort Hall, because history records that the latter event was celebrated by the consumption of an undue amount of villainous alcohol.'

Two years later Wyeth succumbed to the opposition of the Hudson Bay Co. and sold his fort, which from America's western outpost thus became the eastern outpost of the British power in the then debatable land of Oregon. But just before the transfer the Whitman missionary party had brought the first white women across the Rockies, the first portent of the mighty tide of immigration that was to flow along the Oregon Trail from 1842 on and was to win Oregon for the United States. Along this Snake bottom land rolled this tide, and widely paralleled deep ruts still are to be seen which were worn by those ox-drawn Conestogas of 80 years ago.

"A movement has been set on foot to build on the site of the old fort a tower and lighthouse which will shine out across the water at night. It is to be hoped that this will be successful, for the story of this fort is a stirring chapter in the epic of America.

"Below this central portion of the reserve lies Pocatello, the second town of the State, a thriving and attractive little city of 18,000 inhabitants. It is a railroad junction point. From Pocatello north the Yellowstone Branch of the Oregon Short Line runs through the reservation, paralleled by a concreted State highway. Westward from Pocatello the main line of the same railway cuts across the Bannock Creek stem of the reserve on its way to American Falls. The section here traversed by the railroad is known as the Michaud Flats.

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The area of the reservation is over 366,000 acres. The country is here about 4,000 feet above sea level. The annual rainfall is 12 to 14 inches. It is an area of sand and sagebrush, which in the watered region blooms into beautiful vegetation. Irrigation means transformation to wealth and beauty. The summers are short at this altitude, but wheat and hay are produced in abundance when water is obtainable.

The Bannocks and Shoshones, ofer 1.700 in number, were allotted a dozen years or so ago their trust patents dated from 1914. The restricted period has thus 13 years longer to run. Some, of course, received certificates of competency and patents in fee under Secretary Lane's 'declaration of policy.” Others who were quite capable of managing their own affairs seem to have preferred quasi dependence with its exemption from taxes, and still remain wards, though intelligent and prosperous business men and employers of labor. They are, of course, few in number, but even a few who make use of their quantum of Indian blood to escape responsibilities they are quite able to assume are a drawback to Indian progress.

"For the main body of these Indians the period of restrictions is more than halfway traversed. They have completely abandoned the old village life and live as a rule upon their allotments. Tepees have almost vanished, not more than three or four remaining. Many families still live in tents, usually further protected by brush shelters. Many unprotected tents were in evidence at the time of my visit, but these were for workers in the harvest fields. The more permanent houses are of frame or log construction, very small and rude in appearance. Undoubtedly better housing is one of the great needs of these Indians. The situation is complicated by the fact that they have not yet outgrown the superstition which leads them to abandon a house in which a death has occurred.

"The standard of housekeeping is rather better than one would expect from the houses themselves, but there is still great room for improvement. In the matter of industry I received a much more favorable impression than my previous knowledge of these people had led me to expect. Haying was going on everywhere, and I saw Indians actually at work on all sides.

"The agency physician, Doctor Wheeler, has been at this point nearly 20 years. In this he is an exception, for the turnover in school and agency employees here strikingly illustrates the nomadic nature of Indian Service folk. There had been three superintendents within the past 12 months, and at the time of my visit there were a notable number of vacancies to be filled, though school was soon to begin. Fortunately, among the employees attaining some degree of permanency are the district farmers, whose work has such effect upon the industrial welfare of their charges.

"In his long stay the physician has seen great changes take place, though from one year to another the difference may not be apparent. Nineteen years ago the reservation was guiltless of fences and almost unacquainted with roads, according to the present standard. The Indian roved and hunted, camping in village clusters of tepees.

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"Then came the allotment and the building of the big irrigation system which has made fertile so many of these acres. With allotment and the sale or lease of surplus lands came the white neighbor with his serious devotion to farming. To-day fencing is universal and Indian farms are found that are good, indeed, to look upon. One-third of the acreage, roughly speaking, is leased. Irrigated land is leased by individual farmers; the grazing lands by corporate interests. Contact with whites has apparently here worked some portion of the good anticipated by those who devised the allotment system.

