OCR Text |
Show business training that an Indian gets in leasing his land once in three or five years is comparatively small. In the past year over 2,200 Indians at 18 reservations were extended the privilege of making their own leases. For other lands of Indians the Government approves leases, sub-leases, assignments, and the like, and has a large volume of such work in connection with oil and gas lands in Oklahoma. Oil and gas have recently been discovered on restricted allotted lands in the Ponca Reservation, and leases for 5,000 aeres have been approved. On the Shoshone m a t i o n , too, oil and asphalt have been found. In neither section, however, does present development indicate whether the industry will be profitable. The amount of oil produced on the Osage Reservation almost doubled, and the royalties paid t.0 the tribe increased in even greater proportion, as the price of oil advanced. A large number of wells produced a natural flow of several thousand barrels a day. In the Five Civilized Tribes there was a decrease in the number of oil and gas leases on restricted lands, but agricultural leases more than doubled. Under amended regulations oil leases in the Five Tribes may now be taken for 10 years, and as much longer as oil and gas are found in paying quantities; in the ordinary case the royalty for each gsproducing well has been &xed at $300 per year in advance, and the lessee must assume an alternative covenant either to drill a well within a year or pay a rental of $1 an acre. In recornmendig the approval of railroad rights of way across Indian lands allowed by acts of the Congress the office tries to keep in view both the immediate rights of the Indians and the future devel-opment of the resources of their country. In connection with the rights of way of the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railway, schedules of damages aggregating approximately $15,000 were ap-proved for land at Cheyenne River, S. Dak., and Standing Rock, N. Dak. At Pyramid Lake, Nev., the Central Pacific Railway se-cured a right of way extending fifty some miles. .For small station grounds and rights of ways of a few miles each at reservations in all parts of the Indian country numerous applications were approved. SCHOOLS. The utiliiation of the lands given the Indians and the whole industrial development of the race depends in larg? measure upon the education of the children. For this service the Government main-tains a special system of schools; during the year there were 223 day schools corresponding to an improved form of rural schools in white communities, 79 boarding schools on the reservations to which chil-dren of scattered families are taken, and 35 boarding schools at |