Gila River and its tributaries still remains, and it is the opinion of the United States Attorney at Tucson, Ariz., that that right can be successfully vindicated.

Mr. JAMES WOOD.-These Pima Indians especially appeal to us because they and their neighboring tribe, the Maricopas, can say truthfully, “We have never taken the life of a white man.” A few years ago it became my duty to investigate the work of the Arizona Improvement Company in taking the water. I found that the Arizona Improvement Company were required to give a given number of inches of water continually to the Pima Indians, but it limited their use of water for irrigation to the work they were then doing, and the Indians could not use another inch of water for the purpose of irrigating additional land. Their wheat fields were then very prosperous, but they have not been able to irrigate another acre. That was not all, as the lands further up the valley were irrigated, and water continually flowed over them; the seepage from that water worked down to the lands of the Pimas and made their best lands worthless marshes, and the alkali came down and made their land worthless. There they were, limited to a petty number of inches of water, and in using that water limited to a portion of their land which had been made absolutely worthless.

Mr. SMILEY.-About ten years ago General Whittlesey and his wife and my wife and myself went all over that Pima Reservation, and it is one of the most prosperous Indian reservations I have ever seen. The lands lie along the Gila River, and were watered by ditches made probably before a white man ever set foot on this continent. The rule of the West is that the first users of water have the prior right; it is recognized all through the West, and there is no question about the prior right of the Pima Indians. If the Pima Indians have used say only forty inches of water, and have never used any more, that is all the water they have a right to use according to the laws universal in the West.

Gen. C. H. HoWARD.-I would be very sorry to have this matter left simply with the passage of a resolution. It was up two years ago when I was here, and I was interested in it at that time. We need the intelligent co-operation of the members of this Conference, and we need their hearts with us in regard to this matter. I would like to take it up at just the point where Mr. Smiley has left it. The Pimas had a good year this year (I just had a letter from the Rev. Mr. Cook, missionary to the Pimas). They have had more rain than for many years, but they were able to raise only one eighth of the amount that they used to raise, only one million pounds (that is the way they measure the wheat there) of wheat this year, whereas in old times they raised eight million pounds. It is the want of water which is crowding back these people into barbarism. Mr. Cook writes me that for want of this water the sage brush and mesquite are growing up where they had wheat.

Shall we let this matter rest, only passing a resolution? Cannot we take interest enough in it to write to our Congressmen about it after we leave here, and see if something cannot be done? There are forty-five hundred souls there, and why not let them support themselves and hold up their heads in manhood? Why not sustain them, and crowd back these white men who have been robbing them? That is the point I want to make, that we should not leave it with a mere resolution.

Rev. Dr. C. L. THOMPSON.-The resolution is very good, perhaps, as far as it goes. In my judgment it is not strong enough. Digging wells upon the Sacaton Reservation is not going to irrigate that desert. The water of the Gila River belongs to the Pima Indians; white people have taken it away. That dam should have been built upon the Gila River and so give the Indians plenty of water. The Phoenix influence has induced the Government-after we had received the impression that the San Carlos dam would be built for the relief of the Indians-to build the Salt River dam. Nobody is suffering there. I do not believe that the water from the Tonto basin will be carried over to the Pima Indians. It seems to me what we should say to the Government is: "We want the San Carlos dam built that the Pimas and Papagoes may have water upon their desert."

I do not like to make an amendment to any paper that is presented by Mr. James and Dr. Spining, but instead of thanking the Government for digging wells, I should like to have a definite expression that we want water directly for the Indians through the San Carlos dam.

On motion of Mr. Garrett, Dr. Thompson and Mr. James were appointed a committee to report on the matter of this resolution to the Conference at the evening session.

Dr. JACKSON.-The friends of the Pima Indians went to Congress, and brought the influence of the country to bear upon Congress to establish the Gila dam, and politicians influenced white men in Phoenix and vicinity,—because they are voters and the Pima Indians are not voters, who got the money (that was originally voted by Congress with the intention of building the Gila River dam, which would help the Pima Indians) transferred to another river system, which will help the white men; and the Pima Indians have starved these seven years, and are bound to starve unless the Government rations them and keeps them from starvation.

Dr. Thompson asked that Dr. Spining be added to his Committee, and that was accordingly done.

Mr. JAMES.-I want to hear a few words from Secretary Gates. He has had conversation with the authorities in Washington upon this subject, and he has the facts.

Dr. GATES.-The first bill introduced three years ago for the San Carlos dam I helped to draft, with Mr. Newell, Superintendent

of Hydrography, and one or two engineers. We spent day after day with the Rev. Mr. Cook when he was in Washington advocating that measure for the Indians. When Dr. Spining and Dr. Jackson reinforced us before committees we were very grateful. The San Carlos Bill contained every needed provision for guarding the interests of the Indians; that bill failed. One of the best friends of the Indians, Senator Platt of Connecticut, told our Board that he feared it would be an entering wedge for a "general irrigation scheme." It has been a question since that time whether the Tonto dam or the San Carlos dam should be built; it is not probable that appropriations can be had now for both dams. I do not think that the rights of the Indians are safeguarded in the proposed plan for the Tonto dam. That dam ought not to be constructed without guarding the prior rights of the earliest irrigators, -the Indians.

