[San Francisco Bulletin.]

JUSTICE TO THE INDIAN.

The Bulletin always has taken keen interest in the welfare of the Indian population of the State. Of conscience it has felt commanded to do everything possible to improve the conditions of the race deprived of its inheritance by the march of civilization. It has been uphill work because, unlike the Japanese, the Indians have not been backed by money to enable them to secure land, nor even to secure general press and platform publicity for their rights. Some of the most eloquent advocates of the interests of the Japanese have never so much as said a timely word in the cause of the dispossessed Indians.

But something has been done by the Indian Board of Cooperation and its report for 1919-20. entitled Justice 70 Years Later," is an interesting record of notable achievement and a promise of a brighter future.

The board has given the subject nation-wide publicity; has caused the United States Board of Indian Commissioners to take up and report upon the question of nonreservation Indians in California; secured the proclamation of an Indian day; created new school districts and opened a special school at Colusa; supported a test case that established the California Indians in all the rights and privileges of citizenship, and brought their claims under the notice of Congress through the agency of Senator Phelan and Congressman Raker.

Seventy years ago there were 210,000 Indians in California; to-day there are about 20,000: Contrast those figures with the increase in the Japanese population of the State and see how the dispossessor is favored at the expense of the dispossessed.

[Fresno, Calif., Republican, January 13, 1922.]

OWED FOR SEVENTY YEARS.

Another attempt is to be made to have a 70-year old debt of the United States paid. This debt is due to the Indian tribes of California. It was contracted in 1852 by a treaty signed by a Federal commission and by 400 chiefs and headsmen of the Indians, but never ratified by Congress.

Now eight descendants of these original Indians are on their way back to Washington to try to get Congress to act.

We don't know what are the merits of the claims of the Indians that might be the beneficiaries of the present bill. But we do know that the sufferings and wrongs of these 70 years can never be wiped out.

The California Indian has been a pariah ever since the Indian wars of the fifties. He has bought the white man's liquor, he has contracted the white man's diseases, but he has gotten little or no benefit from the white man's laws or customs. Unlike the Indians in the East, he was allowed no easement from the free life of the frontier to the busy life of settled communities through the operation of reservations. There are no reservations in California except those private ones that were privately contracted for. The United States Government agreed in 1852 to pay the Indians hundreds of thousands of dollars and to assign to them 7,500,000 acres of land. Neither has been done. There can be no atonement for the degradation to which the Indians have been subjected during more than two generations. But at least Congress should name a commission, with funds, to provide for those Indians that remain that can be helped to self respect and an education through some of the money promised them 70 years ago. It will make the rest of us feel better for having their land.

[Santa Barbara, Calif., News.]

CHARITY AT HOME.

The News is in recipt of a communication from the Indian Board of Cooperation which strongly reminds it of the old saying that charity should begin at home. If what the Indian board says is true-and no one will doubt its statements-it seems a pity that no more aid can be secured for the Indians of California. Why is it that charity abroad is so much more alluring than charity at home? Why is it, with this dire need at hand, that a dozen or more aid societies will go running around in circles seeking to help the Armenians and the Chinese and the Poles and anybody else, in fact, so long as they live overseas? The newspapers are filled with columns about the sufferings of foreign peoples, but who can recall seeing a word about the Indians of California.

[Sacramento, Calif., Union.]

BELATED JUSTICE.

Thanks to the quiet but well-directed activities of the Indian Board of Cooperatio the Indians of this State are receiving a much-belated meed of justice.

Much still remains to be done before the white people of this State can say th the Indian is no longer subjected to treatment which puts him beyond the pale the justice and privileges extended to other residents, but the annual report of the board shows a fine record of accomplishment.

It may astonish our justice-loving people to learn that generally throughout Ca fornia, Indians have no rights to our public educational facilities and can not iadmitted to almshouses or other charitable and curative institutions.

Surely the original occupiers of the soil which has made our State rich and migh should have the same privileges to our public institutions as are enjoyed withou question by other residents no matter what their race may be.

The bright side of the shield is provided by the activities of the board working close cooperation with the Government. One of the greatest victories of the boart was the winning of the suit to establish the right of an Indian to citizenship in this State. That such citizenship shall have behind it the requisite education for 15 proper use was early recognized by the board, which can now report the successia operation of several public school districts for the instruction of Indian children.

