Mr. MERITT. Mr. Chairman, I suggest that Mr. Ballinger read the wording of the section as amended, and I would also like for the committee to note carefully the language in that section as amended. Mr. BALLINGER. I will be very glad to do that (reading):

SEC. 5. That the sum of $15,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary of the tribal funds of the Chippewa Indians of the State of Minnesota, is hereby appropriated annually for the period of five years to pay the expenses of the general council of said tribe to be held annually on the second Tuesday of July of each year, pursuant to the constitution of the general council of said Chippewa Indians of Minnesota; and the expenses in looking after the affairs of said tribe, including expenses of its necessary committees; said sum to be available to the 1st day of July during each of said five years, and said expenses to be approved by the president and secretary of the general council and certified to the treas rer of said general council, and as [in line 17, the word "but" wants to be changed to "so"] so approved and certified. to be paid: Provided, That said sum of $15,000 shall be paid to the treasurer of said general council upon his first filing with the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States a good and sufficient bond to be approved by the said Secretary for the proper care and disbursement of any moneys received by him: Provided further, That the said Treasurer shall on the 30th day of July of each year render a true statement to the said Secretary of all funds received by him and disbursed or on hand.

Now, Mr. Chairman, just one word with reference to that. If this general council is given the powers that are asked in this bill there will be a great deal of work for it to perform. Annually this council has had to send representatives here to fight for an appropriation for its very existence. It has cost the tribe annually probably $2,000 out of its trust funds to get an appropriation of $10,000. Now if this appropriation is made continuously for five years, that expense will be saved to them and that $2,000 can be used for more useful purposes.

Again, this provision provides that the money shall be paid to the treasurer of the general council, and under existing law it is provided that upon the approval and certification of the account by the secretary and president of the general council the money shall be paid, yet under the practice of the Indian Office, and notwithstanding the fact that the Comptroller of the Treasury has held that their approval and certification is a finality and that the Secretary of the Interior and the Indian Bureau have nothing whatever to do with it thereafter except to submit it for payment, those accounts are received here, lie here anywhere from two weeks to six months and sometimes a year, and then they are transmitted with adverse recommendations by the Indian Bureau, resulting in further delays, and are handled in the Indian Bureau by not less than 10 and Í think I am more accurate when I say about 16 clerks, taking up the time of the Indian Bureau and costing the Government of the United States probably $2,000 a year in clerical hire.

The CHAIRMAN. What have you to say about that, Mr. Meritt? Mr. MERITT. Mr. Chairman, I wanted Mr. Ballinger to read the exact language of the committee, so that the committee could know what Mr Ballinger is attempting to do in this bill.

First, they are attempting to raise the appropriation for the general council from $10,000 to $15,000; and, second, they are attempting to get an appropriation for a period of five years, a very unusual situation. In all my experience with Indian legislation, I have never known anyone to ask for an appropriation for five years in advance. Mr. KELLY. Can Congress appropriate five years in advance?

Mr. MERITT. I doubt if Congress can appropriate for five years in advance.

The CHAIRMAN. They never would; that is a certainty.

Mr. MERITT. The third unusual situation in regard to this legislation is that the only power that the Secretary of the Interior has over these accounts is simply to transmit them to the auditor for payment, regardless of how they are expended. For example, the members of the general council have been paying themselves $10 a day Mr. BALLINGER (interposing). No; Mr. Meritt, $5.

Mr. MERITT. $5 for hotel bills and $5 a day in addition, making a total of $10. They have also been paying Mr. Ballinger considerable money during the last two or three years.

The CHAIRMAN. He certainly has earned it. There is no question about it.

Mr. BALLINGER. They haven't paid me my expenses.

Mr. MERITT. The fourth unusual proposition is that the Secretary of the Treasury is required to pay over this $15,000 each year at the beginning of the year and allow it to be expended without any check or balance, and later, at the close of the year, they are to submit an accounting.

Mr. ELSTON. Of course, Mr. Meritt, here is the theory-this is a conflict of two authorities. I suppose this general council is created as a separate body, as a check at least upon the bureau, to be independent of the bureau and to represent the Indians themselves, and nobody else, and to assert their rights as against the bureau. Now, they must be given self-determination to some degree in order that they be anything more than a mere reflection of the bureau. Now, the bureau can not expect to be dominant at its end and then create an agency to check it and create an independent agency which is supposed to have independent representation here and then to dominate that agency also. The two agencies should be absolutely separate. Now, how that can be done, I don't know, but the bureau can not expect to control something that it has created to check it. The CHAIRMAN. That would be all right if the council was recognized by the Chippewas themselves.

