and the development of agricultural lands in accordance with the plans and purposes of the Irrigation Division.

Respectfully submitted,

MALCOLM MCDOWELL,

Member, Board of Indian Commissioners

Hon. GEORGE VAUX. Jr.,

Chairman, Board of Indian Commissioners.

SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT ON THE NAVAJO INDIANS, BY MALCOLM MCDOWELL.

MAY 17, 1919.

SIR: When I was investigating the conditions of the nonreservation Navajo Indians who live on the public domain in northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona in October of 1918, I was prevented by lack of time from visiting the Navajos who live on the public domain east of the Zuni Reservation. During my visit to the Zuni, in May, 1919, I took advantage of the opportunity to visit the Navajos who are under the jurisdiction of Supt. Bauman of the Zuni Reservation and found these nonreservation Indians in a deplorable condition. I desire, therefore, to offer this as a supplemental report to my report on the Navajo Indians filed with the Secretary of the Interior.

Unless measures for their immediate relief are taken about 500 Navajo Indians who live on the public domain and railroad lands cast of Ramah, N. Mex., a Mormon town just east of the Zuni Reservation, will become destitute. Their flocks of sheep are decreasing; their range is becoming smaller each year; they and their white neighbors can not occupy and use the same land under present conditions. The railroad lands practically are all leased and each year finds the Indians closer to pauperism.

The Indian Office report estimates there are 230 Navajo Indians. under the Zuni Reservation. White stockmen and Indian traders say there are over 500. Whatever the actual number is, these Indians are in desperate circumstances. By placing these Indians under the jurisdiction of the Zuni superintendency the Government has assumed guardianship of them, and so far as I can learn that is about all the Government has done for this band. If the guardian does not come to the aid of its Navajo wards promptly there will be another black mark scored up against the American people for breach of trust and neglect of plain duty.

I will admit the problem is somewhat difficult of solution, but this difficulty should be no bar to an immediate effort to save these Indians from ruination. They can be made self-supporting and a creditable part of New Mexico's population if an intelligent plan for their redemption is adopted and put into effect. It seems to me the emergency can be met by leasing the railroad lands of a couple of townships. This would give the Indians the use of something like 44,000 acres of grazing land and would tide them over. This would cost something like $600.

I can do no better in presenting the condition of these Indians than to quote statements made to me by Supt. R. J. Bauman of the Zuni Reservation and Mr. Evon Z. Vogt, a ranchman whose home is

near Ramah, N. Mex.. and who has lived among these Indians for a number of years. I asked Mr. Bauman to secure for me some figures which would indicate the number of sheep which a nonreservation Navajo family should have to provide a frugal living for it. He said: Economic conditions of the Navajo Indians living on the public domain in Arizona and New Mexico are such that it is a physical impossibility for them to exist on an allotment of 160 acres per capita.

The average family consists of four people. Practically the only means for a livelihood in this section is that of sheep raising. To provide a frugal living each family should have a bunch of 500 head of sheep. Under favorable conditions the sale of wool, pelts, and increase of the herd should bring a gross income of approximately $725 a year from such a herd. Local stockmen estimate that to provide grazing for one sheep 8 acres are necessary. To provide grazing for 500 sheep 4,000 acres are necessary, a section of land, 640 acres, for each 80 head of sheep. Cattle or ponies eat more than twice as much as sheep, thus requiring at least 20 acres grazing for each. Allowing that each family has 15 head of horses and cattle would require an additional 300 acres. Thus, to provide a bare living for a Navajo family, 4,300 acres are needed, or for each person, 1.075 acres.

· Approximately 230 Navajo Indians under the Zuni jurisdiction have their homes south and east of the eastern boundary of the Zuni Indian Reservation and south of the town of Ramah, N. Mex. These are styled the Ramah Band of Navajos. These Indians and their forefathers made their homes on this land and the land round about Ramah long before a white man ever saw this part of the country. The white men have come in and settled up the Ramah Valley, crowding the Indians on to the barren lands to the south, and now the cattle companies and others are taking possession of all this area last mentioned, even to grazing over the little quarter sections of land on which the Indians have filed allotment applications. This is bringing the Indians face to face with want and privation.

Mr. Evon Z. Vogt is a graduate of the University of Chicago; in that city he was a practical sociologist doing welfare work, when a student, in connection with the activities of the University of Chicago Settlement in the stockyards district. He said:

It looks to me as if the time had come for a show-down in regard to the Navajo Indians living near this place. I have been living here among them for four years and am familiar with the conditions here for about 10 years. The Government has not done a thing to help these Indians along the road to better living, prosperity, or citizenship.

They are living under the same squalid conditions as they were years ago. They know nothing of cleanliness, sanitation, or education. Not a family among over 500 Navajos lives in a house. They live and cook on the ground in their huts or hogans under the dirtiest conditions. Tuberculosis is increasing yearly in a climate that should cure them. The closest school for them is over 60 miles away, and the children are growing up in absolute ignorance and filth. I employ a good many of them in connection with my sheep business, and I have to sterilize the boys' heads in lambing camps before it is safe to have them in camp.

