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REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. OFFICE OF INDIAAFNFA IRE, Washimgton, D. C., September 80,1906. SIR: I have the honor to submit herewith the seventy-fifth annual report of the Office of Indian Affairs. NEW LEGISLATION OF IMPORTANCE. If it is to be treated as a report of progress in Indian affairs gen-erally, as distinguished from the narrower function of a record of Indian administration only, this year's summary will probably be admitted to present a greater array of notable features than any of its predecessors. No Congress, I venture to say, has in a single ses-sion past so much legislation of vital importance to the Indian population of the United States and that part of the white popula-tion whose interests are more or less bound up with those of the Indians as the Fifty-ninth Congress in its long session, which ended concurrently with the fiscal year 1906. Besides several very gen-erous appropriations out of the accustomed order, I mig& mention the act postponing the full citizenship of an Indian allottee till he receives his patent in fee, authorizing the issue of such a patent to any allottee who satisfies the Secretary of the Interior of his competency to take care of himself, and providing a friendly and inexpensive pro-ceeding for determining heirships among Indians; the authority con-ferred upon the President to extend the trust period of Indian allotments at his discretion; the extension of the ration privilege under certain conditions to mission schools; the protection of allot-ments released from trust tenure against liens for debts previously contracted; the allowance of interest on minors' money retained in the Federal Treasury;- the grant to this Office of the wherewithal to wage effective warfare upon the liquor traffic in the Indian coun-try; the provision enabling Indian allottees to become sharers in Gov-ernment reclamation projects, and many other general enactments of far-reaching effect. Then comes a long catalog of speoial or local-ized legislation highly important in the regions concerned, such as that for a ha1 disposition of the affairs of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory; for the opening of the Osage Reservation, the 1 8 3 ~ 4 a6r-1 1 |
