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General Indian Policy
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on between whites and Indians with money on the table. Whatever view may be taken regarding gambling between Indian and Indian in their own homes on the reservation, commercial gambling between whites and Indians in pool rooms in a white man’s town is obviously a much more serious matter. Dope peddling is undoubtedly the most serious of the three evils noted, and no effort should be spared to stop the traffic. In Nevada the evidence indicates that the Chinese are behind the trade in Yen-she, an opium derivative, but that the immediate dispensers are Indians, possibly themselves victims. This situation is particularly dangerous as the Indians can spread the habit among their own people in a way that neither whites nor Chinese could do themselves. When the survey staff was in Nevada it was reported that the dispensers were trying to break into Fallon, which had been practically free from its use and which presented an attractive example of effective economic work for Indians. In one important jurisdiction in Oklahoma, it was reported that low grade white physicians were the dope dispensers, finding this an easy means of separating wealthy Indians from their money. Naturally the methods of the survey were not of the detective type necessary to verify such reports, but if they are not true it would be an exceptional failure to resort to an obvious device for debauching these wealthy Indians. The persistence of such statements by reliable persons, however, would at least indicate that certain channels of supply should be blocked, either as a preventive measure or as a means of checking an existing evil.

Again for completeness mention must be made of the astute and unscrupulous whites who take advantage of the Indians’ ignorance of money matters, of their food needs, and their desire for luxuries, notably automobiles, and separate them from their valuable property. Pressure from this source increases as the contacts between the races become closer.

Mention must again be made, too, of the Indians’ low standards of living and their poverty. It has already been pointed out that these factors result inevitably in bad health so that the Indians do, from the standpoint of public health, become a menace to the neighboring white communities. Prevalence of disease among them, their poverty, and their low standards of living make them objectionable to the whites and raise opposition to the admission of their children to the public schools and other community activities neces-