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NE of my fellow tribesmen, now a member of Congress from Oklahoma, helped me to form my ideas of the ability of the Indian to understand his own problems, and to fight effectively for their right solution. He was the attorney of my people in the days when the Dawes Commission were at work on the complicated business of settling the affairs of the Five Tribes.

I was very young then, and "Bill" Hastings was no graybeard either, having arrived at about the age of twentyeight. I remember with something of a thrill the curt, pouncing manner of the young Cherokee attorney. In the particular session I remember, Hastings was fighting the claims of certain descendants of negro slaves owned by Cherokees, and he was battering down the structure of proof reared by the negro claimants'

white attorney. There was a certain cool, sarcastic quality in the Cherokee attorney's questions and comments, the assured manner of the man who knows exactly what he is talking about and is out to puncture the other fellow's vague claims and theories. So far as I could see, the fact that Hastings was an Indian created no prejudice in the minds of those white men who were sitting to hear the arguments.

A good while I carried that impression. Then I began to come in contact with young and educated Indians of other tribes, who told me that at home, on their reservations, they were merely subjects of the white man put there by the government to administer Indian affairs. They had no standing, no voice, no influence,-unless they chose to follow unquestioningly the policy of the agent or superintendent. Usually, these young men and young women had specific proof of incompetence or graft in certain features of reservation administra

tion, not difficult to find in view of the miscellaneous character of the men sent out to take charge. But they found it difficult to get a hearing anywhere.

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My new Indian friends opened up to me another vision of the Indian from that I had known. To me, Hastings, university trained, fighting before white men for the interests of his tribe, seemed perfectly logical. had been told that the legislature of my tribe as early as 1819, a quarter of a century before any such laws were enacted by the whites, had prohibited traffic in liquor. Of course, the Indians knew their own problems! I have had to give up much of my early pride in the work done for Indians by Indians; what has been true of my own tribe is not typical of the reservations. There has been a thirtythree-year period

shape of government, and he tried to give that system of regulations and that theory of industrial organization to the Indians under his jurisdiction.

The political agent has seldom been in sympathy with the Indians. Unlike the agent working under the stimulus of mis

even

sionary zeal, he has regarded his exile to the reservation as a real hardship. So he tackled his job in a spirit of "let-me-alone-ifyou-don't-want-toget-into trouble!" Such was the attitude of the average honest agent after 1883. Of course, the grafter was more intent upon getting into his own hands control of all reservation activities. So, the old men and women who used to exercise authority over the practical affairs of their people, and guide their moral development, were shoved into the background,-into a permanent obscurity. Councils continued, but more and more they were spoken of by the agents as long-winded, time-killing, powwows. Almost any Commissioner of Indian Affairs, after six months in the office at Washington, felt qualified to act on any reservation as a wise representative of the "Great Father." Of necessity, he had to back the authority of his agents, -and that meant stilling the voices of those Indian leaders who dared to disagree with the agent's policy.

of suppression which has done infinite harm to the theory of Indian leadership. It began about 1883, when Grant's policy of placing the agencies under missionary control was abandoned in favor of the spoils system. Under the guidance of church workers, the reservation Indian was encouraged, not merely to become a religious leader, but also a leader in the industrial education of his people. Missions could grow fastest when they could count upon active help from those men and women who were natural leaders.

However, it was no system for the spoilsman agent! He was a politician, ignorant of Indian government methods. He knew what a white community of the size of the reservation over which he was given control would expect in the

True enough, tribes continued to send delegations to Washington, and the President heard them. But what could he do except to refer their bill of complaint to the Indian Commissioner with instruction to look into it? What could the Commissioner do except to refer it