The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-11-30
SCORE IT GOOD.
Cherokee Nation Roasted by
Dawes Commission.
Power of the Chief is Too
Great, Report Says.
GROSS INJUSTICE.
White Settlers Entirely at the
Chiefs Mercy.
No Regard Paid to Personal or
Political Rights.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3O.-The Dawes
commission, in its report of failure to
do anything with the Five Civilized
Tribes, pounces upon the Cherokee
Nation on the intruder question. The
report says that the chief of the nation
has control of citizenship of the ma
ton and that often he will claim a
white man is citizen so that he can
not be reached by the United States
courts, and then he can turn the song
and work it just the opposite.
the report continues: 1.-THE 'in-
truders' rolf is being manipulated in
the same way. This 'intruders' roll is
the list of persons whose claim to citi-
zenship is denied by the nation and
who by the agreement in the purchase
of the Cherokee Strip the United
States is to remove from the territory
by the 1st of January next. This roll
is now being prepared for that pur-
pose by the Cherokee authorities in a
manner most surprising and shocking
to every sense of justice, and in disre-
gard of the plainest principles of law.
The chief assumes to have authority
to designate the names to be put
are, by his order, without hearing or
notice. transferred from the citizens
roll to that of intruders, so that, on
January 1, 1896, the United States will
be called upon to remove from the ter
ritorv, by force if need be, thousands
of residents substantially selected for
that purpose by the chief of the ma
ton.
st has been made clear to the com
mission that the grossest injustice and
fraud characterize this roll. Persons
whose names have been upon the citi-
zens' roll by the judicial decree of the
tribunal established by law for that
purpose for many years, some of them
for twenty years or more, persons who
have enjoyed all the rights of citizens,
unquestioned by any one until dis
tribution per capita of Strip money,
have been by the mere designation
of the chief stricken from the citizens
roll and put upon that of intruders
with notice to quit before January
next. Children of such parents born
in the nation, now of age, with fam
lilies and homes of their own, are re-
ceiving this notice to leave forever all
they have earned; and the homes they
have built for themselves, and this at
the will of the chief alone. If the
United States government removes
such persons, it viii become partic-
ipant in this fraud and injustice, for
which ignorance alone can find any
excuse. The commission feels it a
duty to call attention to these facts,
and invoke the direct intervention of
the government to prevent the con-
summation of this great wrong.
These remarks apply specially to
the Cherokee nation, with which the
United States has recently entered
into obligations in respect to in
truders, but much of what is here
said is applicable also to the condition
of affairs in the other nations. In
these nations many persons coming to
the Territory by invitation of the gov
| ernments themselves, or under the
provisions of the laws enacted by
them, and acquiring citizenship, with
homes and property, in conformity to
such laws, have been, in many in
stances, stricken from the rolls of
citizenship by those in power, for
political and personal purposes, and
| laws enacted and other means re-
! sorted to to deprive them of the
homes and property acquired.
The commission is of the opinion
! that If citizenship is left without con-
troll or supervision to the absolute de-
termination OF the tribal authorities
greatest injustice will be perpetra ted
and many good and lava biding citi-
zens reduced to beggary."
1t is believed this expression on the
part of the commission will prevent
the administration from carrying out
the law as passed in the Strip legisla-
| ton and should the Cherokee Nation
authorities attempt to GUST the in
truders, the United States will inter
fere and hold up proceedings. 1t is
proposed to hold up executing this
law ahd allow it to fall in with the
general legislation proposed to break
up the whole condition of affairs in
that country.
The Secretary of the Interior sug-
gestively observed in his report a
reference to the commissions: The
members of the commission have been
ordered to their homes and directed to
hold themselves in readiness to appear
before the House aud Senate com.
mittee on Indian affairs as soon as
they are organized" This is construed
as meaning that the commission will
be employed during the session il
directing legislation in that country.