Mr. MERITT. For the reasons discussed in this hearing previously.. The Nelson Act of 1889 provides that part of the Chippewa fund is to be reserved for a period of 50 years. Some people contend that if we pay out this money at this time that later on there will be a claim against the Government. My contention is that Congress has absolute authority to pay out these moneys. It is absurd to keep this money in the Treasury for a period of 50 years when the time is now ripe for the competent Indians to have the benefit of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you understand that this proposed legislation will permit you to do that very thing?

Mr. MERITT. This proposed legislation will authorize a per capita payment of $300 to each Chippewa Indian. Those who are competent will receive this money in cash, without supervision. When there is sufficient money in the Treasury to the credit of the Chippewa Indians, another $300 per capita distribution will be made, if this. legislation is passed.

The CHAIRMAN. What will happen to the incompetent Indians? Mr. MERITT. Their money will be paid to the parents, if appointed guardian, and they will be responsible to the courts. If the parents. are not appointed guardians, the Interior Department-that is, the Indian Bureau—will retain the money under its supervision.

The CHAIRMAN. That is a matter provided for in this legislation? Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir; but it does not go as far as I think it should. I think we should reserve only enough of that money to continue the schools and pay out the balance to the Indians individually; paying in cash to the competent Indians and reserving in cash the money due the incompetent Indians.

The CHAIRMAN. It is claimed that there are 12,000 Chippewa Indians. What percentage of that 12,000 are incompetent?

Mr. MERITT, About 5,000 of the Chippewa Indians are no longer under the Indian Office so far as lands are concerned.

The CHAIRMAN. Are those 5,000 Indians made up of Indians who have largely gotten away from the Chippewa Reservation and goneout into the world for themselves, or is part of this 7,000 left up there?

Mr. MERITT. That 5,000 refers to Indians to whom patents have been issued and who were included in the provisions of the Clapp amendment in 1906.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, according to your figures, there are about 7,000 incompetents.

Mr. MERITT. There are Indians who have not yet received patents. who are competent. For example, on the Red Lake Reservation; but we have not allotted the Red Lake Reservation and are not in position to issue patents at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. When I use the word "incompetent," I use it on the basis that they have not been declared competent by the bureau. Now, one further question; if this legislation is enacted, what period of time do you think it would take to declare these incompetents competent? In that question I am not including a certain percentage who can never be declared competent.

Mr. MERITT. I should say within a period of two years after the enactment of this legislation, those Indians who are competentcould be declared competent, except the Red Lake Indians, and, as I

have stated before, it will take a little longer to handle the Red Lake situation.

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The CHAIRMAN. That is due to the difficulties in getting the property ready?

Mr. MERITT. Due to the fact that the reservation needs to be drained and that we need to sell the timber there so that there can be an approximately equitable division.

The CHAIRMAN. You have answered that in your own way but have not given me the information I am trying to get. What I am trying to bring out is how long it would take to get that per cent of incompetents declared competent and the approximate percentage who will come within that competent class.

Mr. MERITT. Out of the 12,000 Chippewa Indians, I would say that approximately two-thirds of the adult Indians would come within the competent class.

Mr. KELLY. Does that mean there are 4,000 who would never be declared competent?

Mr. MERITT. No, sir; we would not declare a minor child competent as long as it retained its minority.

Mr. KELLY. How many of that number you say would not be declared competent, would never be capable of being declared competent?

Mr. MERITT. That would only apply to the old, full-blood Indians and I think it would be unwise and unjust to issue patents to the old, uneducated, full-blood Chippewa Indians.

Mr. KELLY. Approximately how many do you think would always be under the control of the bureau for their own protection?

Mr. MERITT. I would say approximately one-fifth of the adult Indians of the Chippewa Tribe would always need the protection of the bureau.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, Mr. Meritt, when you declare the parents of children competent, under the present rule, that still leaves the children as incompetents and anything allotted is still held by the bureau for these incompetents?

Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Why would it not be a safe proposition when you declare the parents competent to turn over to them, the same as you would to a white man in full citizenship, all the property which belongs to the family and let the parents care for the transfer of the property to the children? Would that not be a fair proposition?

