I arrive in New Mexico at a moment of crisis. I suppose every man always does, here. The crisis is a thing called the Bursum bill, and it affects the Pueblo Indians. I wouldn’t know a thing about it if I needn’t.
But it’s Bursum, Bursum, Bursum! the Bill, the Bill, the Bill! Twitchell, Twitched, Twitched! O Mr. Secretary Fad, Fall, Fall! O Mr. Secretary Fad, you bad man, you good man, you Fad, you Rise, you Fall! The Joy Survey, Oh, Joy, No Joy, Once Joy, Now Woe! Woe! Whoa, Bursum! Whoa, Bill! Whoa-a-a! — like a Vachel Lindsay Boom-Boom bellowing, it goes on in my unwonted ears, till I have to take heed.
And then I sit down solemnly in a chair and read the Bid, the Bill, the printed Bursum bid, Section one — two — three — four — five — six — seven, whereas and wherefore and heretobefore, right to the damned and distant end. Then I start the insomuch-as of Mr. Francis Wilson’s Brief concerning the Bid. Then I read Mr. C.’s passionate article against, and Mrs. H.’s hatchet-stroke summary against, and Mr. M.’s sharp-knife jugglery for the Bid. After which I feel I’m getting mixed up. Then, lamb-like, ram-like, I feel I’ll do a bit of butting, too, on a stage where every known animal butts.
But first I toddle to a corner and, like a dog when music is going on in the room, put my paws exasperatedly over my ears, and my nose to the ground, and groan softly. So doing, I try to hypnotize myself back into my old natural world, outside the circus tent, where horses don’t buck and prance so much, and where not every lady is leaping through the hoop and crashing through the paper confines of the universe at every hand’s turn.
Try to extricate my lamb-like soul into its fleecy isolation, and then adjust myself. Adjust myself to that much-talked-of actor in the Wild West show, the Red Indian.
Don’t imagine, indulgent reader, that I’m talking at you or down to you; or trying to put something over on you. No, no; imagine me, lamb-like and bewildered, muttering softly to myself, between soft groans, trying to make head or tail of myself in my present situation. And then you’ll get the spirit of these effusions.
The Indian is not an American citizen. He is apparently in the position of a defenceless nation protected by a benevolent Congress. He is an American subject, but a member of a dominated, defenceless nation which Congress undertakes to protect and cherish. The Indian Bureau is supposed to do the cherishing.
Around about the pueblos live Mexican and American settlers who are American citizens, who do pay taxes and who do vote. They have cattle ranches, sheep ranches, little farms, and so on, and are most of them in debt.
These are the first two items: the dark spots of the protected pueblos; the hungry, unscrupulous frontier population squatting, rather scattered and rather impoverished, around.
There is plenty of land: sage brush desert. All depends on water. The pueblos, of course, are pitched upon the waters. The beautiful Taos Valley culminates in Taos Pueblo. The ranches and farms straggle round and try to encroach on this watered place. Six miles away is a deserted Mexican village, waterless.
Already you have a situation.
Now, when the United States took over New Mexico in 1848, Congress decided to abide by all the conditions established by Spain and old Mexico in this State. Congress also, apparently, decreed that to each pueblo belonged the four square leagues of land surrounding the pueblo; whether in accordance with ancient Spanish grant or not, isn’t for me to say. Anyhow, there it is. Taos Pueblo owning four square leagues, which is thirty-six square miles of land immediately surrounding the pueblo; measuring a league in each direction from the centre of the pueblo. There are 800 Indians in the pueblo. But much of the land is dry desert or stony hill. True, some of the desert might be irrigated — if the water were there to irrigate it with, or if the Indians would make the effort.
At the same time Congress will abide by all the old Spanish or Mexican grants, titles, and so forth, which were in existence at the time of the taking over of this territory.
