Oral History Interview with
Oscar L. Chapman
Assistant Secretary of the Interior, 1933-46; Under Secretary
of the Interior, 1946-49; Secretary of the Interior, 1949-53.
Washington, DC
November 3, 1972
Jerry N. Hess
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Transcript | Additional Chapman Oral History
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Opened 1980
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri
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Oral History Interview with
Oscar L. Chapman
Washington, DC
November 3, 1972
Jerry N. Hess
HESS: All right, Mr. Chapman, a subject of timeliness this morning I
think would be to discuss the Indians that are here in town. And as you
know, there are a number of Indians who have barricaded themselves in
the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building last night. And according to the
paper, they represent .a coalition of 250 of the Nation's Indian tribes,
and they are here in town protesting treatment of Indians over the years.
And they call their operation the "Trail of Broken Treaties."
As I see it, their central contention is that the Indians have been neglected
and unfairly treated ever since the white man landed on these shores.
And as the man who headed the Department of Interior for a number years
and had overall supervision of Indian affairs, what is you view of the
Indian situation and how those matters have been handled over the years?
CHAPMAN: If you look back over the history of the Indian Office itself,
and the management of the Indian tribes as a group, you will begin to
realize that progress that has been made in creating a proper atmosphere
for the Indians. The white man has himself become more sympathetic in
the last 20 years towards his fellow man, the Indians, than at any other
time that I have known in history.
When I first began to work with the Indian office, they were at a very
low relationship with the white people and I have noticed, and have been
able to see, the improvement in their understanding and what is more important,
the white people's understanding of the Indian. This is more noticeable
today than it was when I first started to work in the Department, and
I think it's continuing to improve.
HESS: What seemed to be the general attitude of the population towards
the Indians say in May of 1933?
CHAPMAN: Well, in the beginning along in May of '33, I started into the
program with the Indians having many claims pending before the Department.
Court did not look sympathetically upon several important cases that we
had at that time, and it was not conducive to what the Indians thought
was a fair dealing with them in these court decisions.
I think the present Secretary of Interior is doing as good a job
as money is made available to him. I think he has a very definite sympathetic
feeling towards the Indians and he's a humanitarian.
Now as he gets support from the public--and that's what I am trying to
tell you this morning--they are getting support from the public
generally, today, that they were never getting before. They are getting
more support now than they were getting 10 years or 20 years ago. It is
gradually improving.
Now, part of that is caught up in this general civil rights controversy
and strides that were made in the civil rights minority group controversy,
and in making that fight the Indians were all inclusive--when you talk
about the civil rights of the minority people you invariably include the
Indian now in that idea of thinking of what you do.
Now this is not something that will be done over night after 40 years,
or more, of what I'd consider not so much mistreatment as it has been
a lack of proper understanding and proper effort being made to include
the Indians in the Federal programs to assist people who are not capable
of helping themselves in some cases.
HESS: Let's discuss the historical aspects of the handling of the Indian
situation just a bit. How was the Indian situation handled in the last
century perhaps? At the time of the Indian wars?
CHAPMAN: Let's break it down in time period like this. You go back to
the earlier days of my childhood and during that period, for say about
20 or 30 years there, there was a very decided neglect, or the lack of
attention, to help the Indian or do anything for him very much. Unless
some Senator would get excited about a particular case, or piece of legislation,
we never got the basic legislative programs through to put Indians on
an overall level with other people. And I'm speaking of the economic situation
more there than anything else. That's in the economic field. They were
not given sufficient opportunity to protect their own holdings, their
own properties.
You will remember back in those days--some of this is long before you
were born--they would appoint the commissioner of Indian Affairs, some
retired Army colonel or Navy captain, somebody of that nature that was
retired. They naturally lived on a bare retirement salary that was very
low at that time and they were looking to improve their own economic situation,
the white man.
Consequently, during that period the appearance was very bad. If you
really sat back and looked at this and studied it very carefully you would
feel very bad about it; you would see it.
HESS: There were charges of graft and corruption at that time. Were those
charges founded on fact?
