On July 3, 1902, the Secretary of the Interior made the first oil and gas lease of Indian lands within the present boundaries of the State of Oklahoma. The development of oil in this section was phenomenal. Six years after the first lease was made, 22.000 oil leases had been authorized by the Secretary. The oil history of this State is intimately related to the land grabbing of Indian lands in the Five Civilized Tribes area. It was oil, not agriculture, which was the prime incentive for the exploitation of Indian lands by the so-called" white grafters," and which separated thousands of Oklahoma Indians from their lands and money. The inception of the use of reimbursable funds for industrial purposes was an appropriation for $25,000 for the Fort Belknap Reservation in 1908; within a few years the aggregated reimbursable appropriations for industrial purposes had reached $750,000. FIFTH DECADE, 1909-1918 Beginnings of present Indian medical service. Effect of War on Indian Service. Three events of profound importance to the Indian people distinguished this fifth decade, 1909-1918; the health drive, the World War, and the Interior Department's new declaration of policy which turned loose some ten thousand and more Indians with disappointing consequences. In 1909 a medical supervisor for the Indian Service was appointed. This was the beginning of the present Indian medical service. Back in 1873 the Indian Office had taken steps to organize its unsupervised and rather inactive efforts for medical relief. A medical and educational division was established in the bureau. It made some gestures but had little money at its command. This arrangement continued until 1877 when the medical section of the division was lopped off, and until 1909 the medical care of the Indians was left to the agency and school doctors. That they did so much good work under the most discouraging financial, administrative, and living conditions is a tribute to the ethical standards, the acceptance of obligations, and the missionary spirit characteristic of the medical profession. The medical supervisor who was appointed in 1909 was in the educational division; the medical service until recently was under the direction of a layman. Conservation of Indian health became an outstanding feature of Indian Office administration in 1911. Several surveys of health and sanitary conditions had been made in schools and reservations which had disclosed an alarming prevalence of tuberculosis and trachoma. The Secretary of the Interior in 1912 presented the collected data to President Taft, who immediately sent the information, with a special message to Congress, urging an appropriation of $253,000 for medical relief for the Indians. He did not get that amount, but his message woke up Congress to some realization of the situation and the funds for the Indian medical service were materially increased. President Taft's message startled the country, for it showed a shameful Indian situation. The following excerpts from this remarkable document, one of the few presidential messages dealing with Indians, present the health conditions of the Indians who were under Federal supervision at the time and also indicate what the Indian Service regarded as an adequate medical service: * In many parts of the Indian country infant mortality, tuberculosis, and disastrous diseases generally prevail to an extent exceeded only in some of the most insanitary of our white rural districts and in the worst slums of our large cities. The death rate of the Indian country is 35 per thousand as compared with 15 per thousand-the average death rate of the United States as a whole. * * Last year, of 42,000 Indians examined for disease, over 16 per cent of them had trachoma, a contagious disease of the eye, frequently resulting in blindness, and so easily spread that it threatens both the Indian communities and all their white neighbors. * * Of the 40,000 Indians examined, 6,800 had tuberculosis. Few Indian homes anywhere have proper sanitary conditions, and in many instances the bad condition of their domestic surroundings is almost beyond belief. * * * As guardians of the welfare of the Indians, it is our immediate duty to give the race a fair chance for an unmaimed birth, healthy childhood, and a physically efficient maturity. The most vigorous campaign ever waged against diseases among the Indians is now under way. It began in 1909. Prior to that time little attention had been given to the hygiene and health of the Indians. In some reservations, equal in area to a State, there were not more than two physicians, frequently only one. In 1909 tens of thousands of Indians were substantially without any chance to reach a doctor. With this additional appropriation, if granted by Congress, it is believed that the tide can be turned, that the danger of infection among Indians themselves and to the several millions of white persons now living as neighbors to them can be greatly reduced, and genuine cooperation with local State boards of health now already under way can be adequately provided for. It is not expected to build up a highly organized Indian medical service, but rather to put efficient physicians and nurses and field matrons, properly equipped to reach all the Indian families, in the field, where service under the best conditions is one of constant self-sacrifice and hardship, but where constant