Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/128

Great pressure is unquestionably brought to bear on the Indian Service to issue fee patents and to release Indians from wardship. A considerable body of people regard the status of wardship as repugnant to our institutions, and they are inclined to quote from the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal.” They forget apparently that wardship and the control of property by trustees also exist among the free and independent whites. Children below legal age cannot control their own property or make a valid contract. Courts declare adults incompetent to manage their own estates and place them in the status of wards. Many a head of a family himself provides for trustees to control the property given or bequeathed to his wife and children. Life insurance contracts, living trusts, and wills often result in depriving a person of the power to control the property of which he has the use. The difference lies in the assumptions. The white man on reaching legal age is assumed to be competent unless deprived of his power over his property by a court or by someone from whom he received his property. Indian guardianship was assumed when the Indians as a race were unquestionably incompetent. Relinquishment of this trust cannot lightly be made. The Indian, therefore, is assumed to be incompetent until formally declared to be competent. His status is that of the child below legal age, except that he can be declared competent whereas the child cannot be. The facts seem abundantly to warrant this assumption in the case of the Indians. With respect to knowledge and experience in the use of property, many of them are still children and must be given training in the use of property and its value before they are declared competent to handle it independently. The national government is their safest trustee. Any improvement in that trusteeship must be brought about by a reconstruction of the machinery to discharge it.

Another group bringing pressure to bear on the Indian Service believes in the sink-or-swim theory. Turn the Indians loose. Let them shift for themselves. The difficulty with this theory as has been pointed out is that the issue is not quickly settled with the disappearance of those who are not able to shift for themselves. Theorists of this school need to spend a considerable time facing the actual facts in eastern Oklahoma where they can see at first hand the disastrous effects of an actual application of this policy.