12. U.S. v. Boylan, 265 F 165 (1920), 170, 174.
13. Laurence M. Hauptman, The Iroquois and the New Deal (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1981), 11–13.
14. For General’s remarkable campaign, see Deskaheh: Iroquois Statesman and Patriot, Six Nation Indian Museum Series (1970).
15. For Rickard and his views on Levi General, see Clinton Rickard, Fighting Tuscarora: The Autobiography of Chief Clinton Rickard, ed. Barbara Graymont (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1973), 59–77. For more on Rickard, see Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty; The Post-colonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 112–19.
16. The Seneca activists are described in The Six Nations, v. 3, n. 1 (January 1929), 11. For the heirship case, see Woodin v. Seeley, 252 N.Y.S. 818, decided August 27, 1931.
17. Laurence Hauptman, Seven Generations of Iroquois Leadership (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 69–72.
18. Joseph W. Latimer, Our Indian Bureau System (New York: n.p. 1923), 9. I am grateful to Jamie Singson for bringing Latimer’s pamphlet to my attention. For a biographical sketch of Latimer, see John W. Larner, ed., The Papers of Carlos Montezuma, M.D., Including the Papers of Maria Keller Montezuma Moore and Joseph W. Latimer (Washington, D.C.: Scholarly Resources, 1983), 9–10. For Latimer’s support for tribal governments, see Elmer Rusco, A Fateful Time: The Background and Legislative History of the Indian Reorganization Act (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2000), 90.
19. “Six Nations Cite Grievances Against Government Bureau,” Buffalo Evening News, February 4, 1933. Jemison, who had worked for the Census Bureau in 1930, was likely drawing here on personal observation.
20. Alice Lee Jemison, “Indians Want Some Voice in Selecting Commissioner,” Buffalo Evening News, April 20, 1933.
21. Alice Jemison, “Indian Affairs, Denial of Hearing on New Commissioner Is Protested,” New York Times, May 25, 1933, 18.
22. For details of McNickle’s life, see Dorothy R. Parker, Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992).
23. From “Going to School,” in Birgit Hans, ed., D’Arcy McNickle: The Hawk Is Hungry and Other Stories (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992), 112.
24. “Meat for God,” in ibid., 25–26, 33, 34.
25. McNickle to Collier, draft, May 4, 1934, quoted in Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 35, 67.
26. Representative William Hastings quoted in Kenneth Philp, John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), 158.
27. The best recent analysis of the final bill and its relation to Collier’s original proposal is in Rusco, A Fateful Time, 255–81. Roosevelt is quoted on pp. 239–40. Collier repeated his (and the president’s) prediction that failure to pass his bill would lead to the “extinction” of American Indians in a radio address delivered on May 7, 1934. See File 74-13, Association on American Indian Affairs Papers.
28. From Every Zenith, 200, 203. For a summary of Collier’s accomplishments in office, see Philp, John Collier’s Crusade, chapters 6, 7, 8.
29. Quoted in Hauptman, Iroquois and the New Deal, 44.
30. Jemison’s column in the Buffalo Evening News for April 21, 1934, was read into the record at a Senate hearing in 1940. See “Wheeler Howard Act—Exempt Certain Indians,” U.S. Senate Hearings on S.2103, 76th Congress, 3rd Session, 168.
31. “Indian Conditions and Affairs,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on General Bills of the Committee on Indian Affairs, House of Representatives, on H.R. 7781, February 11, 1935, 37.
32. Ibid., 36, 38. Free passage across the border had long been a central concern of Seneca leaders as well as Levi General and Clinton Rickard.
33. Ibid., 41.
34. Ibid., 483.
35. Ibid., 499.
36. Jemison’s activities in 1934 are described in Laurence M. Hauptman, “The Modern Mother of the Nation,” in Sisters: Native American Women’s Lives, ed. Theda Perdue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 179. The American Indian Federation’s founding and the August resolution are described in the First American, the federation’s newsletter (ed. Jemison), v. 1, n. 1, 6, 13. A June 15, 1934, letter from Jemison to New York Congressman Alfred Beiter expressing opposition to the new law was written from the YWCA. See “Indian Conditions and Affairs,” 40. For a discussion of the AIF, see also Hauptman, Iroquois and the New Deal, 47–51.
