Mr. Campbell, has brought about a reduction of the operative cases of trachoma from 35 to 2 per cent, the results of which will be permanent. Therefore I feel I am fully warranted in asserting that the end of trachoma in the Blackfeet Reservation is in sight."

Following is a statement in regard to the agency buildings: "In previous reports I called attention to the deplorable condition of the agency plant, the home of employees, and the boarding school and submitted recommendations for improvements that would remedy the situation brought about by long neglect. I now can report that after the improvements which have been authorized are completed it will require only the construction of a suitable gymnasium or playroom for the Cut Bank boarding school, which will provide a place for the children during the severe winter weather of this section, to place this plant in the front rank of agencies."

SAC AND FOX SANATORIUM AND MUSQUAKIE RESERVATION, IOWA

Commissioner ELIOT

Following are extracts from Commissioner Eliot's report on this superintendency, which was visited in November, 1926:

"The Musquakie Reservation consists of some 3,251 acres owned by the Indians and held in common. Two farms separated from the main part of the reservation are rented to white farmers. Most of these Sac and Fox Indians are voters, and they pay their taxes from the receipts obtained from the rented farms. The population is reported to be 363, and most, if not all, of the people are full bloods. Practically all speak English; and while the people are poor, yet there seems to be no serious destitution.

"Four years ago I was able to report that housing conditions were improving. I believe that it is now accurate to say that all the Indians are housed in decent frame dwellings. The old wickiups have disappeared except where they are retained as outdoor kitchens or storehouses. Many of the houses are of four rooms or more, a few of one or two rooms. Some of the families live in primitive fashion, but many have bought modern furniture, including beds, stoves, and dinner tables. The superintendent, Doctor Breid, has been very successful in persuading the Indians to put their money into suitable dwellings. Better housing affects the whole social outlook of the band and should help to introduce the people to the ways of civilized life. Almost every

"These Indians make their living in diverse occupations. man has a little farm or garden piece. Practically every family has a cow, hens and chickens, and a pig. There is the usual pest of superfluous ponies of a poor stock. The men wander a good deal in the open hunting season trapping and hunting along the streams and creeks of the State. A number of the men work as section hands on the railroad which runs through the reservation. Of late a good many members of the band have been finding summer occupation in the show business. This is obviously demoralizing, but the superintendent has no authority which permits him to control the situation.

"The Government maintains two day schools on the reservation and the progress of the children is on the whole encouraging. For a long time these Indians were opposed to giving their children any education, but now 70 per cent of the available children are enrolled; and while the attendance is somewhat irregular, the record improves from year to year. The mission maintained for these Indians by the United Presbyterian Church is slowly gaining influence. For many years there was practically no return for this missionary expenditure, but now a number of Indians have associated themselves with the mission and prospects are increasingly satisfactory.

"The sanitary and moral conditions on the reservation are intolerable. Eight years ago when Commissioner Ketcham of this board visited these Indians he described their moral condition as 'unspeakable.' There is apparently little or no improvement. The sanitary and criminal laws of the State stop at the boundary of the reservation. Off the reservation the Indians are reasonably law-abiding, but on the reservation all kinds of petty crimes are committed and the culprits can not be punished. The marriage laws are held in complete defiance. The men and women cohabit at will and often for very short periods. Marriage means taking a woman into the house and divorce means putting her out. The care of the children devolves entirely upon the mothers, the fathers apparently assuming no responsibility. The condition of the squaws is

often most deplorable and a number of children are suffering for want of proper care. The reservation might readiiy become a center not only of moral but physical contagion. The laws of the State protecting the health of the people can not be enforced. Epidemics can not be controlled. It is simply intolerable that these conditions, which make this small community a possible source of disease and vice, should be allowed to continue at the center of a great Christian Commonwealth.

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The remedy for these conditions is a simple one. The United States Government should immediately and by congressional action return to the State of Iowa all the jurisdiction which, at the request of the State, it took over in 1896, and the State should then proceed to enforce its own laws in this now separated and isolated community. I am convinced that these Indians will not live decently, with profit to themselves and with due regard to the protection of their neighbors, except under coercion. They must assume the obligations as well as enjoy the privileges of citizenship.