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The public schools of Idaho, as in all western States, are weil built and equipped and generously maintained. The public school at the infinitesimal town of Fort Hall, adjoining the agency, is an imposing and substantial building, with teachers' quarters. Many Indian children attend it, some even living at the Government boarding school and taking its higher grade work. It covers the grammar-school work and will inaugurate a ninth grade this year, it is reported. At the town of Blackfoot, a small but exceptionally clean and up-to-date town just north of the reservation, are excellent schools open to Indians as well as whites. There is apparently no lack of harmony between the races, and the Indians like the public schools.

Just east of the agency is located an Episcopal mission boarding school, where 26 girls are educated in an environment of the most desirable sort. There is an atmosphere of home and family life here, apparent even in the vacation season. This mission has been working here for many years, and is

so well appreciated that there is a waiting list of students such as private schools of distinction will have.

"The Indians express a desire to have the agency boarding school abolished and public schools substituted, but distances make this absolutely impossible at present. The school has an excellent irrigated farm of 200 acres, whose products add materially to the school table. A domestic-science building is nearing completion and it is a fine example of an up-to-date home..

"The outstanding need of the Bannocks and Shoshones is better homes, with better home conditions. The burning question in their minds, however, is the money which they anticipate receiving from the sale of the Snake River bottom land.

"The amount paid for these lands was $700,000. One hundred thousand dollars of this was appropriated for repairs and improvements to the irrigation system. This, however, is reimbursable, and will ultimately be returned to the fund from rentals collected from white lessees and landowners.

"The $600,000 remaining means more than $300 for each member of the tribe. The shares of an average family should be sufficient to build an adequate home or to equip one already built, or it would supply farm equipment in considerable measure.

"It was the thought of Supervisor Lipps that if an adequate program of equipment and improvement were worked out with the interest and approval of the Indians, such a program could be presented to Congress as a justification for making so large a sum available for use. Otherwise, it would probably be made available a part at a time. With this in mind, Mr. Lipps talked to these Indians in the spring.

"It is highly improbable that any wise friend of the Indian would recommend an immediate per capita payment of the total amount, and equally unlikely that Congress would make the whole amount available except upon strong representations of real necessity. To pay out all of this fund at once to these undeveloped and unreasoning citizens would be to encourage the dissipation of their resources to the ultimate gain of the bootleggers and the purveyors of useless gimcracks. Six hundred thousand dollars would vanish like dew in the sun. Yet the Indians will never admit they have received it unless they obtain it in such a way.

"It was pointed out that the irrigation system which brings fruitfulness to their lands was built at a cost of $1,700,000. Although legally reimbursable it has never been charged against the tribe or the allottees. The Congress would be within its rights in enforcing the application of this fund as part payment for the irrigation works.

"There is a project under discussion for the extension of the irrigation system. A further extension of canals already in service could be made to bring water to the Michaud Flats, a section south of the present system and west of the city of Pocatello. This land adjoins the main line of the railroad. The present superintendent expresses himself as opposed to such an extension because whites would be sure to benefit by it, while the Indians might fail to make use of it. Of 26,000 acres in this area, 9,000 are already sold. The remainder is unallotted tribal property. If the Indians need more irrigated land than they now use, let them resume some of the 6,000 acres now operated by white lessees. There is merit in this contention. If the land were to be irrigated merely to be sold or leased for the Indians, it would be practically but a postponement or extension of the evil results of a per capita payment.

"Undoubtedly the application of this money to the improvement of Indian homes and farms will be the least harmful method of distribution. The effort to interest the Indians in such a program is being continued, and in time they may assent to it as the means of getting the payments they desire.

"The obvious need for these Indians is home development. Social service and missionary work, of the type that has had such excellent results among the Nez Perces, is necessary if they are to be won to a better attitude and a more wholesome life. Their physical circumstances are in most respect fairly satisfactory; it is in spirit and in character that the change must be sought.

