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CHIEF PLENTY COUPS (CROW) ADDRESSING THE LAST GREAT INDIAN COUNCIL, VALLEY OF THE LITTLE BIG HORN, MONTANA

In Governing the Indian, Use the Indian!

BY JOHN M. OSKISON
(Cherokee)

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NE of my fellow tribesmen, now a member of Congress from Oklahoma, helped me to form my ideas of the ability of the Indian to understand his own problems, and to fight effectively for their right solution. He was the attorney of my people in the days when the Dawes Commission were at work on the complicated business of settling the affairs of the Five Tribes.

I was very young then, and "Bill" Hastings was no graybeard either, having arrived at about the age of twentyeight. I remember with something of a thrill the curt, pouncing manner of the young Cherokee attorney. In the particular session I remember, Hastings was fighting the claims of certain descendants of negro slaves owned by Cherokees, and he was battering down the structure of proof reared by the negro claimants'

white attorney. There was a certain cool, sarcastic quality in the Cherokee attorney's questions and comments, the assured manner of the man who knows exactly what he is talking about and is out to puncture the other fellow's vague claims and theories. So far as I could see, the fact that Hastings was an Indian created no prejudice in the minds of those white men who were sitting to hear the arguments.

A good while I carried that impression. Then I began to come in contact with young and educated Indians of other tribes, who told me that at home, on their reservations, they were merely subjects of the white man put there by the government to administer Indian affairs. They had no standing, no voice, no influence,-unless they chose to follow unquestioningly the policy of the agent or superintendent. Usually, these young men and young women had specific proof of incompetence or graft in certain features of reservation administra

tion, not difficult to find in view of the miscellaneous character of the men sent out to take charge. But they found it difficult to get a hearing anywhere.

My new Indian friends opened up to me another vision of the Indian from that I had known. To me, Hastings, university trained, fighting before white men for the interests of his tribe, seemed perfectly logical. I had been told that the legislature of my tribe as early as 1819, a quarter of a century before any such laws were enacted by the whites, had prohibited traffic in liquor. Of course, the Indians knew their own problems! I have had to give up much of my early pride in the work done for Indians by Indians; what has been true of my own tribe is not typical of the reservations. There has been a thirtythree-year period

shape of government, and he tried to give that system of regulations and that theory of industrial organization to the Indians under his jurisdiction.

The political agent has seldom been in sympathy with the Indians. Unlike the agent working under the stimulus of missionary zeal, he has regarded his exile to the reservation as a real hardship. So he tackled his job in a spirit of "let me - alone-ifyou-don't-want-toget-into trouble!" Such was the attitude of the average honest agent after 1883. Of course, the grafter was even more intent upon getting into his own hands control of all reservation activities. So, the old men and women who used to exercise authority over the practical affairs of their people, and guide their moral development, were shoved into the background,-into a permanent obscurity. Councils continued, but more and more they were spoken of by the agents as long-winded, time-killing, powwows. Almost any Commissioner of Indian Affairs, after six months in the office at Washington, felt qualified to act on any reservation as a wise representative of the "Great Father." Of necessity, he had to back the authority of his agents,

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JOHN M. OSKISON

of suppression which has done infinite harm to the theory of Indian leadership. It began about 1883, when Grant's policy of placing the agencies under missionary control was abandoned in favor of the spoils system. Under the guidance of church workers, the reservation Indian was encouraged, not merely to become a religious leader, but also a leader in the industrial education of his people. Missions could grow fastest when they could count upon active help from those men and women who were natural leaders.

However, it was no system for the spoilsman agent! He was a politician, ignorant of Indian government methods. He knew what a white community of the size of the reservation over which he was given control would expect in the

and that meant stilling the voices of those Indian leaders who dared to disagree with the agent's policy.

True enough, tribes continued to send delegations to Washington, and the President heard them. But what could he do except to refer their bill of complaint to the Indian Commissioner with instruction to look into it? What could the Commissioner do except to refer it

to his appointed agents and inspectors? And finally what could they do except to insist that their original acts or policies were best for the Indians?

Old-time Indian leadership and wisdom fell under the ban along with long hair and the shoulder blanket.

It has been forty-five years since General Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian who had been on Grant's staff and acted as his secretary in the Civil War, left the office of Commissioner of Indian Affairs. No one of Indian blood has since been found worthy to hold that office! The roll of Indians chosen to fill subordinate positions of responsibility in the service is pitifully short.

Yet education has gone forward,through many mission schools, through government reservation schools and such outside institutions as Carlisle, Haskell, Hampton, and Sherman Institute. A large number of young men and women of Indian blood have departed from the reservations to pursue college and technical courses. They have become able professional men and women in the large cities of the country. When I go to the annual meeting of the Society of American Indians (organized to bring such as they into co-operation) I meet them from about every corner of our country, except the reservations.

This is not written merely as a lament over lost opportunities. I suppose most readers are fairly familiar with the theory that Indian affairs in this country have been badly managed; and they do not lack knowledge of the evidence. What I want to say now is, that there is yet time to revise our theory.

In the states of Arizona, New Mexico, California, South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho, and Washington are some 128,000 of the least advanced of our Indians. Thus 95 per cent of Arizona's 30,000 Navajos, Apaches, Pimas, Papagos, and smaller groups are full-bloods; of New Mexico's 21,000 the percentage is 99; about 13,500 of South Dakota's 19,000 are full-bloods; while in Nevada and Idaho the proportions are 87 per cent and 84 per cent. Here live our real "problems;" the purestrain Indians who do not talk English, whose education is hardly started, who

are still vague about the meaning of white civilization.

In such tribes as these you may find survivors of the old generation of leaders, mature people upon whom the hand of the agent has as yet fallen only lightly. If you want to know about the government of the vital affairs of the Navajos, go back into the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, not to the office of the superintendent! So, with the Apaches. So, with the Oglala and Teton Sioux of South Dakota, the Utes of Colorado and Utah, the Assiniboin, Cheyenne, Crow, and Piegan tribes of Montana.

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These people have a long march ahead, many years of effort to understand white government, of difficult adaptation to white civilization. Consult any recent report of the Indian Bureau to get an idea of what bewildering questions of irrigation, assisted stock raising, leasing, school administration, timber utilization, modern farming, are being thrust upon them for action. And the multitude of problems affecting the personal life of the families.

One would think that our government would bid eagerly for the help of the old people in these tribes; try by every means to make them allies, give them as full measure of responsibility during the transition time as they could be induced to shoulder. One would suppose that the few young Indians from those tribes who have had training in the higher nonreservation schools and in the white man's colleges would be drafted into the service and set to work.

They are not. The few exceptions. may be listed on the back of an envelop.

I recall the talk of an enlightened member of the Board of Indian Commissioners (an unpaid body of men established by President Grant to act as advisers to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but with no administrative authority) some years ago. I refer to it here to illustrate the waste of ability under our thirty-three-year-old system of Indian management.

Dr. Gates had made a trip from his home in Massachusetts across the country to California; and on his way back (as a representative of the Board of Indian

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