"The Sac and Fox Sanatorium, near Toledo, Iowa, is in charge of Dr. Jacob Breid, who also has the Musquakie Reserve under his supervision. Originally an Indian school, this institution was converted into a sanatorium in 1913 for tubercular patients. It is now one of the eight sanatorium schools of the Indian Service for children with incipient tuberculosis, and takes its patients from Indian agencies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. It has a rated capacty of 80 and admitted 143 patients during the last fiscal year. An annual appropriation of $50,000 is made for the support of the institution.

I have had the opportunity, through my recent visit, to compare present conditions at the sanatorium with those existing four years ago. I am glad to be able to report that a number of the recommendations made in my report of a visit to this institution in 1922 have since been adopted and carried through. "A new and adequate office building has been built near the entrance to the grounds and the old office building has been made over into a cottage for men employees. The old storehouse has been made over so as to furnish two schoolrooms, one over the other. A modern cottage has been built next to the new office building for occupancy by a married employee.

"Whereas four years ago I found only 2 nurses employed in a hospital with 80 patients, and 1 teacher in a school of some 50 pupils of various ages, and therefore urgently recommended the immediate increase of the number, I now find 3 nurses and 2 teachers with the grades properly divided. Formerly patients of all ages were received, but now I find that there is more discrimination. Most of the patients appear to be between the ages of 12 and 18 and it is therefore much easier to handle the school situation.

"I found the sanitary arrangements improved and sufficient space and accommodation in the sleeping porches. The provision for the isolation of bed patients is inadequate. Everything is done to utilize the existing facilities, but it is obviously impossible to maintain a modern hospital in a building originally designed for a schoolhouse and with an appropriation insufficient for necessary upkeep and repairs. Doctor Breid is to be congratulated upon the efficiency with which he administers his charge under necessarily depressing circumstances."

INDIANS OF SOUTHERN ARIZONA

Chairman VAUX

In March, 1927, Chairman Vaux made a tour of inspection of Indian jurisdictions in southern Arizona, visiting the Pima, Sells, and San Carlos Agencies and the Phoenix school. Parts of his report are as follows:

On the Papago Reservation no large irrigation project is in contemplation, and for their supply of water the Indians are dependent in large measure upon wells, of which there are none too many, and for the stock, storm water, when available, is impounded in dams locally known as 'charcos.' In recent time the Indian Bureau has increased the number of these reservoirs, which can be constructed at comparatively small cost. The need for a much greater number must be manifest to everyone, and it would certainly seem to be good business if the Indians, who at best have a hard struggle for existence, could be encouraged by the provision of considerably more reservoirs than are now in contemplation within the next few years.

"Like so much of southern Arizona this particular locality of the Sells or Papago Agency is sadly in need of an ample supply of water. It would

seem as though this important subject might not have been given due consideration when the location at Sells was selected. The most practicable method of meeting the situation would seem to be to pipe water for a distance of 8 miles from a point where there is an ample supply and whence it will run by gravity. The cost of the pipe line is the principal obstacle. I do not believe it will be possible for the agency to be run adequately with its hospital and other important facilities until this water supply question is satisfactorily solved.

"There are many points in which the equipment of the hospital at Sells is sadly lacking, but since my return east I have found that already arrangements have been made to supply a number of the important wants there as well as to make some important changes in the hospital building itself. Fortunately it is not one of the monumental structures of the sort to which I have had occasion to refer in former reports and where almost every practical consideration had been sacrified to architectural effect, but in several respects the arrangement is bad and it is gratifying to know that steps have been taken to have some of them remedied.

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One of the adjuncts pointed out by Superintendent Stewart would be the extension of the telephone line to some points on the reservation more remote even than Sells in order that, among other uses, the doctor permanently located at the hospital might be communicated with in cases of emergency. Now the only means of communication is by sending a messenger, and oftentimes many hours, if not days, elapse before the sick or injured person can receive medical attention. I saw one case of this personally, where a boy who had had his foot seriously injured the day before was being brought into the hospital nearly 24 hours after the accident had happened. I did not visit any points very remote from Sells, although I went to some of the day schools about 20 miles distant, where I found enthusiastic and painstaking people trying to do their very best, often with very limited facilities.

"It must be remembered that in dealing with the Indians in this region the Papagos, like the Pimas, have always been peaceful and industrious, hardworking people, who, with facilities which we should consider almost nil, are doing their best to earn a living, and that they sympathetically accept any reasonable assistance given to them; that they cooperate both in medical care and educational enterprises and in every way are trying to get the utmost that can be found from the very limited help afforded them. The country is mountainous and broken, difficult to get around in, and if any people are deserving of encouragement these are.

