That the Indians shall not be abused … but have liberty to do all things relating to improvement of their ground and providing sustenance for their families that the planters shall enjoy.

Generally however the Indian had no rights and few privileges. When the Union was formed the single mention of him in the Constitution assigns him the status of the Negro. (Article I, section 2, clause 111.) Since then, he has had no real liberty either as a resident in the United States or as a citizen of his own presumably autonomous tribe. When he was ceded along with land to the United States by foreign powers no mention of his rights was made. He has been an anomaly—neither in the nation nor out of it, neither citizen nor alien. Though his own nations were destroyed because of their fierce love of liberty, he has known only the supervised liberty of a dependent. He passed early into the ill-defined state of a “ward of the nation,” and was never recognized as a citizen. The treaties with his tribes were never respected. They were mere bargains over property and secured no rights to the Indian. The determining factors were force, greed, and fraud.¹

The Indians have suffered ceaseless exploitation, robbery, violence and murder. They have suffered as “inferior races” always suffer, by a lack of bodily safety, freedom of movement, protection against violence or against the law itself when accused of crime…. The illegal and selfish spoliation of their lands by the government, by lawyers, politicians, ranchmen, everybody, does not fall within our province. We need not go into the records of injustice to the Indians. The case can be summed up by generalizations such as:

The history of the Government's connection with the Indians is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises.²

There is not among the 300 bands of Indians, one which has not suffered cruelly at the hands of the government or the white settlers…. The tales of the

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