78 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
The Indians deserve a better legal environment. Small hope may 
be entertained for their healthy progress until the State and the Na- 
tion agree to face the situation. This the Federal Government has 
consistently refused to do, at the same time maintaining its suprem- 
acy. This position of the Federal Government has forced the State 
to exercise authority in certain matters and to extend to these In- 
dians the benefits refused or denied them by the Federal Govern- 
ment, yet the Federal Government, the Indians and the courts have 
refused to allow the State to extend its laws along with its institu- 
tions. 
Have the Several Tribes Yielded Their Sovereignty? 
With the shifting of the economic outlook of the Indian from 
that of the frontier, of the hunting life and of dreams of an Indian 
State, the New York Indian has been compelled to face a changed 
world. He found that the material culture and social organization, 
as well as the legal protection of the white man’s civilization, were 
things that he desired because they contributed to his survival. 
The Indian asked for schools, and received them. The Indian, 
because of his primitive organization and poverty, was unable to 
provide schools, orphanages, criminal courts, sanitary inspection, 
public nurses, highways, asylums, hospitals, poor houses, agricultural 
instruction. The Indian in his primitive state did not need many of 
these things, having provided other means for taking care of them. 
But this is of the past; we are facing the present. Suffice it to say 
that the Indians in certain instances did ask for and receive, and that 
they now enjoy, the institutions enumerated. 
Their people and their reservations benefit by these institutions. 
If the Indians have contracted for or paid for these benefits directly, 
they should be entitled to administer or participate in the administra- 
tion of them, in accordance with laws and regulations agreed upon. 
Having received these institutions and having accepted their 
benefits, it would appear that they must logically accept with them all 
the laws, regulations and administrative authority that goes with 
them. 
In accepting a school or an asylum, it would appear that the regu- 
lative authority attached to the school and asylum or other institution 
or benefit, ought to be accepted. The institution can not exist apart 
from the regulative authority that creates and supports 1t. The two 
are coexistent and one can not be accepted without the other. 
If the Indians had wished to deny the right of the State to exercise 
authority over health matters, agriculture, orphanages, charities and 
