“Immediately subsequent to the removal of the restrictions act of 1908 a veritable Saturnalia of deed-taking from the unrestricted allottees was carried on by the hungry land-buyers, white, red, and black. The man who has secured a prior deed from the now unrestricted allottee had the best chance to secure a new one, and he did so in thousands of cases. Many such had been secured by Senator Owen of Oklahoma, or by his agents for him. There are today pending in these bills 154 so-called cases against him for recovery of Indian lands, most of them involving restricted allottees and many now unrestricted.
“Under the law a deed taken in pursuance of an illegal contract is as void as the illegal contract is; in the absence of a new and completely valid consideration. If the prior deed was invalid, if it was a violation of the restrictions against alienation imposed by an act of Congress and therefore totally and completely void, and if that subsequent deed was in pursuance and in furtherance of that invalid contract, then it is my firm belief that the second deed is as totally and absolutely invalid as the first. Involved in this proposition is necessarily the question of adequacy of consideration. Using the Owen unrestricted cases again solely as an illustration, I do not know whether an adequate consideration was paid or not, though an attempt was made to secure from him the necessary information to determine it, without success. If such was paid, of course, in his, as in all other cases, no further action ought to be taken by the Government. I presented this proposition of law to the Court; the Court said, that may be so, you may be right in the principle of law which you have stated, but the Government itself, the allottee being unrestricted, is without any power to bring a suit on his behalf to have that second deed cancelled. I urged upon the Department an authorization to appeal from the decision of the Court for the reason that a remedy left to the volition of the incompetent allottee is no remedy at all. Up to the time of my ceasing to be connected with the work in Oklahoma, no appeal had been authorized. I do not know why.
“A word in conclusion. It seems evident that there has been of late, upon the part of the Washington departments dealing with Indian affairs, a susceptibility to political influence in connection with Indian matters. I want to lift my voice in emphatic protest against the introduction of the spoils system into Indian activities. As an illustration: Mr. Mott, than whom there was no more faithful servant of the Indian people, and who has accomplished wonders in their behalf in the matter of minors’ estates, was removed; he was replaced by Judge Allen as counsel for the Creek tribe of Indians. At the time, there were in the litigation I conducted some sixty odd cases to cancel deeds taken by him personally, or by a company in which he was interested, from members of the Creek tribe of which he was appointed counsel. Mr. Owen, the United States Senator, as I have said before, is involved in some 154 cases, covering full-blood and mixed-blood lands, taken from the Cherokee people. In charge of the litigation has been placed an official commonly reputed to be a personal appointee of Senator Owen, the United States attorney who was at one time himself a defendant in the suits. I do not mean by this to imply that any one, or all of these gentlemen, have not or will not accomplish much good for these people, but I do wish to contend most emphatically for the utmost singleness of purpose and freedom from all possible entanglements which might even unconsciously warp judgment in the men selected to deal with these and all Indian matters. I cite these illustrations, not for the purpose of striking at anybody in high places. It is farthest from my thoughts and I sincerely wish for them all the highest degree of success in their efforts in behalf of the Indian. What I have said with reference to them is true to an all too great degree among many other men of prominence in Oklahoma. I wish to repeat that there should be selected in connection with the litigation, in connection with all Indian affairs in the State of Oklahoma, men absolutely free from all suspicion of influence, of any kind, in order that their efforts and their work may be devoted, singly and solely, to that which will benefit the Indian allottee; and in this connection I want to say, too, that no man ever had associated with him in public work a more loyal, efficient and devoted set of men than it has been my privilege to have had in the years of my activity in Indian matters in Oklahoma. I am not among those who decry the people of the State of Oklahoma as a whole; I have lived among that people for a period of six years; I have learned to love and respect them, and to admire their enterprise and spirit of progress amid necessarily adverse circumstances, not a little of which was caused by the work I was engaged in, necessary as I believe it was.
“Arouse the citizenship of Oklahoma as you would the citizens of the State of New York or of my own State of Massachusetts, and you will find that it is composed of the same class and type of men, ready to respond at once to the call of duty to suppress wrong.
“That there exists the other class is beyond question, just as it exists elsewhere. The existence of the conditions which called forth the litigation is proof of this; but, mark you, since the institution of these suits, and as a consequence thereof, because of the work of the Commissioner to the Five Civilized Tribes and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the administration of their offices and in connection with these suits, a much better feeling has existed among the citizens of Oklahoma, and today you will find that except among such as have heretofore taken widespread and universally of these lands and are therefore interested personally, there are many who deprecate the wrongs as much as you or I.
“Another wrong impression I want to attempt to correct. In consequence of the litigation and other causes among them, too much generality in the discussion of these matters, statements have been made that titles in eastern Oklahoma are unsafe. Based upon my years of experience in connection with this work, necessitating the reviewing of more titles probably than ordinarily falls to the lot of any one man, I confidently make the assertion that nowhere in the United States can there be found any better titles than those in eastern Oklahoma once they have been properly acquired.”
AN OJIBWA WOMAN DYING OF CONSUMPTION
After hearing her story, I drew an affidavit containing her testimony, to the effect that she was swindled out of $20,000 worth of property, and left to die in poverty. Unable to sit up, she requested that I take her hand and affix her thumb print to the paper. The photograph was taken in a room where the light was very poor, and it has been necessary to redraw it. March 1909, Pine Point. Minn.