Evening star., 1936-08-10
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

Stan Correspondent of The Star.
| )ROW AGENCY, Mont, August
los altered over the
drought-burned hillside, their
white gravestones amidst with
cred grass and sagebrush, lie Custer S
men.
Far below, winding through a rich
valley green with sugar beets and
golden with shocked wheat, flows the
Little Big Horn. It was in food So
years ago this Summer. Down the
valley was the camp, miles long,
of the Sioux and the Blackfeet. The
American soldiers rode rashly into a
perfect trap and were slaughtered to
a man.
Beyond. on either side. tower the
mountains, pine-clad and cloud
wrapped. Amidst the gravestones the
other day stood red-skinned Robert
Yellowtail, Indian superintendent Of
the great Crow reservation, and mused
philosophically as he surveyed the
dominion Of his people over which he
has custody. Their story has been
sad one. Chunk by chunk, their lands
have been taken from them. They
have been declining-through no fault
of their own, says Yellowtail-toward
complete dependency. 1t is not many
years since they were virtual slaves
forced to obtain passes to visit the vii
lage where the reservation headquar-
tiers were located and hitched to plows
like animals as punishment for getting
drunk.
Little Intermarriage.
Yet through it all the Crows have
kept their self-respect and their ra-
cial pride. There has been little in
termarriage with whites. The Crow
today is the same Indian he was so
years ago-larger of stature and more
dignified in bearing than the majority
of his race. Anywhere on the Crow
reservation one realizes that one is in
an Indian community, from the valley
villages to the isolated camps of berry
pickers and sheep herders in the re-
motest fastnesses of the Big Horn
Mountains. And it is not an Indian
community made for tourists, for 1t Is
off the beaten path and few ever visit
it. Conventional dress Is rarity. Both
men and women still wear their black
hair in long, buckskin- -entwined braids.
All wear deerskin boots or moccasins,
many have deerskin shirts, and the
women and girls are picturesque in
their highly colored shawls.
Here is a people which neither has
adopted the white mans culture, nor
succumbed to- it, 1t is largely upon
the racial pride of this people that
Supt. Yellowtail relies for a self
sufficient Grow empire" its founda-
tions sunk deeply in the ancient Crow
culture.
His first move Is the restoration Of
the bison herds from which the old
Crows obtained most Of their live
lihood. His second is the agricultu-
raj development of the valley, laced
with irrigation bitches from the Lit
tie Bighorn, which, either by leas-
ing or tilling, will bring steady cash
return to the tribe or to individuals.
His third is the education of the
young men and women of the tribe,
out Of tribal funds, in the best COL
leges and universities in the United
States. For, he says, the consolida-
tion of white and Indian culture de-
mands the best legal and engineer
ing talent available. He wants to
send from 10 to 20 to the universi-
ties every year.
Education Was Mockery.
Indian education under white aus
piceS in the past, Mr.. Yellowtail says,
has been good deal of a mockery.
The best that the red men were
taught were mechanical trades and
then they were returned to environ
mentS where there was no oppor-
tunity to practice them. Until now
they never have been given an op-
portunity to govern themselves, their
psychological reactions have been
completely misunderstood, and they
have been condemned for failure to
fit into system which was COM
pletely alien to their ways of think
ing.
Few empire builders have ever had
more voluntary cooperation from his
people than Mr.. Yellowtail-and no
wonder. He is everywhere and at
tends to everything. From daylight
to dark there is continuous pro-
ceSSion through his Office of Indians
and white leaSerS with all sortc If
troubles and all sorts of problems.
He settles everything from neighbor-
hood fights to gold-mining leases. He
checks up the doctors in the hospital
and the farmers in the bitches. He
spends his nights studying mining
engineering to decide on the merits
Of new processes for extracting fine
gold from the quartz debris Of the
hills. Something may come Of it at
last, he believes, in spite Of the crum-
bling ghost towns scattered through