"San Xavier is but 10 miles from Tucson and the site of one of the very oldest of the Franciscan missions. It is under the Sells jurisdiction, but is so located as to be in many respects separate from it. Here there is more water and considerable irrigation work has been done, while more is in progress. In this activity the Indians have cooperated and are said to have donated something like $50,000 in labor in order to complete the irrigation project which has cost more than $200,000. The principal need in connection with this work at the present time, so far as I could discover, is to replace a brush and mud diversion dam which frequently washes out and has to be rebuilt with a more permanent structure. I was not able to find out, however, as to the engineering feasibility of this scheme or what its expense is likely to be. From an examination of the locality it would not appear to a layman as though it would be a very serious undertaking, especially as compared with the importance of the Indian farms which are under ditch and the really industrious character of the people.

"When at Phoenix I found a decidedly different situation now existing from that reported two or three years back by Commissioner McDowell. He was then enthusiastic as to the possibility of employing Indian labor on the irrigated land which is under the Roosevelt Dam project, particularly in connection with the raising of cotton. In the time that has elapsed since his visit conditions have altered very materially, the cotton industry having received a serious setback. This has been due to a number of causes as to which I am not competent to speak, but some of them appeared to be observable even by a casual visitor. "The policy of the cotton users has been subject to a number of variations following the demand by the automobile-tire manufacturers for cotton of different lengths of staple dependent on the methods adopted in constructing the carcass of the tire. This has introduced a good deal of uncertainty which, taken with the general depression in the cotton market, and the overenthusiasm of 65428-27-3

some of the cotton raisers, resulted in the production running far in advance of the demand, and in March I saw many acres of last season's crop of cotton which apparently had not been harvested.

"The deadness of this important section of the agricultural industry was a natural incubus hanging over all the other departments, and its effect could be seen in many directions. This region must not be confused with that to which I have referred above on the Papago Reservation, for not a great deal of the immediate vicinity of Phoenix is Indian land. It was, however, desert land until the Salt River project, which included the construction of the Roosevelt Dam, had reclaimed thirty or forty thousand acres of very fertile soil capable of raising all kinds of vegetables, in addition to cotton and citrus fruits, as well as alfalfa and other crops.

"The industrial situation which has resulted from the changed conditions which I have endeavored to outline is not favorable at the present time, in my judgment, for the further exploiting of the colonization schemes which have been suggested, so far as white men were expected to back them. As respects locating on the Pima Reservation, or adjacent thereto on Indian land, Indians from the north and east, who should be industrial workers in these activities, there does not seem to be an openness on the part of their Indian brethren to receive and welcome them with much enthusiasm.

"The Gila River Reservation lies in a general way to the southward of the city of Phoenix. There is not at the present time a great deal of cultivated land, because the territory in the main is not irrigated, although there are some hundreds of acres of going farms. The soil, however, is fertile, requiring only the introduction of water and modern methods to make a very garden spot of what is now a desert.

"It is to endeavor to bring about this most desirable result that the San Carlos project (now known as the Coolidge Dam) was evolved. Nearly 100 miles to the eastward from Sacaton, and near the southern edge of the San Carlos Reservation, a favorable site exists where it is possible to construct a dam across a box canyon and impound a very large amount of water; the point is near the confluence of the Gila and San Carlos Rivers, both of which are at times subject to heavy floods, and whilst the storm waters run off with rapidity, investigations have shown that there is a good prospect, by regulating the flow, of securing an ample supply of water continuously to irrigate 40,000 or more acres of lands. After the making of many detailed surveys and the discussion of the engineering feasibility of a variety of plans, the engineers finally adopted one of these, and Congress has authorized the work to proceed and has made the initial and substantial appropriations to commence the construction.

"Much negotiation was necessary in order to provide for the rights of other persons than the Indians who would be affected by the progress of this work, the most important of which is the relocation of a number of miles of line of one of the branches of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and claims which might have been serious, growing out of this condition, have been satisfactorily adjusted, the Government agreeing to pay to the railroad company $1,000.000 toward the cost of the new construction work that will be involved.

"Another serious question is the submerging, not only of a considerable number of Indian homes but also of all of the buildings of the San Carlos Agency. It is expected that the headquarters of this jurisdiction will be removed to Rice, where the Government now maintains a boarding school. This location is several miles to the north from San Carlos and is also on the railroad. There would seem to be good reason to believe that it will be as convenient in every way as is San Carlos although a considerable sum will have to be spent for the erection and equipment of suitable buildings.

