Senator THOMAS. Are you connected with the National Guard company?

Mr. DURANT. Yes, sir.

Senator THOMAS. In what capacity?

Mr. DURANT. Captain.

Senator THOMAS. How does your company compare with the white guard unit in Arizona?

Mr. DURANT. We have taken the prizes every time we have been there.

Senator THOMAS. That is a very good record and I am very pleased to hear it. I approve of it.

Senator FRAZIER. What inducement is offered to the boys who join the National Guard?

Mr. DURANT. There is no inducement at all. It is just voluntary. Senator FRAZIER. They can join the National Guard if they want to or keep out of it?

Mr. DURANT. Yes, sir.

Senator HAYDEN. Do they get their drill pay?

Mr. DURANT. Yes, sir.

Senator HAYDEN. They are going to have the privilege of going to encampment during the summer?

Mr. DURANT. Yes, sir.

Senator HAYDEN. Do you have a waiting list?

Mr. DURANT. Yes; every boy wants to be 18 years old.

Senator FRAZIER. They can not go in until they are 18 years old? Mr. DURANT. We are not warriors, but we would like to fight once in a while.

(Witness excused.)

Senator WHEELER. We were asking a witness whether or not he went out to find jobs for these boys, and he said it was impossible because his time was taken up, but he felt what ought to happen was they ought to go out and find jobs for them; go out and hunt the jobs.

Mr. BROWN. That is my recommendation. He has shown a great interest in them, and I have attempted to get him to wholly devote his time to that sort of work.

Senator WHEELER. But he is not able to do it at the present time? Mr. BROWN. No. He is the superintendent of this construction and building. He has charge of all the constructive, manufacturing work, and repair work on the campus.

Senator WHEELER. I hope your school will be improved so that they will be able to turn out the finished product. You have a wonderful location for it. The surroundings are beautiful and you ought to turn out the finest class of students of any place in the country.

Senator FRAZIER. If there is anyone present who has not had an opportunity to make a statement to the committee and who wishes to do so, we will request that you make that statement in writing. and send it to the chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs of the United States Senate, at Washington, D. C. We will be glad to place it in the record and give it consideration.

In closing this hearing, we thank you for your interest in the hearing and bid you all good-bye.

(At 5.55 o'clock p. m. the committee adjourned.)

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION,
Phoenix, Ariz., July 8, 1931.

SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS,

Washington, D. C.

GENTLEMEN: In accordance with your request and that of our Senator Ashurst, I am submitting to you a statement of conditions on the Indian reservations in this State as they relate to public schools here and their relation to the Indians.

As you doubtless know, there are many white children on these Indian reservations. These are the children of the employees of the Indian Service, teachers' children, children of persons employed in various capacities, as well as children of traders and merchants who are on the reservations by the consent of that department, and hold licenses for trading.

The State of Arizona has always maintained public schools for white children on Indian reservations, paying the teacher, providing equipment, supplies, and books. The State of Arizona has also kept many Indian children in the public schools, and not until recent years has this State asked for tuition from the Federal Government for these Indian children. But it is not possible for the school districts at these places to build school buildings, due to the fact that being Federal land and not subject to taxation no special tax levy or bond issue can be made to raise funds.

We would like for you to know, Mr. Grourod, as well as the entire personnel of the Indian Service and the entire United States Congress, that Arizona feels very kindly toward our Indian people. We love them and want them to have the best that can be provided for them. We want the Indian children to associate with our white children, as we think in this way only will the Indian be educated to the best things of the white man's ways. We can not go on indefinitely maintaining large boarding schools for Indian children, segregated entirely from white children, and then expect the Indian children, when grown, to compete in business, trade, and professional life with white people. If the Indian children are permanently segregated in the school, they will, to a greater or less extent, continue this segregation when grown. We want the Indian children to be so well trained and associated with white children that when they are grown they may cease to be wards and become citizens and take their places with white people in the race for happiness and modern life. To do this there must be closer feeling of good will and cooperation between the Indian Service and our own public-school system. Not that there has ever been any friction. We have wished you well, and you have wished us well, and that has been about the limit of cooperation; but now we wish the time to come when we shall feel that we are both working for one common end-the education of the Indian child for American life and citizenship and the ultimate amalgamation of the Indian with the white man. Not that we shall look for intermarriage or the giving over of Indian reservations to the white man; but we want the time to come when, for example, a Navajo Indian may be so well cultured and educated that he may be found as superintendent or principal of one of our best schools, or that he may be found occupying a place as engineer or conductor of a railroad train.

