Coyote Warrior

by Paul Van Develder

  141 The Pick-Sloan Plan . . . was “a conscienceless”: Ibid.

  141 “Do you want to pay a fifty-two-billion-dollar water bill?”: Miller, “The Battle That Squanders Billions.”

  142 The bill Congress wrote: Ibid., and Maass, “Congress and Water Resources.”

  142 As a feat of engineering: Meyer, “Fort Berthold and the Garrison Dam,” p. 275, and Seybold, “Constructors Roll Nearly One Million Yards a Week into Garrison Dam.”

  145 “Native Indian leadership is what the Indians need”: Yellowtail, Letter to Martin Cross, April 4, 1953.

  146 “try and control the whims and fancies of the starry-eyed politicians”: Cross, Letter to Sioux tribes on termination.

  146 Myer, who told the New York Times: “Two Congress Bills on Indians Scored.” Myer told the press that the intention of the new bills was not to give anyone the broad powers suggested in the resolution, and that the measures had been written by an Indian and approved by the legal departments at the Department of the Interior. In an op-ed piece published on December 3, 1950, in the New York Times, Collier charged Myer with launching a “grave attack upon the corporate liberties of all Indians,” arguing that “the predatory pressures against Indians are not sated yet, and ‘liquidation’ and ‘assimilation’ are stereotypes appealing to many minds,” including that of the commissioner.

  147 “Indians with their tax-free land holdings as a thorn”: Yellowtail, Letter to Martin Cross, April 7, 1953.

  147 “Felix’s death has shattered me as no death”: Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 319, endnotes on chapter XI. Collier wrote the following in a letter of condolence to Cohen’s wife, Lucy Kramer Cohen, on October 20, 1953: “The agony is on account of all the Indians—and of you and your children—but it is yet more. . . . I daren’t come to the funeral tomorrow—no more. Felix is my highest experience of power and thought united with disinterested power of action.”

  148 “from stomping on Indians”: Ibid., pp. 193- 195. The former secretary found himself coaching the new secretary on how to manage the unseemly affairs being orchestrated right under his nose by his own Indian commissioner. “So far as American Indians are concerned, Commissioner Dillon Myer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs is a Hitler and Mussolini rolled into one,” wrote Ickes. Ickes, Column on Dillon Myer.

  148 Myer’s career with the Japanese: Ibid., p. 265. Myer had a natural talent for enemies. Truman’s secretary of the interior, Oscar Chapman, whose professional disregard for Myer rivaled Ickes’s, was in the “unfortunate position of relying upon an Indian commissioner who is a reckless, bullheaded fool, and a Solicitor who does not scruple to cheat you when you ask for an opinion on Indian law.” Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 195.

  148 “blundering and dictatorial tin-Hitler”: Leviero, “Antagonisms Rife over Indian Policy.”

  148 Myer shrugged off his critics: “Two Congress Bills on Indians Scored,” New York Times.

  149 The New York Times’ opening story: “Indian War Whoop Marks Hearings,” New York Times. Also Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 196.

  149 “wily Indians and their champertous attorneys”: Ibid., p. 189. Myer’s campaign against the tribes’ right to select their attorneys was every bit as rancorous as the McCarthy hearings on “un-American” activities. Three decades after Cohen’s death, documents secured by author Drinnon through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Myer had solicited help from the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, to gather information on Cohen. Ibid., p. 229, and Cohen, “Colonialism.”

  150 Reporters such as Ruth Mulvey Harmer: Harmer, “Uprooting the Indians,” pp. 54- 55.

  150 “form an inseparable unit”: Macgregor, “Social and Economic Impacts of Garrison Dam on the Indians of the Fort Berthold Reservation.” Also see Macgregor, “Attitudes of the Fort Berthold Indians Regarding Removal from the Garrison Reservoir Site and Future Administration of Their Reservation.” Macgregor helped write and edit a series of excellent reports to Congress, known as the Missouri River Basin Investigation reports, over a period of seven years. These accounts detail what life looked like in the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara world, and the Upper Missouri River Valley, before it was flooded by Garrison Dam.

