RED INDIAN CLAIM

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 May 1925, Page 6

RED INDIAN CLAIM

HALF NEW YORK STATE. The newest Red Indian romance is the claim, about to be made in the American Law Courts, by the six Iroquois nations, to about half the State of New York. These six nations, who joined to form one league, were originally the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cay. ugas, Oneidas, Senecas, and the Tusca-roras-—which are very fine names for Tomantioally-minded boys to remember.

The Indians say that the six nations acted together toward the end of the eighteenth century, and were acknow. lodged by the American State as a single power for treaty-making purposes, and that they could only dispose of their lands by a general treaty with the United States Government. They contend that they have not disposed of their lands by any such gen. eral treaty, and that therefore, the lands remain * theirs. The contrary argument is that each nation has, in the past, disposed of its land to private persons, and that therefore the lands claimed by Nations prop erly belong to the heiis of these far-off purchasers. , The lands concerned amount to nearly 20,000 square miles, inhabited by about 2,500,000 people, and worth, ac. cording to the assessed value, nearly £600,000,000. The six Iroquois Nations, including those of mixed blood, total about 6000 persons. Therefore if the claim could be made good, and a transfer of the property dake place on equal terms to all the claimants, each living Iroquois Indian would become worth no less a sum than £lOO,OOO. The Indians, though living within the United States, insist that they are a nation on their own account by treaty and law, and are able to treat unitedly with the American nation as a whole, and that the property concerned is, and alway has been, tribal and not individual property, though apparently if they could get it now they would make it individual. There is something pathetic, says a recent writer, in the simple belief or hope of these people, some educated, and many still primitive, that they can by law upset a whole series of purchases and transfers of land going on for 140 years past; but it seems as if they think it can really be done. There is also something fine in their trust in the sanctity and power of the White .Man’s law. The hearing of the case will awaken interest on both sides of the Atlantic, but the result is inevitable; the Six Nations will find that the law is not on their side.