The Washington times., 1911-02-20

through secret conduits to the Golfers Of
vast monopolistic interests.
, II have no accusations to lay at the
! doors of members of Congress, of com
lack of understanding is too often en-
tirely responsible. Suppose that a
skilled manipulation sets out to grab
reservation by process which will re-
qutre, three successive amendments to
the law. He gets one in this year.
Next year another comes along. A
Congressman gets suspicious of the pur-
pose. The year afterward the third
amendment is to come in, to complete
the structure. That Congressman may
be watching for the joker, ready to
expose it-and he may not be in Con-
gress when II comes!
Course of Legislation.
"The constitutional course of appro-
priation legislation is that it shall origi-
A nate in the House, go to the Senate,
and finally to conference. This years s
Indian appropriation bill passed the
House December Y, was reported to the
Senate in December, and passed by the
Senate late in January. 1t has been in
conference since, and the current un-
derstanding at the Capitol Is that it will
remain in conference till the very close
of the session, when it will come out, in
the expectation of being adopted in
haste.
When this bill passed the House
there were forty-seven pages of it.
When it passed the Senate there were
fifty-eight. The added material, most of
it new legislation, not originating in the
House, affects many millions of acres
| of Indian land and many millions of
dollars of Indian money.
| THE conference committee has report
! ed a disagreement on some of the I'M
| poTtant items in the bill. The confer
| ence agreed on cutting out some bad
items, which ought to have met that
fate, and indications are that the men
| who are making the fight are going to
| win at least good share of their con-
tentions.
Take a single instance, that of the
! Choctaw and Chickasaw lands in Okla
homa. The conferees have agreed, final
| ly, to strike out the provision relating
| to these. The facts about this case are
| worth careful consideration, in view of
| the determined efforts that have been
made TO force this provision into the
| law.
"A vast area of valuable land, full
of coal, OIL asphalt, stone, etc, belongs
| to these Indians. The coal in these
lands is estimated to be worth from
SO,OO00O to 500, 100000.
Would Go to Trusts.
"Who would have got these immense
lly valuable lands? The State of Okla
homa has tried to get them; the Santa
Fe and Rock Island railroads have
tried, and the Standard Oil interests
and various mining companies supposed
to affiliate with the Standard have been
after them. The point is, that II sold,
they would almost certainly go TO some
private and monopolistic interest, ad-
} t-F. L.. ,f,,rr
control of a coal supply.
| "All the people want the lands sold
so that they may be subjected to taxa
| ton. This land should be so held and
administered as to assure protection of
| the public against combinations to con-
| troll the price of coal, and to give the
Indian owners guarantee against be-
coming public charges.
| LAS soon as this provision Is stricken
| out of the bill by the conference, the
same thing turns up in the fohm Of
| separate bill, and effort IS now making
same effect, entirely outside the ap-
preparation bill.
"A vast area of Usage Indian Ianus,
even more valuable, are involved in an
] Usage lands. II sold, these also, full
4 of oil, coal and asphalt, and the sur
face very valuable for agriculture.
would be sol1, and, by the same pro-
full exploiting interests. The Usage In
dians are the richest people in the
! world.
| Senator Gore charged last session
| that efforts had been made to bribe
! him to favor these sales. He was to get
! from $4,000 to $4,000 if he would only
keep still. He didn't keep still, however.
and an investigation of his charges was
ordered. What has resulted from that
investigation? The committee of inves-
tigatiOn has found that Vice President
| Sherman and Senator Curtis, whose
names came into the matter, were en-
Investigation has produced no results
at all Even the evidence taken last
! summer lis not in print.
Efforts Going On.
But the effort to sell those lands is
going on once more; desperately pushed
! by people who think 1t necessary to
act in haste.
THE last item in the Indian bill pro-
vides that hereafter money paid to the
Indians shall be paid according to law
| Seems like an odd provision, but there
! is a most interesting explanation. 1t is
! this:
Last fall Judgment Of nearly 5000, 900
cash was paid to the Cherokee In
dians. The Supreme Court had held
that it should go to the heirs of
signers of the treaty of 1876 and 1851,
between the CherOkeeS and the Gov
ernment. Instead of doing that, a
new roll of tribe members was made,
including many people who, it was
charged, had no Cherokee blood and
no possible claim on the fund. But
they all got their slice.
Before payments started, applica-
tion for a mandamus was made to
the Supreme Court, to compel pay
ment only to these heirs. That case was
set down for hearing February %,
1911. In the face of tendency of that
application, the agent in charge of
disbursement went ahead, and paid
out the millions to the people on the
tribal roll as he had made 1t up. This
mandamus application will be heard
in the Supreme Court Monday; but
the money is gone! If the court holds
that the money has been paid to the
wrong people, the Government ap-
parently will be liable to make it
good to the people who were really
entitled to it! And that is the reason
for the effort to prevent another per-
formance of this sort, by writing into
HHYY sY III