Mr. MERITT. We have taken the position that the money belonging to the children of competent Indians, provided these competent parents will have themsevles appointed as guardians of the children, should be turned over to them but we have not gone so far as to say. we would turn over the allotments of the children to the parents.

The CHAIRMAN. Here is the point, if we went that far we would then be able to disassociate the bureau from future transactions with that family.

Mr. MERITT. I do not believe, Mr. Chairman, that we have reached. the point in Indian development when that can be safely done. The CHAIRMAN. It can not be done perhaps as safely as you would desire; however, you would turn the same thing over to a white It strikes me that when you go so far as to declare the parents competent you do not fulfill all requirements until you turn over to

man.

them everything that belongs to the family. This may be revolutionary with regard to the policy of the bureau, but it strikes me that it is the only way we will ever be able to terminate the activities of the bureau with regard to any individual who has Indian blood in him at all.

Mr. MERITT. I am willing to go that far with the money of the minor children, the Indian Bureau is willing to go that far, but I believe your suggestion might prove somewhat radical

The CHAIRMAN. A good many of my suggestions have been deemed impracticable, but nobody has stated that they were not sane. Mr. KELLY. What would be the danger in that policy? Mr. SINCLAIR. The real estate perhaps.

Mr. MERITT. The average Indian mind, in regard to the property of minor children, is different from that of the average white man. I mean this as no criticism against the Indian, but simply to state what has been the experience in handling Indian affairs. A great many Indians look upon the property of their children as being their own property and feel that they should do with that property exactly as they see fit. They do not look ahead to the time when the child will become of age and will need this property for its own use. A large number of Indians look more to the need of the present day than they do for any need that will arise in the future; they are not disposed to accumulate property like the white man. Now, of course, there are a great many exceptions to this rule. We have in this room Indian men who have accumulated considerable property, but they are the exceptions.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Meritt, allow me to break in right there. You must admit that as a whole the Indians have had few opportunities on account of the restrictions surrounding them. We can not tell whether the Indians, as a whole, if they were permitted to have the opportunity of trying to accumulate anything in the interest of their families, whether they would succeed or not. In the five years that I have had something to do with Indian affairs, I have seen a good many of them and they do not impress me along the line that you claim experience has taught you. I am one of those who believe that a man can do twice as much with his own property, even though he has only half as much knowledge, as some one else will do with it; he will handle his own affairs better than anyone else. That is my opinion, whether it is an Indian or a white man.

Mr. MERITT. I agree with you absolutely and we are doing that very thing for the Indians; we are turning them loose very rapidly indeed, and during the last three years we have turned loose more Indians than during the previous 10 years, and we will continue to pursue that policy at a very rapid rate; but notwithstanding the fact that we have turned loose a great many of the Indians who are alleged to be competent, the experience of the Indian Bureau is that a large percentage of these Indians who are supposed to be competent dispose of their lands and lose their property within a very short period after the restrictions have been removed.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Meritt, approximately how many Indians, during your experience in the department, whom you have once declared competent have subsequently been declared incompetent? Mr. MERITT. Very few; when we issue a patent in fee to an Indian, that man is no longer under the jurisdiction of the Indian Bureau

and we do not attempt to recover that land and assume jurisdiction over it. There have been some cases where exceptions have been made to that rule, but the general policy is that when an Indian is given a patent in fee we no longer attempt to have any jurisdiction over him.

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that we are getting pretty far afield on this proposition and I have in my own experience heard only of one or two cases where an Indian had been declared competent and was afterwards declared incompetent, and I believe that situation was brought about by a band of robbers, land robbers, in the State who were trying to get what the Indian had, and that might happen to any one, either Indian or white man. As a whole, however, have not the Indians who have been declared competent done about as well as the average foreigner who comes into this country, after he has been declared competent? I am judging now from the Indians I have seen and the information I have gotten in these investigations. Mr. MERITT. I would say that they have.

