FEE PATENTS TO INDIANS.

During the fiscal year 2,500 applications for fee patents have been received, of which 297 were denied and 2,203 approved, involving an area of 275,553 acres, valued at approximately $5,000,000. Of the fee patent applications approved, 576 were full blood Indian allottees and 1,627 mixed bloods. Under the new policy and a broadening of its application to requests for fee patents it is estimated that several thousand fee patents will be issued to competent Indians.

COMPETENCY COMMISSIONS.

During the fiscal year competency commissions have investigated the qualifications of Indian allottees to manage their own affairs on the following Indian reservations: Cheyenne and Arapaho, Crow, Crow Creek, Devils Lake, Kickapoo, Lower Brule, Oneida, Sac and Fox, Seneca, Shawnee, and Sisseton. These commissions are composed of men who are well qualified for the work and who have had long experience in the Indian Service. Numerous fee patents, involving an area of about 50,000 acres of land, have been issued on the recommendation of these commissions.

FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES.

The area of the Five Civilized Tribes was 19,525,966 acres of unallotted lands, of which 15,794,238 acres have been allotted to enrolled members, 3,130,129 acres not needed for allotment, have been sold as surplus unallotted lands at public auction to the highest bidder for over $17,000,000, while 139,284 acres were reserved from sale and set aside for town sites, railroad rights of way, churches, courthouses, schools, cemeteries, etc., leaving remaining unsold 458,937 acres in Choctaw Nation, 721 acres in Chickasaw Nation, none in Cherokee Nation, 2,495 acres in the Creek Nation, and 162 acres in Seminole Nation. The Choctaw and Chickasaw tribal unsold lands will be offered for sale at public auction to the highest bidder from October 15 to 31, 1917, to be followed on November 19 by a sale of the remaining unsold Creek tribal lands.

In volume of business transacted by the office of the superintendent for the Five Civilized Tribes, the fiscal year 1917 surpasses all previous years. One million pieces of mail and $42,000,000 were handled. One hundred and eighty houses and barns were erected at a cost of $126,492.11; 2,042.25 acres of land were bought for homes costing $52,437.10; 489,076.62 acres of tribal and allotted lands were sold for $2,190,293.13; $1,741,550 were invested for individual Indians in Liberty loan bonds; $7,500 were invested in other loans and pur

18924°-INT 1917-VOL 2- -4

chases; $7,429,066.10 were disbursed on account of per capita payments to the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles; 2,328 leases for various purposes were approved, and 1,252 canceled; the restriction against alienation of land was removed from 155,428.39 acres and $4,407,909.62 were collected on account of royalties arising from leases, not to mention 16,000 separate accounts, maintenance payments, thousands of investigations, reports and miscellaneous

matters.

The Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma now number 101,506 enrolled members, tabulated as to tribes as follows:

1 This indicates the total number of citizens of the restricted class whose names appear on the approved roll. It is estimated that during the year the restrictions have been unconditionally removed from 2,286 persons by the Secretary of the Interior or by death. The approximate number of restricted citizens who have had the restrictions removed from their entire allotments by the Secretary of the Interior and by death is 12,000, leaving 25,167 restricted Indians June 30, 1917.

This total is 13 less than shown by the report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1916, it having been found that this number of persons whose names appear on the approved Creek rolls were not entitled to enrollment and notations to that effect have been placed on the roll opposite their names by departmental authority.

PROBATE WORK IN OKLAHOMA.

The volume and importance of the work accomplished during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1917, by the corps of probate attorneys, stationed in that part of Oklahoma comprising the former Five Civilized Tribes, can only be fully appreciated by those who are familiar with conditions obtaining there; and this year, as in the past, these men have demonstrated, in no uncertain manner, the value of their work and have justified, by actual results, the establishment of this arm of the Indian Service.

The establishment of such a force followed as a necessary corollary the allotment of the lands and other property of these Indians among the one hundred and one thousand persons who were enrolled as members and freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, for it was inevitable that the personnel of that body of persons should be entirely changed, within a few short years, by the passing of the old and the substitution of a new generation. With this change, which is now being rapidly accomplished, has come a host of per

sons who have succeeded to the original Indian estates, but who, although owners thereof, are not protected by the safeguards that were thrown about their predecessors in interest.

It therefore became necessary to protect this new class of Indian property holders in an entirely new way and to invoke a new machinery of law and a different forum, to wit, the probate court, as a means of continuing the fostering care of the Government over those members of the Indian race who are still dependent. The United States could appear in this forum only by its attorneys, and hence the establishment of the corps of legal representatives which uniformly and systematically operates, for the benefit of Indian citizens, by the authority of the United States and the cooperation of the State of Oklahoma, in the 40 counties embracing the great domain formerly known as the Indian Territory.

