Custer Died For Your Sins Read online

  The northwestern tribes also have their fierce and gentle side. Over the past two decades there has been continual conflict between the western tribes and the Fish and Game commissions in Oregon and Washington. Violations of treaty fishing rights by the state can bring Yakimas to the riverbanks with guns so quick as to frighten an unsuspecting bystander.

  Before anyone conceived of statehood for either state, Isaac Stevens, on behalf of the United States, traveled up the coast signing treaties with all of the Pacific tribes. These treaties promised perpetual hunting and fishing rights for the tribes if they would agree to remain on restricted reservations. After World War II, when the sportsmen began to have leisure time, the states sought to abrogate the treaties. But in the case of Washington there was a specific disclaimer clause in the act admitting Washington into the Union by which the state promised never to disturb the Indian tribes within its borders.

  In recent years there have been a number of “fish-ins” by the smaller tribes in Washington in sporadic attempts to raise the fishing-rights issue. Unfortunately the larger tribes have not supported these people. The larger tribes cannot seem to understand that a precedent of law set against a small tribe means one for the larger tribes as well. It may well be that all Indian fishing will eventually be regulated by the states of the Northwest. This would be quite tragic as there is a fundamental difference between Indian and sports fishing. Indian people are fishing for food for their families. Sportsmen are fishing for relaxation and recreation. Indians may have to starve so that whites can have a good time on the weekends if present trends continue.

  But the northwestern tribes have taken the lead in pursuing their rights in court in this century. In the last century the Cherokees went to the Supreme Court over and over again and set forth most of Indian law in its developing years. Similarly in this century the tribes of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho have won the more significant cases which have been taken to court. Such landmark cases as Squire v. Capoeman, a taxation case which spelled out exemption of individual allotments from income tax, United States v. Winans, which defined water rights and fishing rights, Mason v. Sams, another fishing-rights case, and Seymour v. Superintendent, a jurisdiction case which gave the modern definition of “Indian country”—a concept important for preservation of treaty rights—were all cases initiated by tribes of that area.

  In 1967 ABC television began its ill-fated series on Custer. The Tribal Indians Land Rights Association began the national fight to get the series banned. Eventually the NCAI and other groups protested to ABC over the series and a great Indian war was on. Custer, who had never been a very bright character, was tabbed by the NCAI as the “Adolph Eichmann” of the nineteenth century. But no one could figure out the correct strategy by which ABC could be forced to negotiate.

  Finally the Yakima tribal lawyer, James Hovis, devised the tactic of getting every tribe to file for equal time against ABC’s local affiliate (ABC itself was not subject to FCC regulations). As tribes in the different areas began to move, ABC, through its affiliate board, arranged a trip to California to discuss the program with the NCAI. Several tribes filed against the local affiliates of ABC and did receive some air time to present the Indian side of the Custer story during the brief run of the show. Later we heard that it would have cost ABC some three thousand dollars per complaint if every tribe had gone ahead and demanded FCC hearings on the controversy. Whether this was true or not we never learned, but once again the northwestern Indians had devised a legal strategy by which Indians as a national ethnic group could air their complaints. The series was canceled after nine episodes.

  The greatest potential, as yet untapped, lies in Nevada. With a small total population concentrated in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada is presently on the threshold of development. Some twenty-six tribes, mainly Paiutes and Shoshones, live in Nevada. If these tribes were ever to form a strong political or economic alliance, they would exert tremendous influence within the state. The Nevadan Indian population is fairly young and the possibility of its developing a strong Indian swing vote as it comes of age is excellent.

  Perhaps even more spectacular is the pattern by which Indian land is held in that state. In the closing years of the last century there were no large reservations set up in Nevada. Instead, because the groups were so small and scattered, Indians were given public-domain allotments adjoining the larger towns and cities in Nevada. These groups were called colonies and they were simply unorganized groups of Indians living, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto used to do, “not far from town.” Today the Nevada tribes have extremely valuable land in areas where development will have to move if the towns in Nevada are going to continue to grow. With few exceptions old desert lands of the last century are now prime prospects for industrial parks and residential subdivisions. If the Nevada tribes were to pursue a careful policy of land exchange, they would soon own great amounts of land and have a respectable bank account as well.

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  Indian tribes are rapidly becoming accustomed to the manner in which the modern world works. A generation ago most Indians would not have known which way Washington, D.C., lay. Today it is a rare tribe that does not make a visit once a year to talk with its Congressional delegation, tour the government agencies, and bring home a new program or project from the many existing programs being funded by the federal government. Many tribes receive the Congressional Record and a number subscribe to leading national publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Life, Time, and Newsweek. Few events of much importance pass the eyes of watchful tribal groups without comment.

