A SHAMEFUL CHAPTER IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Neuberger, Capt. Richard L.
A Shameful Chapter In American History By Capt. RICHARD L. NEUBERGER TWO-THIRDS of a century have passed since Indian Chief Joseph surrendered to Gen. Oliver O. Howard in Glacier National Park....
...they still shame and humilate us from the pages of history...
...The Alaska Territorial Legislature has just passed a law which provides that "all citizens of Alaska shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of accommodations, advantages, and facilities of any restaurant, inn, cafeteria, theater, barber shop, transportation company, and any other public place...
...Alaska has a larger percentage of North American natives among its inhabitants than any other place under the Stars and Stripes...
...It is the story of the effort of a few hundred Cheyennes to reach their home in Yellowstone National Park, from the choking heat of the Oklahoma Indian Agency, and how these primitive people ran the withering gauntlet of soldiers, police, railroads, and white settlements...
...The whites are patient, noble heroes...
...WE DO NOT CATER TO NATIVE TRADE," said these signs...
...The Indians never broke a treaty and the whites never kept one," said Buffalo Bill Cody...
...Railroads, mining companies, timber corporations, and speculative land pirates demanded that the Indian tribes be rounded up and herded onto reservations...
...Happily, such signs are no longer legal in Alaska...
...Usually the Indians are fiendish, painted devils whose only ambition is to plunder farms, burn wagon trains, and rape women...
...Indians and Eskimos also know what discrimination means...
...That was long ago...
...Hard-working people are still struggling for it...
...I suppose a comparison might be to portray the Italians invading Ethiopia as noble warriors, and the Ethiopians as savage and lustful barbarians...
...Greed is one of the causes of this dreadful war, and greed lay at the bottom of our treatment of the Indians...
...The men who knew the Indians were their friends...
...Ernest Greuning, advocated it without cease...
...Justice for the Indian and Eskimo has been slowly and laboriously attained in America...
...George Washington, explorer of all the land between St...
...They have fled to the hills...
...Louis and the Pacific Ocean, ate with this man's great grandfather...
...Railroads, settlers, and land companies coveted the rich upland valleys...
...My brother is dead...
...they meant people whose forebearers saw Cook, Vancouver, Bering, Baranof, and all the other explorers, Russian and British alike, come ashore in Alaska in the 18th Century...
...Unfortunately, it was but one of many such incidents in America's expansion westward...
...There is not a single valid, intelligent reason why natives should be the victims of discrimination," he contended...
...I am delighted to know someone so much more distinguished than Meriwether Lewis that he cannot condescend to eat in such company...
...John Collier, who recently retired as Commissioner of the Indian Service, has dedicated his life to serving these people whom we drove from their lands, and the new chairman of the House Indian Affairs Committee, 32-year-old Rep...
...They, not men like Kit Carson and Gen...
...My little people are hungry and freezing," the Nez Perce warrior said...
...So is Sen...
...And these incidents have not been atoned for...
...They ate with the Indians, and on Lemhi Pass, at the summit of the Continental Divide, Chief Cameahwait of the Shoshone saved the life of Captain Lewis...
...They admired the Indians...
...Kit Carson Did His Part Chief Joseph and his people were hounded from their home in the Wallowa Mountains of Oregon, when the settlers coveted their lands...
...Nelson A. Miles wanted to send them back to the Oregon mountains, where they were accustomed to live...
...Henry M. Jackson of the state of Washington, has just declared: "Americans must be made conscious of the obligation that they owe to our own natives, the people most entitled to the proud title 'American.' " Jackson is a friend of the Indians...
...Howard, were the enemy of the Indians...
...One of the sad and sorry tales of American history is that of our treatment of the Indian...
...They were the greatest explorers in all the history of the United States...
...Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota has put up a steady and unrelenting battle for an Indian Claims Commission, to right old wrongs...
...Their corporations had great power and influence...
...Howard and Gen...
...The law also stipulates that no person shall "display any printed or written sign indicating a discrimination on racial grounds of such full and equal enjoyment...