They had, when I first knew them, about 12.000 head of sheep which furnished them much food and wool for making blankets and selling for needed provisions. Four years ago, according to the word of the Government stockman at Blackrock, they owned 10,000 head of sheep at dipping time. Last year they had only 7,000 head of sheep all told. It will be seen that they are fast approaching a state of poverty. Many families have so few sheep it does not pay to care for them and others have none at all. The Cojo outfit and Petaga have the most sheep at present, but Cojo is running behind fast.

These sheep are important not only to them, but to the nation as well and something must be done at once to provide them with range and supervision. At present they have only their allotments to graze on and the public domain which the taxpaying white man, like myself and other stockmen, claim a right to for grazing purposes. We have had several conferences about and with the Indians concerning the trespassing of their sheep on land we own and lease, but the department has never done anything about the matter. They are left to themselves and are slowly being crowded out.

We ranchmen do not think the Government is treating the Navajo right or his white neighbors either. They are allowed to get along as best they can. If their sheep die of starvation or inbreed year after year no one seems to care. They are allowed to trespass on the rest of us to such an extent that sometimes our stock die as a result of their sheep eating us out.

One year they ate out the grass from the land I own and pay taxes on to such an extent that I was forced to move my cattle 25 miles away and rent water and pasture from November to May so as to save my stock. At that time the Navajos had been told that they had the right to go over other peoples' lands with their sheep. They used this advice and simply grazed out the country. A great deal of land has been homesteaded; all the land that can be leased has been leased by American ranchmen, so that these Indians now find themselves on the verge of range starvation. Nothing shows this better than the decreasing number of their flocks.

Now they are good Indians. I have employed them for four years and they are not bad people. They want to advance, they desire better sheep and more sheep. They would like to see their children clean and educated. They would like a little advice how to plant their corn and build their fences. I think it is a shame that they are allowed to flounder around the way they do without care, direction, or supervision, meanwhile imposing on the rest of us, not intentionally, but because they can not help it.

I asked Jesse Johnson, who was raised here and speaks the Navajo language well and knows every family within a radius of 25 miles of this place, for some figures about them. He said: "There are 500 Navajos hereabouts, 200 children who ought to be in school, and they own now 7,000 sheep and 1,000 horses." Mr. Johnson has been until lately stockman at Blackrock and says that there is no question about these people getting poorer and poorer every year.

We would like to see the Government get busy and do something about this. Give them a school, a doctor, a farmer, a stockman, a place to graze their sheep, and in the name of conservation shoot their infernal ponies which get more inbred every year. Meantime the Indians use not one-fifth of what they own and their ponies tramp out and eat off more range than any other animal that grazes.

I am a friend to these Indians. They work for me, they come to me daily for advice. I give them medicines, seed, and what help I can. I claim to know the conditions thoroughly and can prove anything I say about them.

Take it from me, they will be beggars in five years unless something is done in a constructive way for their benefit.

I thought once they could be moved back to the reservation. But they were born here, like it here, and would fight rather than move. The conclusion I have come to is that a school and agency and a range should be secured for them at once.

Respectfully submitted,

MALCOLM MCDOWELL, Member, Board of Indian Commissioners.

APPENDIX B.

REPORT ON THE SAC AND FOX SANATORIUM AND THE FOX RESERVATION, IOWA, BY WILLIAM H. KETCHAM.

NOVEMBER 1, 1918.

SIR: On August 20, 1918, I visited the Sac and Fox Sanatorium and the Fox Reservation, located near Toledo. Iowa. The sanatorium was originally a boarding school for the children of the Musquakie (Fox) Indians whose reservation is only a few miles away, but, as it was found impossible either to persuade or coerce the parents to patronize the school, pupils were gathered in from other tribes. In 1913, the school was converted into a sanatorium for Indian tubercular patients.

The sanatorium, under the able and fatherly management of Dr. Robert L. Russell, superintendent and physician, is in good order. Conditions are ideal so far as circumstances permit. Unfortunately, it too often happens that patients are brought into the sanatorium in an advanced stage of disease, when it is too late to effect a cure. The segregating of tubercular Indians and the devising of some means of bringing patients into sanatoria before the disease has made it impossible to help them are questions that demand immediate and careful study.

Dr. Russell has a difficult problem in the Indians of the reservation. The Musquakie hold fee-simple patents for their reservation, the first tract having been bought by the band July 13, 1857. Other tracts of land from time to time have been purchased, until to-day the reservation comprises about 3,300 acres.

It has been the intention of the Indians from the beginning to adhere strictly to their tribal customs. For the most part they have been opposed to education, to the white man's method of life and to his laws. The patent in fee tenure of their reservation and the legal advice they have secured at times have rendered it very difficult for the Indian Office to advance them in civilization. It is said that continuous efforts of missionaries for not less than 35 years have been practically barren of results.

