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APPENDIX

The field work of the Board of Indian Commissioners involved Indian sections of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Montana, Washington, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Florida, and New York. The special reports on conditions in the reservations visited are presented in this appendix in an abridged form.

PAIUTE INDIAN AGENCY, UTAH

Commissioner WALCOTT

In July, 1928, Commissioner Walcott visited the Paiute Indian Agency, whose headquarters is located at Cedar City, Utah. The Indians of the agency are seven widely separated bands of full-blood Paiutes with a population total of 697. These bands occupy reservations scattered over the public domain in northern Arizona, southeastern Nevada, and southwestern and western Utah. The population by bands is as follows: Kaibab, Arizona, 93; Shivwitz, Utah, 80; Cedar City, Goshute, Indian Peake, Panguitch and scattered, Utah, 314; Moapa River, Nevada, 192.

Until quite recently the general public had little knowledge of these Indians. Few people visited this part of the country but now thousands of tourists are coming into southern Utah to view the beauties and wonders of Zion National. Park, Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon, and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado from the northern rim.

The Paiute are a peaceable, moral, and industrious people. In their remote and arid country these Indians have limited opportunities to engage in special industries other than basketry and glove making; general ranch work is the line of activity which they desire and for which they are best adapted.

Because the reservations of this agency are so widely scattered and difficult of access the administration of the affairs of these Indians is no easy problem. Many of the roads are the ordinary ways across the desert and these are almost impassable when the rains come, or in the wintertime. Some of the little reserves have no telephone connections, and where there is a telephone the message, in some cases, must be relayed. Hospitalization at this agency presents a difficult situation because of the great distances and the small number of Indians in each group. All of the hospitals in this section are private institutions, and one of them has refused admission to Indians. Good contacts, however, have been made with others which are willing to receive Indian patients on the same terms as whites. An allotment of $2,000 should be made to properly meet the hospital needs of this jurisdiction. Each of the reserves excepting Skull Valley has a farmer, stockman, or other Indian Service employeein charge. The superintendent should have another person in his employ for relief assignments and other general work of the agency. Two policemen should be detailed for use at such far-away points as Goshute, where they could accomplish much with minor cases of lawbreaking and in obtaining proper knowledge of conditions which the superintendent could not secure otherwise, except with much difficulty.

The Moapa River Indians are allotted so far as there is good land. Some of the land in this valley in southeastern Nevada is only fit for pasturage, and it has been proposed that 210 acres now used by the Indians for grazing be bought and added to the reservation. Of this area 150 acres can be irrigated and this should be added as additional tentative allotments. If this is done a number of young men would take the tillable land and make use of it. The cost would be $7,500 and 150 acres could be irrigated from an additional ditch from the upper part of the river.

At Moapa River alfalfa hay is the main crop grown and is salable, the Indians receiving $18 a ton for it delivered at the railroad station, the top price paid by the Union Pacific for hay for feeding stock in transit. Some of the Indians here are being started in asparagus raising, which appears to be successful in this locality.

The Kaibab Subagency is situated in northwestern Arizona and its headquarters is on a plain surrounded by mountains which rise over a thousand feet above the plateau. Here are a schoolhouse, stockman's house, storeroom, and barns. Of the 126,000 acres included in the reservation only 28 acres are capable of irrigation with the present supply of water. All around these few cultivated acres the desert stretches away to the mountains and surrounding hills. The desert is intersected by deep washes, dry during much of the year, which are impassable for animals except at a few places. The country is only available for stock raising and there is a fine herd of 534 Hereford cattle in which the Indians are taking a great interest.

Some Indians have bought stock from the tribal herd and at the last round-up 52 were purchased for their individual use. Dry farming is not practicable in this region and has failed when undertaken by the whites under the most favorable circumstances. There is great need, therefore, for more tillable land so that the Indians can be permanently located on the soil. In the Two Mile Wash there is an opportunity to construct a dam which would be of great value and would irrigate many acres of land.

From an observation of this agency it appears that the most practical thing to do is for the Government to acquire the adjoining Heaton ranch in order to provide sufficient land to support the Indians by their own work. These Paiutes prefer to settle down at home, but there is little for them to do. so they must go where work is to be obtained. This sort of compulsory migration encourages unsettled habits, while their living conditions are such that no amount of education along civilized lines can be practiced by the young people when they return home from the schools.