With these ideas in view, Mr. Grourod, and also Mr. Scattergood, I am making a request for an appropriation from Congress to construct schoolhouses for white children on Indian reservations, to complete others partly finished, and to construct teacherages in such places as they may be needed.

It is my opinion, after many long years in the public schools in Arizona and after many surveys of affairs on Indian reservations as rural supervisor for Arizona, that your employees on the Indian reservations are a fine class of men and women. They are honest, clean, studious, and ambitious for the Indians. True, there have been misfits and some mistakes, but as a general rule you have as good a set of men and women teaching these Indian children in Arizona as can be found in any organization of teachers. I have found that they love the Indian children; that they study the child and try to know his heart and mind; that they try to know the peculiarities of each child, his ambitions, his likes and dislikes, his abilities. and shortcomngs; I have found that these teachers in your Indian Service make a special effort to find out the mental traits and peculiar adaptitudes of each child.

These teachers are dealing with a submerged race, a race that has come down through 10,000 years of camp life as huntsmen, everything in fact that is foreign to modern American ways of living.

As much as we may regret the passing of the old and the coming of the new for the white man as well as the Indian, it is here nevertheless. The old life for the Indian is gone never to return, just as it is gone for the white man. Seeing what these teachers are doing for the Indians, I am asking you to help this State provide the best schools for their children right at the reservation where they work. I want to continue the work already begun of constructing good, neat public schoolhouses for our white children. I would like to see a few Indian children in each one of these schools. It would be a fine thing for the Indians and white children too. There should be at each one of these schools a sanitary toilet and bath, so that the teacher may see to it that the Indian children comply with the State law which says, "No children of filthy habits may attend the public school."

You will note that I am asking for money to construct teacherages at these places also. In many places your schools are so overcrowded with your own teachers and employees that you have no place for our public-school teacher. It is necessary that we provide a place for our teacher to live if she is to be happy in her work and do the best teaching possible. In this time of terrible business depression and unemployment this would be a worthy cause, with money never spent to better advantage.

Below you will find the list of public schools on Indian reservations for which I am requesting funds from the Federal Government to construct school buildings.

I would like $14.000 for a school building at Parker, Ariz., Yuma County. There are at this place 113 pupils enrolled, 32 of whom are of Indian blood. At Peach Springs, Mohave County, I would like $3,500 to complete school building; at Rice School, San Carlos Indian Reservation. $3,000 for school building and teacherage; to complete school building and construct teacherage at Tuba City, on Western Navajo Indian Reservation, $1,500: at Chin Lee, on Northern Navajo Indian Reservation, Apache County, $2,500; Sacaton Indian Reservation, $5,000; Lehi Indian School, $300; and $2,500 for teacherage at Whiteriver.

I am also asking that there be some change made in the matter of paying tuition for Indian children attending public schools. The Indian Service has been paying from 35 to 50 cents per day per child to the public schools in Arizona. This is only paid, however, when application for this tuition is made in advance. It often happens that Indian children are hindered in attendance on the public school, and our own teachers and superintendents are misunderstood in this matter due to the fact that it could not be known how many Indian children would attend the public school. Why can not a change be made so that a school may make a report and submit a bill at the end of the term of so many Indian children having attended the public school?

Furthermore, 50 cents a day is not sufficient to pay the tuition of the Ind an children. Make this tuition a minimum of 75 cents a day per child, so that the school may provide a hot lunch with a bottle of milk for the Indian child.

SURVEY OF INDIAN CONDITIONS THROUGHOUT THE

UNITED STATES

FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 1931

UNITED STATES SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS,
CAMP VERDE INDIAN RESERVATION, ARIZ..

Phoenix, Ariz.

Data having reference to Camp Verde Reservation, and referred to by Mr. J. B. Brown, superintendent of the Phoenix school, on page 8102, are as follows:

CAMP VERDE RESERVATION, ARIZ.

The so-called Camp Verde Reservation consists of a farm of about 400 acres on the Verde River 6 miles above the town of Camp Verde and a tract of 18 acres in the suburbs of the town. It was provided some 20 years ago in the interests of a group of Mohave and Tonto Apaches who refused to move to San Carlos Reservation, preferring to remain in the vicinity of their original homes. They are a scattered and floating population, the average number living on the reservation being about 100, none being allotted. The area of the Camp Verde Reservation is slightly over 476 acres of which 98 acres are provided irrigation water.

