RACES: Red Constitution

Brave in ceremonial beads, buckskin, war bonnets and ermine tails, six elder statesmen of Montana’s Flathead Indian tribe ranged themselves one day last week behind the polished Washington desk of Secretary of the Interior Harold Le Clair Ickes. It was a great & grave occasion— the signing of the first tribal constitution under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (TIME, June 25, 1934). Secretary Ickes and Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier were as solemn as the Indians. Just as cameras were about to record the event for posterity a horrified Ickes press-agent spied, clinging to one Indian’s ancestral costume, what seemed to be a thoroughly anachronistic price tag. In a flurry of embarrassment the chieftain’s tag was ripped off while Secretary Ickes, covering up, seized a pen and hurriedly squiggled his signature to the constitution.

Then aggressive, intense, little John Collier became Indian Commissioner in 1933, that longtime crusader for Indian justice resolved that the nation’s red men (now numbering about 350,000, less than half of them full-blooded*) should also have a New Deal. Since 1887, corrupt Indian agents and greedy civilians had tricked, swindled and robbed U. S. Indians of approximately one billion dollars in cash and all but the worst 47,000,000 of their 138,000,000 acres of land, largely reducing them to dependent pauperism. Since attempts to individualize and westernize Indians had obviously failed, Commissioner Collier proposed to revive the tribes’ old life and culture, help them become selfsupporting, largely self-governing, thoroughly Indian communities. Result was the Reorganization Act, passed last year with President Roosevelt’s support over the fierce opposition of ranchers and lumbermen who stood to lose valuable properties leased from Indians and who succeeded in barring Oklahoma Indians from the Act’s provisions.

Besides securing to Indians the use of their present tribal lands, the Act provides for extending their holdings. It gives every reservation the right by majority vote to secure a constitution for its government, a Federal charter for a corporation to run its business affairs. It provides a $10,000,000 revolving fund for loans to tribal organizations, up to $250,000 per year for their expenses.

Though Crusader Collier is about as popular with Indians as any white Government official could be, he has had to hold many a powwow to persuade braves & squaws that his plan is good. Justly do Indians point out that every previous Government move to help Indians has all but cost the Indians their scalps. Spirited young Indians who have strayed off the reservation to college resent any suggestion of new Government paternalism, hotly demand the right to become normal, unsegregated U. S. citizens. But Indians on any reservation may take or leave the Act’s provisions as the majority chooses. Up to last week 176 reservations had voted to accept, only 76 to reject. First to draw up and approve a constitution were the Flatheads.

To the editor of the Washington Post, which had reported the “price tag” incident at the signing ceremony, went last week a solemn letter of reproach. “These costumes,” it read in part, “are hereditary. That worn by Chief Charlo was inherited by him from his grandfather, Chief Little Claw, who as chief of all the Flatheads signed the Treaty of 1855. The ermine tails on this costume signified the rank of Chief Little Claw. Those worn by Sub-chief Bear Track were left to him according to the Indian custom of giving things away at time of death. . . . The plain undecorated war shirt worn by another of the delegation he also inherited and it was actually worn on war parties before the Flatheads settled on the reservation.

”On Sept. 27 to 29 there was held a jubilee in honor of Father Taelman of St. Ignatius, Mont. To this jubilee we sent relics and ancient costumes. . . . The tag which we were seen pulling off the costume was merely the exhibit tag. Our dignity has been offended and we have been incensed by these statements in your paper. . . .

JOS. R. B. BLODGETT, president, Flathead Tribal Council

CHIEF MARTIN CHARLO (his mark)

ROY E. COUNVILLE, secretary, Flathead Tribal Council

CHIEF KOOSTATA (his mark)

DAVID COUTUNE, delegate, Flathead Tribal Council

CHIEF VICTOR VANDERBERG or BEAR TRACK (his mark)”

*Historians estimate that, in 1492, the Indian population of what is now the U. S. was about 846,000.