HAVASUPAI INDIAN AGENCY, ARIZ.

Commissioner WALCOTT

In July, 1928, Commissioner Walcott visited the Havasupai Indian Agency, located in northern Arizona at the western end of the Grand Canyon National Park. This reservation, the home of the small band of Supai Indians, is on the floor of Cataract Canyon, nearly 40 miles west from El Tovar, Grand Canyon. This is one of the most isolated units of the Indian Service and can only be reached by a 38-mile dirt road and a 14-mile trail leading down through the rocks to the Indian village. The Indian lands consist of but 518 acres, and but 80 acres of these are now capable of irrigation from the primitive brush dam built by the tribe.

Figs, apricots, peaches, melons, and vegetables can be raised; also alfalfa. The climate is well adapted to poultry raising, especially turkeys. There is a ready market for all fruit and poultry these Indians could produce at the hotels at Grand Canyon, but because of lack of transportation facilities this is not possible at the present time. Naturally, at present, the Indians do not care to raise more crops than they themselves can consume, but there is little doubt they would use all possible irrigable land if access to the outside world was provided.

Among the immediate needs at this agency are the following, some of these having been taken care of or are in process of being carried out: The longcontemplated irrigation dam should be built as soon as possible. The present difficult trail out of the canyon should be replaced by a shorter trail to be built by the Indians under the direction of the Indian Service, or else by a good road to be built in cooperation with the National Park Service. A light truck for passengers and freight should be provided for the agency. The unfinished hospital should be completed immediately, and a screened porch added. The building, which contains the agency office and the post office, should be remodeled so that it also could be used as a community center and provided further with a guest room. A new cottage should be built for the home of the superintendent. The health situation should be given the attention of the Indian medical service and a clerk and a farmer assigned here.

The trail from Hilltop, the terminus of the road from Grand Canyon, down into Lee Canyon is bad and steep. It follows down Lee to Cataract Canyon and

then on to Supai village, a total distance of 14 miles. The Park Service has already surveyed a road by way of Manacajaw Point, terminating at the falls a mile below the Indian settlement, but as the cost is estimated at $2,500,000 the project has been abandoned. It is expected that another survey will be made to see if it is feasible to carry the road from Hilltop by way of Lee and Cataract Canyons, and for this work funds have been allotted. If this road is found to be impracticable, the only way will be to construct a trail direct from Manacajaw Point to Supai. The agency superintendent thinks such a trail, 4 or 5 miles long, could be built by Indian labor at a cost of $5,000, and this should be done unless a road is built in the near future.

Fortunately, there are few cases of tuberculosis among these Indians. Trachoma is not very prevalent, but there is much venereal disease. Health problems should receive prompt attention, investigation, and intelligent study at this agency. The simple fact that this is a little, isolated, unimportant jurisdiction, apt to be overlooked, warrants the Indian Office in taking instant steps to remedy the health situation.

A number of the Indians are employed in construction work, and the National Park superintendent at Grand Canyon states that they are faithful and trustworthy. The Indian agent feels that if work at Supai were provided most of them would live with their families instead of seeking uncertain employment elsewhere.

There is no place at this agency for community or social-service work. The present house, where as much of this sort of welfare activity is done as the limited facilities permit, contains the agency office and post office. It should be remodeled so as to provide a kitchen and a shower bath and rooms to which the Indian women can come to be instructed in sewing and cooking. Service of this kind is a fundamental need at Supai village. There should also be a guest room with a bath, where traveling officials can be housed while on duty at the agency.

NAVAJO SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS, ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO

Commissioner WALCOTT

In July, 1928, the Northern and Southern Navajo Agencies, the Hopi Agency, and the Charles H. Burke School were visited by Commissioner Walcott.

Old Fort Wingate, near Gallup, N. Mex., was transformed into a boarding school for Navajo students and was opened about two years ago as the Charles H. Burke Indian School. The past year 500 Indian pupils were admitted, and the plant has a capacity for 700. Altogether there is much to be done to make it the kind of a school it should be. It is believed that many of the children who were brought to this school were much too young to be handled with good results. The older pupils are at work on detail 10 weeks during the school term. The children are carried through the eighth grade, and next year it is expected that the ninth will be added.

