but I think the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. HASTINGS] would be an authority.

Mr. HASTINGS. I thank the gentleman for his compliment, and I am very glad indeed to know that the gentleman from Kansas, who is my neighbor, is taking a deep interest in this Indian question. In the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma there are 101,000 enrolled members. Their lands have been all allotted, their money is practically all distributed. They were all made citizens of the United States by the act of March 3, 1901, and of those who are living, of the 101,000 enrolled members of the Five Civilized Tribes, there are estimated to be only 17,500 who are in any way under the supervision of the Government. Taking that number and the deceased enrolled members it would show how many have been graduated into civilized life and have been turned loose free of any supervision on the part of the Government; certainly more than 50,000, or more than one-half of them, in Oklahoma.

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Kansas has expired.

Mr. Chairman, I ask for three minutes more. The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection? There was no objection.

Mr. LITTLE. I thank the gentleman, and I would like to hear him some day speak at length upon this proposition. Of course, the purpose of this business is to keep them alive until we civilize them. I never have quite determined in my own mind just where we have landed on the matter. I favor these bills and shall continue to do so, but I think the time has come when the committee ought to begin to present data such as the gentleman suggests, telling us just where we are. The gentleman is kind enough to express pleasure that I take an interest in the matter. Let me say that the largest Indian school in the United States is in the district that I represent and in the town where I was educated. I do take an active personal interest in it. I visit it and meet men who formerly fought white men in battle and the children of these men-children who were present at the battles. I see them develop and grow. I have seen graduates from that institution that would do credit to any similar-sized institution or any similarly equipped school.

Mr. HASTINGS. Is the Haskell Institute in the gentleman's district?

Mr. HASTINGS. I want to say I know I express the opinion of everyone who has been closely connected with Indian affairs and all the members of the Indian Affairs Committee in stating that we believe that is one of the best Indian schools and the best conducted Indian school in the whole United States.

of the United States being set out in House Executive Document the call of the world of the white man outside of the reservaNo. 247, Fifty-first Congress, first session.

Thus the only two reservations that have existed in Minnesota since 1889 are the White Earth and Red Lake Reservations. Until about a year ago agencies were maintained at Red Lake and White Earth. On the White Earth Reservation there are substantial buildings suitable for the accommodation of the agency and all employees, built and constructed either with the money of the Indians or of the United States. For some reason the commissioner about a year ago removed the agency from White Earth and located it at Cass Lake, approximately 100 miles by road removed from the White Earth Reservation. It is there housed in rented quarters, the expense of which are being paid for out of the Indians' money. Seven-twelfths of all the Chippewas of Minnesota were allotted on the White Earth Reservation. The agency should be brought back to the Indians, and the Indians should not be compelled to travel 100 miles to the agency. For all practical purposes it might as well be located in Washington. To continue this agency at this distant point at the expense of the Indians is an injustice that should not be permitted. The object of the amendment is to bring this agency back to the Indians.

The situation of the Chippewas of Minnesota is one that now is full of hardship and suffering to them, and which in a few years will bring a lot of trouble to the United States Government. These Indians have, by delegates from out of their own midst and by Representatives in Congress representing the districts in which the Indians live, knocked at the doors of Congress begging for justice for them as I do now, but in most instances Congress has turned a deaf ear to them, saying that the Chippewas of Minnesota cause more trouble to Congress and the Indian Bureau than all the rest of the Indians of the country.

These Indians are a very intelligent tribe. The very worst phases of our civilization have been forced upon these people for a long time; still they are fundamentally sound, and, having learned many a lesson from costly experience, they are getting wise to the fact that something must be done to radically change the administrative policy of their affairs, to change their whole mode of living, if what is left of them shall not perish.

There is now much white blood in this tribe, and, having now among them several young men and women who have had the advantage of fairly good education, they begin to see that their civilized life has been the reverse of real civilization. They hunger to be allowed to partake of our civilization in its best forms and according to its best traditions.