  Tribes are also becoming very skilled at grantsmanship. Among the larger, more experienced tribes, million-dollar programs are commonplace. Some tribes sharpened their teeth on the old Area Redevelopment Administration of the early sixties. When the Office of Economic Opportunity was created they jumped into the competition with incredibly complex programs and got them funded. One housing program on the Rosebud Sioux reservation is a combination of programs offered by some five different government agencies. The Sioux there have melded a winning hand by making each government agency fund a component of the total housing program for the reservation.

  Some tribes take home upward of ten million dollars a year in government programs and private grants for their reservation people. Many tribes, combining a variety of sources, have their own development officer to plan and project future programs. The White Mountain Apaches are the first tribe to have their own public relations firm to keep tribal relations with the surrounding towns and cities on an even keel.

  With a change in Congressional policy away from termination toward support of tribal self-sufficiency, it is conceivable that Indian tribes will be able to become economically independent of the federal government in the next generation. Most tribes operate under the provisions of their Indian Reorganization Act constitutions and are probably better operated than most towns, certainly more honestly operated than the larger cities.

  Tribes lost some ten years during the 1950’s when all progress was halted by the drive toward termination. Arbitrary and unreasonable harassment of tribal programs, denial of credit funds for program development, and pressure on tribes to liquidate assets all contributed to waste a decade during which tribes could have continued to develop their resources.

  Today the Indian people are in a good position to demonstrate to the nation what can be done in community development in the rural areas. With the overcrowding of the urban areas, rural development should be the coming thing and understanding of tribal programs could indicate methods of resettling the vast spaces of rural America.

  With so much happening on reservations and the possibility of a brighter future in store, Indians have started to become livid when they realize the contagious trap the mythology of white America has caught them in. The descendant of Pocahontas is a remote and incomprehensible mystery to us. We are no longer a wild species of animal loping freely across the prairie. We have little in common with the
last of the Mohicans. We are TASK FORCED to death.

  Some years ago at a Congressional hearing someone asked Alex Chasing Hawk, a council member of the Cheyenne River Sioux for thirty years, “Just what do you Indians want?” Alex replied, “A leave-us-alone law!!”

  The primary goal and need of Indians today is not for someone to feel sorry for us and claim descent from Pocahontas to make us feel better. Nor do we need to be classified as semi-white and have programs and policies made to bleach us further. Nor do we need further studies to see if we are feasible. We need a new policy by Congress acknowledging our right to live in peace, free from arbitrary harassment. We need the public at large to drop the myths in which it has clothed us for so long. We need fewer and fewer “experts” on Indians.

  What we need is a cultural leave-us-alone agreement, in spirit and in fact.

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  * Notice, for example the following proclamation:

  Given at the Council Chamber in Boston this third day of November 1755 in the twenty-ninth year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Second by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King Defender of the Faith.

  By His Honour’s command

  J. Willard, Secry.

  God Save the King

  Whereas the tribe of Penobscot Indians have repeatedly in a perfidious manner acted contrary to their solemn submission unto his Majesty long since made and frequently renewed.

  I have, therefore, at the desire of the House of Representatives . . . thought fit to issue this Proclamation and to declare the Penobscot Tribe of Indians to be enemies, rebels and traitors to his Majesty. . . . And I do hereby require his Majesty’s subjects of the Province to embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and destroy-all and every of the aforesaid Indians.

  And whereas the General Court of this Province have voted that a bounty . . . be granted and allowed to be paid out of the Province Treasury . . . the premiums of bounty following viz:

  For every scalp of a male Indian brought in as evidence of their being killed as aforesaid, forty pounds.

  For every scalp of such female Indian or male Indian under the age of twelve years that shall be killed and brought in as evidence of their being killed as aforesaid, twenty pounds.

  2 LAWS AND TREATIES

  AFTER LYNDON B. JOHNSON had been elected he came before the American people with his message on Vietnam. The import of the message was that America had to keep her commitments in southeast Asia or the world would lose faith in the promises of our country.

  Some years back Richard Nixon warned the American people that Russia was bad because she had not kept any treaty or agreement signed with her. You can trust the Communists, the saying went, to be Communists.

  Indian people laugh themselves sick when they hear these statements. America has yet to keep one Indian treaty or agreement despite the fact that the United States government signed over four hundred such treaties and agreements with Indian tribes. It would take Russia another century to make and break as many treaties as the United States has already violated.

  Since it is doubtful that any nation will ever exceed the record of the United States for perfidy, it is significant that statesmen such as Johnson and Nixon, both professional politicians and opportunists of the first magnitude, have made such a fuss about the necessity of keeping one’s commitments. History may well record that while the United States was squandering some one hundred billion dollars in Vietnam while justifying this bloody orgy as commitment-keeping, it was also busy breaking the oldest Indian treaty, that between the United States and the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Nation, the Pickering Treaty of 1794.