CHAPMAN: I would say that in 99 of 100 cases it would not be true, in
fact. But there were some cases; there were quite a few cases where
there was some graft and corruption going on from the operation of the
program in the field. I know I did all I could to have personal contact
with the tribes in the field, at their council meetings.
I would go to many of their council meetings, like the Hopi's, down next
to the Navajos, and the Pueblos. There are four or five nice tribes in
there and they are very fine people and they really are calm, stable type
people; they have a very calm mental approach to their problem.
Now, this outward appearance of some abnormal or rough treatment between
themselves and the public last evening here was a very unusual thing.
That's not a usual thing at all, because the Indians have been the most
patient people on earth. I have never known a minority group, of any kind,
that matches the Indian, in calmness and patience in which he has followed
his downward path, as he has seen it go down.
HESS: Do you think their patience may be drawing to an end?
CHAPMAN: It is. It's drawing to an end because they are learning a lot.
They are learning a lot because they see their other friends are now getting
it that didn't get it 20 years ago, getting help.
HESS: Other minority groups?
CHAPMAN: Yes. There are other--well, for instance, they are entitled
to go on Social Security if they qualify for it, and they need it. Now,
that's a kind of a thing that I was talking about when I said the general
legislation that's been passed in the last ten years has been legislation
that was more--should I say it's stronger in its sympathy and understanding
of the Indians because the people were beginning to support the Indian
program more.
Now, a program will not succeed any further than the public will support.
If it will support a program, you can help them and put it through. We
have never had sufficient leadership and support for the Indians as we
should have had all along. We haven't had the support they should have
had, and...
HESS: What would be a proper program for the Indians? What I'm driving
at, there are some Indians who say they do not want to be assimilated
into our culture, that they have their own heritage; they want to live
by their own heritage.
CHAPMAN: Well, now, you've got a problem there, because they differ among
themselves so strongly on that issue; it's very difficult for you to get
unity of thought on that particular question itself. That's one question
that I had most difficulty with, in trying to solidify the thinking of
those people and working out a plan.
Now, what the Indian needs is some guidance and highly trained, technical
help, people that could set up a plant of some kind for him and help him
finance it. The Government's got to help him finance it, just like we
do General Motors and all the rest of the big companies. We have financed
every last one of those companies from one end to the other.
I don't criticize that; that was supporting your economy to make it thrive
and grow, but you can't support just one segment of the economy and leave
another large segment, as large as the Indian group, leave them behind
and not look out for them. You have a responsibility, the Government has,
to proceed to help the Indians, help them find a way to do certain things.
You've got to help them until they get some experience. They need to have
more experience in the business field, the economic field. They have to
have that and that's what they need more than anything else today, that
and education, of course. Education is far behind yet for the Indians,
way far behind.
Now, the Government should set up a program on an economic basis and
develop it. Well, give an example of the Navajo, or the Pueblo tribe,
and make a careful study of what could be developed in that area, in which
they could do the work, mostly themselves. The part they can't do, hire
it, but let them run it. Let the Indian man run it himself. It'll
take him time to gain experience, and you've got to have a well-trained
man to step in to work with him, and a man with the kind of sympathy that
he wants to help this Indian get this program going on his own, and for
him to run it, and not you.
Now the Bureau should not attempt to run these things any longer than
necessary. You have to run them and supervise them for a while, even if
you have a good program; even some of our best programs that have come
in under this new phase of Social Security, that have met with many difficulties
and haven't been a success in every respect. However, when you look at
the mass operation that Social Security is under, and the money that's
gone to that, it moved to its higher level financially so fast that no
one expected it to move that fast. I know that.
HESS: I want to go back just a moment to my thought about assimilating
the people who say they don't want to be assimilated. Is it necessary
to have one plan that would fit over all the Indian tribes? Could it,
or wouldn't it be feasible to have a plan where some people, some of the
Indian tribes, who did not want to be assimilated into our white culture,
could live their lives under their old culture? Couldn't that be done
to let certain tribes live that way if they want to, and if another tribe
wants a factory on their land you could go ahead and help them build their
factory? If another one wanted to develop their oil, you could help them
develop their oil, but if that first tribe wanted to live as aboriginal
Indians just let them?