Congress has from time to time passed laws, perhaps with good intent, the effects of which have been very detrimental to their development as members of our civilized society and their happiness and well-being. Lands were allotted them, and they were almost indiscriminately allowed to dispose of them, in many instances for a mere song, the resultant effect being that, almost without exception, they are now living in poverty, squalor, and misery.

tion be given their share of the funds and that they may go out to face the world to sink or swim-they know that most of them will make good-rather than to have, as they claim, the Indian Bureau eat it up; that those who are yet incompetent be taken care of in a manner different than they have been taken care of before.

There are bound to be factional differences among people like these, among whom you yet find some who are as primitive as can be, who despise the white man's civilization and have seen that it is made up, in part at least, of social lies, frauds, and deceit, and among whom you will also find some who have had the advantage of fair schooling and even a few who have professional training. I am told that in order that it may perpetuate its system of administration and retain or increase its power the Indian Bureau from time to time has been fanning the flames of tribal factionalism, going at times so far as to secretly reward-by governmental rations and otherwise-those who stir up trouble.

Because the White Earth Band began to show signs of that discontent with existing conditions that always must precede any effort on the part of the people to better their conditions and change the old order of things, the agency was taken away from them without warning and moved to Cass Lake, in spite of the fact that more than seven-twelfths of all the Chippewas live on the White Earth Reservation.

For the same reason the annual appropriation for the general council was taken away from them; the intelligent White Earthers were in the majority on that council and they began to dig into the past history of the bureau administration. The Indian Bureau refuses to recommend the reinstatement of this appropriation to be paid out of their own money. The reason given is that the general council does not truly represent all the Chippewas; that they are not all model men and citizens. God bless you, maybe that is so! But I maintain that these people are entitled to being represented in Washington by men of their own tribe; that they have a right to have a body of an advisory capacity to discuss their own problems and have the expense borne out of their own funds. A State is not always represented, either in the House or Senate of Congress, by its best men and not always by men who represent all factions, but, Mr. Chairman, would you bar any State from being represented here unless the best men were sent here?

It has been urged by the Indian Bureau that an additional reason why this appropriation for a general council will not be given is that the men of that council persisted in employing as the legal adviser of the tribe a man who was persona non grata with the commissioner.

Personally I offered to introduce a bill here to prescribe the method of electing a council-any method that would find favor with the Indian Bureau-and I pledged myself to see that an attorney was chosen absolutely in conformity with the majority wishes within the tribe, but it was of no avail.

The present commissioner, I think, is a high-minded man, a righteous man and well intentioned, but blinded by the precedents of the bureau in the administration of Indian Affairs. With such great powers as are vested in his hands it is natural that instead of relinquishing any of it he will grab for more. This gentleman is by the White Earth Indians considered as their evil genius. He it was who, while chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs in the House, saddled upon the Indians the expenses of the agency upkeep out of their own funds, which up to 1912, always without murmur, had been paid out of Government funds in conformity with the treaty of 1889. My effort to correct that was voted down here the other day. Now you have just ruled out on a point of order the right of these Indians to have the agency moved back to where the bulk of them live, that they may enjoy the benefits that may be derived from having among them the administration, the upkeep of which they pay the largest share toward.

The treaty made with the Government has not been carried out in the spirit in which it was entered into. The Government promised that it should allot each Indian land to farm on; it promised to build houses for homes, to buy cattle and machinery to set them up in farming, to instruct them how to make a success of farming, to educate the children, and to take care of the sick and needy. No one of these promises has been kept in the spirit in which the treaty was made. To-day nearly all find themselves without land, living in hovels, and without means of making a living, starving and suffering. They should have been, if looked after properly, prosperous and happy. These Indians surrendered to the Government lands that are now some of the most fertile farming regions of Minnesota | and retained for themselves tracts of lands, some of it beautiful beyond description, where they could have lived as in a paradise, but which has now for a song passed into the hands of the speculators. From their one-time paradise they will soon On page 56 of this bill appears an item, an appropriation of be driven out into the cold world, unprepared to take up the $45,000 for the support of Indian hospitals, the same to be struggle for existence among white men, shrewd, cunning, pre-paid out of Chippewa funds. This appropriation should not be pared to take advantage of them at every turn. made in the manner here prescribed.

