Severalty, is administered. Then, supposedly sweet with liberty and privelege, comes Citizenship.

The educating of the Pueblos has been going on since the eighties. Now and then you may run across a middle-aged man who talks first-rate English and converses with surprising intelligence on the incapacity of his people to adopt the white scheme of every one for himself and the devil take the hindmost. This is usually Carlyle education, accomplishing for the fraction of one per cent who have received it a certain mental clearance in favor of their own institutions.

The

Possibly ten per cent of the Pueblos might be called educated to the extent of using English passably, and of having acquired a precarious insight into the shifty methods of American scalpers. The actual schooling is equivalent to that obtained by a white child of ten. The great bulk of Pueblos possess no education whatsoever, notwithstanding the vigorous efforts, the cruelty and the great expense of the Government. I have known the Pueblos over a period of thirteen years. They use more cook-stoves, lamps, grist-mills and furniture now than they did in 1908; but as regards education they are confirmed amateurs. They get so much but no more. Both the ratio and the effect are constant. They are learning to wear American education in the same way that they

learned to wear the white man's religion. Many practical difficulties obstruct the machinery of education. But aside from these the native virulence, pride and concentration of a people in love with their own scheme of life, render educating the Pueblos a fruitless expense to the Government.

And of course until they can be educated out of their communistic ideas, they will not be fitted to hold property as we do. The second dose, Land in Severalty, is certain to upset them. This is just what a number of Americans, I regret to say, are hoping will happen. It is the quickest and simplest means by which the Pueblos can be deprived of their property.

But there are obstructions of a physical geography order in the way of allotting Pueblo lands.

The experiment was tried long ago upon the brow-beaten Hopis, whose Spanish grant-possibly owing to their persistent hostility to missionaries-never materialized. The Hopi Indians of Arizona, though Pueblos and entitled to own their lands the same as their more fortunate kinsmen of New Mexico, have always been treated as Reservation Indians. This means, according to a decision of the Supreme Court, "that the fee is vested in the Government; that the Indians have nothing more than a right of occupancy; and that the power of Congress to work its will with such reservations

is practically limited only by its own sense of justice in dealing with a weakened and dependent people." So Congress decided to divide up Hopi lands and compel each Indian to farm his own patch like a white man. The surveys were made. Then the winds of the desert held their usual frolics with the sands. Stakes were covered up, lines obliterated. Many fields which had been arable formerly became sand dunes. Such unfortunate red men as were compelled to farm the tracts selected for them by the white men were impoverished in a single season. Washington then heard for the first time of the Hopi method of dry-farming the desert, experience having endued these aborigines with an acumen about selecting spots where beans and corn will grow quite beyond the ken of the white man's science. Then Washington saw fit to cancel the allotments and permit the Hopis to return to their traditional farming methods.

But neither this experience nor fee vested in the Indians deterred the Government from a further attempt to carry out its pet scheme. This time the pueblo of Laguna was the quarry. The people patiently struggled for several seasons to make livelihoods after the manner of white farmers. A few succeeded wonderfully, being happy recipients of favored tracts. But the majority were soon reduced to seek charity of their neighbors. Then the Lagunas petitioned Washington to permit them to go back to their system of farming the land in common. The investigating committee reported in favor of granting the petition. So incipient private ownership again relapsed.

In short, experimentation has demonstrated that the Land in Severalty proposition is impracticable for Pueblo Indians. They them selves already possess a system much better adapted to the conditions of the country. (The white settlers do not even attempt agriculture. Land from which the Indians raise corn, wheat, beans and melons, is considered by the whites as good only for grazing.) Furthermore their ability, unique among later-day Indians, to support themselves, appears to depend upon the continuance of their communistic land policy.

Why, then, should our Government insist upon making them change? Through private Through private ownership we have developed a mighty and prosperous nation. But we have striven and succeeded under circumstances and in an environment radically different from those of the Pueblo Indians. Their own system has stood the test of centuries. It has amply demonstrated its suitability for them. As nations they may not be prosperous; but destitution is un

known among them. Paradoxically, we, by private ownership, build up the national might; the Pueblos, by a communistic scheme, secure the welfare of each individual.

The vexing question of citizenship was brought to a sudden head last year by the Indian Citizenship Bill. The status of the Pueblos has always been uncertain. The Government was proceeding with them as with other Indians, considering the ward as being graduated into citizenship as soon as he began to reside on allotted land. But this procedureauthorized by the Dawes Act of 1887-has been exceedingly slow in making redskin citizens. So early in 1920 a bill was introduced in Congress, and passed by the House, providing for the immediate allotment of all Indian lands and the enfranchisement of all Indians. Its sponsors were under the impression that the Indians had been making great strides toward civilization. They therefore conceived of a great economy in pushing the Indian problem to a quick and permanent solution. I believe that their subsequent personal investigations in the Southwest rather altered their impressions. The bill is hanging fire before the Senate committee on Indian affairs. Indian affairs. Friends of the Indian, or all who believe in fair play, should exert what influence they can to have the bill amended to exclude the Pueblos and other tribes still maintaining the native mode of life.