It is impossible to keep an accurate census, due to the migratory nature of the enrolled members. Many live in the town of Clarksdale where they are employed irregularly by the smelter company, others live on the forest reserve on Beaver Creek and on the San Carlos Reservation, and all over the mountain section of the State in small groups.

MISSIONARIES

The religious interests of the Camp Verde Indians are cared for by Joseph Wellington, a Pima missionary who lives in the village of Clarksdale, and Hugo Bonaha, of the Baptist faith; an Apache Indian, who holds services regularly, has a church near the Indian Agency at Camp Verde. These services are well attended and Hugo Bonaha exerts interest over his congregation.

INDUSTRIES

The residents on the Government farm at Camp Verde are mostly old pensioners not able to do heavy manual labor. The woman make baskets and the men farm small tracts of land averaging about seven acres, which have been temporarily allotted to them with the understanding that when no longer used by them for a farm home, the land reverts to the management of the superintendent to be reallotted to another member of the tribe who may wish to use it.

This arrangement has worked very satisfactorily and is a great improvement over the former irregular plan under which the Indians moved from one small tract to another, having difficulty in managing their irrigation water and many disputes as to the ownership or rights to occupy land.

Permanent allotments of these lands are not recommended at present, and it is doubtful if the reservation should be continued as such after demise of the present old pensioners who reside thereon.

1

In addition to their agricultural products the Indians have sold wood a: a value of $160, and have worked on roads and in the salt mines, besides the larger group employed in the smelter mine. Agricultural products on the Camp Verde Reservation were sold, valuing $2,544.

ANNUAL REPORT, NARRATIVE, PHOENIX SCHOOL, ARIZONA, FISCAL YEAR 1929– CAMP VERDE SUBAGENCY

SECTION I. LAW AND ORDER

Camp Verde subagency has headquarters near the town of Camp Verde, Ariz. 140 miles from Phoenix. This is a range cattle country on the Verde River. It is in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains and near the important copper mining section known as the Jerome district. Some of the Indians of this jurisdiction are located on the Government reserve or farm of 400 acres a agency headquarters, 6 miles up the Verde River from Camp Verde. Others are on a small tract of 18 acres of Government land on the edge of the Cami Verde town site. Still another group of several families is in camp some 1miles up Beaver Creek from the town of Camp Verde, living in the forest reservnear ranches which furnish employment. A still larger group than any of these lives in Clarkdale, a smelter town, in shacks built by the Indians of company land.

In addition to those above mentioned there are many enrolled members this jurisdiction scattered about the mountain regions of Arizona in the vicinit of Prescott, Clemenceau, Cottonwood, Payson, and elsewhere.

There are many immigrations and much shifting from one location to anothe among these groups, due to family quarrels, opportunity for employment, avail able food supply, or the receipt of pensions money.

It will thus be seen that most of these Indians live off the reservation ata are exempt even from such feeble authority as a superintendent now has ove reservation Indians. As State authorities refuse to exercise any jurisdictio over their marital affairs, drunkenness, or gambling, these residents of th State have things pretty much their own way, and conditions do not improve, Among the crimes and offenses of a serious nature committed by Camp Verd Indians and for which they are not punished are gambling, drunkenness, mantifacture and possession of intoxicants, adultery, assault, theft, statutory ral". vagrancy, and abandonment, or failure to support families. Most of these crimes are prevented on the small area of Government land or “reservation by the arbitrary action of the superintendent who refuses to allow them in or domicile on the Government farm while grossly violating law and decenc Their answer is to move to Clarkdale or up Beaver Creek, off the reservatio While this maintains some small degree of respect for the agency farmer ⠀ can not be classed as a solution of the problem.

Legislation seeking to correct these conditions was suggested by me in w letters of February 21, 1929, to Hon. Louis C. Cramton. House of Represente tives, and to Commissioner of Indian Affairs. (Copies inclosed herewith. There is no Indian court at Camp Verde. Not only are State authorities inditferent as to the conduct of Indians on the reservations. but we had a letter from a justice of the peace in the town of Clemenceau asking us to come ai get Indians and punish them for offenses committed in their town.

Very respectfully,

JNO. B. BROWN. Superintendent.