Mr. Smiley is of course correct in what he says about irrigation laws. Those who first used the water for agriculture have perpetual water rights, which take precedence of all other rights to the use of water from that stream. The subsequent use of the water from the stream must be limited by the prior right of the earlier irrigators to the number of "miner's inches" of water which each such irrigator has for a term of years used for purposes of agriculture. The earlier irrigator has a right which nobody else can take away from him, and all later users of the water of a stream are in equity and in law conditioned by this earlier right of the first irrigators. The Pima Indians unquestionably have such prior rights to a good supply of water from the Gila River and also from the Salt River.

I see nothing which we as a Conference can do beyond the adopting of this resolution, except to ask that a committee be named to go to Washington this winter to advocate before Congress, and with the Secretary of the Interior, the protection of the irrigation rights of these peaceful agriculturists, the Pima Indians. I very much wish that the President of this Conference would serve as a member of such a committee.

Dr. SPINING.-While at Washington Dr. Gates and I went to the Bureau of Geological Survey, and there the Chief Clerk, Mr. F. H. Newell, who has official knowledge of everything in that country in connection with the San Carlos dam and the Tonto dam, showed us drawings concerning the water coming from the Salt River to the Pimas. And we shook hands on it that whatever general scheme of irrigation was recommended to the Secretary of the Interior, whether the dam was built at Tonto or on the Gila River, would recognize the rights and provide for the needs of these Indians. The question was raised as to whether the water could be brought over from the Salt River and be made to minister to the Sacaton Reservation, and he said it could, and showed us drawings and traces of ancient canals to prove it.

The Conference adjourned at 1 P. M.

Sixth Session.

Friday Evening, October 23, 1903.

The Chairman called the meeting to order at eight o'clock. Mr. Meserve, for the Business Committee, moved the following ́resolution, which was unanimously adopted :

Resolved: Congress should at the earliest possible moment provide courts and the necessary machinery for the enforcement in the Indian reservations of existing laws operative there for the punishment of crime and the protection of property.

Hon. John J. Fitzgerald, member of Congress from Brooklyn, and member of the House Committee on Indian Affairs, who was to speak upon the obstacles in the way of legislation for the Indians, was then introduced by the Chairman.

SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE CONFERENCE AND SOME OBSTACLES IN THE WAY OF LEGISLATION FOR THE INDIANS.

BY HON. JOHN J. FITZgerald.

It has often been said that the only good Indian is a dead one. The same opinion seems to be quite popular, apparently, with regard to politicians. The late Speaker Reed defined a statesman to be a dead politician; and if it were not for that eminent authority I would say that the most distinguished, the most eminent, the most practical, and the most successful politician attending this Conference was the distinguished Chairman of the meeting. I wish to emphasize the fact that this pre-eminently qualified man for public service, a man of affairs, a man whose name is a household word from one ocean to another, is essentially a politician. Now, I wish to impress upon the members of this Conference the injustice of attributing evil to any one class, whatever it may be. It was undecided until after Mr. Smiley's eulogy of the Governor, whether a politician, an Indian agent, or an ethnologist was the most wicked man upon the face of the earth.

It was charming to me, accustomed to frankness and a freedom of expression in debate, to find a liberality of spirit and a freedom of expression in this discussion; to find an absence of narrowness; to find men of every creed and of every profession and from every walk in life standing up and speaking right out in meeting.

Much of the good that has been accomplished by these Mohonk Conferences has resulted from that very thing. Nobody is sensitive that somebody else's corns will be trodden upon. You cannot accomplish anything in conferences by being afraid of offending somebody. There is the impression, the great and deep impression, that comes to the stranger coming to this Conference seeking light and truth and information, that intelligent, practical men and women, and perhaps some idealists (I would not like to particularize in that regard), have the courage to speak out their convictions. And this is the way so much good has come from the Lake Mohonk Conference.

Let me relate how valuable the Conference has been to me in my work in Congress, particularly on one occasion. You may know, those of you who have followed the proceedings of Congress, that there is a growing sentiment in opposition to the enlargement or spread of the non-reservation boarding school; the conviction is quite firm that they have attained as great a growth as they should. They were very violently attacked in the House one day, and the chairman of the Committee, compelled to defend his bill, picked up the Commissioner's report and read a most glowing account of the work of the non-reservation boarding schools. I being on the other side of the House got the floor immediately after him, and opened the Commissioner's report at the beginning, and asked the members of the House to take the report and follow it, that I was going to read from the Commissioner's speech at the Lake Mohonk Conference. Those two statements were as contrary as it was possible for statements to be, and I stated to the House that it was merely a question as to which part of the report had been written by the Commissioner; and I assumed that he had at least written the speech that was delivered here, and those were his sentiments whoever might be credited with the views expressed by the chairman of the Committee. That was one instance when the reports of the Conference were very valuable to me.

The work of this Conference is known throughout the land. I had some peculiar ideas regarding it when I first heard of it. I thought a number of peculiar people came together at Lake Mohonk, and without knowing anything practical whatever indulged in theories. But I find here the men and the women who are engaged in the active work of civilizing the Indians; men of the highest and brightest intellects who give their valuable time and thought to the many problems affecting the Indians. And I know of no gathering where better results can be obtained than when you get the men who do the practical work and the men who do the thinking, having the ability to apply the knowledge they have to the difficult problems of a question in order to work out true solutions.

Now, I imagine this Conference is interested in knowing why Congress does not legislate all the evils of the Indian problem out of existence. Well, it is a simple matter. For instance, I am on the Committee on Indian Affairs; I represent a district of the