President's Visit

To his haughty redskin brothers, to the haughty strong Sioux nation, with his wife and son beside him, with big medicine in his pocket, came the pale-Wamblee-Tokaha,* New White Chief and High Protector--otherwise Calvin Coolidge, 29th U. S. President, but first President ever to visit any Amerindians on one of the reservations set aside for them by their Caucasian conquerors.

He came and was received in peace and friendship.

Wrapping Mrs. Coolidge in a horseblanket on the grandstand of the Pine Ridge fairgrounds, the President first beheld a Sioux pageant--including war-painted savages, bareback riding and children dressed as beets, carrots, cabbages. He received presents from the Misses Nancy Redcloud, Rosa Red-hair, Jessie Marrowbone, Mary Little Iron, Jennie Blue Horse, Emma No Horse and several chiefs.

Massed 7,500 strong in a semicircle in front of the platform, the Sioux listened to their Council's memorial, of which the burden was that the Sioux are too proud to ask for anything not rightly theirs but must insist that the Government restore to them certain lands taken away after supposedly permanent treaty settlements.

The President did not reply directly to this demand but launched upon a short history of the Indian Problem, which began when white and red men first saw each other some four and one quarter centuries ago; which ceased to be violent with the battle of Wounded Knee, S. Dak., (near Pine Ridge) in 1890; which entered a new phase in 1924 when President Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, declaring all native-born Indians citizens of the U. S.

Tribes to Citizens. The policy of disorganizing the more than 200 tribes and bands of Amerindians in the U. S. and treating their members individually, like any other racial group of U. S. citizens, was begun by Congress in 1871. The Government then formally refused to acknowledge or recognize any independent nation or tribe within U. S. boundaries. That put an end to treaties, but it was not retroactive. Land that had been acknowledged, in various of the 370 prior treaties made between the U. S. and the Indians, as belonging to tribes of Indians, was allotted to individual Indians in those tribes under an act of 1897. Some 206,000 Indians received private property by these allotments.

With so many new charges on its hands, the Government, through its Indian Bureau (established in 1824) had to 'set about a program of social work--building schools, hospitals, etc. The discovery of oil on Indian-owned properties kept Federal agencies busy.

The final step of declaring all U. S. Indians citizens by birth did not come until nearly two-thirds of all Indians in the U. S. had obtained the franchise through naturalization.

Let Live. It is doubtful that more than one-half of President Coolidge's swarthy audience at Pine Ridge understood all that he said. Perhaps there were a few who bridled momentarily at the simple words: ". . . Many Indians are still in a primitive state." The President noted that a great portion of Indians, "mostly the older ones, still cling to the old ways, stoically refusing to go further along the modern road. They wish to live and die according to the old traditional ways of the Indians, and they should be permitted to do so."

Bonnet. The close of the president's speech was mqst effective. He recalled how, as the final rite at the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Va., some old

Indian warriors surrounded the tomb while one of them, acting for his entire race, took off and laid upon the bier his eagle-feath-ered warbonnet.

* "Leading Eagle."