Inquiry into the feeding of the children here convinces one that the ration they receive is inadequate. It is deficient in fats and there is no milk to supplement it. A dairy herd has been proposed for this place, but until such time as arrangements can be made to build a dam for collecting water from springs on the reserve feed will have to be purchased for the livestock. With irrigation alfalfa could be raised for a cattle herd.

The hospital at this institution is a remodeled building formerly part of the fort and is old and not well suited for the use to which it is put. It has no sterilizing plant and very little equipment of any kind.

At Fort Defiance, the headquarters of the Southern Navajo Agency, the hospital was visited. This was found to be very much overcrowded, two patients often occupying the same bed. The plant is in good condition, but an X-ray machine is very much needed and also a laboratory. There is no milk or eggs available even for the tuberculosis sanitarium. The school buildings at the agency are adequate and the dormitories are in good condition. Domestic science is taught here and a very attractive building of logs has been constructed for class work.

The agency superintendent is very anxious to have a dairy herd at Fort Defiance, and this should be provided as soon as possible, as the use of milk in the hospital is imperative. The school here is for trachomatous children, and

BOARD OF INDIAN COMMISSIONERS

during the winter there were 400 pupils enrolled, and of these 134 were returned cured in the spring. One-half were pronounced "cured questioned."

At the Chin Lee boarding school under the Southern Navajo jurisdiction the buildings are old and in their method of construction are very far from what they should be. There is not sufficient light and air in the playrooms and other parts of the plant. Some of the equipment is very old, and there are many minor repairs which should be made around the place.

At the Tohatchi school under the same agency a new hospital has been built. On orders from Washington the wards were reduced 6 feet in width, decreasing the number of beds about one-half so the staff can only accomplish one-half the work that should be done. This boarding school is well situated as regards water and, having good fields of alfalfa, it should be provided with a dairy herd, because these children need milk as a part of their regular diet.

At the Hopi Agency the superintendent has charge of about 5,000 Hopi and Navajo Indians, about equally divided in numbers. The boarding school conducted at this agency has a capacity for 125 children, and as it is too small to be run economically it is proposed to increase the size to 200 capacity as soon as possible. The hospital here is in active operation and during the winter is so crowded that sometimes three patients are put in the physician's office. The same criticism of the diet can be made at this place as at most of the other schools; there is no milk for the children and but few fresh vegetables are provided.

At Shiprock, N. Mex., the location of the boarding school of the Northern Navajo Agency, there are 250 acres of land under cultivation. Fine alfalfa as well as 5 acres of tomatoes are grown. matoes were put up for the use of the pupils at the school. Many root vegeLast year 1.500 gallons of totables and onions are also grown. A serious question must be considered in connection with the cultivation of the land at this agency as the water is so filled with alkali that numbers of trees are dying.. If this alkaline condition continues-and there is every reason to expect that it will-much of the land will not be fit for cultivation in the course of a few years. comes from the San Juan River and is ample. It is understood that if proper The water supply care is exercised in applying alkaline water this condition can be largely remedied.

There is a dairy herd of good quality at this reservation. The various buildings of the agency, which are quite old, should be repaired in many places and the irrigation ditches need attention.

CARSON SCHOOL AND AGENCY, NEVADA

Commissioner SEYMOUR

The Carson Agency, which has charge of about half of the Indian population in Nevada, between 5,000 and 6,000 in all, and also the nonreservation school of 470 capacity at Stewart, was visited by Commissioner Seymour in July of 1928.

The Indians of Nevada have always been self-supporting, but in the meager fashion necessitated by the barrenness of the country in which they live. Their acquaintance with the white man is less than a century old, dating in general from the second expedition of Fremont in 1843 and 1844. At this early date the Indians of this region by the necessities of their existence were scattered along the few river courses and lakes. Occasionally, where such a source of food supply existed as the abundance of fish in Pyramid Lake, there was a tribal organization and a group claim to the desirable territory. The less favored sections, however, did not tend to any real tribal development. It is for this reason that to-day most of the Indians of the State have not known either a tribal home or reservation life. They are laborers for hire rather than tillers of the soil.

