The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1923-03-08
SETTLERS ON RES
ERVATION AFFECTED
CONTINUED from page one)

had a great deal to learn. Officials
in Washington had too much OF the
Daniel Webster idea that they would
not give a hundred dollars for all
the deserts In Western America. and
Dubois was joked and turned down
when he talked about dams and
bitches and engineering for Indians.
What did Indians want with bitches!
Trails interested them more and they
would make the trails themselves.
Whether Dubois had the price per
acre for the FIT. Hall water fixed at
| Sc as q compromise to get things
started or whether he thought 1t
enough, we do not know, but we do
know that when 1t was completed
and began to back flood waters out
on the meadows of the Dunns and
the Misslens and others. and the silt
and willows began to choke the
canals and bitches and cut down the
volume OF water, Dubois made 1t his
business to sit with department
heads in Washington and break the
news to them that there was not
enough water at points of delivery
and that preparations should be
made to greatly enlarge the system.
That was bad news in Washing ton,
and they tried to forget it, but
Dubois would visit them again the
next year and furnish them proofs.
Each succeeding year made matters
more urgent and altho the contracts
held by the settlers might not give
the settlers material damages from
the government when they lost some
of their crops due to water shortage,
yet it made work for the court of
claims and claims kept bobbing up to
prove what Dubois had been telling
them for years. In recent years, he
and Borah and Addison T. Smith
working in conjunction with local
men here, got officials to come this
way and be shown, and the CONNER
cial clubs of three towns working |
with settlers, got the government to
match dollars for surveys and maps |
and plans that resulted in congress
a very liberal appropriation |
for rebuilding the system, on condf- |
ton that the white settlers pay their |
OF cost, and in concluding |
these arrangements It was assumed
that all the settlers would sign con-
tracts for their share. The paying
power at Washington seems to have |:
that part Of the under
and says he will hold them
70 it. So it happens that bag of
half a million dollars lying in the
treasury to be expended out here,
has a string attached to it. With
lozen land owners on the reservation
declining to sign, the string seems
% have grown to the size of a rope.
A Blight ON the Tract
If work does not proceed as plan
led, it will be like throwing blight
IN the development of the territory
included in the project. The settlers
Who were actually farming under the
,rOject have been short of water al
eady, and much of the land entitled
O water has never been put to crops,
nd of course, the water for 1t, has
zen allowed to be used on neighbor-
ng lands. When these other land
wners crop their lands and demand
yater, it will cut down the amount
for these others who have
cen enjoying the free use of the
eighbors' water supposing it was
heir own.
1t is the old question of the
Weakening to find out that the sys- /
en- is not so complete as was ex-
ected, or that something new had to
e done and done at the cost of the
eople receiving the benefits and the !:
eeds. The American Falls canal !:
ad its dykes and lavabeds; the
copies canal had its washouts; the
Ugh Line had it fumes up in the Il
r, baking, breaking and leaking, H
Id the Corbett Slough ditch had its
.avel bars annually lodging against
e headgates. The FIT. Hall system
,eds a higher and better dam, an
llarged river bed thru the fiat lands y