For some time the enlightened ones of this tribe have asked that steps be taken to wind up their affairs under the treaty with the Government; that the tribal claims against the Government be adjusted; that swamp lands erroneously ceded to the State of Minnesota be settled for; that timber stolen from them by wealthy lumber companies be checked up and paid for; that land taken up by homesteaders be paid for according to agreement; that an accounting be made of money expended by the Government, ostensibly for their own benefit, be accounted for; that the sum total be divided and that those who now feel

About 1913 the funds of the Indians were appropriated for the construction of three hospitals, which were located at White Earth, Red Lake, and Cloquet. These hospitals were constructed for the primary purpose of treating tuberculosis and trachoma cases. Since their establishment the department has excluded tuberculosis and trachoma cases from the hospitals on the theory that these diseases were either contagious or infectious and that there were no isolation wards. The Secretary of the Interior should be allowed to use this appropriation in any way he may deem best in promoting and conserving

the health of the Indians. Under the provision as it stands in the bill the money can only be used in the maintenance of the three hospitals.

Tuberculosis and trachoma are rampant all over the territory in which these Indians live. If they are not taken care of in the hospitals, as now is the case, they should be accommodated in hospitals especially built and maintained for such purposes, and the Secretary of the Interior should be allowed to pay for the treatment of such patients where they could receive treatment, instead of, as at present, spending money in the present hospitals, where it is of little or no use to do so, and allowing tuberculosis and trachoma to spread unhampered all over. The present method is the very best one to exterminate them all.

How will the United States Government have succeeded with its "relief and civilization" of the Chippewa Indians, after having spent millions of dollars in the venture-most of it the Indians' own money--and many years of honest effort, through a mistaken governmental policy which I shall call witnesses to prove?

I wish to read you the following reports of a newspaper man who was sent to White Earth to investigate the conditions of the Chippewa Indians. It reads:

[From the Minnesota Daily Star, November 5, 1923.]
(By Thomas H. Moodie.)

WHITE EARTH, MINN., November 5-Minnesota has a white man's burden. Ten hours' ride by automobile from the State capitol in St. Paul there is a destitute nation. lt is 5,000 miles nearer home than the destitute nations of the Orient. Its people are the first Americans of us all. They are the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota.

Ninety-seven years ago, according to the records of the treaty of Prairie du Chien, made in 1826, they owned practically all the land in the present States of Minnesota and Wisconsin, a part of Michigan, and the country in the rich Red River Valley of North Dakota to the Cheyenne River Valley. Then they are estimated to have numbered more than 100,000. To-day there are about 13,000 people on their tribal rolls. Of these, Hittle more than 3,000 are full bloods.

DEBAUCHED AND ROBBED.

Debauched and robbed, reduced to pitiful extremes of poverty by a process described in terms of the Federal Government as "relief and civilization," bundreds of them will die this winter unless immediate steps are taken to aid them.

On the Leech Lake, Cass Lake, Grand Portage, Fond du Lac, Bois Fort, White Earth, and other reservations conditions are the same, according to those who speak for the Indians. Disease is pitifully prevalent. Tuberculosis and trachoma scourge the people. Indians, old and bed-ridden, stoical, taciturn, suffering the pangs of hunger, living in conditions of indescribable filth and squalor, who have abandoned hope of aid from the Great White Father in Washington, lie in log huts and shacks waiting for the call of the Great Spirit.

EYES TURNED TOWARD GRAVE.

Their eyes are turned to the graves of their ancestors. They wait eagerly for the return of boys and squaws from the hunting trails where the only game is an occasional rabbit or partridge.

Squaws whose flimsy calico dresses are scant protection from bitter winds fish desperately long hours in lakes where winter is beginning to set its seal to keep the wolf from the door. Game has fled far from most of the reservations.

These are the conditions in which final scenes in one of the tragedies of civilization, dictated by the inexorable law of the survival of the fittest, are being enacted. The end is near, for white men who have lived a half century and more among the Indians say that in another quarter of a century the last of the full-blood Indians in Minnesota will have passed.

SOLONS SEEK RELIEF.

