202 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Neither are Indians now "a dying race"; they 

 have been increasing in number for forty years. 



All Indians became citizens under a law passed 

 June 2, 1924, but how many possess the franchise 

 depends upon state laws. There will not be many. 

 Nearly all Indians, also, have "received their allot- 

 ments" and theoretically are on their own, indepen- 

 dent of government help. Theory and fact, how- 

 ever, do not always agree; there's another side to 

 this pretty picture of prosperity. In spite of the 

 appearance of experience, judgment, and confidence 

 which make many Indian faces impressive in mature 

 and older years, few Indians have the capacity to 

 meet the competition of the white man's civilization. 

 Occasionally Congress, or some Secretary, assumes 

 that they have and turns a lot of them loose on the 

 hard world, nearly always with disastrous results. 

 In 1887, Congress decreed that each Indian should 

 personally be alloted his own share of his reservation 

 under the proviso that he could not sell it nor bor- 

 row on it for twenty-five years. This is known as a 

 trust patent, and most Indians now possess it. La- 

 ter, legislation provided that he could sell or borrow 

 upon receipt of an award by the government of a 

 patent in fee. Altogether, the Bureau has only 

 issued experimentally about twenty-five thousand 

 patents in fee, but Congress has taken affairs into its 

 own hands to the number of nearly a hundred thou- 

 sand more. 



But mark the results. About ninety per cent of 



