The Washington times., 1934-05-07

Lie NeW DSdl lids COlAl6 W
Window Rock, and it means
that out there on the Arizona
table lands, where the painted
stones rise into the air like so
many fairy castles, the Navajo
Indians will have their own cap
ital. their own government
buildings and a full measure Of
self-rule. About $4,000 NavajoS
are left, most of them in the
$4,000 square mile reservation
centered around Fort Defiance.
They live a nomadic life,
tending their horses, cattle and
goats, dwelling in hogans, which
are cabins made of mud, laid on
a framework of poles. Theirs is
a family rather than a COM
munity existence, with grand
mother always the big boss Of
the hogan. For the present it is
their task to set up their own
government buildings on the
mesa of Window Rock, picked
by their tribal chiefs as their
new capital and christened Nee
Alneeng.
Big Powwow
The New Deal for the Ma
vajos all grew out of and is the
first fruit of a big pow-wow
which was held in the heart OF
the Black Hills. A pale face
was explaining a New Deal the
Great White Father was prepar-
ing in Washington. The Great
White Father and his chief aide
in the new plan, John Collier,
Commissioner for Indian Al
fairs, who is white of skin but
Indian at heart, had decided
that, after all, it was better to
make an Indian a good Indian
rather than a poor white man,
and that the way to help him
was to put him back or. the
land and restore to him his
tribal rights and customs.
The Indians have much to
forgive. They were a kindly
people when the white man set
foot on jamestown Island and
Plymouth Rock. They had de-
veloped agriculture. They we're
a moral people with a firm
belief in God, and their family
life was a lesson to the invader.
But the white man almost de-
stroyed them, Turing them with
pretty beads, Slaughterlng them
with leaden bullets, degrading
them with whisky.
Yielding to the advance OF
"civilization" they were Shunted
onto reservations where no
white man wanted to settle.
Mr.. Collier, who has made the
Indians cause his own, de-
termined to change all that.
The Wheeler Howard bill,
drafted by the Bureau of In
dian Affairs, strikes a double
blow at the two fatal weak
nesses of Indian administration
across a whole century; first,
the robbery and pauperization
of the Indian, and second, the
suppression of the Indian tribal
and social and religious institu'
tutions.
So the white man approaches
a belated act of justice to the
original possesSorS Of the soil,
the real Americans of the United
States.
A Representative in Congress,
Mr.. Howard, of Nebraska, has
introduced a bill in the House
which provides that certain
members of the Barada family,
living on the Omaha Indian res
ervation in that State, be de-
clared, officially, members OF
the Omaha tribe. An incon-
spicuous item in the news. But
behind it glows a romance as
glamorous as ever came out OF
the old pioneering days and the
settlement of America. For that
bill in Congress traces back to
the court of King Louis the Six
teenth of France, and almost
every phase of it, for $50 years,
is to be found in the records of
the United States Court Of Ne
braSka.
In those old days, when much
of the West was still in the pos