OCR Text |
Show determination of heirs is the sole object, but also includes wills and petitions for sales and all miscellaneous correspondence in connection therewith. Special attention was given the determination of heirs at the Shoshone and the Uintah and Ouray Reservations in order to safe-guard the water rights of the Indians. Each of 28 agencies reports from 100 to 1,200 undertermined inheritance cases. An adequate appropriation available for both field and office work should be pro-vided by Congress so that the Indian Bureau can be able to clear up, at the earliest possible date, the tangled condition of the estates of deceased Indians, in order that the lands not needed by the Indians may be leased or sold and the proceeds used to improve and farm the allotments of the heirs. THE FLORIDA SEMINOLES. For hundreds of years the Seminoles of Florida have made their homes in the Everglades, and have obtained a living by hunting, trapping, and hhing. On account of the various drainage projects now being constructed for the reclamation of the Everglades, and the diminishing swamp area which has been their home and hunting ground these Indians are rapidly being deprived of the game upon which they have hereto-fore subsisted. They are in no sense agriculturists but are natural hunters and trappers, making fully 75 per cent of their expenses of Iiving from alligator skins. In addition to the restriction of their hunting grounds, during the past year the tanneries have discon-tinued the purchase of alligator skins, the main source of their incame. An appropriation of $10,000 for their relief was reappropriated and made available in the Indian appropriation act for the current year (37 Stat? L., 518), and on March 1, 1913, Mr. Lucius A. Spencer, of Florida, was commissioned as a special commissioner to these Indians. It was not deemed advisable, taking into consideration the traditions and history of this remnant of Osceola's band, to place a Government o5cial in charge of them as the term is usually applied to Western reservations, as they are extremely suspicious of the good intentions of my representative of the Government; but their condition required , , some action in order. to prepare them for the inevitable change which must in a few years come to them. There are about 400 of these Indians who live in camps surrounded , by vast tracts of uninhabited swamps and morasses. They are splendid types of the physical man and are nearer the aboriginal Indian in habits and customs than almost any other band. . The Florida State Legislature in 1889 set aside 36 townships as a Seminole Reservation, but while the law apparently has not been repealed, nearly all the land has been obtained by private persons. |