Uncle Sam Reports on His Real Estate Deals
With His Red Children; He Bought 2,600,000
Square Miles at Average of 48 Cents an Acre
ny ELMO SCOTT WATSON
R. V>H.wd by Western Newspaper Union,
RECENTLY the department
> of the interior issued a
new colored map, the first of
its kind, which shows how
Uncle Sam since 1790 has ac
quired the nation’s public do
main from 66 principal Indian
tribes by some 389 treaties and
numerous acts of congress.
A study of this map shows
that these cessions by the red
man constitute about 95% of
the public domain, or some
thing like 2,600,000 square
miles. In so far as the aggre
gate cost of this land was ap
proximately $800,000,000—
that means a little more than
$307 a square mile or approx
imately 48 cents an acre — it
would mean that Uncle Sam
certainly got a bargain in
these dealings with his red
children.
In a statement issued at the time
the map was released, Secretary
Harold Ickes ot the department of
the interior declared that* “while
questions are still frequently raised
h* to whether the Indians received
tatr prices for their land, the rec
ords show that, except in a very
few cases where military duress was
present, the prices were such as to
satisfy the Indians. Discussions of
enhancement of land prices from
original costs to the present esti
mated value of nearly 40 billion
dollars only lead to idle specula
tion. Itiere is no equitable basis of
value comparison then and now.
"Sine Black Pages.”
'“While the history of our dealings
with tiie Indians contains some
black pages, since the days of the
early settlers there has been a fixed
policy based upon the principle of
free purchase and sale in dealings
between the native inhabitants of
the land and the white immigrants.
In no other continent has any seri
ous attempt ever been made to deal
with a weak aboriginal population
•hi these terms.
" While the 15 million dollars that
we paid to Na|>oleon in the Louisiana
Purchase was merely in compensa
tion for his cession of political au
thority. we proceeded to pay the In
dian tribes of the ceded territory
more than 20 times this sum for such
lands as they were willing to sell.
Moreover, the Indian tribes were
wise enough to reserve from their
cessions sufficient land to bring
them an Income that each year ex
ceeds tiie amount of our payment to
Napoleon."
I* is true, as Secretary Ickes says,
that in the majority of cases the
Indiana probably received a fair
price for their lands since there is
no equitable basis of value compari
son, but it is doubtful if the Sioux,
the Nez Perces, the Modocs and the
Poncas—-to name only a few—would
agree with Mr. Ickes that the “prin
ciple of free purchase and sale” had
been observed In their dealings with
the Great White Father.
Louisiana Territory.
Since Mr. Ickes mentions the Lou
isiana Purchase, it might be well
to examine briefly the record of our
government's dealings with one of
the aboriginal occupants of that re
gion, the Sioux. For generations
these Dakotas had occupied a vast
empire along the Missouri river, in
cluding most of the present states of
North and South Dakota and parts
of Nebraska. Wyoming and Mon
tana Gradually their territory had
been reduced by a series of treaties
until they held only their choicest
bunting grounds in the Black Hills,
the Powder river country and the
Big Horn' mountains.
That was guaranteed to them, by
the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, as
a ‘ permanent reservation" and, be
sides, they were granted, for as long
as there were buiTalo on the plains,
“the right to hunt on any land north
of the Platte.” This reservation was
to be considered "unceded Indian
territory" in which "no white per
son or persons shall be permitted to
settle or occupy any portion of the
same or. without the consent of the
Indians first had and obtained, to
pass through the same.” Moreover,
It was agreed that no subsequent
treaty should be considered valid
"unless executed and signed by at
least three-fourths of all the adult
male Indians occupying and inter
ested in the same."
The government kept its promise
less than a year. Four months after
the President had proclaimed the
Fort Laramie treaty, General Sher
man (noted for his only-good-Indian
is-a-dead-Indian philosophy) issued
an order that all Indians not actually
on their reservations were to be
under the jurisdiction of the army
and “as a rule will be considered
hostile.” Then came the announce
ment that the Northern Pacific rail
road was to be built across the north
ern part of the Sioux hunting lands
and soon afterwards the Great White
Father sent surveyors, protected by
soldiers, into this region without tak
ing the trouble to ask the Sioux
CALICO IN PERPETUITY — An
important provision of the treaty of
1794 whereby the United States ac
quired lands from the Iroquois Con
federacy was that there should be
an annual distribution of calico
among 5,000 members of the Six
Nations. This provision is still car
ried out each year with appropriate
ceremonies in observance of perpet
ual “peace and friendship” with the
Iroquois. Shown here at a typical
ceremony is Florence Printup, a
descendant of old Iroquois chiefs,
who received the rolls of calico for
distribution.
for permission to "pass through the
same.”