A fight is also being made under legislation, introduced by a number of Californis Representatives and Senators, to compel the fulfillment of the promises made to the Indians under the 18 treaties made with them 70 years ago. If these claims can b established, the Indians will secure $12,000,000.

We know little about the legal justification for these claims, but we do know that the Indians have not secured a square deal from the Government, and we feel certain that if their wrongs are placed before the public, the people of this State will insist on them receiving at least the same treatment accorded to other residents of California

[San Francisco Bulletin.]

STARVING INDIANS NEED HELP.

Seventy years ago there were more than 200,000 Indians in California. To-day there are less than 20,000, and of that number about 15,000 are said to be on the verge of starvation, landless, dest tute, and afflicted with disease.

What a change in the position of a race that once owned all these lands, and what a contrast between the decline and poverty of the Indians and the increase and pros perity of the Japanese landholders! We have been more than generous to the Asiatics, and less than just to the aboriginals of our own country. We have permitted the Japanese to acquire the lands that we took without compensation from the Indians. It is a moral obligation upon us that we do care for the descendants of the race we dispossessed. We are ready with millions for starving Europe, even with millions for starving Asia, but true charity begins at home, and at home the Indians are starving.

This does not mean that we should not give to the poor of Europe and Asia, but that some part of our benevolence should be bestowed upon the poverty-stricken Indians at our own door.

Perhaps the difficulty is that while Europe appeals to us in the name of charity. the Indian can ask in the name of justice. This is not cynical, since it is a truth that the impulse to do a generous thing is more common than the instinct of justice, especially toward those we have injured.

But the deeper truth is that the Indian is without the machinery for propaganda. Others must speak for him-he can not speak for himself. The cables buzz whenever there is a famine in Europe or Asia, but when thousands of Indians are starving along the Pitt River, they must get a couple of leaders to go to Sacramento and make an appeal.

Properly speaking, the care of the Indians should be, and is, a national obligation. It is a mere detail that the remnants of the redmen are in this or that State. The nation as a whole is the dispossessor, and the nation as a whole should provide for the dispossessed.

Meanwhile Indian children in California are living on squirrels, when they can get them, and are forbidden to catch fish or kill deer out of season in order that city sportsmen may have plenty of fish and game when the time comes for taking up the rod and gun.

We should ask Congress to help, but Congress is a long way off and moves slowly. Let us do something now.

[San Francisco Call, April 10, 1922.]

CAN YOU THINK OF AN OBJECTION?

Once there were more than 200,000 Indians in the State of California. Now there e hardly 20,000.

Once these 210,000 Indians lived on and possessed the richest lands in the State. ow their grandchildren drift and drudge on the impoverished lava bad lands of the rth.

Once upon a time the white men came to this State seeking gold and careless of stice and negotiated treaties with the owners of the land. These were official-the aties of 1851-52-framed and signed by a duly authorized Federal commission on e hand and by 400 chiefs and headmen of the Indians.

When the Indians signed these treaties they agreed to live in peace and friendship ith the whites and among themselves, accept the sovereignty of the United States overnment, and cede their lands in exchange for much smaller "reservations." he white people in return promised beef cattle, live stock for work and breeding, lothing, implements, seeds, schoolhouses, and equipment for the children, and eachers of all sorts.

The Indians have kept to their agreement, but the white people have never made any ttempt to keep their promises. The Indians have lost their lands and have received practically nothing in return. Instead they have been driven to the most barren and inaccessible lands of the State, while their numbers, says Prof. C. Hart Merriam, have been cut to a tenth because of "eviction, starvation, and disease."

Now, a full 70 years after those promises were made, eight California Indians have gone to Washington to ask for the simple privilege of taking their pitiful claims to the United States Court of Claims. They ask only to be allowed to ask for justice. Senator Johnson has introduced the necessary bill in the Senate. Representative John Raker has introduced it in the House. Can anyone think of one good reason for not giving this justice to the Indians?

[The Survey, February 18, 1922.]

LOST TREATIES.