Immediately a problem. Because the Indian four square leagues has been much of it for centuries occupied by Spanish or Mexican or white settlers. There they sit. Taos Plaza, that is the white village of Taos, stands itself entirely within the four square leagues decreed to Taos Pueblo. There are Spanish grants from governors; there are Mexican grants; and there are forged grants, forged deeds. Well, then, a terrible problem. For Taos Plaza has probably been standing for at least 200 years. Almost as old as New York.
Terrible problem! Why hasn’t the place run with blood? Because the Indian never measured any leagues, but tilled his land around the pueblo itself. Much of the space intervening between the pueblo and the plaza is just sage desert. And this definite uncontested Indian land — uncontested for the moment, that is, so long as there is no Bursum bill — lies between plaza and pueblo as a sort of frontier. Nobody cut anybody’s throat, because the occasion didn’t arrive. Many squatters squat within the bounds of these four square leagues, but they are beyond a no man’s land still of sage desert, away from the heart where the pueblo rises, among the cotton-wood trees, and tills its land around the waters.
Thus the situation.
Then the highbrows come and say: “Poor Indian, dear Indian! why, all America ought to belong to him! Why look you now at the injustice that has been done to him! Not only has all America been snatched from him, but even his four square leagues are invaded by vile white men, greedy white men, hateful white men!”
So sing the highbrow palefaces. Till the Indian gradually begins to get his tail up.
Luckily for us he is few; unluckily for himself. Because if the tiny prairie dog yaps too hard at the western American airedale, alas for prairie dogs!
Now things begin to stir. It is time this business of grants and titles was settled. Old Spanish grants to Spaniards versus these four square leagues. Taos Plaza versus Taos Pueblo. Spanish grants, Mexican titles, forged deeds suddenly fluttering into life in a breath of hot wind of contest. Four square leagues flying away on the wings of old Spanish grants, which Congress is bound to validify, and the Indian perching on his big toe end, trying to poise on four square inches. Or, vice versa, an appeal to Congress, and Congress is sovereign majesty, and the Indians can come and take their brooms and sweep old Jose or old Fernandez or old Maria, with all Taos village, pell-mell over the border of the four square leagues, into limbo.
Not that the Indian is likely to take Congress by the ear and do it. The Indian is afflicted with the lovable malady of laissez-faire. But then you never know what some of those white highbrows will be up to, these palefaces who love the dear Indian, the poor Indian, and who would like to see all America restored to him, let alone four square leagues, which is thirty-six square miles.
Now I believe the lands of some of the pueblos, sadly, very sadly enough, have been eaten right up by encroachments. But let me not be very sad. Taos isn’t sad. Let me stay by Taos.
It will be obvious to everybody that a move had to be made about these leagues and these grants. And New Mexico made the move. Senator Bursum is the black knight who has hopped on to the four leagues. His famous Bursum bill has passed the Senate and comes before the House, presumably this month (December).
And here is the Bursum bill: an absolute checkmate to Pueblo, highbrow and all. It is the frontiersman biting off as much as he can chew.
“A bill to ascertain and settle land claims of persons not Indian, within Pueblo Indian land, land grants, and reservations in the State of New Mexico.”
1. A court called the District Court of the United States for the District of New Mexico shall assume jurisdiction over all crimes, offenses, etc., committed within the areas of pueblo grants, by any person, Indian or non-Indian, so long as the Indians are occupying that land or claim that land.
(So this nice New Mexico court, which knows just what it wants for itself, takes a first modest step.)
2. This court shall have exclusive original jurisdiction in all suits of a civil nature, in all suits involving any right or title to any land within the said pueblo reservations, also in all suits involving property of Indians, also in all suits involving any question of internal government of any of the said pueblos.
(Which means that the old, autonomous tribal body of the pueblo is placed at the mercy of this distant district court.)
4. All persons or corporations who have had possession of lands within the pueblo grants since prior to the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty of 1848 shall be entitled to a decree in their favour for all lands so possessed. In proof, secondary evidence shall be admissible and competent.
