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Show 16 COI\.IMISSIONEE OF INDIAN AFF~IBS. well as real, and its benefits should be extended to Indians in Okla-homa outside of the Five Civilized Tribes and the Osage Nation, which already have adequate power to dispose of trust property by will; authority should he granted to permit, under regulations, min-ing upon Indian reservations set aside by Executive order; and there should be a modern definition of Indian country, or the idea expressed in the term should have a restatement which will accord with resent ~- ~~ conditions. Some laws affecting particular reservations require amendment, as the provision under which the Flathead Indians would have to reimburse the United States for the whole cost of a $5,000,000 reclamation project, whereas white citizens would receive fully one half of the benefit; and the exception of timber in the States of Wis-consin and Minnesota from the authority to sell mature living and dead-and-down timber should be annulled. Any codification of statutes affecting Indians should be annotated to the decisions of the courts and supplemented with a digest of the multitudinous decisions of both State and Federal courts. In a codification of Federal statutes affecting Indians care should be exercised against the danger of extending present Federal law, for the body of law affecting Indians as a class should be kept within as small compass as possible, and should relate only to subjects about which the necessity of special legislation is imperative. With all the expedition compatible with the Indians' welfare they should he made subject to the laws of their States and he taught to look to their local government instead of the National Government. Because of my conviction that no possible obstacle should be placed in the way of the transformation of Indian affairs administered by the United States into the affairs of normal citizens under the ordinary juris-diction of the States, I do not suggest that further authority be given for enlarged Federal jurisdiction over minor offenses on reser-vations, although under existing law it is frequently very difficult to define the power of the o5ce or of its representatives. Important questions of marriage and divorce illustrate difficult points, of which the only proper solution appears to he education of Indians, whether or not they are citizens, to comply with the laws of their States. Administratively the most serious difficulty which confronts the Indian Office lies in the lack of supervisors or examiners who can go from reservation to reservation and inquire into the superintend-ents' management of the Indians' business which is in their hands; measured as business, the affairs in the hands of superintendents in-volve many millions of dollars. For schools the office has a corps of ~upervisorsw ho in two years have greatly increased the efficiency of .educational activities and expenditures; but it is neither possible nor desirable that these men, necessarily men who are essentially " school men,?' should also attempt to scrutinize adequately the business rela- |