However, despite their stubborn adherence to Indian customs, the Musquakie are being unconsciously influenced by environment and are making some substantial progress. Two day schools have been established on the reservation which, at the present time, are well attended. Some few children have gone to nonreservation schools and four of the tribe enlisted in the war, two of whom have seen service in France. A few have built houses and all are beginning to modify their dress somewhat in conformity to the customs of the whites around them.

With an eye to profit, they have instituted an annual celebration, called a powwow, to which they invite the whites. They entertain themselves and their guests by Indian dances, and this mingling of Indian and white has an influence both for good and for evil. They are taking some interest in agriculture and are beginning to make a showing at the county fair. They seem to specialize on beans, of which they cultivate many varieties; corn and small grain are, however, the principal crops. At the time of my visit they were very much discouraged, as their fields had been flooded from an overflow of the Iowa River.

The Musquakie are particularly fortunate in having a physician for their superintendent, as the superintendent, by virtue of his work among them as a physician, comes in very close touch with them and acquires an influence he otherwise would not have. For this reason, the superstitious medicine practices of former days are gradually breaking down.

While it is true the Musquakie are making considerable progress, it is also true that the moral conditions prevailing among them are unspeakable, and this state of things can be remedied only by well-defined laws. If the laws of the State of Iowa can be extended over the reservation and executed by Federal courts, the superintendent will have some foundation on which to base his work, and

the progress of the band in the next 10 years, no doubt, will be very marked. This will be the case with all other tribes if a like foundation of law can be supplied as a groundwork for their civilization. In this connection, the following letter from the superintendent will be found instructive:

Rev. Wм. H. KETCHAM,

SAC AND FOX SANATORIUM, Toledo, Iowa, September 25, 1918.

1326 New York Avenue, NW., Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR FATHER KETCHAM: In accordance with the promise made you on your recent visit here I make the following statement covering certain matters concerning these Indians, the correction of which will, in my judgment, have a great civilizing influence upon them.

In the old days law and order on the reservation was maintained to the satisfaction of the tribe by certain laws made and enforced by the council. At present, however, it seems that the tribal council has lost its influence and that the influence of the white man has not as yet had its proper effect. These Indians are, in fact, in the transitional stage, during which the younger element are growing up unrestrained by the older members of the tribe and in defiance of the white man's laws.

With the exception of seven serious crimes provided for by the United States Statutes these Indians are immune to the law when committing crimes on the reservation. The Indian Office regulations, of course, cover most of such crimes, but their enforcement necessitates the employment of an Indian judge and the maintenance of a jail on the reservation, and we have never yet been able to persuade an Indian to accept the position of judge, nor have we been financially able to maintain a jail.

All kinds of petty crimes are committed on our reservation, the culprits going unpunished. These include housebreaking, petty thievery, drunkenness, gambling, wife beating, and others too numerous to mention, the worst feature of the whole thing being that our men and women are thoroughly cognizant of the limitations of the law and commit crimes deliberately, secure in the knowledge that they will go unpunished. I make the statement unhestitatingly that no Indian girl in this tribe has ever reached the age of 14 years without being seduced, Indian parents having submitted their children to such treatment for years without protest, fearing injury at the hands of the perpetrators.

Probably the most disgraceful feature of the whole situation is that in regard to marital relations as maintained by our Indians. In so far as I can discover the old customs regarding marriages have become obsolete and no new customs have developed in their places. These Indians are married one day and divorced the next without any ceremony whatever and without either party securing the consent of parent or guardian. Many children of such marriages are suffering for the want of parental care. Frequently children of very tender years marry in spite of protest of parents, who realize fully the harm in such unions but who do not have the moral courage or the support of law to prevent such unions. We have numbers of cases in which men and women have been married and divorced many times, one instance in particular being a young man who was married and divorced five times before he was 21 years old. Another woman yet under 30 years has had children by three different men and is married to a fourth, and only yesterday we asked the local board to induct into the Army an intermarried citizen Indian who deserted a woman and child after telling her that he was not legally married to her. Mothers of illegitimate children have absolutely no redress and are compelled to bear the burdens of their shame alone.

This disgraceful state of affairs should be corrected by all means and the laws of the State of Iowa made to cover these Indians or new laws enacted by Congress especially for them. Personally, I believe that the criminal code of this State could be made to apply to them more easily than could the enactment of new laws. They are in a measure familiar with the laws of the Stateevidenced by the fact that they do not break them while off the reservationand could comply with them without any hardship being effected.

For this reservation some provision should be made allowing the superintendent to sit as a court for minor offenses, such offenses, for instance, as a mayor and justice of the peace handle here, otherwise minor offenses would have to be tried in Federal court 50 miles away, proceedings which would be