condition; that all rubbish shall be removed and burned or buried or otherwise disposed of as directed by the officer in charge; that when camps or other buildings are abandoned or removed all debris shall be burned or otherwise disposed of as directed by the officer in charge; and that all buildings or other structures shall be removed from the sale area within six months from the date of the termination of the contract or become the property of the United States in trust for the Red Lake Indians. Telephone lines shall be constructed under permits issued by the superintendent of the Red Lake Indian School. Such permits will provide that free use of such lines shall be allowed to Indian Service officers for official business and that no stumpage charge will be made for poles used in construction of these lines if, in the judgment of the officer in charge, they are of sufficient value to the Indian Service to make this concession equitable. All other telephone lines, trails, and traveled roads traversing the cutting area, which are now constructed or shall hereafter be constructed by other parties than the purchaser, shall be kept open and free at all times from obstruction by logs, brush and débris caused by logging operations, and all telephone lines, trails and roads damaged or destroyed by logging operations shall be repaired or rebuilt as required by the officer in charge.

18. Donkey engines or steam skidders may be used in logging on all portions of the sale area except Sections 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, and 14 of township 150 north, range 33 west, and sections 24, 25, 35 and 36 of township 151 north, range 33 west, but no unnecessary damage shall be done to trees left standing and to reproduction. Such engines and skidders may be used within portions of the excepted area with the written permission of the officer in charge.

19. Between April 1 and November 1, of each year, all locomotive, donkey engines, or other steam power engines when not burning oil, shall each be equipped with an efficient spark arrester which is satisfactory to the officer in charge. During this period each year donkey engines shall be equipped with a steam pump with not less than a 1-inch discharge, 150 feet of fire hose, 6 buckets and a constant supply of the equivalent of 6 barrels of water, and at least 5 shovels, this equipment to be suitable for fire-fighting purposes and to be so used when necessary.

20. At each setting of each donkey engine or other steam logging contrivance in which oil is not used as fuel, the ground shall be cleared of all inflammable material for a distance of 50 feet in all directions. During the period from April 1 to November 1 of each year no donkey engine or other steam logging contrivance in actual use for which oil is not used for fuel shall be left during the noon hour without a watchman and during the same period the purchaser may be required to employ a night watchman to guard against the escape of fire from logging engines.

21. No rigging shall be slung upon trees left for seed unless absolutely necessary. Where it is necessary to fasten chockers or straps around trees which are to be left for seed, they shall be protected from girdling by first encircling the trees with suitable poles of blocks of wood.

22. The approximate minimum diameter limit at a point 44 feet from the ground to which living trees are to be cut is 12 inches. Trees above these diameters may be reserved for seed or protection and merchantable trees below these diameters may be marked at the discretion of the officer in charge.

23. The purchaser will pay for damage to property of the Indians growing out of his operations under the sale. The purchaser shall comply with all regulations relative to the maintenance of order on Indian reservations. Indian labor shall be employed in the cutting and removal of the timber and in the disposal of the brush whenever the use of such labor is practicable.

24. The title to the timber covered by the contract shall not pass to the purchaser until it has been paid for and scaled, measured, or counted.

25. All questions relative to the location of railroad spurs, the exact areas to be logged, the location of all structures, and the requirements to be observed in their construction, and other matters concerned with the operations of the purchaser upon the sale area shall be settled by the officer in charge. Final decisions as to points involved in the interpretation of the regulations and provisions of the contract governing the sale, cutting, and removal of the timber shall be rendered by the Secretary of the Interior. Work may be suspended by the officer in charge if the terms of the contract are disregarded, and the violation of any one of such terms, if persisted in, shall be sufficient cause for the revocation of the contract and the cancellation of other permits and privileges.

26. Refunds of deposits under the contract shall be made only at the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior.

27. This contract shall be void and of no effect until approved by the Secretary of the Interior, and no assignment of the same in whole or in part shall be valid without the written consent of the said Secretary.

28. No Member of or Delegate to Congress shall be admitted to any share, part, or interest in any contract, or to any benefit derived therefrom (see secs. 114 and 116, act of Mar. 4, 1909, entitled “An act to codify, revise, and amend the penal laws of the United States," 33 Stat., 1088, 1109), and no person undergoing a sentence of imprisonment at hard labor shall be employed in carrying out any contract. (See Executive order of May 18, 1905.) The cutting or removal of timber from Indian lands in breach of the terms of any contract, and without other lawful authority, or the leaving of fires unextinguished will render the contractor liable to the penalties prescribed by section 6 of the act of June 25, 1910 (36 Stat. L., 855, 857).