While the Government is anxious to have Congress ratify the seven new treaties arising from the Washington conference, a supposedly dead and buried past seems to be rising to smite it with some scraps of paper thought forgotten. They are the treaties which, more than 70 years ago, the original American inhabitants of the West were induced to sign. Here is another instance of a racial minority asking recognition of what they regard as their inalienable rights, only with this difference that it is a minority within the Republic itself, and that it bases its claims upon treaties which were entered into by duly authorized agents of the Government of the United States. The California Indians are pressing the passage of their Court of Claims bill by Congress, an enabling bill that would authorize them to submit their claims to the United States Court of Claims for adjudication. These claims are based on 18 treaties negotiated with them in 1851-52 by a Federal commission sent among them for that purpose, treaties which the descendants of the Indian signers claim have during all these years remained unfulfilled by the Government.

According to the terms of the treaties the Indians agreed to accept the sovereignty of the United States, to live in peace and friendship with the whites and among themselves, to refrain from retaliation for wrongs done them by the whites, and to aid the civil authorities in keeping peace and bringing criminals to justice, to cede their rights in their lands to the United States Government. In return, the Government agreed to reserve in perpetuity to the Indians certain diminished reservations, 18 in number, described by metes and bounds, aggregating about 7,500,000 acres, and to provide them with goods, clothing, implements, seeds, live stock, teachers of agriculture and handicrafts, schools, school equipment, and teachers for their children, amounting to about $1,800,000. The treaties were signed by thumb marks and cross of 400 chiefs and headmen of the California Indians, and, with the understanding that they were effective, faithfully lived up to by the Indians. But the Indians claim that they never received an acre of the lands nor a penny's worth of the goods promised them in these treaties. They were made in the height of the gold rush, when every acre of California held promise of hidden fortunes to the adventurer. An able advocate of the white man's interests was hurried to Washington to ask protection for the gold seekers. The treaties were considered in executive session of the 106933-22-PT 2- -5

Senate and failed of ratification. They have become the lost treaties to the Indians, who have waited homeless, in poverty, driven hither and thither through 70 years for their fulfillment.

After their release from the 50 years secrecy required, the original treaties were unearthed from seclusion and their possibilities examined by Frederick G. Collett, executive representative of the Indian board of cooperation, the California organization of white friends of the Indians that has for the past 10 years worked to better their condition and help them obtain their rights.

The result is the pending Court of Claims bill which, after having been passed by the Senate of the Sixty-sixth Congress and dying automatically on the 4th of March, 1921, was reintroduced in the House and Senate of the present Congress and is scheduled for a hearing before the Secretary of the Interior this week. The bill was passed by the Senate of the Sixty-sixth Congress on the Unanimous Consent Calendar, after having been unanimously approved by the Senate and House Committees on Indian Affairs, and also approved by the then Acting Secretary of the Interior, Alexander Vogelsang, and has been the subject of a favorable report by Secretary Malcolm McDowell, of the Board of Indian Commissioners, which was embodied in the report of the House hearings on the Court of Claims bill.

In view of the fact that the California Indians have received less from the Government than any other Indians in the United States, are poorer and have suffered more, dwindling from the estimated 210,000 at the time of the signing of the treaties to the remnant of 20,000 of to-day-and dwindling through eviction, starvation, and disease," is officially admitted-it is an interesting indication of their development under adversity that they have sent to the Capital eight Indian delegates to represent them. They selected these by vote from among their own people and financed them out of their own funds. They are organized into 54 Indian auxiliaries of the Indian board of cooperation and have in these auxiliaries a membership of about 6,500 Indians who are working to unite all the California Indians for their mutual benefit. What they would ask if permitted to go before the Court of Claims is not the return of the lands specified in the treaties, nor any upsetting of titles, but a money compensation based on the valuation of the lands at the time the treaties were made, stipulated in their Court of Claims bill as not exceeding $1.25 an acre.

[San Francisco Examiner, April 1, 1922.]

JUSTICE TO THE INDIANS.

The record of the United States Government toward the Indians of the northern counties of California is not a good one.

It never has made good its treaty promises of over 70 years ago to turn over to these Indians whose descendants now number only about 4,500-lands as valuable as those from which they were evicted by the coming of the white man.

So a committee of nine full-blooded Indians appeared before a congressional committee the other day for permission to push their claim in the Court of Claims of the United States, to make regular court action of it, as it were, instead of asking for money appropriations. They want, it seems, what they claim belongs to them, not for a money dole.

In the words of their own committee: "The California Indians are asking the United States Government for justice, nothing more and nothing less; and not for charity."

The fact is that for years these Indians of our northern counties have been treated shamefully, in about the same manner as the British Government treats the natives of lands it "so beneficently rules."