Inasmuch as in their primitive life it was necessary for both men and women to be diligent in the search for subsistence, it was not difficult for the men of the tribe to take up the habits of industry which the lordly Indian of the Plains has yet to learn. The Nevada Indian, both men and women, are therefore to be found wherever work is to be had-at the railroad shops at Sparks, at unskilled labor of various sorts at Reno, as guides and hotel employees at Lake Tahoe, and at this time of year in the hay fields throughout the region.

The Indian of the State shares with other members of his race the primitive inability to look ahead of the present day. As much of the employment avail

able is of seasonal nature, periods of prosperity alternate with periods of want, when the automobile and phonograph purchased during the busy summer are not easily convertible into food for the winter. It is because of this lack of foresight that we so seldom find the Indian either a farmer or a home owner,

It is to meet these conditions that the Government has established in various places throughout the State so-called Indian colonies. A tract of land is provided where Indians who wish to do so may build themselves homes and cultivate gardens for family use. Such colonies are located convenient to a labor market. A public school and a mission church are usually to be found in the immediate neighborhood. The largest of the three colonies visited lies midway between Sparks and Reno. It covers about 20 acres of ground, and the road running through the center of the tract divides the domain of the Washoes from that of the Paiutes. The little houses which the Indians have erected for their own use, containing from one to three rooms, vary considerably in workmanship and surroundings. The Government buildings on this tract are a commissary and an office for the field matron. The public school provided by the city of Reno stands opposite the entrance of the tract.

There is a small colony at Carson City, but in general the Indians working there live within the city limits and solve their own location problems as white laborers do. Three or four miles south of Carson School is another colony at Dresslerville. Being more remote from town the Indians at this place, in season, work in hay fields or at Lake Tahoe and return in the fall for their children to enroll in the public school.

In the valley 31⁄2 miles south of Carson City is the Carson nonreservation boarding school. This was known as the Stewart Industrial Institute when it was founded 37 years ago, and the school post office is still called Stewart. Pupils are carried through the ninth grade at this institution. In connection with the school is maintained a general hospital for the Indians of the State.

The physical appearance of the Carson School is so attractive that the observer is ready to echo the Nevada opinion that this is one of the garden spots of the State. The older buildings are frame, painted white, with attractive looking green roofs and are in an excellent state of repair. The newer structures are built of stone.

This is a nonreservation school. Its pupils are drawn mainly from the Washoe and Paiute Tribes, though other tribes are represented. The greater number of the children are, of course, in the lower grades. A decade or more ago there would be a large proport on of older pupils in any Indian school, but with the growth of willingness for education it has come to pass that Indian children now come to school and pass through the various grades at approximately the same ages as whites. As much of the industrial training for them must wait upon a proper stage of physical development, two results have arisen which deserve attention.

In the first place, Indian children are finishing their school work with less industrial training than they formerly received; and in the second place the necessary work of the school must be done by fewer people in much shorter time. Definite steps should be taken to minimize both these unsatisfactory conditions. Practical industrial training should receive more attention, and if the pupils are to be more and more relieved of the necessary routine work of conducting the school it is obvious that there must be a proportionate increase in the force of employees.

The Pyramid Lake Reservation set aside for Nevada Indians entirely surrounds Pyramid Lake, which is properly called "the Lake of the Desert." A fertile strip of land of several miles along the Truckee River is also within the reserve. These Indian lands have never been allotted, although numerous recommendations to that effect have been made. An equitable division would seem difficult, as the desert portion has little value, while the fishing rights and the irrigable section above the Truckee are highly desirable.

Near where the Truckee River enters the lake is located a Government plant which formerly served as a boarding school and a separate agency. In place of these there are now operated a day school and a sanatorium for tubercular children. Most of the patients at the sanatorium come from the State of Washington, whose moist climate is far more hostile to a tubercular patient than the dry air of Nevada. Eighty-four children can be taken care of at this place.

In addition to the school and sanatorium a farmer is located at Pyramid Lake, in charge of the farm and of the irrigation system along the Truckee River.

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