MINORITIES: As Maine Goes… ?

When an old Passamaquoddy Indian woman in Maine 20 years ago asked her tribal governor to look at some ancient, fragile documents she had in a cardboard box under her bed, she had no idea that they might be important. Yet one of the items in her cache was the 1794 treaty that her ancestors had struck with Massachusetts; in it, they ceded virtually all their land to the state. The find set off what has since become one of the largest Indian land claims in modern U.S. history. The 3,500 Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians in what is now Maine are fighting to get title to as much as half the entire state, which they claim was wrongly taken from them. Last week the Maine Indians moved a big step closer to success when the Federal Government announced that it would back their claim in both the courts and the U.S. Congress.

Less Trifling. The Indians’ legal argument is that the treaties they made beginning 183 years ago were invalid. Congress never ratified the treaties, as required by the Nonintercourse Act of 1790, which mandated congressional approval of Indian land transactions. The Justice Department, concurring with this argument, said that it would take Maine landowners, including the state itself, to court on behalf of the tribes unless a congressionally approved settlement was reached by June 1. President Jimmy Carter plans to appoint a mediator to try to negotiate an agreement.

The Indians, most of whom now reside on three reservations in northern Maine that cover 22,000 acres, subsist largely on low-paying jobs and welfare—like many whites. Originally, they demanded more than 10 million acres, or one-half of the state. But Justice puts the probable extent of their supportable claim at 5 million acres. Justice is still researching the historical ownership of some 3 million additional acres. The Indians agreed to put off claims to 2 million acres of valuable coastal property (where 40% of Maine’s 1 million non-Indians live) in return for money.

For a while, most Maine residents regarded the Indians’ case as a trifle. But it began to seem a lot less trifling last October, when lawyers refused to certify some local bond issues because title to land in the localities involved was clouded by the Indian suit. The bonds are selling again, but some hostility persists in what some Down Easters describe as a “whiteneck” backlash. Says Maine’s popular Republican Congressman William Cohen, who is anxious to run soon for either Senator or Governor: “It’s not politically feasible to be liberal on this issue. The notion that 3,000 people can claim even 5 million acres is excessive.”

Assistant Attorney General Peter Taft, who drafted Justice’s brief, hopes that Congress will decide on a one-shot cash and land settlement of the Indian claim; the Government would presumably provide the bulk of the cash, as it did in the $1 billion Alaska native claims settlement of 1971. If there is no settlement by June 1, the Justice Department would start filing suits—most likely against paper companies with large landholdings. The outcome—in either legislation or litigation—could set the pattern for the settlement of similar yet smaller Indian land claims in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and South Carolina.