The ways of white governments with "inferior natives" seems to be much alike throughout the world.

Malcolm MacDowell, secretary of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, in a report of previous hearings on this same matter, has recommended "the adoption of a California Indian policy, with appropriate legislation to make it effective, predicated upon the acknowledgment of a legal debt due the Indians because they were dispossessed of the lands without due process of law and without compensation, and based upon the principle of exact justice and not upon sentiments of pity or charity." The Indians are a proud people. They resent doles as much as any high-spirited person would resent food given in charity. The tribes of northern California were the owners of a large area of land. They have never been adequately compensated for it since it was taken away from them.

Perhaps the Government of the United States could speak of justice to inferior peoples" with better grace if it served the Indians of California with more of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Does anybody wish to ask Mr. Collett any further questions? Mr. COLLETT. Let me say this with reference to my general work and how the board came to organize the auxiliaries, and it will not take me more than a very few minutes to tell you the instances that really led to this.

My first interest in the Indians was in 1910. As old Chief Odock told his story; how he had been to a conference and had returned. He said "I tell you what I have been up to. I go build me a schoolhouse; the teacher she come, then she go away; she say she soon come back and by and by she write me she no more come back; she go fly the coop and we have no teacher; nothing only I sleep in the schoolhouse to keep it going. And it was through that story that Mrs. Collett and myself became interested in the Indians.

We went there and we found that the Government had just given them 40 acres of land. The band previously had been known as the "graveyard band" because they were huddled in a wheat field surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Their only water supply was a small well 10 feet deep among the graves of their ancestors and they just had little homes on this fertile acreage of 40 acres.

At that time, when we first began our work, it was rather slow. They had no school; they had never had a Christian burial; they had never had a wedding; they had never had any attention from the Government at all; they had never been admitted to the public schools, had never been admitted to the county hospitals and had never received any county aid. To-day they have some 20 homes, many of them quite modern. They have fruit trees and vegetable gardens. Their conditions are improved generally, and we began there to get the Indians at work and to work with us in bettering their conditions. Now, here is an instance which will illustrate the whole situation: We found that the Indians had no wood on this land but that every spring the river was freighted with wood. I said to the chief, "why do you not go out and get that wood?" He says, “I can not; the river is too swift, the logs are too heavy." So I called them together and announced we were going to get the wood, that we wanted every man to get his rope, tackle, and boat and meet us on the river, and within less than a half hour they were there. Some of the boys went out in their boats, put a rope around the logs and brought the logs ashore, and by working together we were able to land those logs and get enough wood for the entire winter. It was that cooperative spirit that we taught those Indians to respond to there and they did.

The other case is this: They needed a water plant, as they had no water. So we figured out that a water plant would cost them $700. There were only 80 Indians in that whole town, and they at once said, "We can not do it, we can not handle that much, we can not get that much money together. I said, “Now, if each family will stand a share it will amount to so much. Could you stand that much?" They said, Yes, we could stand that much.' So they put up their money and then they dug the well; they bought the gasoline engine, they bought the material, they bought all the outfit that was necessary, and to-day they have water piped to every home on the place. They are proud of that as their water plant; they are proud of the schoolhouse as their schoolhouse; they are proud of their woodpile and other achievements, and it is a pride that comes out of their work which makes it worth while in getting them to do it, in getting them to do things for themselves. That is the way in which I became interested.

The CHAIRMAN. You have submitted a list of witnesses you desire to have heard, beginning with Alfred C. Gillis, chairman. Is he present?

Mr. COLLETT. Yes. Doctor Merriam is here and you might hear from him, perhaps, at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. There are nine names on this list, and of course we want to hear as many as desire to be heard, but we want to avoid repetition of that which has already been stated to the committee.

Mr. COLLETT. It will not be a repetition in any sense.

The CHAIRMAN. We want to conserve as much time as we can, but if you desire to have Doctor Merriam heard we will hear him.

Mr. MERITT. Before Mr. Collett leaves the stand I would like to ask him one or two questions, if it is agreeable to the committee. What does the total claim of the California Indians amount to in dollars?

Mr. COLLETT. That is a matter we are asking to have the court determine. We do do not know, but it has been estimated about $10,000,000.

Mr. MERITT. I understand you claim compensation for about 7,500,000 acres of land, at $1.25 an acre.

Mr. COLLETT. That is the basis upon which the figuring has been made.