OCR Text |
Show 20 permission of the United States. As years of actual practice had indicated, the Indian tribes only tended to be allowed to occupy their "vast territories" until they were needed by United States citizens. The cost of obtaining the lands by the United States was normally a few cents an acre, and the better lands would then be sold to citizens for about $1.25 an acre. Under Spain and Mexico, the Pueblo Indian had been subject and citizen but had still been under the special protection of the Crown or the Executive, much as is the case of an Indian as a citizen and also a member of an Indian tribe or community in the United States today. But, it took a long time and considerable legislative effort before this occurred for Indians throughout the United States in 1924. The experience with the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico is an important part of the legal and political history of that effort. The agents assigned by the Indian Department, later called the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), to work directly with the Pueblo Indians recommended from the beginning that the policies envisioned in the Trade and Intercourse Acts should be made applicable to the Pueblo landholdings in order to equip these agents with means of protecting the lands and other rights of these Indians from their ambitious and avaricious neighbors, both Hispano and Anglo, as they were legally allowed to protect other Indians. The findings of the United States courts would eventually show that there was actually not as much difference in the basic philosophy of Spain and the United States in regard to original Indian title |