application to those methods which the study of modern hygiene has developed, will show results so encouraging as fully to justify the expenditure of the sums herein asked. The following year the United States Public Health Service conducted a survey of Indian health conditions, stressing trachoma and tuberculosis, and Congress responded to the distressing disclosures of the survey by granting further increases in health appropriations. In 1911 the general appropriation for Indian medical service was but $40,000; in 1918 it had grown to $350,000. The effect of the World War upon the Indian Service has seldom been taken into account by critics of the Government's administration of Indian affairs. Almost all of the activities concerning health, education, and welfare were seriously crippled. Little if any new construction was attempted during the war; repairs of agency, school, and hospital plants were reduced to the minimum, and for some years after the war appropriations for buildings were most inadequate. Consequently schools, hospitals, employees' homes, agency buildings, and agency equipment in many places became positively disgraceful. Many of the most efficient men of the service who went to the front did not return to the Indian Service. The low salaries, even meaner in comparison with the higher pay offered in private employment after the war, forced the Indian Service to take what it could get to fill the vacancies. Altogether the postwar conditions as concerned the field service were most discouraging. Thou The Indians themselves took much interest in the war. sands of them volunteered, and many were cited for exceptional bravery under fire. The precise number of Indians who served in the Army and Navy is not known, but it has been estimated that more than 15,000 young tribesmen saw active war service. Hundreds of the members of northern tribes slipped across the border before the United States joined the Allies, and enlisted in the Canadian Army. Indian women in many reservations were active in Red Cross work; several thousand Indians bought Liberty bonds, and subscribed to other war activities; and in the Indian schools the children displayed a patriotism in no wise less genuine than that shown in schools for white children. On April 17, 1917, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs announced a new declaration of policy. In brief, he declared the time had come for the separation of the full bloods and the mixed bloods, for discontinuing Federal guardianship of all competent Indians, and giving even closer attention to the incompetents that they might more speedily achieve competency. Pursuant to this policy it was declared that all able-bodied Indians of less than one-half Indian blood should be given, as far as might be under the law, full and complete control of all their property and that patents in fee should be issued to all adult Indians of one-half or more Indian blood who would, after careful investigation, be found competent provided that where deemed advisable patents should be withheld for not to exceed 40 acres as a home site. Competency commissions were sent to the several reservations and between 1917 and 1920 there were issued 10,956 fee-simple patents, compared with 9,894 in the 10 years from 1906 to 1916. The outcome of this liberal policy was disappointing, for the greater proportion of the Indians thus released from Federal supervision quickly disposed of their real estate and spent the proceeds for automobiles and other unnecessary things instead of using the money for useful purposes. In 1921 this policy was discontinued, and since then the Indian Office has been much more cautious in the matter of turning the Indians loose. SIXTH DECADE, 1919–1928 The Budget System. Individualizing the competency question. The Bursum bill agitation. Pueblo lands board. Committee of One Hundred. Indian citizenship act. Trachoma campaign. Reorganization of medical and field service. The last decade, 1919-1928, of the 60-year period under consideration began with the Indian Service struggling against the adverse influences of postwar conditions; lack of funds for necessary new construction and for repairs, a depleted field service and an impaired morale. It is doubtful if any other branch of the National Government was more harmfully affected. The present budget system of the Government began to function in 1921. The consideration of the Indian Service estimates was taken from the House Committee on Indian Affairs and thereafter the Indian bill was drafted by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee as a section of the Interior Department bill. The Indian Service estimates are now first subjected to the scrutiny, and require the approval of the Director of the Budget, acting for the President, before they are presented to the subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. At first this new procedure was viewed with some apprehension by the Indian Service, but the five members of the subcommittee became each year more interested in the Indian problem. They took up the practice of spending several weeks of each year in the field visiting not only Indian jurisdictions but other units of the Interior Department. The first-hand information concerning Indian field conditions which they obtained gave them an insight of the Indian situation which led to a closer and more sympathetic