OCR Text |
Show COMMISSIONER INDIAN ILFBAIBS. 63 ney of Minneapolis, Minn., and Mr. Gordon Cain, an attorney of the Department of Justice. The work of preparing the roll is going forward. SPO-PE. Early in March of the present year I learned that a Blackfeet Indian by theaame of Spo-pe was incarcerated in the Government Hospital for the Insane in this city. Facts in connection with this case were presented to me which aroused my immediate interest. I t appeared that this Indian was tried and found guilty of murder in Montana Territory on the 14th of October, 1879, and mas sentenced to be hanged. This sentence mas later commuted by the President to life imprisonment in the Detroit House of Correction. After a year in that institution it was determined that Spo-pe was insane, and he was transferred to the Government Hospital for the Insane, in this city, where he had remained for 32 years. I made a personal investigation of the case and spent some hours with Spo-pe at the Government Hospital. I t seemed to me that without regard to the nature of his crime or the justice of the pnn-isliment to which he mas sentenced, this Indian had long since paid the penalty for his offense. The fact that Spo-pe, if insane at dl, was but mildly so, and the great length of his confinement under most unusual circumstances, appealed to my sympathy. It seemed wholly out of harmony with the genius of American institutions that anyone could be permitted to pay such a terrible penalty for the com-mission of an offense against our laws, particularly that the punish-ment should be imposed under the very shadow of the Capitol of this grent Democracy. Upon my request formal application was made for the pardon of Spo-pe, and on July 6,1914, the President pardoned the Indian from his sentence of life imprisonment. The authorities at the hospital, feeling that Spo-pe's mental condition was not of a nature which would warrant them in retaining him at the institution, he was immediately freed, and I took steps to have him returned to the Blackfeet Reservation. On Jnly 18, 1914, the Blackfeet Indians held a council, at which the formal enrollment of Spo-pe as a member, made necessary by his long absence and to avoid legal complications, was unanimously approved. The action of the tribe in adopting Spo-pe was approved on August 13, and on the next day the superintendent was directed to assist Spo-pe in selecting suitable lands for allotment. INDIANS FOR EXHIBITION. The office is frequently in receipt of requests to grant permission for the use of Indians from various reservations for exhibition purposes. |