In 1874 Gen. George A. Custer and
his Seventh cavalry were sent to ex
plore the Black Hills—again without
asking permission of the Sioux to
whom Pah-sah-pah <the Black Hills)
was almost sacred soil. Then a
newspaper man who accompanied
Custer flashed to the world the elec
trifying news that gold had been dis
covered in the Hills and Custer’s of
ficial report not only confirmed
this but It was also an ecstatic de
scription of the beauties of that re
gion. The result was inevitable.
‘Justified’ Treaty Breach.
Prospectors and miners flocked to
the new El Dorado. For a time the
government went through the mo
tions of expelling the intruders, then
gave it up as a hopeless job. Hav
ing failed to keep the whites out of
the Black Hills, the government's
next step was to And some way to
justify this violation of the Laramie
treaty, A good excuse came when
several bands of the Sioux, notably
Sitting Bull's Hunkpapas and Crazy
Horse's Oglalas, who were hunting
in the Powder river country (as they
had a perfect right to do) failed to
return to their reservations within
the time limit set by the Indian bu
reau January 31, 1876. (The fact
that it was almost physically im
possible for the Sioux to obey this
order within the time allowed didn't
make any difference to the Indian
bureau!)
On February 1 the Indian com
missioner proclaimed all Sioux who
were not on the reservation “hos
tiles" and called on the army to
round them up. Then followed the
campaigns of Generals Crook, Ter
ry. Gibbon and Miles against these
•'hostile" Sioux and Cheyennes in
1870-77 which either compelled the
surrender of the Indians or drove
them across the border into Canada.
Even before the campaign was over,
a commission was sent to treat with
the Sioux and arrange for the ces
sion of lands which the Fort Lara
mie treaty had guaranteed to them
'‘forever."
Concerning this commission, which
began its work in August, 1876,
Doane Robinson in his “History of
the Sioux Indians” (South Dakota
Historical Collections) writes:
The commission says: “While the In
dians received us as friends and listened
with kind attention to our proposition, we
were painfully impressed with their lack
of confidence in the pledges of the gov
ernment. At times they told their story
of wrongs with such impressive earnest
ness that our cheeks crimsoned with
shame. In their speeches and recitals
of wrongs which their people had suf
fered at the hands of the whites, the ar
raignment for gross acts of injustice and
fraud, the description of treaties made
only to be broken, the doubts and dis
trusts of our present profession of friend
ship and good will, were portrayed in col
or* so vivid and language so terse that
admiration and surprise would have kept
us silent had not shame and humiliation
done so. That which made this arraign
ment more telling was that It often came
from the lips of men who are our friends
and who had hoped against hope that the
day might come when their wrongs would
be redressed.
Sioux Had to Like It.
Since the Sioux didn’t have much
choice in the matter, they signed the
treaty offered them. Here’s what
another historian says about it (not
an Indian historian, but a white his
torian). George E. Hyde, author of
“Red Cloud’s Folk—A History of the
Oglala Sioux Indians,” writes:
But the object had been attained at
last, and under the cloud of war the
government had taken the Black Hills,
the Powder River lands and the Bighorn
country. The pretense of formal agree
ment and fair payment which Congress
had devised to veil this act of robbery
did not even deceive the Indians. The
chiefs knew that they were being robbed
and that they were forced to sign away
their lands. Here are beef, flour and blan
kets (said the United States) for your
lands In Laramie Plains and between the
forks of the Platte, which we took from
you before 1865; and here (said the Unit
ed States) are the same beef, flour and
blankets for your lands In Nebraska
which we took before 1870; and (said the
United States, with an air of vast gen
erosity) here are the same beef, flour
and blankets for the Black Hills, the Pow
der River, and the Bighorn lands which
we are now taking from you. In all fair
ness, that is very near the true meaning
of the "agreement" of 1878, by means of
which these last lands were taken from
the Sioux
So the Sioux were finally settled on
a greatly reduced reservation with
in the present states of North and
South Dakota. But even then the
Great White Father wasn’t through
with them. In 1888 another com
mission went to the Standing Rock
reservation to swing the cession of
11 million acres of Sioux lands at a
fixed price of 50 cents an acre (“an
outrageous robbery,” Stanley Ves
tal, biographer of Sitting Bull, calls
it) and break up the great Sioux
reservation into smaller ones. Sit
ting Buil lined up the chiefs against
it, then went to Washington where he
succeeded in getting the price raised
to $1.25 an acre.