The CHAIRMAN. If that is so why can we not give them a little more latitude and by so doing relieve the Government, as a government, of this eternal guardianship on unborn children? I want to make this statement: I had no knowledge whatever of Indian affairs five years ago but the knowledge I have gained in five years in these committee hearings leads me to believe that the complications grow considerably more intensive and the difficulties concerning the handling of the property of the Indians are multiplied instead of decreased all the time and if we keep on with this mass of laws we are putting over every year, adding to them all the time, I do not see where it is going to end. The further I go into it the more complicated the situation looks, and I have come almost to the conclusion that if the whole business of taking care of the Indians was done away with entirely and their property turned over to them as bands or tribes and they had permission to distribute that property among themselves and handle their own affairs, they would be better off and the country would be better off. I will not say that that is a settled conclusion with me but I am getting very nearly to that point and therefore I will be very liberal in this legislation if I can be shown that it will be the means of turning as many as possible of these 12,000 Indians over to the State in the same status as any other white citizens, and give them their property to do with as they please.

Mr. MERITT. In answer to that statement I want to say that the Indians of the United States control property to the value of about a billion dollars. If the legislation you have suggested were enacted by Congress, these Indians would, within a period of six months, have disposed of at least one-half of their property.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course that is only an observation on your part. Mr. MERITT. It is observation based upon experience under the legislation enacted by Congress heretofore.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not say that is a final conclusion with me. Mr. MERITT. Congress enacted the Clapp Act removing from the jurisdiction of the Indian Bureau the property of all adult Indians of less than full blood and as a result of that legislation the mixed blood Indians on the White Earth Reservation, who are supposed to be

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among the most competent Indians in the United States, lost at least 80 per cent of their property.

The CHAIRMAN. How long ago was that?

Mr. MERITT. That was in 1906.

The CHAIRMAN. Well we have made some headway with the education of the Indians since then, I hope, and a great many of them are in a better frame of mind to care for their affairs than they then were. Mr. MERITT. You see here only the competent ones, you do not see the full-blood Indians back in the tepees, who are not capable of looking after their own interests. You see the most comptetent Indians in the United States here in Washington as a rule. We had before this committee, recently during your absence, full-blood Chippewa Indians who were incapable of presenting intelligently their views on any proposition.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not mean that those who were here would be a fair illustration of the best minds of that tribe?

Mr. MERITT. I mean that those who are here now are an illustration of the most advanced Indians in the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. You can go out in any tribe, white, black or yellow, and bring in an element which will prove to the committee instantly that they are not competent; but you could also go into that same tribe and select men who are capable of handling their own affairs and the affairs of their people.

Mr. KELLY. It strikes me as an observation that the Assistant Indian Commissioner takes it that it is a very fine thing to teach these Indians to swim, but at the same time to say to them that they must not go near the water. There came to my personal notice the case of a young Indian lad who had been in the Army; served in France, came back finally and was recommended for an allotment by the superintendent but could not get it out there and came on to Washington to see about getting it. He accidently came into my office and I got interested in him and his case and sent him, along with a white man from my office, whom I insisted should accompany him, to the Indian Bureau and at the Indian Bureau he was told that this white man's presence made it very suspicious and therefore the Indian boy would have to go back to the reservation and they would write him there.

That was the best he could do. He went back and after three weeks had gone by he wrote me that he could not get his patent because the Indian Bureau had informed him that it would be necessary to make a thorough investigation to see whether this white man, who had gone to the Indian Bureau with this boy at my request, was not attempting to defraud him of his land. This Indian boy is perfectly capable of handling his own affairs, but it seems to me that the policy of the Indian Bureau is to prevent them doing so.

Mr. MERITT. I remember that specific case, Mr. Chairman. This Indian was from the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota and came to Washington for a patent. He was accompanied by a white man who came all the way from South Dakota with him to help him get his patent in fee. We have a rule in the Indian Bureau not to issue patents in fee to Indians here in Washington and the reason for that rule is because our experience shows that if we issue patents in fee to Indians here in Washington they frequently dispose of their lands before they get back to the reservation, and sometimes at a very inadequate price. For instance, only recently we had an Indian