BIG CLAIM FOR LAND.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2119, 26 May 1925, Page 2

BIG CLAIM FOR LAND.

HALF NEW YORK STATE,

WORTH NEARLY £600,000,000.

The newest Red Indian romance is the 'claim, about ta be made in the American law courts, by the Six Iroquois Nations, to about half the State of New York. These Six Notions who joined to form olne league were originally the Mohawks, Ononragas, CayugSs, Oneidas, Senecas, and the Tuscaroras—which are very fine names for romantically mnded boys to remember. The Indians say that the Six Nations acted together at the end ol the eighteenth century, and were acknowledged by the American State as a single prayer 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 general treaty, and that therefore the lands remain theirs. The contrary aigument is that each nation has, in the past, disposed of its land to private persons, and /that therefore the lands claimed by the Six Nations properly belong to the heirs of those far-off purchasers.

The lands concerned amount to nearly 20,000 square miles, inhabited by about 2,500,000 people, and worth, according 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, each living Iroquois Indian would become worth no less a sum than £IOO,OOO.

The Indians, though living within the United States, insist ithat they are a nation on their own account by treaty and law, and are able to treat unitedly with the American motion as a whole, and that the property concerned is, and always has been, tribal and not individual pro/perty, though, apparently, if they could get it now, they would make it individual.

There is something pathetit, 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 pasit; but it seems as if they think it can 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.