29. As a further guaranty of a faithful performance of this contract the said party of the second part agrees to furnish within 30 days from the execution of this contract a bond in the penal sum of $25,000, and further agrees that upon the failure on his part to fulfill any and all of the conditions and requirements hereinbefore set forth all moneys paid under this agreement shall be retained by the United States to be applied as far as may be to the satisfaction of their obligations assumed hereunder.

I, Thos. McLaren, secretary of the International Lumber Co., a corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of Minnesota, do hereby certify that at a duly called meeting of the board of directors of said company, at which a quorum of said directors was present, held at Minneapolis, Minn., on the 10th day of November, 1917, a resolution was adopted, of which the following is a corrrect copy:

"The president reported to the directors that on November 1, 1917, the company, by its vice president, authorized a bid to be made for certain timber to be sold by United States Government on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, State of Minnesota, at a sale to be held in Washington on November 5, 1917, or any adjourned date thereof, and that such bid had been accepted by the Government.

"Resolved, That the action of the vice president in making said bid be, and is hereby, duly ratified; and it is further

"Resolved, That in the contemplated absence of the president, the vice president is hereby empowered and duly authorized to do each and every act necessary to the proper completion of the purchase from the Government of said timber and to execute any contract or bond necessary thereto."

I further certify that on the 19th day of November, 1917, the above resolution was still in force and that on the said 19th day of November, 1917, S. W. Backus was the vice president of said company;

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the seal of the said company, this 24th day of November, 1917.

THOS. MCLAREN, Secretary.

Mr. RANDALL. That is a Canadian concern, is it not? Mr. MERITT. I think it is a Minnesota company. They have interests in Minnesota with headquarters at Minneapolis.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to ask you if you know whether or not the White Earth Band, whom you claim were so fearfully defrauded in the conversion of their property and these assets into money, feel that they were badly treated at that time and defrauded to a great extent. Mr. MERITT. They do, and these documents are full of testimony showing how badly they were defrauded.

The CHAIRMAN. And you feel now that you have so surrounded the activities of the Red Lake Indians in the conversion of their wealth

and the value of their property that there will be no fraud or robbery or anything of that sort?

Mr. MERITT. There will not be any fraud and robbery if there is no legislation gotten through Congress like they got through the Congress in the year 1906. We are going to do everything we can to prevent legislation of that kind being enacted and we are furnishing information to the committee at this time with the hope that if that legislation is attempted to be gotten through Congress that it will be blocked.

The CHAIRMAN. What has happened to the legislation that permitted this fraud of which you speak? Does that still exist? Is that still law?

Mr. MERITT. It is still law, and the Indians very quickly after the passage of that legislation disposed of their property interests, and the department was not in a position to prevent it, although we have recovered for some of those Indians money to the extent of between one and two million dollars, referred to yesterday by Mr. Ballinger. The CHAIRMAN. Then the contract which exists now for the taking off of this lumber is with one concern only?

Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir. There is still some timber on the Red Lake Reservation that has not been sold nor contracted for.

Mr. DALLINGER. Your idea is to have it all cut off and turned into money?

Mr. MERITT. Our idea is to have practically all of the timber eventually sold and the proceeds go to the Red Lake Indians.

The CHAIRMAN. How long do you expect that the conversion of the lumber into money is going to take?

Mr. MERITT. It will take four or five years to dispose of the timber that we have already sold.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there actual work going on up there now?

Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. How long has that been going on?

Mr. MERITT. About two years, I should say. I will furnish to the committee the contract which will show the date and the terms of sale. The CHAIRMAN. There is just one contract with one concern?

Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. ELSTON. What is done with the proceeds?

Mr. MERITT. Deposited to the credit of the Indians.

Mr. DALLINGER. Has any of that been divided?

Mr. MERITT. Part of it has been divided.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any competition in the letting of this contract?

Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir; we received bids on that timber. The contract was dated December 11, 1917, and the contract for the sale of the timber is with the International Lumber Co. of Minnesota, and covers the sale of approximately 72,000,000 feet of timber on the Red Lake Reservation.

The CHAIRMAN. Then the contract was made in 1907, but the actual work was not begun until 1918, or thereabouts?

Mr. MERITT. 1917.

The CHAIRMAN. Ten years after the contract was made.

Mr. MERITT. Not at all. I stated that the contract was dated December 11, 1917. It was estimated that 67 per cent of the timber was white pine, and the bid was $14.10 per thousand.

Mr. ELSTON. May I ask what that $14.10 means? Is that in the log?

Mr. MERITT. That is as it stands on the land.

Mr. ELSTON. Stumpage?

