OCR Text |
Show dition that the most profitable administration of it would be joint. rather than separate. .The Osages, for instance, have surplus lands for sale, and mines and oil wells to lease, as well as trnst funds in the Treasury drawing interest. Among white people; alarge family, or any considerable group of unrelated persons having come into possession of a complicated estate in which the bendciaries have equal interests, undivided ahd temporarily indivisible, would solve their di5culties very promptly by fling articles of incorporation and issuing joint stock certificates representing the shares of the several parties individually. I have had in mind a good while a plan of this sort with regard to some of the Indian tribes. 16 seems to me that if all the members of a tribe living and enrolled on a certain fixt date could resolve themselves into a joint stock corporation for the purpose of admin-istering their common estate, the plan would accomplish two desir-able ends; i t would conserve their property interests at large, and. yet clothe each beneficiary with that sense of personal possession which among all r a q serves as an incentive to progress. Suppose, by way of illustration, that a tribe has $1,000,000 in the Treasury, 1,000,000 acres of agricultural land, and mines which pay royalties of $100,000 a year. For hypothetical purposes we mag suppose the tribe to number 1,000 souls. Now, let acensfis be cast on a certain date--say the 1st of January of next year-and to each person then on the roll let there be issued one share of stock in the tribal corpor-ation already organized. That stock at the outset would represent $1,000 in cash, 1,000 acres of land, and $100 of annual royalty. The mixt property would be no greater in the aggregate than before the act of incorporation, but it would be removed from the communal to the business basis of ownership-.brought into line with the vast mass of the property in our country. I anticipate from some quarter a question like this: If an Indian wisht to sell his share of stock to somebody who was ready to buy it for a song, how could the Government prevent him? It seems to me that prevention would be very easy. Under the terms of incorpora-tion,. which, of course, would take form in a general statute for appli-I cation to all Indian tribes, it could be provided that the Secretary of the Interior should be the perpetual treasurer and transfer agent of the company. Other officers of the Government, if it were deemed desirable, might be placed and kept in important official positions in the directorate; and into this board it mightbe wet1 to induct also a certain number of the Indians themselve3, for experience ~ertainly warrants the belief that the more advanbed and intelligent members of the tribe would forge to the front as its representatives in sucb a transaction. The Secretary of the Interior, as treasurer and transfer agent, would have, as now, complete control of all negotiations, |