Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-07-19

amounts.
The Usage Indians have property of
that their pres
Indians Richest ent incomes are
Per Capita Race. Of sny Of the other
tribes. Yet the American Indians are
the richest per capita race of people
in all the world. They are the owners
of more land. more coal, more timber,
more cattle. more oil per capita than
are the whites of the nation in which
they dwell. The per capita value of
their wealth is not such that any ques-
ton of its precedence may be raised.
They are six times as rich is the
average citizen of the United States
and that citizen is the wealthiest in
the world, when they are excepted. In
fact, if the wealth of the Indians was
equally distributed among 100000 MEM
bers of the race dwelling within the
United States each of these would be
the possessor of $500 worth of it.
This is an ambitious showing in com
parison with that of the hundred mil
lion beneath the flag. who have but
900 each on the average
The basis of Indian wealth is real
America the Indians owned the CONT
nent. From the standpoint of the money
value of their land. however. they were
not as rich as might be supposed. Real
estate is valuable. other things being
equal, in proportion to the number of
people who live near it. Rich Ohio
farm lands then brought a string of
beads for a township.
But the Indians were gradually driven
back until they occupied those wild
"a me "a o1
Eventually the government granted
them those lands as reservations. They
still own them, but many people have
come to dwell near them the laws
OF real estate values have operated, and
the Indian has become rich. Let us
look at some of his properties.
The reclamation service some years
ago completed what is known as the
Yakima project. 1t brought under ir-
rigation a region that had formerly pro-
duced nothing because of insufficient
moisture. 1t transformed a desert into
one of the richest farming regions of
the United States. a region which has
become most famous of them all as
the produce of high-class apples.
The river. the reclamation project, the
principal town of the section are called
Yakima from the Indian tribe that
lives in the vicinity. These Indians had
merly useless land. 1t was reclaimed
with the rest of the region. There are
10000 acres of the Indian land, and
because OF the people who have come to
dwell thereabout it has a market value
Of from 800 to 5000 an acre.
An entirely different people dwell
ing under different conditions are the
Quintet Indians, also
Indians Own of Washington. They
lp:, r..4 have dwelt through the
~AOA centuries beneath the
dense shadows of the forests near the
coast: they cast their nets into the
streams that mirrored their birch bark
canoes while Alexander was busy con-
Quering a medieval world They have
suffered no privation since the dawn of
came inland to spawn.
The federal government gave these
Indians the land along the solitudes of
the streams where they fished, and then
| forgot them. Recently, when stock was
being taken of the value of the stand
ing timber of the nation. government
agents visited these Indian lands and
estimated the trees that were ready for
| the ak. They found s13,000,000 worth
of them under present market condi-
lions. The Quinielt Indians, however,
are in no hurry to sell and, with in
creasing scarcity of high-grade timber
and improvement of transportation
facilities. it will probably be worth
twice much in a decade.
Oregon has kindred tribe in the
Klamaths, likewise river Indians and
salmon fishermen. A railroad has re-
vently been built into their holdings
and they are selling some timber when
ardently pressed to do so. They have
$27 100000 Of it readily in sight which
they can cash in whenever they want
to, but the murmur of their pines IS
| sweeter to them than the rattle of gold
and there is no hurry.
Down in Arizona dwell the brothery
of that Apache tribe which has been
held captive for a
Coal and Timber generation because
| vu..14L IT. o;,, of its depredations
among the settlers
thirty years ago. These troublesome
Indians were pushed high into the
mountains and a wild region was al
lotted them. Now the timber on il is