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![handle is hein.amindian/lebest0001 and id is 1 raw text is: [No. 37-SECOND SERIES-3000.]
INDIAN RIGHTS AssOCIATION,
1305 ARCH STREET.
PHILADELPHIA, February 20, L897.
LET THERE BE NO BACKWARD STEP.
To the Members of the Ffty-Fourth Congress:
GENTLEMEN: The General Indian Appropriation Bill for the
coming fiscal year contained, as it came from the House of
Representatives, the following paragraph :
That all children born of a marriage between a white man
and an Indian woman shall have the same rights and privileges
to the property of the tribe to which the mother belongs, either
by blood or descent, as any other member of the tribe, and no
prior act of Congress shall be so construed as to debar such child
of such right.
The Senate Committee very wisely struck this out; but as the
paragraph will be one of the subjects discussed in conference, it
is important that every member of' both houses should under-
stand its bearing. In a still more objectionable form-that is,
conferring upon the children their mothers' rights and privileges
either by adoption, blood, or descent -it has repeatedly come
before Congress. It is even now embodied in a separate bill
(H. R. 9668), which may be revived later if this rider fails.
We urge its defeat because-
I. It aims to overthrow well-established law, which, if left
undisturbed, would in time bring about a social and
political fusion of the two races.
The act of Congress approved August 9, 1888, of which
Senator Dawes of Massachusetts was the author and chief sponsor,
provided-
That no white man, not otherwise a member of any tribe of
Indians, who may hereafter marry an Indian woman, member of
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