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Show I REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDTAN AFFAIRS. 79 equally for residence purposes. Their agent followed them into Wyoming, intercepted them in their journey across that State, and for several days counseledwith them, urging and admonishing them to return to their own country, and trying to point out to them the uselessness of going further with any such project as they had in ' view. When he announced that the Indians were deaf to all reason-ing and had decided as a finality to push on, I sent him the follow-ing dispatch : If absolutely certain you can not indo& Indians to abandon their intentions, xou will return to agency. Before doing so warn them that if they persist in ' disregarding your advice they must take the responsibility for anything that happens to them. Explain that the citizenship to which they attribute their independence has its burdens as well as its privileges, and that as citizens rhey are liable to punishment by local authorities for an$ unlawful acts they may commit ~ m a t will happen to these Indians, who on any foreign reservation can not be recognized except as visitors or permitted to stay very long in that character, there is no prophesying. As allottees under the old law they are citizens, and as citizens they are not subject to even the benevolent despotism exercised over the noncitizen Indians by the United States Government. I do not see that there is any Fed-eral authority which can convey them back, forcibly and against their will, to the country where they belong, except 'by the process provided by the Constitution to meet situations with which the local authorities confess themselves unable to cope. The most that this Office or the Department can do of its own initiative is to order their . . . expulsion from any foreign reservation they may have penetrated and impose a fine of $1,000 upon any one of them who returns with-out permission. But, as they have no money, the fine would be for all practical purposes a nullity. Threats of the guardhouse would have no terrors, for the guardhouse would at least mean free food and shelter; and on reservations where such difficulty is experienced ' in finding employment for the Indians already living there, no open-ing seems to offer itself for the utilization of the labor of a band of intruders under condemnation of vagrancy. To forestall the criticism that all this is a narrative of adventure rather than a discussion of the allotment question, I may conclude the story by saying that the White River exodus means fresh troubIes in straightening out the land tangle at Uintah. Those now xander-ing Indians who have not yet fairly identified themselves with their allotments will be all the more difficult to identify after their excur-sion, even though they may return by and by. Indeed, it may even- . tually be impossible to determine the owners of many tracts set apart for the White River Utes. Thus, thru the defectiveness of so many land titles, the development of the country may be seriously retarded. |
