The ALASKA
SOV'R'DOVGH
VoL I. No. 1
Douglas, Alaska, Friday, September 1, 1911
10c a Copy
An Alaska Social Function—The Sou’wester Party.
L
CITIZENSHIP FOR ALASKA INDIANS
Alaska lawyers are looking for a
momentous decision from the United
States Court of Appeals at San Fran
cisco this month or the next. If the
court sustains the opinion of John W.
Arctander,—and many lawyers believe
his view is based on sound law, natives
may qualify as pilots, may take up
claims, may drink at t^e bar, and may
even go to the polls and vote for city
councils and congressional delegate,
whenever they wish. Arctander has
presented to tha* court an astounding
array of authority to show that an Al
aska Indian may, whenever he * gets
ready, become a citizen of the United
States, with all the rights of the white
man.
On the judgement of the court of
appeals, hangs the question of whether
Thomas Nagle, a Wrangell saloon
keeper shall serve fifteen months on
McNeil’s Island, but more than that,
the political status of thousands of po
tential voters.
Arctander maintains his claim for
citizenship for the Alaska Indian on
the act of February 8, 1887, and the
subsequent amendments which have
been made to this act. This act made
cifizens of three classes of Indians.
First, those who took allotments from
the United States under that act; sec
ond, Indians who had taken allot
ments under other laws or treaties;
and third, and this class appears to in
clude the Alaska Indians—all other In
dians who have been born within the
territorial limits of the United States,
who have abandoned their tribal re
lations, and who have adopted the hab
its of civilized life.
Courts have abundantly construed
the law and its amendments, and in
every case, as related to the Indians
of the United States, the decisions
have been in favor of the Indians. The
law, if it applies to Alaska Indians,
will, or at least, may be more sweeping
in its effect hero than in any other
corner of the United States domains,
for here, at least in Southeastern Al
aska, the Indians have nearly univer
sally abandoned their tribal relations,
have emasculated the authority of tlu
chief, and have come to dwell in the
white man’s towrns. The question has
been raised as to whether the natives
of Alaska are Indians, but congress has
referred to them as Indians in more
than a half a dozen instances. And in
any case, Arctander clinches that ar
gument by a quotation from the treaty
of Cession of Alaska, which provides
that: “The uncivilized tribes will be
subject to such laws and regulations
as the United States may from time
to time adopt in regard to the abori
ginal tribes of that country.' ’
In concluding his brief, Mr. Arc
tander says:
“I frankly confess that the main
purpose on my part for prosecuting
without fee or reward, and at consid
erable personal cost, expense and in
convenience, this writ of error, is not
to free the plaintiff in error from his
punishment, for I must admit that I
have little sympathy for persons of
his ilk.
“But I deem it my duty, under my
oath, even though appointed by the
court to defend a ease in which no
money consideration could have in
duced me to accept a brief, to use all
honorable lefforts to right t he lega
wrong imposed upon any eitizen of
humble origin, and whatever low and
despicable character, when he is rail
roaded into penal servitude in the very
teeth of the statutory law of the land,
“There are more serious and in their
effect more farther reaching wrongs
than selling liquor to Indians; and to
convict a person and punish him, when
the letter and the spirit of the law does
not only authorize it, but at least im
pliedly forbid it, is not, in my judge
ment conducive to that high respeet
for the courts, without which the hard
ship of living in Alaska is not to any
perceptible degree lessened. But a
stronger inducement I still have for
prosecuting this writ with all the en
ergy I now in my advanced years
possess, and that is a burning desire,
through the decision of this court, to
have established and declared the
rights of the now civilized natives of
Alaska as citizens of the United States,
a right which is daily being denied
them in Alaska.
“When these civilized, and to quite
a degree intelligent natives, be they
Haidas or Thlingets, appear before of
ficials to secure licenses as pilots or
engineers, or to run their own motor
boats, they are 'denied these privil
eges, under the pretext that they are
n#t, and cannot be, citizens of the
United States.
“When these Indians attempt to lo
cate homesteads and mining claims,
they are informed that these rights are
for citizens of the United States only.
“When some of them who are run
ning general stores, restaurants, pool
rooms, halls and industrial plants, for
which they are paying their annual
license fee to the government, and who
are also paying their taxes like little
men, to the local towns in which they
reside, undertake to offer their bal
lots at elections for delegate, or even
the local election for officers, they are
practically kicked out of the election
booth.
“If any of them should go quietly
into a saloon to warm his frozen hands
and feet in what are practically the
only places in the .little towns «of Al
aska where they can do so, they are
sometimes politely, but more often bru
tally, told that they have no business
there, and ordered to ‘skiddoo’ as soon
as possible.
“For the last six or seven years I
have made the conditions of the South
eastern Alaska Indians a subject of
particular and serioas study, and as a
result of such investigation into their
intelligence, industrial activity, civic
and economic ambition, into their man
ners, habits, inclinations and charac
ter, I feel fully authorized to assert
that the advance which they have
made of late years, though hampered
by the humiliation which the denial
of their civic rights has amounted to,
would lead us to expect a still more
wonderful stride towards a much
higher civilization and econoiais inde
pendence in the near future, if they
could be assisted in their efforts in
life by an authoritive declaration (to
which all the government officials
would be bound to bow) that they are
entitled to all the rights, privileges
and immunities of citizenship of the
United States, and thu bse spared the
deadening effect on their energies and
ambitions which they now daily meet
with.
“An Indian once said to me: ‘An
Indian is no better than a white man.’
“But he is no worse, either.
“There are ‘white trash’ and ‘In
dian trash,’ but there are Indians
among these raees as good as gold, as
there are white men and women who
are as good as gold.
“Was it not General Miles who said
in print that he knew of no treaty with
the Indians ever made by our govern
ment which had not been ruthlessly
broken by our government, and that
he knew of not a single treaty made
by the Indians whieh they had ever
broken. Woe unto us that such a
thing could ever be truthfully utter
ed.
‘ ‘ But the same sad story is repeat
ed every day in the treatment of these
Indians in denying them their rights
so clearly and unequivieally given
them by congress.
“And if these words of praise could
be truthfully spoken of the Indians of
the Plains, how mu«l stronger should
be the words of praise of the Alaska
natives who admittedly stand head
and shoulders above their brethren of
the plains in thrift, in ability, in en
ergy, in economic conditions, in am
bition, in honesty, in capability and in
intelligence, in spite of, or perhaps just
because of the advantages the latter
have had as the special wards of the
government, whose spiritual needs
have been supplied by this, our gov
ernment.
It is to obtain a plain assertion of
the civic rights of these wonderful
raees pf native Alaska that my voice
is risen in this cause.
“I respectfully demand, in their be