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In magnitude of construction the Coolidge Dam will rival the Roosevelt Dam and it is expected that about three years will be occupied in the work of building. Excavation was commenced about the first of this year and is being prosecuted with great vigor, although up to the time of my visit the actual construction of the dam itself had not been begun. The removal of thousands of tons of earth and rock, made necessary to provide for the spillways and similar adjuncts, was in progress, but the contracts provided that concrete should not be poured during the summer months as the extreme heat and dryness of the atmosphere would interfere with the stability of the masonry were building to be done at that time in the year.

"It would seem as though at last something tangible was to be done for the Pima Indians on the Gila River Reservation. No one who has seen the work

in progress as I did could fail to be impressed with the magnitude of it and with the rate at which it is progressing. One of the chief problems in connection with this reservation is that of getting the Indians to appreciate what is being done and preparing them to avail themselves of the results when not only the dam is finished, but also the canals and ditches which will distribute the water.

"Naturally, the Indian wants to be shown, and of course he will wait, in many instances, until he actually sees the water at hand before getting his land ready to receive it. Some of the friends of the Indians in Arizona expressed a fear that if too much time were to elapse before the actual beneficial use of the water was made there was danger that the Indian might lose his rights and that the white man, after all this long struggle, would be the real gainer from this enterprise, because the Indian would under the State law lose water which he did not actually use. I am assured by officials of the Indian Bureau that the acts of Congress have been very carefully framed so as to prevent so direful a consequence from resulting."

PUEBLO LANDS BOARD

Chairman VAUX

Returning east from Arizona, Chairman Vaux stopped at Santa Fe, N. Mex., to obtain some first-hand information concerning the activities of the Pueblo Lands Board and to see some of the Pueblo Indians. Mr. Herbert J. Hagerman, a member of the Lands Board, submitted a statement later respecting the work being carried on among the Indians. Parts of the statement are as follows:

"Five pueblos (Tesuque, Jemez, Nambe, Taos, and Zia) have been reported on by the board. Two other pueblos (Santa Ana and Sandia) have been thoroughly examined and investigated and are nearly ready for report. At two other pueblos (Isleta and San Felipe) much preliminary work has been done. "The board has passed on 1,152 cases of adverse claims, each case involving the meticulous and detailed examination of original documents furnished by the claimants, many of them were old Spanish deeds which had to be photostated, translated, and analyzed. Each was then abstracted and discussed by the board. Then hearings were held at or near the various pueblos, at which hearings the claimants, the Indians, their attorneys, their witnesses, and the representatives of one or more of the organizations claiming to be solicitous for the Indians' welfare were present. There were generally present also the special attorney for the Pueblo Indians, and frequently the special assistant to the Attorney General. There were always present at these hearings at least two members of the board, often all three members. Each of the 1,152 cases had to be considered separately, and in each case a careful stenographic transcript of all testimony was made.

"After all the evidence has thus been gathered in each case, much of the testimony has to be reconsidered and studied by the board members preliminary to the drafting of the final reports.

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Frequent meetings have been held, not only in the pueblos already passed upon but in other pueblos, with Indians and non-Indians, outside the regular hearings, to secure the cooperation of all interested parties.

"A good deal of work has been done by the board in cooperation with the reclamation and irrigation service of the Indian Bureau and other field officials of the office in connection with the water rights of the various pueblos with a view of preserving, as far as possible, all necessary water for the Indians, irrespective of the results in respect to lands, and with a further view of recommending betterments and improvements in the irrigation systems of the pueblos when the Indians' damages for lost lands shall have been appropriated by Congress in accordance with the provisions of the law.

"The total amount of damages so far found in favor of the Indians for lost lands in the case of the five pueblos passed upon is $104,929. Of this, $29,301.20, the Tesuque award, was provided for in the last deficiency appropriation bill.

Owing to the fact that the Joy survey did not cover certain tracts of land in some of the pueblos, it is necessary for the board, through its engineering force and in cooperation with the cadastral engineer of this district, in some cases to make further examinations and surveys. This has recently been so in the case of the town of Bernalillo, and some months of time and considerable expense have been necessary for the making of these surveys prior to the preparation of the Sandia report. Similar surveys will have to be made in San