for all it took from us, our homes and lands, cattle--even
furniture. A treaty was made solemnly between the Indians and the
United States that Oklahoma should be theirs 'as long as the grass
should grow and the waters run.'

"That meant perpetuity to us, don't you see?" She makes her points
with a directness and simplicity that should disarm even the
diplomatic suavity of Uncle Sam when he meets her in Washington.
"Year after year the Cherokees waited for the Government to pay. And
at last, three years ago, it came to us--$133.19 to each Indian,
seventy-eight years after the removal from Georgia had taken place.

"Oil was discovered after the Indians had taken the wilderness lands
in Oklahoma and reclaimed them. It was as if God, in reparation for
the wrongs inflicted by whites, had given us the riches of the
earth. My people grew rich from their wells, but a way was found to
bind their wealth so they could not use it. It was said the Indians
were not fit to handle their own money."

She lifts eyebrows and shoulders, her hands clasped before her
tightly, as if in silent resentment of their impotence to help.

"These are the things I want to tell; first our wrongs and then our
colonization plan, for which we hope so much if the Government will
grant it. We are outnumbered since the land was opened up and a mass
of 'sooners,' as we call them--squatters, claimers,
settlers--swarmed in over our borders. The Government again offered
to pay us for the land they took back--the land that was to be ours
in perpetuity 'while the grass grew and the waters ran.' We were
told to file our claims with the whites. Some of us did, but eight
hundred of the full-bloods went back forty miles into the foothills
under the leadership of Red Bird Smith. They refuse to sell or to
accept the Government money for their valuable oil lands. To appease
justice, the Government allotted them lands anyway, in their
absence, and paid the money for their old property into the banks,
where it lies untouched. Red Bird and his 'Night Hawks' refuse to
barter over a broken treaty.

"Ah, but I have gone up alone to the old men there." Her voice
softens. "They will talk to me because I am my father's daughter. My
Indian name means 'One-who-does-things-well.' So if I go to them
they tell me their heart longings, wha