Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-12-06
oKLAHoMA's sEAMY SIDE
State Is the Theater of Most Amazing
 Drama of Exploitation

! For almost twenty years Oklahoma has been in process of settlement by inn migrants hailing from other American states, moved by the common impulse that peoples new territory in our day
 -the impulse of the thrifty to "get in early" on a paying proposition. There was no element of true greatness of spirit in the settlement; the boldness and daring, the deep-rooted courage of the earlier pioneer struggle was want ing; this migration was a business ad- venture, and nothing more. Don be misled by the appearances of that much talked-of constitution. Tom, Dick and Harry, Claude and Clarence didn t fash ion the fabric or devise the frills of that constitution. It's enough to say now that these Oklahomans are neither more nor less in their makeup than fair-to- middling Americans. There s absolutely nothing extraordinary in them; they are measurable by the common, everyday standards. One needn't have gone to Oklahoma to "size them up. Any average American neighborhood is ruled by the same type of citizenship.
 But hat 's not the case in Indian Ter ritory, which forms the eastern part of the new state. Here is the home of the Five Civilized Tribes; and here is the theater for the most amazing drama of exploitation in which the Five Tribes have been unwilling actors. No average Americans could have played the lead ing parts in this performance. One was justified in expecting to find an extra ordinary strain of character among the white folk of Indian Territory. That s what l was looking for, and that s what I found. These townspeople are in a class by themselves, having mighty lit tie in common with any average. l had | a notion that they would bear a careful separate study-and they did.
 For a generation these Indians have been mere counters in game of grab, whose shameless wantonness has rarely been equaled. Their possessions landed and otherwise, have been surprisingly rich; their territory is a garden spot, and beneath the fruitful soil lie vast treasures in coal, oil and gas. It is one of the miracles of "get rich quick v age that the tribesmen have not long since been stripped clean of their her itage, as their grethren have been on every side. But somehow they have escaped the extreme of the general pill laging of tn reservations.
 E, Al l.. .f ing spirit on the part of the looters of the frontier The dry-as-dust official 1 literature of the Government printing office tells a sordid story of knavery that has been carried out, sometimes in insolent defiance of the law s ministers, and sometimes with their active favor and assistance. Grazing lease grabs, coal leases, and what not thieveries of like form have marked this territory for their own through a long dreary string of years. "Move on!' has been spoken effectively to other Indian tribes whose holdings were coveted. The Rose bud Sioux, the Shoshones of Wyoming and the hapIess Utes are recent cases in point. But the Five Civilized Tribes have kept nominal hold upon their own, up to the day of the dignity of state hood The leasing deals, though, have returned to the Indians only tiny fraction of the profits made by the ex- ploiters. Unable to steal the lands themselves, these birds of prey have had to be satisfied perforce with steal ing the fruits Stealing" is just the right word. Occasional official sane tion doesn't change the fact. Taking something for nothing from an ignor- ant, helpless people is stealing. That s what the pale-faeed hawks and buzzards of Indian Territory have been doing this long time.-Boston Transcript