Evening star., 1936-07-31

ised to be prize winners at the Sioux
County Fair until the grasshoppers
came.
The only thing that Indian family
can do is to pack up its slender be-
longings. trudge into Fort Yates.
throw up a tent or a log hut and
wait for relief. That seems to be the
only way Of getting on a w. P. A.
or Indian E. c. w. project. And that
is the best way to get on relief, which,
all agree, is the only means by which
the majority of the tribe can be car
ried through the year. Just where it
is coming from is very indefinite.
It's q sad comedown for the proud
Sioux-but he may reflect that he is
snatching victory out of defeat. The
white man is worse of. Custer and
the rest drove the grandfathers of this
generation Of red men hither and yon
and finally herded them, helplessly
beaten. into small part of their old
prairie empire. Then crooked lawyers
and amateur .,sociologists took away
from them a good deal OF what the
soldiers had failed to take. Now
come these Spirit-smashing two years
Of drought and promise to undo all
the victories of the soldiers and ma
chinations of the lawyers-they prom
Use, that is, to drive the white man
out and leave the Sioux master Of his
own land once more. He may have
a hungry Winter-probably not with
the Government recognizing its duty
of feeding him. Hungry Winters have
not been rare in the past half century.
Almost every Winter, as a matter of
fact, a good many Indian families
have been in the habit Of leaving their
homes on the prairies, where there
was no firewood and no windbreaks,
and setting up tent communities along
the wooded banks of the Missouri
River. They could stand weather that
sometimes went to 20 below zero bet
ter in stove-heated tents than in un-
heated log houses
Boom on Relief.
So 1t comes about that Fort Yates
is enjoying one of the most paradox
ical booms in history-a boom on re-
lief. It's a boom, rather, on antici-
pated relief.
The town, by the way, Is pretty
much an Indian community-half-
blood or full-blood. But probably no.
where on earth do two races live
together in such perfect harmony and
lack Of any distinction. Two cultures
have blended. One sees the Indian
girl strolling in the evening in beach
pajama costume and bare back-the
Indian father walking beside his white
wife and wheeling the baby in a
brand-new perambulator Just brought
in from Bismarck And most Of the
Indians can quote the latest radio
funny man.
Strangely enough, the attitude of
the Indian just now seems to be one
of mingled despair, triumph and SYM
pathy. He doesn't know just how his
family will eat this Winter, but ex-
poets the Government to do some
thing about it. He thinks the drought
may ICoult AL VI iA1eLlS UdCh ttlc ldIlu
which his fathers lost partly through
skullduggery and partly through Gov
ernment inefficiency. But he Is gen.
timely sorry for his white neighbor,
with whom he has lived on kindly
terms for so many years. The Indian
by and large, although there have
been some notable exceptions-never
has been much of a farmer himself.
Perhaps he has been too wise from
centuries of inherited experience with
the land. He never has seen the use
of toiling in the hot sun for the benefit
of the grasshoppers. But he seems to
have a genuine admiration for the
men who have waged the hopeless
fight and to enjoy no sadistic triumph
over the defeat, which he always
thought would be inevitable. A good
many of the defeated, after all, are
his blood relatives by this time-even
though they have blond hair and blue
eyes.
(Copyright, 1850