Recommendations
Except a few persons, everybody agrees that affairs in Oklahoma are in a bad shape. The Indian Office is doing all that it can through Mr. Sells’ attorneys to bring about desired reforms and protection, but it is exceedingly slow work. We must adopt Miss Barnard’s plan if we desire to save the remaining Indian peoples in Oklahoma. That is, briefly, to arouse the conscience in hundreds of thousands of good citizens in Oklahoma and persuade them to take a firm stand against further despoilation of Indians. The grafters, through their newspapers, have exerted an influence out of all proportion to their strength. They have dominated in Oklahoma. They have even subsidized. One of the newspapers which attacked Hon. George Vaux, Jr., and afterwards was very bitter toward Mr. Mott and myself, received thousands of dollars from an Indian minor child’s estate. This money was used to boom a political journal.
All who would save the Indian must stimulate the better class of citizens into action. Attacking grafters, is not bringing into discredit the good name of a great State. I mention this because the grafters raise the cry of State persecution. They do not, however, deny the pauperizing of Indians, or the 30,000 specific cases of fraud. Miss Barnard well answers critics with the statement that we are merely attacking forces of evil. The people of Oklahoma themselves can solve the problem promptly and satisfactorily, if they will assert their rights. All the protection and publicity, and legal procedures in the world will not save the Oklahoma Indians, if the better class of citizens (the great majority) do not take a firm stand for right and justice. The ministers, Miss Barnard claims, are already beginning to preach sermons against graft—all of which indicates a trend of healthy public opinion.
Mr. Foreman, who has worked along the same lines as Department of Justice officials, Miss Barnard and Mr. Kelsey, and has been associated with Mr. Mott, takes a rather gloomy view. I present his paragraphs herewith:
“In a few short years, Congress has removed the restrictions on the sale of nearly 70 per cent of the 100,000 Indians of the tribes—on all but the full-bloods. The inevitable has overtaken these mixed-bloods from whom Congress released its protecting supervision, and probably not one in ten of them retains even a considerable part of his original allotment of land.
“The experiment of turning these mixed-blood Indians loose has been a lamentable mistake. But at least some good should be extracted from it. The lesson should be employed to emphasize the need for protection of the full-blood. The mixed-blood as a land owner is no more. He is gone and there is practically nothing to be done for his class except in the protection of his minor children.
“But the full-blood still has his land, for his restrictions have never been released. There is no obligation to these Indians so commanding as the duty of seeing to it that they are protected in their property; this means that the restrictions against the sale of their lands must not be relaxed except under the supervision of the Interior Department. To permit them to sell their lands without this protection would expose them to their own inexperience and improvidence, to the cunning of the shameless horde of white land grafters.
“It was claimed that at least the mixed-bloods are competent to handle their property, and developments have shown the fallacy of that claim. Many of the full-bloods are but little more fortunate. Totally unprepared they have had thrust upon them individual ownership of their lands. In 1906 Congress provided that full-blood Indians might sell lands inherited from deceased relatives. As the rate of mortality is high among these people, there are many such inheritances and many such sales have been made. In a great number of instances they have been swindled out of their inheritances for a pittance.
“Congress unwisely permitted these full-bloods to lease most of their land for five years without supervision. Thousands of them were induced by white speculators to lease their land, including their homes and little cultivated farms which were capable of making them comfortable. Inexperienced in such transactions, they gave the white man their home for five years for little or nothing, the consideration depending on the extent of fraud practiced on them. The speculator in turn sublets the land to a renter and makes a handsome profit on the transaction. The Indian was then forced to move on the land of a relative, or into the hills on unimproved land, with practically nothing to sustain his family. In many cases only the first year’s rent is paid the Indian and the lessee refuses to pay more. The Indian in his helplessness knows no remedy and suffers almost a total loss of the consideration agreed upon. This situation is particularly distressing in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations.
“These leases are extended by methods which the mind of the Indian cannot comprehend, and once out of possession it is practically impossible for the Indian to get his land back. When the restrictions are removed from the sale of this class of land, which is looked forward to by the people holding them, they will make the most of their advantage over the Indian, by making it practically impossible for the Indian to get any other buyers than the lessees, who will buy on their own terms. This mean advantage is evidenced now in another way. The Indian Department can sell part of the Indian’s allotment for the Indian’s benefit, but in many cases a sale for an adequate consideration is defeated by the presence of leases often taken by white speculators for no other purpose than to prevent anyone else buying the land, or to demand a heavy tribute for a surrender of the lease.
“The newspapers and the court files of the eastern half of Oklahoma for several years have been filled with the stories of the Indians’ undoing which explains the swift impoverishment of the mixed-blood Indian. If the mixed-bloods could not stand up against this condition, what chance, would the full-bloods have?
“When the hardy pioneer ventured within the domain of the aboriginal proprietors of this country he found himself among what are often described as “hostile” people. It is a strange caprice of fortune that with the coming of the white man’s civilizing influence, the description “hostile” should be shifted from the Indian to the white man, and the submissive red man, remaining upon his own land, should discover himself surrounded by the perils of hostile white people. Perils less bloody but more insidious and relentless; the thirst for blood supplanted by the thirst for the Indian’s property; the Indian’s ambush exchanged for the white man’s ambush of intrigue and deception; conquest of the stout of heart and arm routed by the conquest of the pen and deceit and of the brain befuddled by the devastating alcohol.
“The Indian is groping his way through the dusk of his day upon earth and soon he will pass from our sight and the sound of his footsteps will cease. As he proceeds falteringly, this shred of a great race is comforted by no expressions of good will. The road is rough and the guideposts are far between and hard to read. The only light that would reveal his path to him shines distantly but faithfully. From this light, from the voices and counsels of a few distant friends unselfishly striving for him, comes the only promise of amelioration.”
Miss Barnard’s assistant, Mr. Huston, at Lake Mohonk, dictated to me the following two paragraphs as indicative of the essential things for which the Department of Charities and Corrections is fighting. It must be understood that the second paragraph from the end is not aimed at the Indian Office personnel. It is merely a statement of fact, that the new attorneys labor under disadvantage.
1st. To elect a Legislature pledged to appropriate sufficient funds to make effective the Department of Charities and Corrections,—the only arm of Government, Federal or State, which is clothed with legal authority to intervene in the probate courts of Oklahoma on behalf of Indian minor heirs.
2nd. To enact a law embodying adequate probate procedure. The probate procedure recently agreed to between the probate judges of Oklahoma and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs is substantially the same procedure which was prepared by M. L. Mott and put into effect in five out of the eight counties of the Creek Nation several years previous to the present administration. Mr. Mott had this procedure embodied in a bill which passed the lower house of the Oklahoma Legislature two years ago, but which was defeated through the influence of grafters in the Senate. Mott knew that the probate procedure, depending for its force and effect merely upon the personal agreement of county judges elected by a constituency hostile to the Indians, would be ineffective to protect Indian minors, unless the same had the force of law, and provided adequate penalties for violation of same.
Finally, all good citizens in the United States must rally to the support of those who are making a fight for simple justice and decency in Oklahoma. If the better element in that State is defeated by a combination of oil, coal, gas, timber, land, and asphalt interests, the taxpayers of this country will be called upon to support 100,000 homeless paupers. Nowhere else in the United States are 100,000 citizens to be dispossessed, and if this calamity is permitted to occur, the blackest page in all American history shall have been written. A helpless, a trusting, and a dependent people look to us to keep the final one of all our promises.