cooperation with the Indian Service. Appropriations for the whole Indian Service increased, especially those for educational and health activities. In 1920 the Secretary of the Interior ordered that further issuance of patents in fee be stopped and that thereafter no Indian should be granted one until his particular case had received a searching examination. In short, he directed that "turning the Indian loose " should be individualized-it had been handled as a group proposition after 1917. A promising effort to make self-supporting, self-respecting citizens out of Indians is the so-called "Five-year industrial program which had its inception in the Blackfeet Reservation in 1922. Its success encouraged the Indian Service to extend the program to other reservations, modified, where necessary, to meet special situations. In 1922 the " Bursum bill" agitation swept the country. This was a measure, introduced by Senator Bursum of New Mexico, at the instance of the department with the avowed purpose of settling the long standing and perplexing dispute concerning the land titles of the Pueblo Indians. Some of their friends declared that the bill not only was inimical to the interests of the Indians but that its provisions, enacted into law, would confirm land titles to hundreds of non-Indian claimants who under one pretext or the other had encroached upon Pueblo lands. A campaign characterized by bitter denunciations of the officials of the department and Indian Office ensued, the outcome of which was an act which established the Pueblo Lands Board which now is engaged in New Mexico in the settlement of land titles, awarding damages to the Pueblo Indians where it is found they have been injured through the neglect of the United States and definitely settling the whole question. Secretary Work, in 1923, called together in Washington a number of men and women interested in Indian matters who met as the "Committtee of One Hundred" to discuss Indian affairs and offer recommendations to the Secretary. This body held a two days' session and made a report, containing recommendations and sugges tions for bettering the Indian Service and the conditions of the Indians. The report was referred to Congress by the Secretary and was printed as a congressional document. President Coolidge signed the Indian citizenship bill June 2, 1924, and thereupon all noncitizen Indians became citizens of the United States. This act formally merged the Indian people into the general citizenry of the country, although prior to the President's approval of the act more than two-thirds of the Indians had become United States citizens. An intensive trachoma campaign was started among the Navajo of Arizona in 1924, and additional funds for fighting this disease were secured from Congress. Several special hospitals for treating the disease have been established, and an experiment is now in progress for segregating trachomatous children in special schools. The United States Public Health Service became a cooperating partner of the Indian Service in 1926, when it loaned one of its physicians to the Indian Bureau to head the Indian medical service with consequent improvement in the conduct of the health activities, in the personnel and in the general tone of the medical service. In this same year a beginning was made to reorganize the Indian Field Service. The experiment was tried of dividing the field into several districts with a district superintendent in charge of each district. Seemingly, the experiment did not prove to be satisfactory, for changes were made two years later which practically restored the old order of administration. On June 12, 1926, Secretary Work requested the Institute of Government Research to conduct a survey of the whole Indian situation, and the institute consented. The funds for the survey were provided by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, jr. A survey partly of 10 specialists went into the field, visited 95 jurisdictions, and in 1928 submitted its report. At the request of Secretary Work the Board of Indian Commissioners made a critical study of the survey party's report for the information and use of the Indian Service in its subsequent administration. The board's review of this report was submitted to the Secretary in January of 1929. A growing tendency toward closer cooperation between the Government and States in the administration of Indian affairs became observable in the later years of this decade. Secretary Work discussed the question in an annual report in which he asserted that the time had come for the States which had Indian populations to interest themselves in a practical way in their Indian people. He suggested that the funds appropriated by Congress for the educational, health, and welfare activities of the Indian Service might well be handled, for the Government, by the appropriate agencies of the States. Several bills having this purpose in view were introduced in the Sixty-ninth and Seventieth Congresses. In his report on the bill which concerned Montana Indians, Secretary Work said: The principle underlying the bill, therefore, is in agreement with my belief that the time has arrived when the States directly interested in the civilization and advancement of the Indians should begin to assume a certain degree of responsibility for the administration of their affairs. However, it would be 70301-29- 4 |