The Pueblo Indians have held many weighty councils over this impending legislation. I had the interesting privilege of being present at several. Individuals from nearly every pueblo opened their minds to me on the subject. The sum of their attitude is a deathly fear of citizenship. They realize that they are qualified to take proper care of their own interests in open competition with the white man. They have petitioned the Government to continue to treat them as wards and act as trustee for their lands. By granting the petition our Government will confer at least temporary immunity upon these much harassed unoffending people-that is, they will be treated no worse than usual.

Government trusteeship means:

(1) exemp

tion from taxation; (2) prevention of property loss under state law of adverse possession; (3) protection from land swindles; (4) restriction on Indians from selling out shares of tribal property.

This modicum of consideration should be granted them at once. It is the least that our Government should do for them. What they want and need, what they deserve and should have, is a complete guarantee of liberty and

acknowledge their economic independence and to afford them such protection as is needed to save them from the evils in our civilization.

So long as they are not an economic burden why should we concern ourselves with their mode of living? So long as they prefer their own ways why should we go to the trouble and expense of forcing ours upon them? The question of right has remained hidden in the background. We have acted first upon the supposition that the Pueblos were a burden, and second upon the faith that our culture is the best for all peoples. There is the further element of land greed, an illusion mainly; for very few white men would accept the Pueblo lands as a gift, if they had to live on them and derive livelihoods from them as small farmers. These lands support an Indian population of about twelve thousand. It is doubtful if they could be made to support twelve hundred of us, as we insist upon utilizing semiarid land and upon living.

We can play square with the Pueblos only by keeping our hands off, while protecting them from legal entanglements, swindles, robberies, demoralization and the many kinds of wrongs that a certain element are always ready to perpetrate upon a childlike defenseless people. Playing square means live and let live, being happy in our way while permitting them to be happy in theirs.

But what of the schools and agencies already established at considerable cost to the Government? Many of the Indian schools could be converted into district schools, thus affording means of education for rural white and Mexican children whose parents are eager for them to have it. Other buildings could be used as hospitals, sanitariums and centers of scientific research. The most radical change needed in the present Indian field service is one of Attitude; aggressive interference should be replaced by

friendly unobtrusive helpfulness.

A good many Pueblos perceive the value of education to their children. The ability to talk English and to figure is not to be despised in this day. Hence there is always likely to be a percentage of Pueblo school children. Let the opportunity of education be open to such as want it, in the same way it is open to the rest of our population; but where there are only Indians who want to remain Indians, white education is a curse to them and a useless expense to our Government.

The Government force could be considerably contracted. Not many attorneys would be need

ed to look after the interests and protect the rights of the people in these twenty-eight small communities. But they must be men not only of ability, but capable of understanding Indian character and of putting heart into their work.

A large sphere of helpfulness is now open through the willingness of most of the Pueblos to receive medical aid. My visits among them have amply revealed the worthlessness of the present agency medical service. Except in rare instances the agency doctor is politician ahead of doctor. He is not the white man who would give the snap of his finger for an Indian's life. The Indians quickly learn to distrust him. He doles out pills to such as hunt him up in desperate emergencies. But his visits to the homes are limited to the officially required weekly round, which generally consists in walking through the village. Moreover he rarely ever extends his prescriptions beyond physic for all ailments indiscriminately.

Yet herein is a sphere of activity in which we can be of real and welcome assistance to our red brothers. Small-pox, tuberculosis, tracoma and other infectious diseases ravage the lives of these simple house-dwelling Indians uncontrolled. Through lack of understanding on their own part and neglect on ours, they succumb to insignificant minor disorders. Their own herb remedies and faith-healing medicinemen can not cope successfully with the many new and dread diseases introduced through contact with civilization. Could some of the present school buildings be converted into hospitals for the treatment of acute diseases, and others set aside as sanitariums for the tuberculosis, etc., with first-class doctors and nurses in charge, a real blessing would be conferred upon the Indians and our money would pay for true humanitarianism. But it will, however, always remain a fact that only such white persons as help the Indians medically or otherwise. feel kindly disposed toward the Indians can

The Zunis told me of a colored doctor who had proved an eminent success among them. No doubt attracted by the social felicity of Pueblo life, he took real pleasure in visiting their homes. Thus he won the confidence of a varied clinic such as a great many ambitious young physicians would barter the best years of their lives to obtain. But for some reason the Government removed this successful black medico.

In pleading for a radical change of policy toward the Pueblo Indians-in presenting the plea of the Indians themselves, I do not lose sight of the fact that an individual here and there and a small percentage from time to time