Plight of the Indians has been revealed through investigation started by Congressman KNUD WEFALD, of Hawley, and United States Senator HENRIK SHIPSTEAD, of Minneapolis, following a series of council gatherings.

They are moving for the relief of the Indians. At a council with representatives of the White Earth Chippewa council at Hawley, Friday, Congressman WEFALD pledged himself to introduce a bill for a special appropriation when Congress meets in December. It will ask that a payment of $100 from tribal funds be made to each Indian on the tribal rolls to aid them in buying food and clothing to carry them through the winter.

BOUND BY RED TAPE.

Yet before the action contemplated by the Minnesota Congressmen can be taken, the red tape attending Government procedure unwound, and before the money can be placed in the hands of the Indians it will be late in January at the best. Suffering and death for scores of the aged, indigent, and little children in the intervening interval is inevitable, for the law of nature operates relentlessly.

An Indian can not live without fuel, clothing, or food. Neither can a white man.

There are no easy winters for the Indian. Winter and the great white silence have always been for him a time of terror. Yet not in many years has he seen the "sheshibe" (wild duck) wing away to the southward and the muskrat build his winter house with the sense of foreboding he feels to-day.

INEFFICIENCY-CHOFS DON'T PAY.

The Indian's plight at the present time appears to be the result of two things:

The first and most lamentable is inefficiency of the Indian Department.

The second is the same condition that affects the farmer of the Northwest, for where he has raised any crop at all, and these cases are few, it is potatoes. There is no market for them.

The Indian Department's employees are in charge of a system of rationing. There is much complaint against it. Not all the people need rations now. But scores that do are not receiving them. Indians charge that the Government's representatives are favoring some Indians and totally disregarding others who are near the verge of starvation.

BEG AT MISSIONS.

For the first time in many years Indians are appearing in some numbers to beg food at the St. Benedict's mission school.

There is no work for Indians to do on the White Earth Reservation. Indian boys are working for a wage of 25 cents a day on wood-sawing rigs and spending their pitiful wage to relieve the suffering and distress of their aged relatives.

Hundreds already are suffering from malnutrition. They will enter the severe period of the winter undernourished and an easy prey for the diseases of famine and pestilence that have scourged them for centuries.

There will be many pitiful processions this winter to the bleak and wind-swept cemeteries of the White Earth Reservation.

CHILDREN MUST DIE.

Many of the coffins will be those of little children. Many of them will be those of the patriarchs of a once great savage people. In the medicine lodges there will be the wail of women chanting the death song of the chiefs.

Chief Tay-com-ege-shig (Cross Sky) ponders this situation deeply: "I do not know what we shall do this winter. I hope the chief of the Speaking Leaf, the Minnesota Star, the Star of Sky Blue Water, will tell his people that the Indian is old and hungry, that the house of the muskrat is high and that the "sheshibe" (wild duck) has left the Indian early.

"Let him tell his people that the Indian's blankets are old; that he waits for the call of the Great Spirit; that he prays the white man's prayer.

SOME FOUGHT FOR US.

"Let the chief of the Speaking Leaf say to his people that the grandsons of Tay-com-ege-shig have followed the white man's war trail far across the big water to the place where the white man's guns shoot to-day and kill next week to aid the white man in his Let him say that Tay-com-ege-shig did not go on this war trail, for Tay-com-ege-shig is old. He has not gone on a war trail since he was a young man and struck the Sioux.

wars.

"Let him tell the white man to take the trail to the White Earth Reservation and come to the lodge of Tay-com-ege-shig that he may see for himself that the Indian is old and hungry and his. blankets are worn "

But here a scolding squaw entered the room where Tay-com-ege-shig, 96 and bedridden 5 years, lies waiting for the call of the Great Spirit.

SQUAW INTERFERES.

"Let Tay-com-ege-shig," said she, scolding sharply, “auswer only the white man's question. Tay-com-ege-shig is old. He speaks with the tongue of a child. Why does Tay-com-ege-shig

tell his troubles to the white man? Let him tell them to the Indian man. Let him fight for that which is his right. Let him demand the rations and the money that the White Father owes him. Tay-com-ege-shig is a chief. He is not a beggar."

So Tay-com-ege-shig subsided.