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Every encouragement should be offered the missionary board in authority over this station to resume active work among these people. This should be field work of a practical nature, as friendship and confidence will have to precede any interest on their part in formal services.

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The improvement of homes and of moral conditions should be a prime object of the Government work. Not only should expenditures of money be viewed in the light of their relation to this purpose, but a greater degree of

personal work should be done by school and agency. The new domestic science teacher might well work to create an organization of mothers-a canning club, sewing club, parents association, or some grouping that study would show to be better suited to their needs.

"Undoubtedly one factor in the mental state of these wards is the constant changing in personnel at school and agency. So many are always strangers to them. The agency office has undergone a complete change in the year; the school force is almost as unstable. There have been three superintendents within the fiscal year ending last June. To the casual view there is nothing in the location and surroundings to make this more difficult than other Indian Service points. Again the reason lies in feeling rather than physical conditions. 'These Indians have gotten so they're not to be satisfied with anyone,' some one expressed the situation. Evidently the same discontent has been reflected in the employee force. A new awakening of spirit must affect both whites and Indians if real improvement is to be brought about."

FORT LAPWAI INDIAN RESERVATION, IDAHO
Commissioner SEYMOUR

In the latter part of August, 1926, Commissioner Seymour made a visit to this reservation, in western Idaho, the home of 1,400 Nez Perce Indians, of whom more than a thousand are full bloods. The jurisdiction covers 212,000 acres, of which 178,000 have been allotted. Parts of the report on this agency are as follows:

"If all the Indian tribes who have received lands in severalty reached the state of progress attained by the Nez Perces the general allotment policy of the Government might well be deemed a satisfaction of the needs of the Indian. This is not by way of saying that there is nothing left to be desired for this tribe. But, if there were no needs more serious than theirs, the Indian problem' would have passed into history.

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'These are an exceptional people in many ways, and theirs is an exceptional country. It is hard to believe that the continuous hills are really cultivated fields, for they look too precipitous for horses and machinery. But, at this time of year they are rich with a golden harvest of wheat.

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"The former Nez Perce Reservation, long since opened to along the course of the Clearwater River in western Idaho. Lewiston, at the junction of the Clearwater and the Snake, is a dozen miles northwest of the Indian lands and of Fort Lapwai, where are located a tuberculosis sanatorium and the agency establishment which cares for the business of those Nez Perces who are still in wardship.

"At Fort Lapwai the altitude is about 800 feet, and the climate is des gnated semitropical.' This perhaps exaggerates the situation, but certainly it is a land of long summers, mild winters, and fertile soil.

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"An hour's drive along the Idaho North and South Highway, which passes by the fort, will take one to an altitude of 3,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level, where the breeze is cool and laden with the scent of pine trees. As a car presses up the slopes, winding round and round the hills at an average 5 per cent grade, one looks below at a marvelous panorama, a vast rolling checkerboard of alternate wheat fields and summer fallow lands, whose smooth blackness contrasts vividly with the gold of ripened wheat or of the stubble left after the huge combine' has made its way over the fields behind 20 or 30 toiling horses, in its progress cutting the wheat, thrashing it, sacking it, leaving rows of scattered straw and heaps of sacked grain in its wake.

"All this is dry farming, of a productiveness I have not seen equalled. There are some small irrigable garden spots in the little pocket canyons where a stream pierces its way through the hills, but the great acreage is bringing forth its wealth of grain with an annual precipitation of about 14 inches.