37. “Indian Conditions and Affairs,” 32.
38. Ibid., 498, 484, 485, 501.
39. The referendum results are summarized in Hauptman, Iroquois and the New Deal, 57; Fenton and Roe Cloud’s role is described in ibid., 65–68.
40. This discussion of Yellowtail’s activities in the 1930s is taken largely from Hoxie, Parading Through History, chapter 11.
41. Quoted in ibid., 326. See the telegram appointing Yellowtail: John Collier to Robert Yellowtail, July 31, 1934, John Collier Papers, Reel 18.
42. Quoted in Hoxie, Parading Through History, 334–35.
43. Vine Deloria, Jr., The Indian Reorganization Act: Congresses and Bills (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 69.
44. Quoted in Hoxie, Parading Through History, 341. The IRA allowed for the transfer of public land to tribal control and for modest purchases but did not address the millions of acres lost by allottees to non-Indian farmers and ranchers. Crow tribal members understood that the new law would do little to repair the devastating land losses of the previous half century.
45. James Carpenter to Robert Lowie, February 26, 1935, and Robert Yellowtail to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, May 17, 1935; both quotations and the referendum results quoted in Hoxie, Parading Through History, 341.
46. For a history of the ratification and constitution-writing process at Rosebud and Pine Ridge, see Thomas Biolsi, Organizing the Lakota: The Political Economy of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992).
47. See Vine Deloria, Jr., and Clifford Lytle, The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 172.
48. See Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 71–72 and D’Arcy McNickle, “In Maine,” Indians at Work (October 1, 1937), 15–18. McNickle’s travels can also be deduced from his comments in a speech to the Missouri Archaeological Society. See D’Arcy McNickle, “The Indian Today,” Missouri Archaeologist, v. 5, n. 2 (September 1939), 1–10.
49. D’Arcy McNickle, “Four Years of Indian Reorganization,” Indians at Work, v. 5, n. 11 (July 1938), 4–11.
50. McNickle to Collier, June 30, 1937, quoted in Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 74.
51. McNickle, “Four Years of Indian Reorganization,” 11.
52. McNickle, “The Indian Today,” 10.
53. Harold E. Fey and D’Arcy McNickle, Indians and Other Americans: Two Ways of Life Meet (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 146–47.
54. The evolution of McNickle’s view of himself as an Indian advocate was also evident in his decision in 1939 to sign on to a separate statement issued by Indian delegates at a U.S.-Canadian conference on Indian policy. See Donald Smith, “Now We Talk—You Listen,” Rotunda (Fall 1990), 48–52.
55. For her ties to the Black Hills group, see “Survey of Conditions of Indians in the United States,” Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Pursuant to S. Res. 79 (70th Congress) and Subsequent Continuing Resolution, 21441; for others, see ibid., 21553.
56. Jemison speech, July 27, 1938, quoted in Hauptman, Iroquois and the New Deal, 50.
57. First American (August 14, 1937), 2.
58. Ibid. (February 21, 1939), 1.
59. See Hauptman, Iroquois and the New Deal, 51–52.
60. Harold Ickes, The Secret Diaries of Harold Ickes (New York: Simon and Schus
ter, 1953), 507. Collier’s charges were made in a hearing on a bill to repeal the Wheeler-Howard Act. See “Wheeler Howard Act—Exempt Certain Indians,” House Committee on Indian Affairs (76th Congress, 3rd Session), Hearings on S. 2103, 69. The commissioner, who testified while the Nazi invasion of France was unfolding, charged that Jemison’s activities were “something deadly serious,” 91.
61. First American (July 1, 1939), 2. The statue was ultimately removed in 1958.
62. See Hoxie and Bernardis, “Robert Yellowtail,” 69–70, and Constance Poten, “Robert Yellowtail, the New Warrior,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, v. 39, n. 3 (1989), 38–39.
63. G. E. Barrett, “Crow Indians Hold Second Annual Tribal Fair,” Scenic Trails (October 1937), 10.
64. See Hauptman, Iroquois and the New Deal, 136–63.
65. See Kenneth R. Philp, Termination Revisited: American Indians on the Trail to Self-determination, 1933–1953 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 11–12.
