The Daily Alaska empire., 1944-10-10

United States. l
 No one can doubt that the Territory would never have been settled by whites and would never have reached the present state of development if the pio- neers could have known that titles to land and fishing rights would some day be in jeopardy and held to be subordinate to exclusive claims of Indians, and We cannot now understand the apparent reversal of policy of the Government if the Govern ment, as now constituted should permit the establishment of these proposed reservations.
 "The Indians of Alaska have been well treated, not only by the pioneer white settlers who have always respected their ac- tual rights, but by the Govern ment also, and we defy anyone to show the contrary. They have been deprived of nothing; their rights have always been protected; they have every right in the Territory which a white man has, including even the right to assist in making our laws. This is evidenced by the fact that three Natives of the whole and half-blood were nom- mated as candidates to the forthcoming territorial Legisla- ture, and two of them have been elected and will sit in the House of Representatives next January.
 "The lot of the descendants of the aboriginal races of Alaska is better today than at any time in their history, and as they be- come better educated and a little farther advanced in the ways of the whites, they will all grad ually become assimilated. The whites want them to become as simulated and have done every thing in their power to bring that about. All the privileges of the whites have been very rapid ly extended to the Indians. They are well treated by the whites and certainly well cared for by the Federal Government. It would be not only a mon- strous injustice to the men and women who pioneered Alaska to now establish and set up claims of any one group, whether In- dians or whites, to exclusive rights of any nature, and to grant these so-called aboriginal claims now pending, but it would be greatly detrimental to the Indians themselves. It would be equally unjust to give white persons any claims or rights under them which are not also common and available to the Indians. No such claims now exist or have ever existed.
 We are persuaded from our long acquaintance and associa- tion with the Indians, that they did not initiate any such claims it was done for them by out siders, and if they are granted, it will mean that the Territory will be ruined for both whites and Indians. Even if only part of the asserted claims are granted, the principle will be es- tablished like a rule of law, and thereafter, so far as property rights in the Territory are con- cened, nothing but confusion and uncertainty will exist.
 This subject of exclusive h. dian rights, based on ancestral or aboriginal occupancy, was so ably discussed and with such common sense and logic, by President John Quincy Adams at the observance of the anni- versary of the Sons of the Pil- grims on December 22, 1902 (printed in 9th Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1896- 1897, Pages 536 and 53D, that we beg leave to quote his words, as fol- lows:
 There are moralists who
 have questioned the right of
 Europeans to intrude upon the
 possessions of the aborigines
 in any case and under any