Section 3837: “All marriages of persons of Caucasian blood, or
their descendants, with negroes, Mongolians or Indians, and their
descendants, shall be null and void.”
Section 3839: “All marriages valid by the laws of the place where
contracted, shall be valid in this state; PROVIDED, that all
marriages solemnized in any other state or country by parties
intending at the time to reside in this state shall have the same
legal consequences and effect as if solemnized in this state;
parties residing in this state cannot evade any of the provisions
of its laws as to marriage by going into another state or country
for the solemnization of the marriage ceremony.”
Arizona and its people have no desire for a population of half-breeds;
and it is a pity that not all the sovereign States of the Union have
been filled with an equal pride. There is one State where it has been
found to be necessary to proscribe by law the usage of the term “squaw
man.”
While the Agents of to-day have not the military with which to coerce
obedience, they have, as Stevenson once wrote of dogs, a strong sense
of their rightness and superior position in action. The moral authority
is theirs, and the legal means has not been emasculated.
The Regulations for the Indian Service, dated 1904, and unamended in so
far as control of closed reservations is concerned, were based very
largely on the Act of 1834. Since these regulations were issued, the
Indian Agents have been engulfed by 2000 additional rules, advices,
warnings, sermons, and remonstrances; but no modification of
law-and-order guides has been encountered; and these original
regulations have been consistently sustained by the United States
District Courts.
An Indian of the Enchanted Empire may be dealt with by his Agent as
surely as were the Sioux of the ’80’s. I had occasion to revive the
permit system for both whites and Indians, to supervise the conduct of
whites within Indian country, to protect native ceremonies, ruins, and
graves, to deport those visitors and Bolsheviks considered of no
immediate benefit to the quiet Indian population, to arrest and arraign
both Indians and whites for offenses, to sentence them, and to see that
the sentence was respected.
Now mark you! This does not mean that every Indian Agent is a
functioning Agent. It may as well be said, frankly, so long as this is
getting out of the family circle, that few Indian Agents perform their
fully authorized duty when it is possible to intimidate them: a process
often recognized by quavering superiors at Washington who hope to
outlast a dying Administration.
But before coming to the field in 1910, I saw three Secretaries of the
Interior steadfastly uphold these Regulations; and as an Indian Agent
in the field I have been strongly supported by three other Secretaries
of the Interior, to the end that my Indian charges, until 1922, were
the best-protected people on earth.