The next year another commission
came to Standing Rock to bargain
with the Sioux at the new price but
found themselves blocked at every
turn by Sitting Bull. Finally by
making various promises (many of
which were never kept, incident
ally) they managed to get enough
chiefs to agree to the sale. So, in
the words of Vestal, "the cession
was signed, the great Sioux Reser
vation was only a memory. It was
the death of a nation.” Among the
promises that were not kept was one
about supplying rations to the Sioux,
penned up on their reduced reserva
tions, and in the winter of 1890-91
that broken promise bore bitter
fruit. For the Sioux, suffering from
hunger and disillusionment, became
easy victims to the apostles of the
Ghost Dance and before that excite
ment was over the shameful story
of the massacre at Wounded Knee
had been written on one of the
“black pages” which Secretary
Ickes mentions.
As indicated previously some of
the other “black pages” bear the
stories of our dealings with the Nez
Perces, the Modocs and the Poncas.
That is why it is likely that any
member of those tribes, as well as
the Sioux, who reads the secretary’s
statement about "a fixed policy
based upon the principle of free
purchase and sale in dealings be
tween the native inhabitants of the
land and the white immigrants” will
probably smile—and there won’t be
much humor in that smile!
Forty Tribes Celebrate
Festival at Gallup, N. M.
Indian drums are sounding in the
far places of the Southwest, and the
Navajos, Zunis, Hopis, Utes, Apa
ches. Lagunas. Acomas and a score
of other tribesmen and their fami
lies are trekking to "the place by
the bridge,” Gallup. N. M.
Here each year 7,000 Indians from
nearly 40 different tribes join forces
to produce America’s most colorful
and spectacular Indian show, the an
nual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial.
For four days they dance, chant,
compete in sports and engage in
weird pagan rites before capacity
audiences made up of their white
brothers. The Gallup Ceremonial is
the largest and most authentic In
dian spectacle of its kind in the
country. Usually the Ceremonial is
held the last part of August.
A special attraction each year is
the unusual display of Indian arts
and crafts in the Exhibit Hall where
thousands of articles are shown. A
score of native craftsmen will be
at work showing the technique of
Indian handicraft.
Great White Father Makes Tardy
Payment for Indians’ Ponies
‘When Sitting Bull's outlaw Sioux
massacred Gen. George A. Custer
and flvii troops of the Seventh caval
ry on the Little Big Horn, the U. S.
rumbled with indignation. Amid all
the furore the Army brass was
struck by a wonderful idea—since it
waa almost impossible to catch
mounted Sioux, why no. tnke away
their horses?
' Ttug scheme had obvious defects,
the chief of which was that Sitting
Bull and most of his followers had
already ridden off to Canada. But
the army put it into operation with
vast enthusiasm. In the fall and
winter of 1876 cavalrymen seized
8,567 ponies from baffled, friendly
Indians, at Camp Robinson, Neb.,
and Dakota Indian agencies.
"Sioux and their friends were
quick to clamor for payment; by
1892 the U. S. government had paid
a quarter of a million dollars in
damages. But even this left 2,298
horses still unpaid for.
o
“By 1928, when an investigation of
Indian claims was authorized, time
had not simplified the problem. But
this spring. 69 years after Little Big
Horn. Congress voted to pay off the
last of the Sioux claims. Last week
the President solemnly signed a bill
granting them $101,630 ($91,920 for
ponies. $9,710 for property lost in
the scuffle). Nobody suggested re
storing the Sioux to mobility by re
placing the horses with second-hand
Jeeps.’’—Time Magazine.
One Dessert—Many Variations
(See Recipes Belowi
Variations on a Theme
I have often thought that most of
us would be better cooks if we
learned to make a few dishes well
instead of gathering hundreds of
recipes without ever learning how
to do any one of them well enough
to set in front of company. Then, if
these few dishes get monotonous,
there are always good variations to
use to make them seem entirely dif
ferent than the basic recipe.
One woman whom I know frankly
admits that the only dessert which
she can be certain of turning out
"right and proper” is a bavarian
cream, cut is it
monotonous to
have bavarian
cream whenever
we go to have
dinner with her?
^ No, indeed. Some
-L-i—^ times it turns out
to be maple flavored, garnished with
pecan nutmeats. Another time she
will cleverly flavor it with choco
late and coffee, a most intriguing
combination. Then during the fruit
season, she has a spree by adding
delicious combinations like pine
apple and apricots.
Basic Bavarian Cream.
(Serves 6)
1 envelope plain, unflavored gelatin
cup cold water
2 egg yolks
^ cup sugar
% teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup thin cream
2 egg whites
Soften gelatin in cold water. Scald
milk in top part of double boiler,
then gradually add the combined
egg yolks, sugar and salt. Return
to the double boiler and cook until
custard-like in consistence. Remove
from heat, add gelatin and stir
until dissolved. Add vanilla and
cream. Chill, and when mixture be
gins to thicken, beat until fluffy with
rotary egg beater. Fold in stiffly
beaten whites. Pour into mold or
molds that have been rinsed in cold
water. Chill until firm. When ready
to serve, unmold and garnish as de
sired.