Mr. MERITT. That is the point at issue.

Mr. ELSTON. I am speaking of the theory, Mr. Chairman, not of this particular instance. It looks to me that in pursuance of the policy of the department in making these people independent in their own affairs, giving them the right of self-government, teaching them how to look after their own affairs, you can not go meddling into everything they try to do independently for themselves.

Mr. MERITT. We do not want to do that, but we do want the council up there to be representative of all the Chippewa Indians, and between 40 and 45 per cent of those Indians are not now represented in this council and the 55 per cent are dominating the Chippewa situation to the detriment of the other 45 per cent and are making representations and endeavoring to get legislation that is opposed by at least 45 per cent of the Chippewa Indians. Besides that, this council is actually using moneys of the Red Lake Indians. to maintain themselves down here while they are attempting to deprive the Red Lake Indians of property which they claim is their exclusive property.

Mr. KELLY. Has the mind of man ever conceived a better form of government, of representation, than the majority rule where the majority is recognized?

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Mr. MERITT. That is true, that the majority should rule, but they may not be a majority. It may be intelligence overcoming inexperience, and it may be shrewdness overcoming a lot of incompetent Indians who do not know how to manage their own affairs.

Mr. KELLY. I understood you to say that 55 per cent was admitted to be on the side of the general council?

Mr. MERITT. I do not admit that they have 55 per cent representation. The full bloods claim that they have 80 or 90 per cent of the real Indians on their side, but when it comes to organizing a council they are very shrewd business men and very shrewd politicians, and they can usually control the conventions so that they will dominate the situation.

Mr. ELSTON. If the bureau would revise its regulations in regard to the conduct of these elections and let the thing go under those regulations and, instead of trying thereafter to block the action of the majority, if you absolutely make fair regulations for the conduct of the elections, and when the election is made, take the acts of the council, of the election, as representing the wish of the tribe, that is the only way that you can get along.

The CHAIRMAN. The difficulty as I see it is that there are at least four bands up there, and one of the bands exclude themselves from any part of the arrangement. Now, in addition to that you have the Indians that call themselves full bloods who do not participate in the proposition at all. It is just like four States; they might all have to be included in the general unity of the proposition whether they voted or not, but you have got a lot of incompetents to deal with. It is not really a question of States, and yet it assumes somewhat the proportions of them. We have got the same thing in the wet and dry situation now; certain States that rebel, and you have the same situation here. If we pass the legislation that is proposed here by the general council, it is objected to by a segregated set of Indians who do not agree at all, and the minute this legislation is attempted to be put into effect they are going to rebel and protest and litigate.

Mr. KELLY. Well, is the power of the Government to be limited by the rebellion of certain small minorities?

The CHAIRMAN. I should say no, but we are confronted here day after day with legislation desiring to go to the Court of Claims to adjust just exactly the same kind of matters that are going to be involved after this legislation goes into effect, if it ever does. I can see all sorts of claims and protests and difficulties that we are going to have to eventually straighten up the trouble that we are going to make by enacting this legislation, and yet it might be in the long run the proper thing to do.

Mr. BALLINGER. Mr. Chairman, there is a provision that I am going to offer at the tail end of this bill that will settle once and for all the question of elections in that country.

Mr. HENDERSON. Before we get to that Mr. Chairman, may I say briefly on behalf of the Red Lake Indians, that they ask to be excluded entirely from the effect of section 5.

The CHAIRMAN. There you go the first thing, you see.

Mr. MERITT. The Red Lake Indians refuse to have anything to do with the Chippewa general council. They refuse to have any representation on that general council and they repudiate the action of the general council.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, let me ask, beginning with section 6, we come into what we might call the jurisdictional part of the bureau, or this is what has already been introduced as a separate bill?

Mr. BALLINGER. I am going to come right to that.

The CHAIRMAN. Am I correct in that?

Mr. BALLINGER. Yes, sir; and I am going to take up now--let me complete the amendments to the other provision of this bill so it will be clear on the record.

On page 20, lines 1 and 2, reinstate the matter stricken out.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you object to that, Mr. Meritt.

Mr. MERITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. KELLY. That was included when you said section 5 should be reinserted.