CHAPMAN: There would be no difficulty in the world of their not living
that way if they want to. I see no obstruction in the way of that kind
of a program being worked out where you are operating one kind of a program
over here and another one over there. You've got to put the practical
things that are already embedded in their minds, you've got to put it
to work in the terms of what they know, and what they believe.
What the tribes in one area will think of in one way, the tribes in another
area would think of in another way. That has made it very difficult for
us because I think our people, the white people, have invariably tried
to insist on a unification of all the tribes into one unit for one program.
I don't think you'd ever find a program that's big enough to handle that
kind of situation. You won't get enough support, enough help for it. You've
got to hire a lot of experienced and skilled people to help you run the
mechanical side of the job. The educational side of the program has to
be carried in line with the other part of this program. That's got to
be kept in pace with the other things that we are doing for the
Indians.
HESS: One of the complaints that the Indians were making last night was
that so much territory has been taken away from them. I think they are
requesting, or they're demanding that over a million acres be returned
to the Indian tribes. It's their contention that if land is worth anything,
or was worth anything, they were moved off of it. If any minerals
are found in or under the land that they were moved on, then they don't
get the benefit of even that; then the white people get the benefit of
the minerals of the land that they were pushed off onto. Are they right
in those complaints?
CHAPMAN: To some extent that is correct. That has some essence of truth
in it. Where you had someone that did not have the interest of the Indian
at heart but was more interested in the mechanical success of what he
was trying to do so that he could make a showing to the public, "what
I am doing, see," than he was in the Indian himself personally. Now, that
is where we have missed out for a long time, of not doing enough for the
Indians personally. There's some truth in what they say on that; it's
not all true, but a lot of it is true. Enough is true to justify their
complaint and justify arousing the sympathy and understanding of the white
man to help him. Now is the time to help this man attain a standard
of living and an understanding of how to acquire that standard of living
and maintain it. Now that goes back to your economic culture, goes back
to the economy of your country.
They came out very well in their latest effort in the court when they
won that Alaskan case. That was a fabulous case to win. But what I was
so puzzled about was that here the Government was on the side of the fellow
who is trying to get this land for the white man and there were only a
few white people; the rest of them were Eskimos and other tribal Alaskan
people of Indian blood.
A major decision has been given, that has opened a way to clarify a lot
of these complaints that they have been making about that particular point
that you've just raised, where they complain about their being moved off
of the good land and put into the bad land and sometimes are robbed of
their inheritance, of their rights.
In those earlier days that was done as a matter of regular business and
trade, when they had no experience in dealing with the Government. They
were doing quite a bit of that in the earlier days; when I was a boy,
that was just coming along. It was just coming on; in the last three decades
it has shown progress, has taken root, and is improving.
Now that protest that they made last night was a very hopeful sign. To
me it was a very fine thing, because they got together on one or
two issues that they could get together on and fight for. They
did arouse opinion, some public opinion about this. They'll have to arouse
public opinion to a much greater degree than they have yet. They haven't
done it sufficiently, and they've got to do that; they have to help guide
it and support it and push it. And then some of our white people that
are friends of the Indians and are trying to help them must
try to be patient and to understand them a little bit, too; because there
are some very fine people in this country that have gone out of their
way really to try to help the Indians. They have really wanted to help
them and they have done everything they could to help them.
You take my old friend, Morris Llewellyn Cooke; oh, he's been in and
out of the Government as an adviser on something, and he was a man of
some means; and he devoted a lot of time to this to help the Indians find
an area, find some direction that they could go, and travel towards the
end of some goal that they could get together on. He never quite succeeded
during his time. He was getting along in years when I first knew him.
I don't know whether Morris is still living or not and I don't know where
he is, but he was a man who gave a great deal of money toward...