This is indeed a sordid picture, but I know from personal visits that it is not much overdrawn. He speaks of

I want to let the same correspondent speak on. politicians. Yes; the politicians always promised the Indians many things.

They told me when I first came to see them "that the politicians always were fine to us before they were elected. Congressmen and governors came here to beg for votes, they came here to take in our celebrations, they danced with our girls and treated cigars to the old men, but as soon as they were elected they always forgot us."

[From the Minnesota Daily Star, November 6, 1923.]

(By Thomas H. Moodie.)

WHITE EARTH, MINN., November 6.-" Cawein! Cawein !! Cawein!!!” (No! No!! No!!!)

That is the answer of Chief Big Bear, of the White Earth Chippewas, to the question:

"Did the chief ever know an honest politician?"

He is a picture for a painter, this aged Indian, seated by a great, rusty box stove in a frame shack, wind searched, built on the shore of a tiny lake under the brow of a hill that shelters it but poorly from the bitter blasts of Minnesota winters.

CHIEF MEETS POLITICIANS.

Many are the politicians Big Bear has met in his lifetime of 75 years. for several times he has been to the lodge of the Great White Father in Washington, and on the wall of his home hangs a picture of the chief, taken wearing a white collar and four-in-hand necktie with a tuxedo suit, when he was one of the head men of a delegation from White Earth who went to Washington to ask for justice for his people. He is still an oracle of the Chippewas. When the people are troubled they come to him for counsel and advice.

Adjoining his home is a medicine lodge. There the White Earth Chippewas counsel and dance. There last Sunday they held a council to make arrangements for an armistice day observance, when their service flag, containing more than 40 service stars, many of them gold, will be displayed and the mothers of men who sleep in Flanders fields will raise again the wall of the Indian mother for her sons who have died upon the field of battle.

GLOOMY CONTEMPLATION.

POLITICAL SPEECHES.

"Always before the election comes the politician; he makes long speeches to the Indian. Then is his heart big for the Indian. He crys like a squaw when he hears the story of the wrongs of the Indian. He goes away. He comes no more after the election.

"Big Bear can not speak of the white medicine man now in the Congress who was elected two years ago [Doctor SHIPSTEAD]. He has been here and he has counseled with Big Bear. Big Bear will wait and see what the white medicine man does. It may be that he is an honest politician. It may be that the new Congressman from Hawley [KNUD WEFALD] is an honest politician. Big Bear will see. Both of these politicians speak wisely in the counsel. But Big Bear is hungry."

PLIGHT TYPICAL,

The plight if Tay-com-ege-shig (Cross Sky) and Big Bear is typical of that of practically all of the older Indians. They are in need of food, dependent upon children and grandchildren, who can not give them aid because there is no work by which an Indian can earn money on the White Earth Reservation or near it at this season of the year. In the lodge of Tay-com-ege-shig in bed, near the bed where the old chief has been confined five years, there is an Indian girl. She is going down to the valley of the shadow more rapidly than is her aged grandfather. In the home are two fine-looking Indian boys, grandsons of Cross Sky, who fought in the World War. They soon will ge to seek employment cutting pulp wood for contractors off the reservation. The prospect of leaving their mother to fish alone in White Earth Lake for food for the invalid pair is not pleasant. Rice from its beds, fish which are daily becoming more difficult to catch, and potatoes are the only food of this family. Much of the time there is nothing but potatoes to eat. The youths who soon are to go to cut pulp wood are rot

The chief was wrapped in gloomy contemplation of the medicine lodge and the wreck of a plano long since disused, through a dirtgrimed window, when he was interviewed. Mrs. Big Bear, a fine type strong, for they are undernourished. of the aged Indian woman, sat beside him. ing picture of the "old folks at home."

The chief acknowledged an introduction Beaulieu and George Berry, members of the of which he also is a member.

They made a rather strik

explained to him by T. B. White Earth Tribal Council,

"The chief looks sad. Is his spirit troubled?" he was asked. BIG BEAR SAD.

