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Show 1 REPORT OF THE OOMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 27 including both receipt and expenditure of money and transfers of stock from hand to hand. Moreover, the general law of incorporation might provide that in case any stockholder wishes to dispose of his interest and has the con-sent of the transfer agent thereto, he must offer the first option for its purchase to the corporation itself. The acceptance of such an offer would mean simply that this stockholder's share of the tribal prop-ertyof all sorts should be estimated at a fair cash valuation and paid over to him. If the company regularly bought in its own stock, of course the shares of all who remained members till the h a 1 liquida-tion of its affairs would have a largely increased value. But the great advantage of this movement mould be that, one by one, the stockholders would disappear, and with their severance of relations ' with the company would 'go also 'the last tie that bound the Govern-ment to them, even constructively, as a providential-power. We should. thus witness 'the gradual dissolution of the Indian race as a separate social entity and the absorption of its individual members into our general body politic. This process is continually going on, but it would move much faster and more smoothly under the plan I have suggested than it moves now, ?yen with all the facilities we have at command. I can not spare the space to go extensively into the details of the proposed incorporation systcm in this report. My purpose is merely toplace on record here, for ready reference, an idea which I shall be . glad atany time to help work out in concrete form if it appeals strongly enough to you and to the law-makingbranch of the Govern-ment. " THE BURKE LAW." The general allotment act of February 8, 1887 (24 Stat. L., 388), better known as the Dawes law, was the crystallization of the resolve of our Government that' the tribal relations of the Indian should cease. The power conferred by it to segregate the lands occupied by the Indians and have them taken in severalty has been exercised to as great an extent as conditions have seemed to. warrant. By its provisions the lands allotted in severalty were to be held in tnlst for twenty-five years, and the Indians were to become citizens of the United States and of the several States at the instant of the approval of their allotments. The citizenship provision is in the sixth section of the act; and as many allotments mere made under treaties and special acts the terms cf this section vere so drawn as to include all allotments under any law or treaty. Thus a.large number of Indians were made citizens, and a still larger number have since that time been placed theoret-ically on the same footing with their white neighbors. |