  151 Cherokee philosopher John Ross’s: Rogin, Fathers and Children, p. 231.

  152 “Federal responsibility for administering”: Lewis, Letter to Senator Arthur Watkins.

  153 “dispose of tribal lands, tribal funds, tribal water rights”: George, Letter to NCAI tribal chairmen.

  153 “The Government of the United States first dealt with”: Cross, Telegram to Associated Press.

  154 “Could it be that those who propose”: Commissioner Myer seriously misread the media’s willingness to weigh in on this issue. Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, pp. 127- 128.

  154 “forced atomization, cultural prescription, and”: “Plot on U.S. Indians Charged by Collier,” New York Times. Also see Korey, “The Genocide Treaty.” For a complete account of Cohen and Collier’s charges of genocide, see Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, pp. 243- 244.

  155 Curry and Anderson had locked horns: The deaths of Felix Cohen and Harold Ickes left James Curry exposed on either flank. I am indebted to Drinnon for his extraordinary scholarship in assembling the many pieces that went into this mosaic. He notes that Curry wrote a searching and desperate letter to his old friend, John Collier, on June 29, 1952, in which he stated with great insight: “Chapman is still holding our arms while Myer, Anderson, and McCarran slit our throats.” On August 30 of the same year, Curry defended his record in an article published by the Washington Post entitled “Speaking for the Indians.” After explaining that he was being investigated to death by the Indian bureau, he finished with a foreboding note: “I expect that I, a single mouthpiece of the Indian, can and will be destroyed. But the voice of the national conscience will not thereby be permanently stilled.”

  155 “Frankly, sir, we’d like to have an answer”: U.S. House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Hearing with BIA Director Dillon Myer on Indian Attorneys and Per Capita Payments to Enrolled Members of Three Affiliated Tribes.

  161 President Eisenhower: In a speech he delivered a year earlier at Lowery Air Force Base in Denver, CO, in August 1953 (Eisenhower, Speech made on Public Law 280), President Eisenhower declared that he had serious questions as to the legality of termination but did nothing to stop it. See Tyler, Indian Affairs: A Work Paper.

  CHAPTER VII: HITTING BOTTOM ON TOP

  Interviews: Fred Baker, Bucky Cross, Crusoe Cross, Mike Cross, Phyllis Old Dog Cross, Raymond Cross, Luther Grinnell, Emerson Murry, Hans Walker, Dr. Herbert Wilson, Marie Wells.

  163 Thus far, no one in Washington: For a full discussion of this period in regard to federal Indian law and policy, see Tyler, A History of Indian Policy, and Washburn, Red Man’s Land/ White Man’s Law.

  Martin knew the tribe was at a turning point and had to make a decision. His private correspondence suggests that he was inclined to take the entire matter to federal court. This was the last thing Congress, or the Army Corps of Engineers, wanted to see happen. What probably swung his decision, or lack of one, to pursue legal remedies was the fact that he had championed the large faction of tribal members who were anxious to receive per capita payments—checks to individuals—rather than a lump-sum payment to the tribal government. Crusoe believes Martin always regretted not taking it to court.

  The dilemma was made more cruel by the fact that Watkins told the tribe the settlement offered was a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposition. If the tribe refused it, they could take their chances in court, but that might mean they would get nothing if they lost. The tribal leaders had watched the original offer of $18 million spiral downward. By 1948, the tribe had no reason to think Watkins, Anderson, and Pick would not make good on this implied threat to leave them homeless and penniless. I have come to believe that Martin would have preferred to go to court, but the “prisoner’s di
lemma” he found himself in prompted him to opt for the bird in the hands of his fellow tribal members rather than the pair he saw in the bush.

  163 Public Law 280: Much of the history of P.L. 280 in North Dakota derived from interviews with Emerson Murry, Hans Walker, Chief Justice Gerald VandeWalle, and the correspondence of Martin Cross.

  164 Legislative Research Committee: This history comes from the committee itself, which is now called the Legislative Council. Two directors preceded Murry, who would hold the post for twenty-five years.

  165 Congress was busy: Tyler, Indian Affairs: A Work Paper. Also Drinnon’s chapter entitled “Terminator” examines the role of Congresswoman Reva Beck, Senators Arthur Watkins and Clinton Anderson, and Dillon Myer in the formation of Termination Era legislation. Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, pp. 233- 267.

