OCR Text |
Show ters at Seattle, Wash.; he likewise must abandon lucrative employ-ment to take up his permanent residence on the reservation. Still another was a music teacher residing off the reservation. Many more were similarly affected by the ruling. They were recognized members of the tribe, had formerly resided on the reservation, and had received their original allotments under the act of January 14, 1889. To require continued residence on the reservation in order to obtain and hold the additional allotment meant the sacrifice of their business opportunities off the reservation and their return to conditions from which they had had the good sense and the resolution to seelr escape, and from which the Office is always urging Indians to cut themselves free. On February 14, 1907, Senator Clapp wrote to the Office that the interpretation given the law was opposed to the settled policy of the Government to encourage Indians to take up their residence among white people, and that the ruling was not founded on legal authority. He maintained that the act provided for allotments, first, to Indians who were legally residing on the reservation at the date of the passage of the act, and, second, to those who might afterwards remove to the reservation and who in other respects were entitled to allotments, but that nothing in the act required either class to remain permanently en the reservation, especially in view of the well-settled policy of the Government in dealing with Indians who are capable of self-support outside of reservation limits. Accepting this interpretation of the law, coming from such a source and being consistent with the broad common-sense aspect of the situation, the Office, as soon as practicable, annulled its former instructions to Superintendent Michelet, and on April 27, 1907, instructed him as follows: 1. Ail persons who were lawfully residing on the reservation at the date of the passage of the act, and who eome within its purview as defined in your gen-eral instructions on the subject, are entitled to ailotments under the provisions of said act. There is nothing in the act which requires them to remain on the reservation. 2. All persons who are otherwise entitled to allotments under your general Instructions who were not residing on the reservation at the time of the passage of the act, but who afterwards removed thereto, are entitled to allotments under its provisions. There is likewise nothing in the act which requires this class of persons to remain on the reservation. 3. Persons attending school OR the reservation, whether adults or minors, will be regarded as having a residence on the reservation. 4. Ail persons who are otherwise entitled under your general Instructions who are absent from the reservation in the employ of the Government, persons under any form of judicial restraint, the insane, idiotic, and others not capable of forming an intent, are to be regarded as having a residence on the reservation. The superintendent was directed to give the widest publicity to the modified instructions. |