Mr. MERITT. We are opposed to the insertion of section 5 in this bill, for the reason that I have stated, and also for the further reason that if there is to be any appropriation for the Chippewa council it. should be made annually in the Indian appropriation bill.

Mr. BALLINGER. Now, Mr. Chairman, so that the administratíve provisions may be altogether, I ask, now, to turn to pages 26, 27, and 28. Change section 5 to section 6. Let that follow on as section 6 of this bill.

On page 28 change section 6 to section 7.

Mr. MERITT. We have no objection to the amendments.

Mr. BALLINGER. On page 28, include section 8 in this bill as it appears in the committee print.

Mr. HENDERSON. I don't quite get that, Mr. Ballinger. Where would section 8 then come?

Mr. BALLINGER. Just in its regular rotation. The next section above that is section 7; then comes section 8 as it is numbered in the bill.

Now, include section 9 with the following amendments:

Lines 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 reinstate the matter stricken out.

In lines 24 and 25 strike out the words in italics. Let me read that to you as we desire it first and then as the department desires it. I will read now the provision as desired by the council:

That all laws and parts of laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed, and the sum of $50,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, to defray the administrative expense in carrying out the provisions of this act.

Now, Mr. Chairman, so that there may be no question about this in the future, that provision as it stands would take that money out of the Public Treasury and not out of their trust funds. The council feels and insists that it has already paid out of its trust funds far more money than would have been sufficient to have administered this estate. Nearly 50 per cent of the entire proceeds received from the sale of property of the Chippewa Indians has gone into administrative expenses.

Mr. MERITT. Now, Mr. Chairman, we deny that.

Mr. BALLINGER. I am going to put the official figures into the record before I get through. Survey after survey has been made up in that country, classification after classification of timber has been made in that country; then years later on account of frauds committed by administrative officers, the work done was all thrown into the scrap heap; that is, it was done over again, and the money was

again taken out of the trust funds of the Indians, or appropriated by Congress and made reimbursable to cover the expenses.

Because of the waste of millions of dollars in the way I have described, the council asks Congress in common fairness to it to defray these remaining expenses out of the Public Treasury. The provision as offered by the bureau, which is supposed to represent the Indians, is not to take it out of the public fund, but to take it out of their trust fund. I hope I have made myself clear upon that point.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you have. Now, Mr. Meritt, what have you to say about that?

Mr. MERITT. The position of the bureau in this matter is simply this, Mr. Chairman: Congress has established the policy of paying administrative expenses for the administration on Indian reservations out of tribal funds where there are large amounts of money in the Treasury to the credit of those Indians. The Chippewa have in the Treasury of the United States at this time more than $6,000,000 and we believe that inasmuch as certain of the Chippewa Indians are asking for the legislation herein, that it is only proper that the usual policy should be pursued, namely, that those funds should come out of the Chippewa funds rather than as a gratuity appropriation out of the Treasury of the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, what have you got to say as to the waste of funds in administrative work?

Mr. MERITT. We deny that absolutely, and we want an opportunity to analyze any figures that Mr. Ballinger may place in the record,. and furnish a true and correct statement of the situation.

In addition to my statement, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ballinger is attempting to establish a precedent here that will enable him to strengthen the claim that the Chippewa Indians will later maintain against the Government, namely, that Congress has not heretofore had authority to appropriate moneys out of the Chippewa funds for administrative expenses. That is one of the contentions that Mr. Ballinger now makes and has made for some time, and if he can get this as a gratuity appropriation it will strengthen his position in asserting that claim against the Government.

The CHAIRMAN. I think that it is very clear to the minds of the committee that a platform or policy is laid out here for the purpose of later on making great claims against the Government for moneys that have been heretofore expended.

Mr. BALLINGER. Mr. Chairman, I want to be absolutely candid. The CHAIRMAN. I think you have stated that several times. Mr. BALLINGER. While that is true, this can not be used in any manner, shape, or form as a basis for such a claim.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not arguing that point.

Mr. BALLINGER. On the other hand, Mr. Chairman, I am perfectly willing that we shall write into this law right here a provision that in lieu of this appropriation out of the Public Treasury no claim resulting from timber frauds shall be brought in any court against the Government.

Mr. HENDERSON. Mr. Chairman, I would not on behalf of the Red Lake Indians be willing to have that substitute made, as I think the whole question can very easily be settled by a liberal provision being