"Here and there the narrow canyons widen into pockets large enough for a settlement. In such a valley, entirely surrounded by hills, is the Fort Lapwai Agency with its buildings and sanatorium. In the eastern part of the reservation is the larger and more notable Kamiah Valley, the home of the mythical monster from whom the ancestors of the Nez Perces were fashioned. The heart of the monster may still be seen, an odd-shaped pile of rocks jutting up unexpectedly from the floor of the valley. Northeastward from Kamiah lies the Lo-lo Trail, over which came and went the Lewis and Clark expedition, leaving with the Nez Perces the tradition and sentiment of friendship for the white

man which has been broken but once, and then by only that racalcitrant portion of the tribe which, in 1877, followed Chief Joseph outward along the Lo-lo Trail after fighting the battles of Whitebird Canyon, the Cottonwoods, and the Clearwater.

"The story of the development of the Nez Perces in the main tells of cooperation on the part of the Government authorities, the missionaries, and the Indians themselves. Lewis and Clark found these Indians peaceful and friendly, though the hard circumstances of the meager existence they could wrest from their bare land made them more avaricious as well as more thrifty than the average tribe.

"A quarter of a century later came the visit of the four northwestern Indians to St. Louis in search of the I white man's gospel.' While varying accounts given by the whites assign these Indians to different tribes, the Nez Perces themselves have an oral tradition, unquestioned by them, handed down from one generation to another, which gives with considerable detail the names, relationships, and story of the four who made the long pilgrimage. According to this tale, all were Nez Perce Indians, one having a Flathead mother. While the party did not bring back the book they sought, their trip was followed in a few years by the establishment of the first missions in the Oregon country, and to the Nez Perces came Henry and Eliza Spalding, to set up on the banks of the Clearwater, as the inscription on a bowlder recently placed reads, The first home, the first school, and the first church in the State of Idaho.'

"Great beginnings were made in the next decade. The Spaldings and those who joined them later were leaders in works as well as in faith. Farm, orchard, gristmill, printing press, all joined in the work of regeneration. But a few years ago the first apple tree in the State, grown from seeds planted by Spalding himself, stood here, until the whim of an automobile tourist made it material for a camp fire.

"The Whitman massacre in Oregon, in 1847, resulted in the withdrawal of all this mission work, and Mr. Spalding was absent from the tribe for many years, returning for educational work for the Government for a period in the sixties and for regular mission work in the seventies, not long before his death. But some of the early seed had reached good soil; and the Misses McBeth, two devoted sisters whose work among the Nez Perces extended from 1874 to 1915, carried on so well that to-day the Nez Perces stand alone among Indians as a tribe that supports its own churches, provides its own ministers, conducts its own religious life, and even sends out missions to other Indian people.

"After the trouble of 1877-78, when Chief Joseph and his captured band were sent to Oklahoma, the Christian Nez Perces sent to them preachers and teachers; and through their efforts many of the hostiles were reconciled to the life and beliefs which had been adopted by the majority of the tribe. These returned later to Idaho and to their people. Those who remained unfriendly went with Joseph to the Colville Reservation in Washington.

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Miss Alice Fletcher, when she allotted the Nez Perces in the early nineties, pleaded with Joseph to accept an allotment, but in vain. The majority, however, received their trust patents in 1895, becoming citizens at that date, according to the law.

"At the expiration of the trust period in 1920 many who were deemed competent received patents in fee. For the others there was a 10-year extension, their restrictions now being scheduled for removal in 1930.

"This period since allotment has been one of considerable prosperity for the tribe. The sale of surplus lands, the lease of large areas, the lease or sale of inherited lands, the growth of dry farming, have combined to make a golden flood for the Nez Perce. The old people have in many cases retained the thrift begotten in them by early years of industry and need, but the young folk have grown up in the pernicious atmosphere of easy money' and have suffered a deterioration in character as the result.

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During the past five years wealth has flowed less freely. Many who spent lavishly now feel the need for a careful husbandry of what remains to them. One man who dissipated in a grand three month's trip with racing horses the entire proceeds of his land sales, some $20,000, came to inquire anxiously for his share of one-third of the crop of a 2-acre plot still remaining to him.

"An organization to carry out a five-year industrial program was formed two years ago, but its activities seem to have worked very little improvement as yet. The pinch of economic need will prove more effectual, probably, than any pressure from without.