Now, I have something that I ought to show you this morning. You know
that there are people who get interested in Indians for all kinds of reasons,
not just straight business reasons, but it has a ring to it that arouses
people strongly in certain things. And you know what one of them is? To
my great surprise, to see how far this fellow carried this thing, he went
out into the Black Hills and he wanted to honor the Indian with a sculpture
cut from the mountains of the Black Hills up there. He went up there,
oh, he went up there 12, 15 years ago. He didn't have a child when he
went, out there and he's got 11 now.
HESS: The climate did him good, didn't it?
CHAPMAN: Yes. This man was a sculptor from the old country, from over
there, and he's a real artist. He drew his maps and his sketches and he
got an angel up in Connecticut that was very much interested in seeing
the Indians get interested in sculpture, making things, and doing things
with their hands. In the meantime, he had a two-edged sword with that;
he wanted them to understand what these things were and what they stood
for in terms of the recognition of the Indian. And that was a recognition
of the Indians. He sculptured Crazy Horse, council chief of the--I can't
think of that tribe right there at Rosebud in South Dakota. He drew up
his sketches for this place, and--understand what I'm talking to you about
is telling you a story of how one little thing can develop into so much
for these people if one man will devote his time to it.
This man devoted his time to trying to raise a statute of the Indian
in his own mind, for the first thing, and he did everything he could to
create a better understanding of themselves, an appreciation of themselves.
He was teaching them; he was teaching them sculpture work in a little
class, a school sculpture class; he didn't have many students, but he
had a few. And it got started and that man has gotten contributions enough
that he could finish that sculpture in another 10 years, about 10 years,
10 to 12 years. He's going to finish it. "This is my life's work; I intend
to finish here." And he's got the whole thing laid out on his maps, drawn
out, laid out on his maps; and Crazy Horse was the Indian selected by
the Indians themselves, a man they wanted to honor.
HESS: He does a good deal of that sculpting by blasting does he not?
CHAPMAN: Oh, yes.
HESS: Drilling the holes and blast it off with dynamite.
CHAPMAN: Oh, yes, he will blast off tons at a time and blast it down
until he gets it down to the size that he has to work on, and always keeping
the view in perspective.
HESS: Mr. Chapman, how closely did Mr. Truman watch Indian Affairs matters?
CHAPMAN: As I was talking to you and telling you about the public attitudes
and public support becoming more and more helpful to the Indian program,
this is a proper place to say to you that one of the things I had in mind,
was having people like President Truman take the personal interest
he did in the Indian programs. He helped me with--and did it personally--he
helped me with so many cases in which he would help these people get their
titles cleared to their lands. You'd say, "Well, how did he help?" He'd
let me bring the tribal council in. One of the tribes out there in Oklahoma
was having a lot of trouble and difficulty about their lands, because
they had hit oil and the people were trying to get the titles to it by
phony leases and I was trying to block it. I told the President what I
wanted to do, that they should not sell that land; they shouldn't be encouraged
to sell it. They should be encouraged to keep it and draw an income from
it, and let the income be put into a trust fund with the council as the
trustees. They are elected by the Indians, by the way, those council members;
and when they are elected they automatically become a trustee of this
fund. And that bunch of trustees would have to report every so often,
I've forgot how often they reported, but they'd have to make an annual
report to the whole tribe.
They'd have a big party some place out there out on the range where someone
was living; they'd have a big party and one of the trustees, usually the
chairman, would give a report on what the status of their trust was, how
much money they had in that trust, how much land they had in that trust,
and what they were doing with it and what they were planning to do with
it in order to improve the trust. They had to report, and did report that.
They began to do it in really a business-like way.
Well, I'll tell you, one of the people who has done so much on this and
he's never tried to get any credit for it at all, is Bill [W.W.] Keeler.
Bill Keeler is a full-fledged Cherokee; he's a full-blooded Cherokee.
His wife is a full-blooded Cherokee. They both speak Cherokee language.
There's only about five tribes that have a language at all and the Cherokees
are one of them; and the Choctaws have a little language. It's one they've
developed over the years; it's expanded and expanded over the years and
there are about five tribes altogether that have a decided language now.
Now, Mr. Truman would say to me, "Well, now, give me a memorandum that
gives me the background of how and why these Indians got into this position."