"The white man speaks with a straight tongue," he replied. "Big Bear is always sad. His heart is never light and he can never raise the song when he looks upon his people. Before the kinnikinick (willow) buds again many of them will go to heaven. They have no food to eat; they can not live. That is why Big Bear is always asking the Great Father in Washington to aid them. I know I have property there. That is the reason I am demanding not the Government's property but my property. I want to use this property. I can not understand why the Great Father refuses to give it to me. Knowing what belongs to me, I shall ask as long as I live for that which is mine. I shall ask the Great Father, and I shall pray to the Great Spirit that the eyes of the Great Father in Washington shall see straight the plight of the Indian.

"Is the chief a Christian?" the interviewer asked. "Yes," was the answer.

GOOD TO PRAY.

"What good does it do the chief to pray? Why does he not go on the hunting trail and kill the deer and the moose that he may have meat in his lodge?" the interviewer asked.

"The chief knows it is good to pray," he replied, looking straight at the interviewer. "Yesterday there was no food in the lodge of Big Bear. The squaw of Big Bear asked at the school for rations. She was told there were no rations. Big Bear and his squaw made the prayer to the Great Spirit before they went to beg for food from their grandchildren. They found the lodge of their grandchildren closed. They hunted the 'she shibe' (wild duck). So Big Bear and his squaw turned sadly again to their lodge. There they found a bag hanging from the door knob. In it were two wild ducks. The Great Spirit had answered the prayer of the Indian. Big Bear would gladly go on the hunting trail. Deer and moose are far from the White Earth Reservation. The chief is old. He has no ammunition to hunt with; no money to buy ammunition. He can no longer run so fast that he catches the rabbit. He can not fly and catch the partridge. It is 15 years since Big Bear has eaten of venison he killed himself. When winter comes Big Bear has the mesaba (glant) pains in his legs. He no longer can go on any trail. Hls squaw is old. Fifty-five years she has lived in the lodge of Big Bear. She is old; no good. She can not fish; she can not gather wood to keep Big Bear warm."

"Did the chief ever know an honest politician?" he was asked. "Cawein! Caweln!! Cawein!!!" he replied emphatically, which is to say, No! No!! No!!!

WHITE MAN'S LIFE.

Strangely enough Tay-com-ege-shig is a victim of the white man's mode of life. Until a few years ago he was one of the most successful farmers on the White Earth. He was known as a hard worker. He had cattle and a good, small farm. Then he was injured while at work in the woods by a falling tree. Since that time he has been unable to work. Tall weeds grow in the patch of ground he cultivated. The younger Indians look upon the plight of their starving patriarch sadly.

"Look at Tay-com-ege-shig," say they. "He dies by inches of starvation, He was a farmer and a hard worker. It is better that the Indian should spend his time seeking that which is right. fully his than to become a farmer. He can not die more pitifully than Tay-com-ege-shig dies."

There are scores of other cases of old Indians as pitiful as that of Tay-com-ege-shig. There are Indians starving because they are too old and too feeble to go to the agency school to ask for rations.

NEED THREE THINGS,

The Indians on the White Earth Reservation need three things badly. They need them now. These three things are fuel, warm cloth ing, and food. If they do not get them, many of them will die. That is the cold, hard fact.

But fuel, food, and clothing are not yet in sight for these stricken people. Death is in sight.

Their case is squarely up to the Indian department at Washington. It claims to be rationing the Indian. Here is the ration a starving, undernourished Indian is asked to live upon on the White Earth Res ervation.

Twenty pounds of flour, five pounds of pork, two pounds of sugar, two pounds of tea, three pounds of beans, a half-pound of baking powder, two bars of soap.

How would you like to live on this ration for 30 days, the time the
Indian is asked to live upon it? How would you like to live upon it
for the next five months. How would you like to beg for it?
Indians now asking for rations are being told there are no rations.
And again this same correspondent sent to his newspaper a
very interesting article. The main story of these articles is
probably not new to the old Members here. The same sorrow-
ful tales have been told to the committees of Congress before,
but I read them into the RECORD now that you may see whether
or not conditions have improved; that we may see in the future
by looking back to the pages of the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD that
we are writing these days if the matter stands better then than
it did last fall:

[From the Minnesota Daily Star, November 7, 1923.)
(By Thomas H. Moodie.)