...The Indians were put on the Oklahoma Indian Agency, where they were ravaged by malaria and tuberculosis...
...Miles and, above all, the great frontiersmen, Lewis and Clark—these men respected the Indian...
...The Court turned down the Indians, but the decision was 5 to 4. Justice William 0. Douglas, who was brought up a few miles from the Yakima Indian Reservation, wrote a powerful dissent, and he was joined by Justices Murphy, Reed, and Frankfurter...
...In The Last Frontier Howard Fast tells a tale which no bona fide American can read without being stirred by anger and indignation...
...Hitler, the most savage barbarian of all time, has made people conscious of persecution...
...In the words of Howard Fast it was "only an obscure incident in an obscure place in the life of a great nation...
...Generally the Indians were driven from rich soil, studded with timber, and put on arid sagebrush and alkali...
...The beaten Indians gave up their arms...
...The first white men to cross the North American continent were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark...
...The enemy of the Indians was greed, the greed of men in Washington and Wall Street...
...This is a milestone in Alaskan history," said Gruening as he signed the bill...
...Discrimination and prejudice are important topics today...
...These signs were not aimed at the people whom some folks want to "go back where they came from...
...Next time the Indians will win...
...From this time on, as long as the sun sets in the sky, Joseph fights no more forever...
...No Catering To Native Trade When I landed in Alaska from the transport Aleutian in the fall of 1942, I saw signs in restaurants, inns, and cafes in some of the small towns...
...Yet that is what Hollywood has done with the Indian Wars...
...The clock moves slowly, but move it does...
...Yet in all the talk about discrimination, the American people have overlooked the most fantastic discrimination of all— discrimination against the descendants of the original inhabitants of the North American Continent...
...One day on the banks of the Columbia River a former friend of mine—and I say "former" advisedly—declined to eat with a fat old Indian fisherman...
...For the past decade in Alaska such a proposed law was the object of violent controversy...
...Persecution has also been directed against men and women whose ancestors saw the first Europeans land in the New World...
...Not only Negroes, Jews, Nisei, Chinese, and foreign-born citizens generally have been the victims of bigotry...
...On the dry, dusty prairie they died, remembering the dark, green pines and the clear mountain rivers...
...My own children are dead...
...Out of a total civilian population of 72,170 more than 40 per cent—32,458—are Indians, Eskimos, or Aleuts...
...No passage in our history has been more prostituted, distorted, and betrayed by Hollywood than the story of our conquest of the Indians...
...Suddenly I shook my head in bewilderment...
...But the Government overruled the soldiers...
...One man, Gov...
...Not many people in continental United States realize how large a section of Alaska's civilian population consists of natives...
...Howard, Gen...
...Men like Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, Gen...
...These signs mean Indians and Eskimos...
...I looked at them curiously...
...Crook, Gen...
...Yet having friends of the red man in high places is a relatively new departure...
...Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who when he died last February was the oldest living graduate of West Point, once said to me, "The American Indian has endured persecution, intolerance, and injustice from the people who stole his home land...
...Joe O'Mahoney of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, a committee which includes such other advocates of justice for the Indians as Burton Wheeler of Montana, Bob La Follette of Wisconsin, Glen Taylor of Idaho, Carl Hatch of New Mexico, William Langer of North Dakota, and Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma...
...They traveled thousands of miles through the country of the Sioux, Blackfeet, Nez Perce, Shoshone, Chinooks, and Cheyennes in peace and friendship...
...In the 1943 session the anti-discrimination bill failed by a tie vote in the Territorial Senate...
...Col...
...Only a few weeks ago the United States Supreme Court considered the petition of the Shoshone Indians of Idaho and Utah for redress of the theft of their lands long ago...
...I said to my former friend, "Meriwether Lewis of Albemarle, Virginia, secretary to Thomas Jefferson, son of an old Virginia family, captain under Gen...
...This year it passed overwhelmingly—19 to 5 in the House, 11 to 5 in the Senate...
...Every citizen of this country should do all in his power to right this grievous and burning wrong...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 18