Bavarian Cream Variations.
Maple Bavarian: Make above
recipe using shaved maple sugar in
place of white sugar. One dozen cut
marshmallows may be added or
% cup chopped pecans or walnuts.
Butterscotch: Omit white sugar.
Cook % cup brown sugar with 2
tablespoons butter and add this to
hot custard.
Chocolate Rice: Beat 3 table
spoons cocoa into 1 cup cooked rice
and fold into bavarian mixture.
Fruit Bavarian: Fold 1 cup diced
fruit into bavarian cream after it
starts to thicken.
Chocolate Bavarian: Add 2
squares melted, unsweetened choco
late or 6 tablespoons cocoa to scald
ed milk. Continue as directed. If
a slight flavor of coffee is desired
with the chocolate, substitute 1 ta
blespoon cold, boiled coffee for 1 ta
blespoon of the milk.
Coffee Bavarian: Substitute Ms cup
cold, boiled coffee for V4 cup milk
and add 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
Ice cream comes in for many
Lynn Says
How to make good pastry: The
proper proportion for pastry is
1 cup Hour, salt to taste and Vi
cup shortening or substitute.
The important points are: have
ingredients as cold as possible;
never over-mix shortening and
flour. The mixture should be
"lumpy*' about the size of giant
peas.
When the shortening is not
thoroughly mixed with the flour,
it "streaks" and makes for flak
ier crust.
Too much water makes the
pastry a “toughie." LTse just
enough to make the dough stick
together. On damp days, less
water ia required, on sunny days,
more.
I
L
ibers’ Point-Easy
Menus
Lima Beans with Ham Chunks
Seven-Minute Cabbage
Fried Tomatoes
Jellied Pear Salad
Bran Muffins Jelly
Orange Chiffon Pie
Beverage
delicious variations, too, if you have
a good basic recipe:
Custard Base Ice Cream.
2 cups milk
% cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 eggs
I cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Scald lVfe cups milk and add all
but 2 tablespoons of the sugar to it
Add cornstarch and salt to remain
ing V4 cup milk. Add to milk which
has been heated in top part of
double boiler, stirring occasionally.
Beat 3 egg yolks and 1 white, add
the hot custard and return to double
boiler to cook for 5 minutes. Chill.
Beat 2 egg whites with the remain
ing sugar until stiff and add to
chilled custard with vanilla. Final
ly add cream which has been beat
en until thick but not stiff. Freeze
without stirring.
Ice Cream Variations.
Banana: Crush three bananas
through potato ricer, adding 2 ta
blespoons lemon juice. Add to cus
tard before adding egg white.
Caramel: Heat the sugar of the
.-- above recipe in
heavy skillet stir
ring until melted
and light brown
in color. Add V*
cup water and
stir until smooth.
Cook the com
1-—1 starch with the
milk and salt and add the caramel
plus 1 tablespoon of sugar. Proceed
as directed above.
Chocolate: Melt Hi to 2 table
spoons of chocolate over hot water
adding to custard while hot.
Coffee: Scald Vi cup finely ground
coffee in the milk, then strain
through three thicknesses of cheese
cloth. Proceed as above, adding Vi
teaspoon almond flavoring.
Mint: Add Vi teaspoon mintextract
for vanilla. Tint the ice cream a
delicate green. Or, if mint extract is
not available, melt 1 cup crushed
or ground mints in milk. Tint pink
or green, as desired.
Peach: Add 1 cup crushed
peaches, Vi cup sugar and Vi tea
spoon almond extract. Omit va
nilla.
Now we come to an interesting
variation in the meat department.
When you want to dress up pork
chops for company, here are two
excellent suggestions. They are
stuffed to stretch the meat.
Pork Chops I.
6 thick pork chops (cut pocket
alongside hone)
2 cups toasted bread cubes
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons parsley
4 tablespoons fat
1 can tomato soup
Stuff pork chops with toasted bread
cubes and pars
ley. Pin together
with a toothpick.
Sear chops on
both sides in skil
let. Season with
salt and pepper,
1
add tomato soup, h_I (—r
cover and cook over low heat for
45 to 60 minutes.
Pork Chops II.
6 thick pork chops, cut for stuffing
1H cups cooked rice
2 pimienios, shredded
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons lard or substitute
Stuff pork chops with a well sea
soned mixture of rice and pimien
tos. Pin with toothpick. Sear
chops until golden brown. Season
with salt and pepper, and add V4
cup water, cover tightly, and cook
until tender.
Released by Waatern Newspaper Union.
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