WHITE EARTH, MINN., November 7-Christopher Columbus discov ered America in 1492. Leif Ericson may have discovered it a few hundred years earlier.

What headway Leif made in robbing the Indians is not of record. It is a historical fact, however, that after Columbus had offered a prayer of thanksgiving for the success of his voyage of discovery and turned his back, the sailors and soldiers of his argosy began trading with the Indians.

Right then and there probably began one of the most shameful campaigns of robbery and plunder the world has ever known. It is not ended yet. It will not be ended in all probability until a mixed blood raises the death song of the last full-blood Indian.

STORY GOES FAR BACK.

The story of how the Indian has been robbed would fill a canoe with good-sized books if it were told in detail. So the present account will disregard all stories of this kind except those that arise in Minnesota. There are so many of these that all except a few that touch on preseut conditions must be disregarded.

The real story would open graves long since forgotten. It would, if it were thoroughly related, reveal a story of shame that could accomplish nothing but the humiliation of innocents of the second and third generation. It would be a tribute of shame to the white man's lust. FORT SNELLING TREATY.

One of the first noteworthy robberies of the Indian in our own Minnesota began with the signing of the treaty by which the Fort Snelling Reservation was created. The consideration was a few gallons of whisky and a small amount of money. There was a promise to pay later the sum of $2.000 to certain Indians. The promise to pay was violated by the Congress that made it, for it is an acknowledged bistorical fact that it was never paid. That was the first of a long series of robberies in our Uncle Samuel's bureaucratic system of " lieving and civilizing the Indian."

re

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Ever since that time an elaborate Federal department has been lleving and civilizing" the Indian. It has now progressed so far that it bas "relieved" him of about all his valuable possessions. The rest will be easy. It has "civilized" him so that in bundreds of instances he is the equal of the white man as a grafter and a brilliant beggar. In many cases he now is so thoroughly civilized that he can carry his liquor almost as successfully as the white man. The Indian has made progress. Few of his kind have regard for the Volstead Act. When he learns to be a bit more "choosy" in his selection of liquor he will be in all respects the equal of the white man in this phase of civilization.

The Indian is not yet proficient as a bootlegger. He has no need to be, for there are reported cases where employees of the Indian Bureau meet all his needs in this regard. These, of course, are white men. The United States of America never made treaty with the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota which it has kept. That is the charge made on the White Earth Reservation. It is backed by an impressive array of facts and figures.

a

The latest example of the integrity of our bureaucratic system for relieving and civilizing the Indian is the Clapp Act, passed as a rider to the Indian appropriations bill of 1906. It created the citizen Indian. It gave to all Indians the right to sell their lands. It said, in effect, "The Indian now is civilized; his further relief will proceed." White men saw their opportunity and proceeded promptly to further relieve the Indian of his land allotments which were part of the Clapp Act's provisions.

CASE OF "OLDEST OLD LADY."

Not all the Indians were robbed in this transaction. Some of them received a fair price for their allotments. But hundreds of Indians, incompetent to deal for themselves in such affairs, were promptly robbed and " relieved."

There is the case of the minor heirs of the Oldest Old Lady, as she is known on the tribal rolls of the Chippewa, still in litigation. She died leaving six heirs. She had a valuable allotment. Her estate was probated and her allotment sold. Records show that one heir received $100, another $50, and four $10 each. Then a seventh heir was found and a lawsuit begun which is not yet ended.

SHARPERS SECURE LAND.

only $1 and other valuable considerations" as the price paid for Indian lands.

Meantime the Indian department was proceeding with its work of "relief and civilization." It was getting snug appropriations for the "relief" of the Indian. Indians charge that for every dollar the Indian received in hand $2 was spent in getting it to him. But in winter the Indian was always hungry. There were always a lot of pitiful processions to the bleak and wind-swept hills of the reservation where the Indian cemeteries are located.

CHEAP GOODS SOLD TO TRIBE.