It is impossible to state in a brief space all things actually accomplished by the probate attorneys, but the fact that there are nearly 45,000 probate cases now on the dockets of the county courts of eastern Oklahoma affords some measure of the volume of the work. The work during the last fiscal year shows the determined efforts of the probate attorneys to put each on a sound basis and to correct abuses generally. In doing so they have, within the past year, participated in numerous criminal actions and civil suits on behalf of Indian citizens, the civil suits involving property valued at upward of $474,000.

During the year a total of 4,470 citations were issued by the probate attorneys to delinquent guardians, which resulted in the removal or discharge of 1,762 of such guardians and the filing of 2,935 new bonds, amounting to $3,331,693.

Of the tangible results, most readily appreciable, are the accomplishment of preventing losses in the amount of $1,514,314 during the last fiscal year that would have befallen Indians but for the efforts of the probate attorneys, which is exceeded, however, by the amounts conserved for them through bank deposits and investments aggregating, for the same period, $3,424,226.

The scope of the year's work of these attorneys, and the character and quantity thereof, may be comprehended at a glance from the following summary of results:

SALE OF REMAINING UNALLOTTED CHOCTAW AND CHICKASAW TRIBAL LANDS.

Under the regulations governing the next sale of unallotted Choctaw and Chickasaw tribal lands, including the timber land and the surface of the segregated coal and asphalt land, including townsites established on said surface, a sale of these lands at public auction to the highest bidder will commence at Hugo, Okla., on October 15, and concluding at Ardmore, Okla., on October 31, 1917. The timber lands and surface of the segregated coal and asphalt lands classified as suitable for townsite purposes will be sold on the deferred payment plan as heretofore, but the surface of the segregated coal and asphalt land area classified as agricultural and grazing will be sold for cash in accordance with Section 4 of the act of Congress approved February 19, 1912 (authorizing the sale of such surface), without regard to the appraised value thereof, two years having expired since the lands were first offered for sale from November 16 to December 2, 1914.

The most valuable agricultural lands, consisting of 25,910 acres, to be sold are practically all located in Haskell County, while the timber lands are located in McCurtain, Pushmataha, Le Flore, and Latimer Counties, there being 141,126 acres in McCurtain County, 107,083 acres in Pushmataha County, 119,450 acres in Le Flore, and 51,500 acres in Latimer County yet to be sold. These timber lands averaged at the last sale held from October 4 to 31, 1916, $3.36 per acre, and the agricultural lands averaged $9.15 per acre.

Steps will be taken as soon as practicable to sell the remaining unsold Creek tribal lands consisting of a little over 2,000 acres, and Creek town lots in Muskogee and Tulsa, recovered as a result of Creek town-lot suits, and the old Creek capitol building site at Okmulgee, Okla., which occupies a square in the center of that city, for the disposal of which several propositions have been advanced, as the

preservation of the old Creek capitol building which was the Creek council house, as a Creek National Museum, to be purchased by the United States for the Creek Tribe for that purpose, to give Okmulgee County preferential right to purchase the old capitol building site with improvements for a courthouse, at the appraised value (about $60,000), or to have Congress purchase the site for a post-office building for Federal purposes.

ESTATES OF DECEASED INDIANS.

Not only does the United States follow the Indian with watchful care during his life, but after his death distributes his estate, in accordance with the laws of Congress and the regulations of the Department of the Interior in pursuance of these laws.

In former days, before the present really hopeful spirit of understanding and sympathy existed between the white man and the Indian, it used to be commonly and flippantly remarked that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." The Indian Office can see no distinction as to goodness between living Indians and those who have passed on; it does note, however, in a very large proportion of the cases in which it undertakes the distribution of the estate of a deceased Indian, that he has during his lifetime undertaken and generously fulfilled heavy responsibilities toward relatives, adopted children, or other dependents, who may or may not be claimants to his estate after his death.

In the determination of heirs to Indian estates, the department occupies the position of a probate court, and operates under regulations as to notice and hearing, etc., very much as would such a court. In the consideration of wills made by Indians, however, the department acts also as a guardian of the Indian and his estate, the law making the approval of the Secretary a condition precedent to the validity of such wills, and providing that such approval (or disapproval) may be given either during the life or after the death of the testator. The circumstances of many individual cases have made this method of procedure appear to be the only adequate one. The fact that during the past year a considerable number of wills (49, or 28.5 per cent of the entire number acted upon) was disapproved, shows the importance of the discretionary power in this respect vested in the Secretary of the Interior. The total number of wills approved was 123, exclusive of Osage wills, which receive consideration under a law applicable to them alone and for the approval of which no fee is collected.

The total number of estates which were the subject of final determination during the year ending June 30, 1917, was 2,851. On 2,608, or 91.4 per cent of these, a $15 fee for such determination was collected, the total amount of such fees being $39,120. Of the 172