Well, I had to do a lot of research, a lot of research, to go
back to find out who was making the decisions during such and such a period.
I'd take a period of time and research it, then take another period and
research it, and sometimes I'd take a different area and have a research
job done on it. And I could show him where the Indian was being cheated.
I could show him how the Indian was absolutely being robbed. I said, "Mr.
President, this Indian here has just come into his inheritance, his headrights."
They've got what you call headrights, established by law. When they became
members of a tribe and they were transferred to a given reservation they
were established a headright, which means an equity part in the holdings
of this tribe; depending on how much land they had, each Indian got his
headright. It may be a valuable headright, or it may be a poor headright,
depending upon the holdings; but all the Osage and most of the Cheyennes
got valuable headrights, very valuable headrights. It helped them get
money.
There is this board of trustees, which is the council. Twice in the last
four years Bill Keeler has been elected as chairman of the trustees. He
is the president of the council; the position is elective.
And who is Bill Keeler? Bill Keeler speaks Spanish as well as you speak
English; and he has worked in the Department for us, as a dollar-a-year
man a dozen times or more, helping us with a specific program. He is chairman
of the board of the Phillips Petroleum Company; that's who he is.
HESS: A man who is quite well-off, well placed?
CHAPMAN: Oh, yes, Bill had his full education. His mother and father
were far enough along in the education field to appreciate the value of
what it means to be an educated person, and what it means to get his education.
Well, he went straight on through until he got his geology training; he's
a geologist, a complete...
HESS: Well, he could understand Indian matters.
CHAPMAN: He could understand Indian matters so well that...
HESS: Bartlesville is 40 miles from my home town and it's about 20 to
25 miles, I believe, from Pawhuska.
CHAPMAN: That's right.
HESS: It's straight east of Pawhuska, and of course, Pawhuska is the
center of the Osage nation.
CHAPMAN: Well, Bill Keeler is the leader, quietly, and you'll
never see his name in print about this. Now, if he was trying to gyp them
or get something out of them, get their lands transferred and the titles,
you'd never see his name anywhere anyhow; they would be very careful about
it. But Bill, for totally modest reasons, had a sense of modesty about
it that he would not try to get any publicity for his help that he gave
us.
Now, he would come in and I'd get him into the White House to see Truman,
let him talk to Truman. I fixed a little memorandum on Mr. Keeler once
as to who he was, where he was born, his mother and father being Cherokees
and full blood; and then I showed where he went to college, where he graduated
and got his degree in geology. He had a full educational background with
a college degree. He gave all the time he could to help.
And whenever I called on him and said, "Look Bill, I'm having so much
trouble with these two tribes over there that I can't get them together
and I can't get them to do anything together. They won't agree. Can you
get them together or suggest a way that we can work out a program for
them in which they can have some degree of control over their stuff and
operate it? And I'm thinking of moving over now, Bill, from the old idea
of the Indian office having to run everything they had from right in Washington,
out to the tribal council as much as possible; move it out there as fast
as we can get personnel that can manage this kind of a program that we
have." We moved in the educational field first, and we got down among
the Osage and the Navajos and the Pueblos, and then the whole five civilized
tribes were in that category. Bill was the principal adviser to any of
them on all their land. I would show him how much land this tribe had
according to the books of the Government.
I'd have Bill go out and file a private suit. He'd never want to file
it in his name because it would get his company involved in an unnecessary
suit. So, what he would do, he would file it in the name of his father,
or mother, when they were living, or some other good Indian friend that
knew what he was doing, knew how to do it, and he would, in turn, help
them get that thing started. He'd get a piece of land put together in
a joint venture; there were so many hundred thousand acres of land, and
in Oklahoma that's a very, very fine gamble that you would get something
out of there; you'd hit somewhere. The point was that we didn't want one
Indian to get real rich and the other one, because he had to make a squatter's
right over here, two miles further, he didn't get any. And the man right
across the creek over here would hit oil on his place. So, we set up the
joint venture where everybody collected according to the number of acres
they would own by the headright law. The headright would establish the
number of acres they would really have, and that headright would come
to them through their mother, or their father, or sometimes their brothers
and sisters.