  After the Revolution it appeared necessary to the colonies, now states in the new confederation, that in order to have peace on the frontier a treaty would have to be signed with the Iroquois of New York. George Washington sent a delegation to Iroquois country headed by Timothy Pickering. In return for peace and friendship the United States promised to respect the lands and boundaries which the Iroquois had set for themselves and never to disturb the Indians in the use of their land. The United States also affirmed its promise that it would never claim the Indian lands.

  In the early 1960’s, however, a dam was built which flooded the major part of the Seneca reservation. Although the tribe hired their own engineer and offered an alternative site on which the dam would have been less expensive to construct and more efficient, the government went ahead and broke the treaty, taking the land they had decided on for the dam.

  It has been alleged by people who had reason to know that this dam was part of the price of keeping Pennsylvania in line for John F. Kennedy at the 1960 Democratic convention.

  Article III of the Pickering Treaty read:

  Now the United States acknowledge all the land within the aforementioned boundaries, to be the property of the Seneka nation; and the United States will never claim the same, nor disturb the Seneka nation, nor any of the Six Nations, or of their Indian friends residing thereon and united with them, in the free use and enjoyment thereof; but it shall remain theirs, until they choose to sell the same to the people of the United States, who have the right to purchase.

  Rather than having a choice as to whether or not to sell to the United States, the Senecas were simply forced to sell. It was a buyer’s market.

  Hucksterism and land theft have gone hand in hand in American history. The tragedy of the past is that it set precedents for land theft today when there is no longer any real need to steal such vast areas. But more damage is being done to Indian people today by the United States government than was done in the last century. Water rights are being trampled on. Land is being condemned for irrigation and reclamation projects. Indian rights are being ground into the dirt.

  It is fairly easy to trace the principal factors leading to the great land steals. The ideological basis for taking Indian land was pronounced by the Christian churches shortly after the discovery of the New World, when the doctrine of discovery was announced.

  Discovery negated the rights of the Indian tribes to sovereignty and equality among the nations of the world. It took away their title to their land and gave them the right only to sell. And they had to sell it to the European nation that had discovered their land.

  Consequently the European nation—whether England, France, Spain, or Holland—that claimed to have discovered a piece of land had the right to that land regardless of the people living there at the time. This was the doctrine of the Western world which was applied to the New World and endorsed as the will of God by the Christian churches of western Europe.

  As early as 1496 the King of England, head of the English church, commissioned John Cabot to discover countries then unknown to Christian peoples and to take possession of them in the name of the English king. In Cabot’s commission was the provision that should any prior Christian title to the land be discovered it should be recognized. Christianity thus endorsed and advocated the rape of the North American continent, and her representatives have done their utmost to contribute to this process ever since.

  After the Revolution the new United States adopted the doctrine of discovery and continued the process of land acquisition. The official white attitude toward Indian lands was that discovery gave the United States exclusive right to extinguish Indian title of occupancy either by purchase or conquest.

  It turned out that the United States acquired the land neither by purchase nor by conquest, but by a more sophisticated technique known as trusteeship. Accordingly few tribes were defeated in war by the United States, fewer still sold their land to the United States, but most sold some land and allowed the United States to hold the remainder in trust for them. In turn, the tribes acknowledged the sovereignty of the United States in preference to other possible sovereigns, such as England, France, and Spain. From this humble beginning the federal government stole some two billion acres of land and continues to take what it can without arousing the ire of the ignorant pu
blic.

  This fight for land has caused much bitterness against the white man. It is this blatant violation of the treaties that creates such frustration among the Indian people. Many wonder exactly what their rights are, for no matter where they turn treaties are disregarded and laws are used to deprive them of what little land remains to them.

  The original import of the treaties was allegedly to guarantee peace on the frontier. And the tribes generally held to their promises, discontinued the fighting, and accepted the protection of the United States over their remaining lands. Yet submission became merely the first step from freedom to classification as incompetents whose every move had to be approved by government bureaucrats.

  Incompetency was a doctrine devised to explain the distinction between people who held their land free from trust restrictions and those who still had their land in trust. But it soon mushroomed out of proportion. Eventually any decision made by an Indian was casually overlooked because the Indian was, by definition, incompetent.

  Indians often consider the history of the Jews in Egypt. For four hundred years these people were subjected to cultural and economic oppression. They were treated as slaves without rights and property although the original promise of the Pharoah to Joseph, like the Indian treaties, spelled out Hebrew rights. Like the Great White Father, the Pharoah turned his back on his former allies and began official oppression and destruction of rights. Yet the Hebrews survived.

  America’s four-hundred-year period is nearly up. Many Indians see the necessity of a tribal regrouping comparable to the Hebrew revival of old.

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  What were the treaties and agreements that the United States violated? For the most part they were contracts signed with tribes living in areas into which the whites moved during the last century. Nearly a third were treaties of peace; the rest were treaties for land cession.