Private Property in Land Among Reservation Indians in Southern California

Imre Sutton* California State College at Fullerton Private Property in Land Among Reservation Indians in Southern California Private property in land is exalted as the ideal tenure in Western Culture. Associated with one's own labors and the dignity of the individual in society, it remains the backbone of both the market system and the expression of polity. In the contact of cultures whereever most Western Europeans have gone, this property concept has been asserted, and as Hagan noted, "The idea that private property had peculiar civilizing qualities has been present throughout the history of relations between Indians and our government."1 Although for nearly a century this nation experimented widi land reservation as a means of preserving tribal tenure in land, in 1887 a policy of allotting land in severalty was enacted into law.2 The allotment, analogous to a homestead, was to make the Indian self-reliant and market oriented. Designed to create freehold tenure and to end tenancy-incommon , the allotment policy made a frontal attack on tribal structure . But ill-conceived and inadequately administered despite certain altruistic motives, the policy strayed from its avowed purposes in furthering the economic opportunity of Indians owing to a dearth 1 W. T. Hagan, "Private Property, die Indian's Door to Civilization," Ethnohistory, Vol.3 (1956), pp. 126-37. 2 24 Stat. 388. * This study is a continuation of an aspect of the writer's dissertation, "Land Tenure and Changing Occupance on Indian Reservations in Southern California" ( University of California, Los Angeles, 1964). Basic data are for the period ending in 196263 , aldiough Agua Caliente has been brought forward to 1965 and die remaining area to spring, 1967. For gracious assistance the writer thanks Orlando Garcia, retired Field Representative and Frank Haggerty, acting Field Representative, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Riverside. Maps wore prepared by Don Severson, Portland, Oregon, and James Huning, Fullerton, California. 69 70ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS of means to make Indian lands yield productive income and to educate Indians in the management of property. While the harsh facts of the allotment process lead to the generalization that real property among most Indians has been ineffectual to date,3 few studies trace the effects of the institution in a specific Indian community. Such, in brief, is attempted in this explication of the problem in the Mission Indian Locale ( Figure 1 ). The Coming of Allotment Thirty-one small, scattered reservations, comprising about a quarter million acres, were set aside by executive orders for remnants of Mission Indian bands between 1875 and 189P (See Table 1). Established during a period of inordinate land settlement and accompanied by land booms and overwhelming administrative problems in the disposition of newly acquired public domain, these reservations were never fully buffered from surrounding agricultural, mining, or town expansion. In 1891 after considerable and unreasonable boundary adjustments as well as legal ejectments from villages located on former ranchos, the present lands were confirmed by executive order and land allotment was authorized.5 To date, eleven reservations have allotments, and slightly less than 20 percent of total Indian acreage in the Locale is in individual trust patents. Allotted lands represent about 40 percent of the acreage of the eleven reserves with individual allotments differing in size and number of individual parcels per allottee. More than 50 percent of all allotted acreage is on Agua Caliente which with TorresMartinez comprises 86 percent of the total. Although the median size is well in excess of forty acres, mainly because of equalization of land 3 Lewis Meriam, et al, The Problem of Indian Administration ( Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), pp. 469-79; J. P. Kinney, A Continent Lost—A Civilization Won (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1937), pp. 214-248; T. H. Haas, "The Legal Aspects of Indian Affairs from 1887 to 1957," Annals, American Academy of Political 6- Social Science, Vol. 311 (May 1957), pp. 12-22. 4 C. C. Royce, comp., Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Annual Report, 1896-97 (Washington, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1899), Pt. 2., pp. 884-938; Cf. E. E. Dale, Indians of the Southwest (Norman, Univ. of OkIa. Press, 1949), Chap. III. Mission Indians are those descendants of Indians who were...