ME AND MY SOPHIE had as callers at our home in Maywood, Monday, May 30, our good friends, Mr. and Mrs. M. R. Harrison and Sunflower, secretary of the National American League and her lovely mother, all of whom are intensely interested in abolishing that rascally Indian Bureau that has been keeping our First Americans in bondage for over 100 years, and giving all Indians their freedom and having the U.S. government pay these Indians the billions of dollars due them for property taken from them since the government was organized.
It is the solemn duty of the government to feed, clothe and educate these wards as promised in solemn treaties that have never been kept by the government and most of what clothing and food these wards receive is donated by private citizens. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison will soon leave for a vacation trip through the Navajo concentration camps in Arizona and New Mexico.
They will take a lot of clothing to the day school at Albuquerque, New Mexico, among some of the articles some very nice dresses and underclothing that my Sophie has gathered for them.
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I SEE IN THE papers where the House committee has approved legislation to protect the white people who built on Indian lands in the Palm Springs area. I see some hidden graft in this bill favoring the Whites, like always where Indians are involved.
The Whites have been digging at the original Indian owners of that whole country and while in recent years the Indian Bureau has helped them Indians in securing a little pay for that valuable land on that Agua Caliente reservation. This bill that has been approved by the House committee protects the Whites, with the help of that rascally Indian Bureau.
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IT PROVIDES that if an Indian who receives an allotment sells or leases the land, those who have built improvements shall have the privilege of meeting the highest bid for the tract. The House Indian Affairs Committee approved the measure, asked by Rep. Phillips (R), Calif., after the Indian Office allotted land to individual Indians.
Officials of the Indian Office told the Committee that when the land was owned by the tribe as a whole, the Interior Department issued 300 to 400 permits for construction of valuable improvements, some costing as much as $100,000 in the resort area.
At the beginning that Indian Bureau didn’t have anything to do with the Hualpais Indians recovering nearly 502,870 acres in Mohave County, Arizona. The Indians were also awarded 6,381 acres surrounding Clay Springs, a valuable source of water, which had been left out of the Indian reservation through faulty surveying. Some religious organization supplied the money and legal help. They sued the government for the land that was taken from them Wallapai Indians and given to the Santa Fe Railroad in 1866 under a grant from Congress, and an attorney general’s ruling.
The suit was backed by the Interior Department and the Department of Justice after various church groups and members of Senate Indian Affairs Committee backed the Wallapai Indians in protesting the issuance in 1932 of final patents to the railroad for the lands it claimed under the Congressional grant of 1866.
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ALTHOUGH THE secretary of the Interior and the attorney general had upheld the railroad’s claim, they agreed that the Indians should have their day in court, and that resulted in favor of the Indians after it was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. And them Indians are now in possession of that big tract of fine land. Sixty per cent of the Santa Fe railroad station at Peach Springs was awarded to them Wallapai Indians and the judgment stated that the Indians should have rental of them fine buildings retroactive to date the buildings were erected and the railroad company to continue to pay rent on the buildings the company put up on that Indian land.
While this issue is saying so much about the plight of our First Americans in my department I will add another by a correspondent in the L.A. Examiner of a recent date which reads as follows. Quote:
“To the Los Angeles Examiner: We desire to say something on behalf of the Piute Indians of Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Senator McCarran has introduced a bill, the purpose of which is to take more land from the Indians. We think that the time for this kind of business—robbing Indians—is long past.
“The Constitution prohibits taking private land for private use. We hold that these Native Americans who have been pushed out to the shore of a desert lake should not be deprived of any land. This is a small tribe and they do not have many friends or money for lobbying but we respectfully ask the United States Senate to defeat Senator McCarran’s bill No. 17. Leonard B. Cunningham, Veterans’ Home, Napa, Calif.”