Mr. MERITT. Yes. We considered that a very high price.

The CHAIRMAN. Previous to 1917 it would have been an exceedingly high price.

Mr. MERITT. That $14.10 is a very good price indeed. That was obtained, and about 27 per cent of it was Norway pine, for which bids of $10.25 were received.

The CHAIRMAN. Who checks the quantity of lumber taken off? Mr. MERITT. We have checkers representing the Indians and the Indian Bureau. The total receipts on this contract deposited by the superintendent February 21, 1920, were $487,039.77. This quantity of timber covered by this contract and already out will bring something over $500,000. There is unsold timber on the reservation of a value estimated at about $500,000.

Mr. DALLINGER. Does your bureau have experts to check up on the stumpage?

Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What check do you have on the checkers?

Mr. MERITT. We have a check on the checkers. We send our chief supervisor of forests to the reservation to supervise the conditions and keep in touch with the work.

The CHAIRMAN. How frequently in the proceeding of that work do you send some one there to check up these checkers? Are the

checkers under bond?

Mr. MERITT. We have the superintendent on the reservation, who gives supervision of the matter in addition to the regular checkers, and then we send occasionally the chief supervisor of forests.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, in addition to that, you have cruisers in the whole territory so that you can check and see how the stumpage comes out in comparison with the cruise?

Mr. MERITT. We have the entire timber area cruised and we know almost exactly the amount of stumpage.

Mr. DALLINGER. Do they cut everything or only trees of a certain size?

Mr. MERITT. They cut trees of a certain size.

Mr. ELSTON. I would like to refer to the proposition of how well you are protecting yourself against possible reversal of the bureau's interpretation of the act of 1895 with regard to the title of the Red Lake Reservation. Do you feel that you are taking any chances whatever in making sales there and distributions on the theory that the Red Lake Indians own the whole of the 700,000 acres, and do you feel that there is nothing that you could do that would provide against the possible contingency of your being wrong?

Mr. MERITT. We could practically discontinue all activity on the reservation until this legislation was passed by Congress.

you

Mr. ELSTON. Would there be some kind of an agreement by which could salvage yourself if you were wrong or keep the situation in such a way that if you make payments erroneously under your theory, which may prove wrong, that you can recoup yourselves out of the remaining property of the persons to whom you made erroneous payments? Is there any possibility of that? Of course, you are

assuming in everything you are doing that this thing is absolutely settled and that there is no possible doubt, in view of this pending litigation. It shows that you have no question whatever about the issue or otherwise you could not proceed on the theory that you are making all these payments without any reservation whatever to recoup yourselves if you are wrong. I think I can not overstate that at all.

Mr. RANDALL. As I understand it, the attitude of the Bureau of Indian Affairs irrespective of litigation is that they are compelled by the law existing to go ahead and administer this fund as the law reads, and if the United States is stuck by the litigation, all right.

Mr. ELSTON. That is the explanation, I think. But what I want to inquire is whether or not they feel that in view of the fact that there might be some mistake and that Congress having passed the legislation largely on the implied recommendation of the bureau is following erroneously a start that the bureau gave them, and that if the bureau thinks it is running Congress and the people into a possible hole that they might suggest something by which we can recoup ourselves if we are wrong.

Mr. RANDALL. I agree with your suggestion entirely. That is about what you might gather from what Mr. Meritt stated.

Mr. ELSTON. I think it is.

Mr. MERITT. I think that we can not pay out hereafter the proceeds from the sale of this timber without further legislative authority of Congress, and, inasmuch as the jurisdictional bill is now pending before Congress, our attitude as administrative officers would be to conserve the proceeds from the sale of this timber so far as practicable and above what is absolutely necessary to administer the affairs of those Indians and meet their most urgent needs so that if that judgment is against the Red Lake Indians the funds would be conserved to meet it.

Mr. RANDALL. May I ask you how much remains of the $480,000 that has been derived from the sale of this timber?

Mr. MERITT. The Red Lake Indians have $410,000 on deposit in the Treasury to their credit carried as "Red Lake Forest 4 per cent fund."

The CHAIRMAN. Without casting any reflection whatever on the checkers, I would like to know who pays the checkers? Mr. MERITT. The superintendent.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you state what the salaries of these checkers are?

Mr. MERITT. The following is a list of these employees and their salaries:

Forestry employees, Red Lake Reservation, as of Mar. 1, 1920.

William Heritage, deputy supervisor of forests, check scaler....

John A. Jackson, scaler..

The CHAIRMAN. They are in no way employed or paid by the company? It is taken off the lumber?

Mr. MERITT. The company probably has checkers of its own, but we have separate checkers.