5. All persons who have held possession of lands within the pueblo grants for more than ten years previous to July, 1910, without colour of title * * * shall be entitled to a decree in their favour for all lands so possessed. But in return to the Indians, the secretary of the Interior shall have some other bit of adjacent land allotted to the pueblo if any such and be available. (None of the available land is any good.) Otherwise the pueblo shall be compensated in cash, as the Secretary thinks fit.
6. Pueblos shall have the right to the use of just as much water as they use at this minute (even though this amount be sadly insufficient to irrigate the present fields). But if any dam or reservoir be made, damming up the pueblo supplies, then all the surplus water and the control thereof shall be adjudicated according to the laws of the State of New Mexico.
7. All proceedings under this act shall be without cost to parties.
8. All suits under this act must be brought within five years.
9. The “Joy Surveys” (which were made to give evidence as to how Indian lands had been wrongly invaded) shall be accepted as prima facie evidence.
12. That any person or persons making any claim whatsoever to any lands within pueblo grants, whether they squatted on it only yesterday, may, with approval of the court, purchase the land at the court’s valuation, and the money paid shall be held by the Secretary of the Interior on behalf of the Indians. (Which means that if I want a chunk of pueblo land I put a fence around it and pay the Secretary of the Interior a sum which the court will, if it likes me, kindly make as small as possible, and the Indian sits staring at the Charybdis of me and the Scylla of Mr. Secretary Fall and holding out his hand for a bit of charity bread.)
It is obvious this means the scattering of the pueblos. The squatters and Mexicans interested — and where land grabbing is the game, every neighbour is interested — openly declare that the pueblos will be finished in ten years. That is, five years for the claims to be all made and five for their final enforcement. And then the Indians will have merged. They will be scattered day labourers through the States and the nucleus will be broken.
The great desire to turn them into white men will be fulfilled as far as it can be fulfilled. They will all be wage earners, and that’s enough. For the rest, lost, mutilated intelligences.
As it is, the pueblos are slowly disbanding; there are the Indian schools, a doom in themselves. The young men all speak American. They go as hired labourers. And man is like a dog — he believes in the hand that feeds him. He belongs where he is fed.
The end of the pueblos. But at least let them die a natural death. To me the Bursum bill is amusing in its bare-facedness — a cool joke. It startles any English mind a little to realize that it may become law.
Let the pueblos die a natural death. The Bursum bill plays the Wild West scalping trick a little too brazenly. Surely the great Federal Government is capable of instituting an efficient Indian Commission to inquire fairly and settle fairly. Or a small Indian office that knows what it’s about. For Heaven’s sake keep these Indians out of the clutches of politics.
Because, finally, in some curious way, the pueblos still lie here at the core of American life. In some curious way, it is the Indians still who are American. This great welter of whites is not yet a nation, not yet a people.
The Indians keep burning an eternal fire, the sacred fire of the old dark religion. To the vast white America, either in our generation or in the time of our children or grandchildren, will come some fearful convulsion. Some terrible convulsion will take place among the millions of this country, sooner or later. When the pueblos are gone. But oh, let us have the grace and dignity to shelter these ancient centres of life, so that, if die they must, they die a natural death. And at the same time, let us try to adjust ourselves again to the Indian outlook, to take up an old dark thread from their vision, and see again as they see, without forgetting we are ourselves.
For it is a new era we have now got to cross into. And our own electric light won’t show us over the gulf. We have to feel our way by the dark thread of the old vision. Before it lapses, let us take it up.
Before the pueblos disappear, let there be just one moment of reconciliation between the white spirit and the dark.
And whether there be this moment of reconciliation or not, let us prevent Jack Grab and Juan Arrapar from putting their foot on the pueblos.
Besides, if the Bursum bill passes, what a lively shooting match will go on between all the Jacks and the Juans who claim the bits of land in question, ten claimants to every inch!
And then, again, what business is it of mine, foreigner and newcomer?