  The vice president of the NCAI, Frank George, a Nez Percé, wrote member tribes as early as September 1952 that “Commissioner Myer now has fifteen bills all ready to introduce in the next Congress asking for the abandonment of federal trusteeship responsibilities over Indian property and the withdrawal of Indian bureau services such as schools, hospitals, and social welfare from various Indian tribes.” George, Letter to NCAI tribal chairmen.

  For his part, former Indian commissioner John Collier called Myer’s strategy a “hoax” in which the commissioner was pursuing “as a new policy those social genocides of the earlier generations of dishonor toward Indians (Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 236). Also see Drinnon’s endnotes on p. 308 for the legislative evolution of Reva Beck Bosone’s original termination bill in the second session of the 82nd Congress.

  165 “all Federal supervision”: U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Hearings on Termination of Federal Trust Responsibility over Indian Lands.

  165 existing policy was out of step: Tyler, A History of Indian Policy, p. 163. Tyler’s overview of the Termination Era, and his analysis of legislative initiatives instigated by Dillon Myer and Senator Arthur Watkins, are as unsettling as they are sober and insightful. William Zimmerman replaced William Brophy as acting commissioner until President Truman nominated Dillon Myer for the post. Congress asked Zimmerman to compile a set of standards that Congress could use to determine whether a tribe was ready for termination. On November 3, 1951, the New York Times reported that Zimmerman, regarded by many as the greatest living expert on Indian affairs, left the field on the day that Dillon Myer became commissioner in May 1950. At that point, Congress was already moving toward a “final solution” for the Indian bureau.

  Myer’s right hand at the bureau would be the same man who designed his relocation strategy for interned Japanese at the end of World War II. H. Rex Lee, wrote Ickes, was a man “who feels perfectly at home in a puppet show.” Ickes, Column on Indian bureau.

  Not to be outdone, former commissioner John Collier also chimed in after a face-to-face confrontation with Lee at a congressional hearing on termination.

  Lee was asked if he had any idea how many treaties there were between the Federal Government and the Indians. Lee said that he did not have any idea. However, he did feel that many of the existing treaties could be adjusted in some way in order to terminate the Federal obligations. . . . Lee also said several times that the object was to sit down, get to work, and get this thing wound up fast (Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 171).

  All these years later, policies applied by Myer to the Japanese and the American Indian are now recognized for what they were. Author David Abram writes:

  The massive relocation or transmigration projects underway in numerous parts of the world today in the name of progress (for example, the forced relocation of oral peoples in Indonesia and Malaysia in order to make way for the commercial clear-cutting of their forests) must be understood as instances of cultural genocide. . . . The local earth is, for them, the very matrix of discursive meaning; to force them from their native ecology is to render them speechless—or to render their speech meaningless—to dislodge them from the very ground of coherence. It is, quite simply, to force them out of their mind (Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, p. 178).

  166 soon to be followed by the Three Affiliated Tribes: U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Hearings on Termination of Federal Trust Responsibility over Indian Lands. In his remarks to the Tribal Council in 1948, acting commissioner William Zimmerman told them:

  Your home in North Dakota along the Missouri River was established by a solemn treaty of your ancestors with the United States in 1851, almost a hundred years ago. When the government proposes to move you in the public interest, you have every right to insist that the special overall costs, which attach to moving you as a group, shall be defrayed (see Zimmerman, Acting Indian commissioner’s statement and remarks).

  166 “complete termination of wardship status”: U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Hearings on Termination of Federal Trust Responsibility over Indian Lands, and Tyler, A History of Indian Policy, pp. 172- 173.

  166 “We only oppose their interference in the management”: Meyer, “Fort Berthold and the Garrison Dam.” It is noteworthy that the position Cross staked out in this response to termination was the very principle Richard Nixon would reiterate in his speech to Congress in July 1970, when he told lawmakers that just because the federal treasury paid Indian tribes money it owed them, and provided assistance, it did not give the government the right to meddle in tribal affairs or dictate how the money was managed.

