As the Big Sioux valley is noted for its fertility, it was not long before the rest of the land was taken up by white farmers. These Indians proved good neighbors. It is told of them that, during the hard years 1873 to 1875, when drought and grasshoppers afflicted the land, they organized a relief society for the benefit of their poorer white neighbors, and in many instances furnished them with cordwood as well as seed-corn and potatoes.
For years the Flandreau Sioux controlled the politics of Moody County, and although after the district had become more thickly settled they lost their numerical preponderance, they still wielded much influence in years when the parties were pretty equally divided. As late as 1898 they held the balance of power, and were accordingly treated with respectful consideration.
From this little Indian community more than one earnest youth has gone forth to work for race and country in a wider field. My father brought me there from wild life in Canada in 1872, and after two years in the little day school he sent me away to master the secret of the white man's power. Only a few years earlier he himself was a wild Sioux warrior, whose ambitions ran wholly along the traditional lines of his people. Who can say that civilization is beyond the reach of the untutored primitive man in a single generation? It did not take my father two thousand years, or ten years, to grasp its essential features; and although he never went to school a day in his life, he lived a broad-minded and self-respecting citizen. It took me about fifteen years to prepare to enter it on the plane of a professional man, and I have stayed with it ever since.
It is noticeable that when the Flandreaus consented to reënter their names on the tribal rolls in order to regain their inheritance, they fell into the claws of the professional politicians, and a degree of demoralization set in. Yet during the early period of free initiative and self-development, some of their best youth had gone out and are now lost in the world at large, in the sense that they are wholly separated from their former life, and are contributing their mite to the common good. Those who remain, as well as other bands of citizen Sioux with whom I am acquainted, are becoming more and more completely identified with the general farming population of Nebraska and the Dakotas.
LEGAL STATUS OF INDIANS
The door to American citizenship has been open to the Indian in general only since the passage of the Dawes severalty act, in 1887. Before that date his status was variously defined as that of a member of an independent foreign nation, of a "domestic dependent nation," as a ward of the Government, or, as some one has wittily said, a "perpetual inhabitant with diminutive rights." The Dawes act conferred upon those who accepted allotments of land in severalty the protection of the courts and all the rights of citizenship, including the suffrage. It also provided that the land thus patented to the individual Indian could not be alienated nor was it taxable for a period of twenty-five years from the date of allotment.
Of the 330,000 Indians in the United States, considerably more than half are now allotted, and 70,000 hold patents in fee. The latest report of the Indian Bureau gives the total number of Indian citizens at about 75,000. Those still living on communal land are being allotted at the rate of about 5,000 a year. The question of taxation of allotments has been a vexed one. Some Indians have hesitated to accept full citizenship because of fear of taxation; while white men living in the vicinity of large Indian holdings have naturally objected to shouldering the entire burden. Yet as the last census shows 73 per cent. of all Indians as taxed and counted toward the population of their Congressional districts, it appears that taxed or taxable Indians are not necessarily citizens; though they must be considered, in the words of Prof. F. A. McKenzie, who compiled the Indian census, as at least "potential citizens."
The so-called "Burke bill" (1906) provides that Indians allotted after that date shall not be declared citizens until after the expiration of the twenty-five-year trust period. This act has served no particular purpose except to further confuse the status of the Indian. The "Carter code bill," now pending in Congress, provides for a commission of experts to codify existing statutes and define this status clearly, and has been strongly endorsed by the Society of American Indians and the Indian Rights Association. It ought to be made law.
There is a special law under which an Indian may apply to be freed from guardianship by proving his ability to manage his own affairs. If his application is approved by the Interior Department, he may then rent or sell his property at will. About five hundred such applications were approved during the fiscal year 1912-13.
The Pueblos and a few other Indians are or may become citizens under special treaty stipulations. The 5,000 New York Indians, although among those longest in contact with civilization, yet because of state treaties and the claims of the Ogden Land Company, still hold their lands in common, and are backward morally and socially. It is likely that the United States will eventually pay the company's claim of $200,000 to free these people. A few of them are well educated and have attained citizenship as individuals by separating themselves from their tribe. Professor McKenzie, who has deeply studied the situation for years, proposes a scheme of progressive advance toward full citizenship, each step to be accompanied by decreasing paternal control: as, for instance: (1) Tribal ward; (2) Allotted ward; (3) Citizen ward; (4) Full citizen.