66. D’Arcy McNickle, They Came Here First: The Epic of the American Indian (New York: Octagon Books, 1975; originally published in 1949), 262.
67. D’Arcy McNickle to Helen Peterson, August 13, 1959, NCAI Papers, Box 1.
68. The Bureau of Indian Affairs moved to Chicago during the war to free up office space in Washington, D.C., for the war effort. McNickle’s planning for the first NCAI meeting thus took place at the BIA’s temporary headquarters in the Midwest. McNickle described the process in his August 13, 1959 letter cited above.
69. “To Tribal Councils and Indian Leaders,” October 16, 1944, NCAI Papers, Box 1.
70. McNickle to Peterson, August 13, 1959.
71. “Register of Delegates at the National Convention of American Indians Held in Denver, Colorado, November 15–18, 1944,” NCAI Papers, Box 1.
72. Thomas W. Cowger, The National Congress of American Indians: The Founding Years (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 44.
73. Napoleon Johnson, “The National Congress of American Indians,” typescript of article published in American Indian Magazine (Summer 1946). NCAI Papers, Folder 27, Box 65. In February 1945 Dan Madrano, the newly elected secretary of the NCAI, testified in the confirmation hearing of William Brophy, who had been named by Roosevelt to succeed Collier. Madrano urged Congress to delay confirming Brophy and to consider appointing a Native American. See “Nomination of William A. Brophy to Be Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” Hearings Before the Committee on Indian Affairs, U.S. Senate, February 26, 27, 28 and March 1, 1945.
74. Quoted in Prucha, The Great Father, 1015–16. See also Philp, Termination Revisited.
75. Robert Yellowtail to Ben Dwight, September 27, 1946. “Correspondence, Outgoing,” Box 1, NCAI Papers.
76. Ibid.
77. Address by Robert Yellowtail, December 7, 1953, “Speeches,” Box 4, NCAI Papers.
78. “New York Indians,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, U.S. Senate, 80th Congress, 2nd Session, on S. 1683, S. 1686, and S. 1687, 23, 24, 26. See also Laurence M. Hauptman, The Iroquois Struggle for Survival: World War II to Red Power (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 48–64.
79. “New York Indians,” 27.
80. “Resolution No. 15, The Indian Plan,” “Proceedings, 1948,” Box 2, NCAI Papers.
81. See Kenneth R. Philp, Termination Revisited: American Indians on the Trail to Self-Determination, 1933–1953 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 60. Congressman Rogers’s efforts helped prompt the Truman administration to propose spending $90 million for rehabilitation there.
82. Ruth Bronson to Harold Ickes, September 14, 1950[?], Series 8, Folder 1, Box 10, NCAI Papers.
83. “N. B. Johnson Urged ‘Progressive Liquidation’ of Indian Service,” Havre (Mont.) News, December 11, 1951 in File 108-16, Governor’s Interstate Council Clippings, Association on American Indian Affairs Papers.
84. McNickle, They Came Here First, 8–9.
85. Ibid., 300.
86. “Convention Proceedings, 1947,” Box 1, NCAI Papers.
87. Prucha, The Great Father, 1043–44. See also Philp, Termination Revisited, 170–75 and passim, for a view of the termination campaign that downplays the role of Watkins, Butler, and other congressional critics.
88. Letter of invitation, February 9, 1954, and “A Declaration of Indian Rights,” in “Résumé of the Emergency Conference of American Indians on Legislation,” “Emergency Conference Bulletin,” Box 257, NCAI Papers.
89. W. W. Short to Ruth Bronson, November 3, 1953, and Robert Yellowtail to Short, November 13, 1953, both in “General Correspondence, 1953,” Box 4, NCAI Papers.
90. Garry was elected to the Idaho legislature in 1956.
91. “Address delivered to the National Congress of American Indians at Hotel Westward Ho, Phoenix, Arizona, December 7, 1953, by Robert Yellowtail, a Crow Indian,” “Speeches, 1953,” Box 4, NCAI Papers.
92. See “Indian Registrations,” “Emergency Conference Bulletin,” Box 257, NCAI. Yellowtail was not listed as a registered delegate to the conference, but he is referred to in the “Emergency Conference Bulletin” and was likely present.
