Monday, Feb. 16, 1931

Pow-Wow Man

High on the Continental Divide in the States of Arizona and New Mexico is a great reservation belonging to some 40,000 gypsy-like members of the Navajo Nation, famed of old as blanket-weavers, silversmiths. And to the east through New Mexico are scattered the adobe cities of the Pueblo peoples (best known settlements are the two "skyscrapers" at Taos, where the bronze men stalk about in white sheets; most picturesque is atop the big mesa rock at Acoma, whence the women must descend for water). In all, there are about 75,000 Indians in this district. Every now & then their chiefs hitch up covered wagons or crank up battered motor trucks and travel through the varicolored badlands to councils called by tall, tanned, benign Herbert James Hagerman, 59, onetime (1906-1907) Governor of New Mexico Territory, now special Interior Department Commissioner to handle the business of 21 tribes. Constantly his little official car is speeding over the roads to local powwows or religious dances, where the guttural excitement of the drums will greet him several miles away.

Fortnight ago most New Mexicans, who consider Commissioner Hagerman one of their most distinguished citizens, were astonished to hear that the U. S. Senate had amended the Interior Department appropriation bill thus brusquely:

Provided, That no part of the moneys . . . shall be used for the payment of the salary [$6,500] or expenses [$2,500] of Herbert D. [sic]Hagerman.

Sponsor of the amendment was North Dakota's broad-shouldered, bald-headed Lynn Joseph Frazier, chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, who contended that Mr. Hagerman's duties duplicated those of the Indian superintendents, that his tribal councils were ineffective, that he had "pulled off a deal" in Navajo oil leases which disqualified him for "a job on the Government payroll."

Forthwith friends of "Governor" Hagerman created a stir in speech and writing that must have reminded him of all the Indian drums he had heard, rolling together. The New Mexican press unitedly expressed such sentiments as:

There once was a Senator Frazier

Whose ideas got Hazier and Hazier. . . .

The New York Times published two editorials, several letters from noted people. Comment culminated in a resolution by the New Mexico Senate demanding that Mr. Frazier "denounce ... the person or persons guilty of imposing upon his credulity."

Hearings in Washington disclosed that one John Collier, earnest, agitating executive of the American Indian Defense Asso ciation, had erred in informing the Senator. Members of the rival Associations on Indian Affairs showed that no official shared Mr. Hagerman's many duties, that his tribal councils were beginning to pro duce results, that the "deal" was a $1,000 sale at public auction of a lease which geologists had declared practically worth less and which the buyer, one E. S. Munoz, thought so little of that he divided it among his creditors in a poker game be fore (very much later) he sold it for $1,000,000.

The House & Senate conferees on the Interior appropriation bill last week struck out the Frazier amendment, restoring Commissioner Hagerman's pay and re storing the Senate to New Mexico's good graces.

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