OCR Text |
Show An item in the current Indian appropriation act (34 Stat. L., 363) removes all restrictions as to sale and incumbrance of the allotments, including inherited lands, in Indian Territory and Oklahoma which helong to adult Kickapoos. It also includes all allotments in these Territories made to, or inherited by, adult Shawnees, Delawares, Caddos, and Wich'itas-- who have heretofore been or are now known as Indians of said tribes, afiiliating with said Kickam Indians now or hereafter nonresident in the United States : * * * Provided, That any such Indian allottee who is a nonresident of the United States may lease his allotment without restriction for a period not ex-ceeding five years : Provided fzrrther, That the parent or the person next of kin having the care and custody of a minor allottee may lease the allotment of said minor as herein provided, except that np such lease shall extend beyond the minority of said allottee. The language of the act lacks definitaness; but the Indian 'Office holds that since the 21st of last June, the date of the approval of the act, the Department has had no authority over any lands of the adult ICickapoos of Oklahoma, or of the affiliated Indians mentioned, then or thereafter nonresidents of the United States, except such control as is implied by the restrictive clause as to leasing. Scandalous acts have already been charged as sequels of this legis-lation, and the local court,s in Oklahoma have found the situation such as to werrant the appointment of a guardian for a number of these unfortunate people in order to protect them from being stript of their property. Doubtless the grafters will next be applying for legislation totake their Indian victims out of the jurisdiction of the courts, so that they may complete their plans for inducing the Indians to part with their valuable lands for a song. And after that-what? Possibly a wholesale flight of the Indians concerned to that paradise in Mexico described in Senate Report 2561, Fifty-ninth Congress, first session, in which blacktailed deer abound, and which lies next to land granted to other Kickapoos, in 1824, by Charles 111 of Spain when the said Kickapoos were in Illinois and Missouri, and the monarch named had been in his grave thirty-six gears ! So many misrepresentation.; have been made in the public prints and elsewhere regarding the attitude of the Indian O5ce toward the expatriated ICickapoos that it seems fitting to make a public statement here of precisely what that attitude is and what has occurred in con-nection with it. Some years ago, Martin J. ~ e n t l ew~h,o had formerly been United States Indim agent in charge of the Kickapoo Indians in Oklahoma, took charge of an exodus of a considerable number of these Indians from the United States into Mexico. The Indians who migrated |