93. “Termination of Federal Supervision over Certain Tribes of Indians,” Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on Interior and Insular Affairs on S.2745 and H.R. 7320, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, Part Four, 342, 345, 347. Hauptman notes that Jemison’s self-published newsletter, which she revived in the 1950s and published irregularly, declared that termination would leave Indians “suspended in a twilight zone of political nonentity.” See Hauptman, Iroquois Struggle for Survival, 63.
94. Jim Hayes to Lawrence Lindley, March 29, 1954; Joseph Garry and Helen Peterson to Jonathan M. Steere, April 6, 1954, “Emergency Conference, Hayes Correspondence,” Box 257, NCAI Papers. The conference featured appearances by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn Emmons, Congressmen Carl Albert and Ed Emondson of Oklahoma, and Roger Baldwin, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. None of the prominent terminationist legislators appeared.
95. “Emergency Conference Bulletin,” Box 257, NCAI Papers.
96. D’Arcy McNickle, “The Role of the National Congress of American Indians,” 15th Anniversary Booklet, “D’Arcy McNickle Correspondence,” Box 66, NCAI Papers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1. New York Times, November 15, 2005.
2. Burnette wrote in his memoirs that he had told members of the executive committee in January 1964 that he would step down as executive director in July. See Robert Burnette, The Tortured Americans (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 83.
3. For the bleak financial news, see “Convention Materials, 1964,” Box 13, NCAI Papers, 6.
4. Deloria later claimed that he happened on the Sheridan meeting by accident and that he was “more a pawn” in the battle between the organization’s factions than a serious candidate. See Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: Avon, 1969), 264–65. For more on the extraordinary history of the Delorias, see Vine Deloria, Jr., Singing for a Spirit (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1999), 6–87.
5. “Convention Materials, 1964,” 7.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 8.
8. October 19, 2001, interview, quoted in Daniel Cobb, Native Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for Sovereignty (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 118–19.
9. Quoted in ibid., 8. See also, D’Arcy McNickle, “Process or Compulsion: The Search for a Policy of Administration in Indian Affairs,” America Indigena, v. 17, n. 3 (July 1957), 269. The connection between Point Four and Indian policy is also described in Paul Rosier, Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 138–43, 191–201, thoug
h Rosier does not note McNickle’s support for tribal development in the 1930s.
10. “A Program for Indian Citizens” (Albuquerque: Commission on the Rights, Liberties and Responsibilities of the American Indian, January 1961), iii. See Papers of the Association on American Indian Affairs (hereafter PAAIA), File 107 18, Fund for the Republic.
11. Ibid., 1, 4.
12. Nancy Oestreich Lurie, “The Voice of the American Indian: Report on the American Indian Chicago Conference,” Current Anthropology, v. 2, n. 5 (December 1961), 481.
13. Oliver La Farge to LaVerne Madigan, December 16, 1960, PAAIA, File 59-6, American Indian Chicago Conference.
14. Quoted in Cobb, Native Activism, 38 ff. 18, 225.
15. The Association on American Indian Affairs executive director LaVerne Madigan reported to Oliver La Farge in April that the Rosebud tribal chairman Robert Burnette expressed fear of congressional termination sentiment at a meeting to discuss the Chicago conference. See Madigan to La Farge, April 6, 1961, PAAIA, File 59-7, American Indian Chicago Conference.
16. While William Rickard was not listed in the press release announcing the formation of the steering committee, he was present at the committee’s preconference meetings, and he took an active role in the June conference. Apparently he was added to the group after the original announcement. See press release, February 15, 1961, PAAIA, File 59-6, American Indian Chicago Conference and “American Indian Chicago Conference Progress Report No. 3, March 16, 1961,” 2 (photo of Rickard with steering committee), PAAIA, File 59-7, American Indian Chicago Conference. Rickard was also an associate of Wallace “Mad Bear” Anderson, a Tuscarora activist who had campaigned against the seizure of tribal lands for reservoirs in upstate New York and had traveled with a Seminole delegation to Havana, Cuba, in 1959 to seek the assistance of the country’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. For a summary of his activities, see Rosier, Serving Their Country, 227–28.
17. Sol Tax to Oliver La Farge, January 20, 1961, PAAIA, File 59-6, American Indian Chicago Conference.
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