  166 “The tribes are now enjoying the highest level of resources in their history”: U.S. House, Report on House Resolution 108 Authorizing the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. This report is remarkable for the fictions it masquerades as facts for the purpose of moving the Three Affiliated Tribes closer to termination. The Department of the Interior compiled a report on the Three Affiliated Tribes at the same time and concluded: “Less than 50 percent of the approximately 650 Fort Berthold Indian families have demonstrated the ability to support themselves by their own efforts.” Just ten years earlier, the BIA’s report of 1943 found that all the Fort Berthold families were self-sufficient. With the tribe now fully enveloped in dislocation, the 1954 report concludes:

  It is the conclusion of the Bureau of Indian Affairs field staff, and this conclusion is supported by anthropologists independently of Federal personnel, that to a considerable extent a substantial percentage of Fort Berthold Indians suffer from the mental conflicts which develop in the process of transition from the earlier Indian cultural environment to the environment now being imposed on these people by a dominant non-Indian culture with its differing social and economic system of values. As a result of this situation it is probable that any program under which the great majority of Fort Berthold Indians were permitted to assume full responsibility for independent management of their own affairs, would result in rapid depletion of existing assets followed by widespread dependence upon welfare assistance. “Background Data Relating to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation Located in the State of North Dakota.”

  166 the Three Affiliated Tribes: Ibid.

  166 “We can see no particular gain”: Ibid.

  167 “I am packing some resolutions”: U.S. Department of the Interior, Conference with Delegation from Fort Berthold Tribal Council on March 20, 1953.

  170 “recent court decisions”: Indian Claims Commission case, n. 350, “The Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation v. The United States of America.”

  170 “A government attorney reported”: “Indians Seek Pay for 70 Pct. of Nation’s Land,” Indianapolis Star.

  170 Robert Yellowtail and Martin Cross: Yellowtail, Letter to Martin Cross, April 7, 1953. Yellowtail also wrote a public challenge to the BIA that was distributed to members of Congress and all tribal leaders in the NCAI.

  The United States courts have repeatedly pointed out that on account of the greed, avarice, and rapacity of the white race toward the Indians, and their constant eagernes
s to take advantage of them through sharp practices, it has become necessary to protect them, to set up safeguards to prevent such wrongs. The Indian bureau sprang into being because of this fact.

  Now, said Yellowtail, the bureau, through people such as Myer and Watkins, had closed ranks with the very forces they were obligated by law to hold at bay.

  170 painful experiences of the previous decade: U.S. Congress, Declaration of Indian Rights.

  171 “There is no satisfaction in our record”: U.S. House, Congressman Lee Metcalf speaking on proposed revision. Congressman James Murray called for a complete revision of federal Indian policy and P.L. 280. For Goldwater’s speech decrying Termination Era objectives, see U.S. Congress, Senator Barry Goldwater speaking against termination legislation. For an analysis of Senators Goldwater and Metcalf’s challenges to Termination Era legislators, see Tyler, A History of Indian Policy, pp. 176- 178.

  172 “WASPs [white Anglo-Saxon Protestants] assume that the value system”: Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 266.

  172 “I have been to Washington to see the Great White Father”: Cross, Letter to Marilyn and Kent Hudson.

  173 “Their poverty, coupled with the isolation of many”: U.S. House, Report on House Resolution 108 Authorizing the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs.

  173 The authors concluded that the forced relocation: Ibid.

  173 “Since I have time on my hands”: Ibid.

  176 “Indian kids were dying of hunger and exposure”: Meyer, “Fort Berthold and the Garrison Dam,” p. 344.

  176 Bureau of Reclamation: When Congress set up this civilian water agency in 1902, projects were supposed to be financed through a reclamation fund. This fund would initially be charged with taxpayer dollars that would later be repaid through receipts collected from the farmers who derived the benefit from the projects. But by 1924, not all was well with this plan. Reisner explains that in passing the act, Congress ignored much of John Wesley Powell’s advice and made things worse. By building so many projects in a rush, the bureau was repeating its mistakes before it had a chance to learn from them. The bureau was in financial trouble almost before it had a chance to open its doors for business.