The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-28
OKLAHOMA GRAFT
 DEATH ID INDIAN Some Day Will Be State Full
 of Poorhou8es RED MAN ILL TREATED Has Been Driven From Pillar to Post For a Century and Now Faces
 Poverty and Final
 Determination.
RED MAN ILL TREATED

Pending federal court decisions on the indictments of Gov. c. N. Haskell and Senator R. l.. Owen for alleged conspir- acy in an Oklahoma land-grabbing deal and the settlement of twenty-odd thou sand other cases, each bearing on some fraud against the red man, special time liness and importance attaches to an ar ticle on the Last Stand of the Indian." by Emerson Hough in Hamptons Maga- zine for April. Mir. Hough was in Okla homa making a study of the Indian prob lem when Governor Haskell and Senator Owen were indicted. In a scathing ar raignment of the whites for their shame less pilaging in Oklahoma, the article reviews the story of the Indian since the time of Lewis and Clark.
 'fWhen cases of squatter occupancy on Indian lands, or Indian claims on treaty land, came before Clark, our first Indian commissioner" says Mr. Hough, ''he stood for a square deal-and justice even to the Indian. The white man came to hate Clark because of his hon esty and few of them chose to abide by his decisions He gained the confidence of the Indians, and no one of them was ever known to appeal from his de- cision.
 "In 1915 all these despairing Indians concluded to go to St. Louis and ask the Red-Headed Chief, as Clark was called, what was best for them to do This was one of our greatest Indian councils. It was the real foundation of these Indian law suits which are now going on down in Oklahoma.
 Sine 17s9 the United States had tried eight distinct policies upon him and it has been small wonder if he has been confused. First his tribes were treated as independent nations. Next came the trading post scheme; then the war idea with the war department as guardian, to be superseded, in 1849, by the interior department. As fifth move the red men in each state or ter ritory were organized (until President Grant abolished the system in 1S69) un- der a superntendency, with, generally, the commonwealth's governor for super intendent. That was followed by the reservation plan which fell before the constant demand for more land by pros pective white settlers, and this was final ly superseded by theory that the h. dian could be made into a farmer-im- plements, seed. clothing and rations be- ing issued to each red man. Then, as an eighth and last resort, we fall back upon the idea of education.
 There may be some in the benghted east who fancy the Indians of Oklahoma to be beaded and blanl<eted hewers of wood and drawers of water, but as matter of fact the term Indian does not mean real Indian today. Black blood Is not socially received in any spart of the United States today but Indian blood constitutes no social disaualifications; rather to the contrary, speaking at least for this part of the country; because each Indian man, woman and child, has l farm, and many of the farms have rich 1 oil wells and coal mines on them now.
 ''Yet no full-blood Indian ever under stood any such things as individual own ershp of land. That being so, and the Indian always being sure that there was more land somewhere else he was ever ready to sell his own little-valued title | to the soil to as many different men as would offer him the price. The result is that In parts of Oklahoma the ground has been owned or claimed by England, France, Spain, Texas and the United States: has been sacredly conveyed by our government to Indians more than once, and has been sold by the Indians them selves, under the severalty act. With this in mind it Is easier to understand the cunning which framed that national law under which the Dawes commission began it's task of alloting the Indian lands In Oklahoma; for it is under the iniquitous administration of that act, and when fol- lowing and strengthening it, that there | has been perpetrated series of deeds, ] large and little, which for ingenuity sur i pass anything that has come under re- cent observation"
 As a result the Oklahoma of the future will have to provide poorhouses for about 100000 Indians.