Meantime the Indian had a nice piece of money in his tribal funds at Washington. This money was loaned to various business and manufacturing concerns at what appears to have been a fair rate of interest. These concerns made overalls for the Indian, cheap calico for his squaw and the cheapest kind of merchandise of all kinds which was sent to the reservation and sold to the Indian merchant and to the Indian consumer at prices that would make a profiteer of 1923 turn green with envy.

Meantime under the Clapp Act there are Indians who have never received their allotment of land despite the fact that the time in which all the allotments were to have been made has long since expired. There is a great deal of complaint about this.

SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED.

Finally came the time when the Indian was pretty well established in a status of relief and civilization." His schools were closed and the men who had been "relieving and civilizing him" moved awayall but a few. Indians on the White Earth Reservation charge that some of these became bootleggers. They made a nice thing, for the Indian likes firewater. It warms his soul, It is part of the finesse of "civilization" taught him by the white man.

Smart lawyers say the Clapp Act is illegal and unconstitutional because it abrogates solemn treaty contracts made by the Government with the Indians, and there is no act of Congress which can abrogate a solemn treaty obligation. But the Indian has no money to tight such a contention through weary years of court delays. He has found it best when he is stung to stay stung.

But when he is hungry it is another matter. He becomes a Lazarus at the Government's gate, begging brilliantly and vociferously for relief that without question is his due. He is hungry and vociferously begging to-day. You can't blame him much.

No attempt will be made here to tell the story of how the Indian was robbed of his pine. It is too long and it is pretty well known. No attempt will be made to tell how he was robbed of his morals. That is a story that would make the printed page reek with rottenness. It is too hot to handle in any publication not read exclusively by

adults.

WATCHMAN DRAWS $1,400 SALARY.

The Government still has interests on the White Earth Reservation. One of them is constituted in a rickety old Government building. It would not bring $1.400 at any auction sale. Yet the Government is paying an Indian Bureau mployee $1,400 to watch it. It is deserted. This is a fair sample of the efficiency of the Indian Department. The money the Indian Bureau pays for watching this building comes from the Indian appropriation, money set aside from Indian funds for the "relief" of the Indian. Meantime there are hungry Indians on the White Earth Reservation, Indians ill, Indians far back in the woods suffering the pangs of hunger.

The Indian department will say this is a lie probably within a few days now. There is only one answe to such a statement. Any white man can go to the White Earth Reservation and note conditions for himself. He can see just how far the work of “relief and civilization " has progressed.

But there is one bright spot on the Whit Earth Reservation. It will be described to-morrow in the story of Father Aloysius, the priest of St. Benedict's Mission. For 45 years it has been a star of hope in the dread, drab environment of the White Earth Reservation.

I will read some more articles by the same correspondent into the RECORD. They throw a good deal of light upon the Chip

[From the Minnesota Daily Star, November 8, 1923.] (By Thomas H. Moodie.)

There was another sharper who worked very successfully in getting title to Indian allotments. pewa situation. He would arrange with the Indian to purchase his allotment, secure a deed showing that $1 and other valuable considerations had been paid. He would undertake to pay the Indian more money at some future time. The Indian would appear for his money.

Lo, the white man's memory had become short.

"I do not know," the white man would say, "whether you are the same Indian I bargained with. All Indians look alike to me. I can not pay money to an Indian I do not know. I shall pay you nothing."

Then was the Indian sad and turned away. But he had no money to hire a lawyer and fight a lawsuit. He waited Indianlike for something to turn up. Meantime the statute of limitation was running. Soon the Indian's claim was outlawed. Hundreds of incompetent Indians were thus "relieved."

Hundreds of deeds to lands in the

three counties adjoining the White Earth and other reservations show

WHITE EARTH, MINN., November 8 (special).--When the Indian on the White Earth Reservation hears the voice of Kabibingka (the north wind) calling far away in "the land of everlasting snow and icebergs" he knows it is a death knell for many of his kind.

For Kabibinoka brings in his swirling trail of snowflakes, influenza, pneumonia, bitter suffering from the icy blasts of winter. Indians half fed and suffering from malnutrition, old and indigent, then go on the long trail.

SUMMON WHITE MAN.

Before they go most of them summon a white man they have known, loved, and trusted for nearly half a century. They hold his band as they grope in the shadow land, for he has never failed them.