I would add to that, the continuation of the discussion of the Indian
problem.
HESS: All right. This will be the continuation of the discussion of the
Indian problem.
CHAPMAN: Sort of carry the continuity.
HESS: That's right.
CHAPMAN: The winning of this law suit in Alaska was primarily because
public opinion had developed so strongly in favor of the Indians having
a right to that land and not just a bunch of gold mining hunters who went
up there looking for gold, and many of them lost their lives looking for
it. They had this land; they could trace it so clearly that you couldn't
dispute their word on it. They had a complete record of the ownership
and what we call a clear title; so we'd have a title drawn, title developed,
by a lawyer who knows what goes into the record and makes...
HESS: Knows how to search for land titles.
CHAPMAN: That's right and how to search for the record and clarify it.
They had some good lawyers to help them, and--oh, I want to say that at
this point a young man by the name of Jebby Davidson shows up from Louisiana,
and he was appointed Assistant Secretary by Ickes and to my great pleasant
surprise--not surprise necessarily, because I knew something about
him. But to my great pleasure I found that he had a decided interest in
the human side of the Indian, and he set about to clarify the lands and
titles and their wooded areas, timberland, for these Indians of the various
tribes up in the northwest.
You see, you have wealth of one nature up in this area of the country,
and down in the middle areas of the country you have another kind of wealth.
You have oil down in Oklahoma; you had timber up in Oregon, and Washington
and up through there.
Well, Mr. Davidson showed a deep sense of appreciation of the right of
the individuals. He was very much devoted to that, and I give him credit
for it. We may not have agreed on everything as we went, but I wanted
to give him credit for it. The white people have to take a--not try to
take over the Indians--the white people have to take an interest in their
program, to help. That has been established pretty well now; it's fairly
well established, and the Indians have many white people that are devoting
their time to it.
HESS: One point on that, Mr. Davidson told me last summer when I spoke
with him that he wanted to move the Bureau of Indian Affairs out of the
Department of Interior into Health, Education and Welfare, because the
Department of the Interior was land oriented and the Indians should be
treated as a human problem, which would come more under the Health, Education
and Welfare frame of reference. What would be your view on that?
CHAPMAN: Well, he argued that view back and forth and he had, I thought,
a considerable amount of credit due him for the effort of trying to do
that. There was a question of whether the idea of getting the whites and
all the Indians together more as a community could be better done by having
the white people help them as much as possible and help through the economic
field, and having a credit union set up, or a credit organization set
up, to loan them money to pay for what they wanted to do. There's where
you needed a good man like Bill Keeler to sit down with the tribe for
a couple of evenings and tell them, "Now fellows, you don't know whether
this land has oil or not, and if you haven't got money in your council
sufficient to drill and test this area, you don't know what you've
got. You may be giving away the greatest wealth of your lifetime. You
may not, but the chances are you might be, because you've got to look
at the facts in the case and say, 'Where's the closest well to this area
of land; what is the geology of that area? And if oil comes we'll give
it to you; they've surveyed it all, they know, and we can get that from
them."' And he could; he got that from the man who had it to give to them.
Now, the opposition to that position was that the Indian was land-oriented,
too, more than he was anything else. He had a few horses; his number of
horses was an indication of his wealth, and he was very strong on that.
Most of the Indians are; even now they are. So, the Indian was so strongly
oriented to the land that Jebby was right on that point, and I supported
him strongly on that feeling that this ought to be dealt as just a plain
human problem and deal in the office of education and welfare departments;
that's two together now, those agencies were put together. And during
that transition period you had men like Paul McNutt being made the Administrator
for what is now HEW--Health, Education and Welfare. Paul was playing that
for political reasons since he thought he was going to run for the Presidency
against Truman in the following year; so he was playing it for all it
was worth. He thought that was a ten strike to him; that he would play
that. So, Paul came forward with that Indian stuff, to give it some support
and become a leader in this thing.
HESS: Oscar Ewing headed the Federal Security Agency also at this time.
CHAPMAN: That's right.
HESS: What was his view? You knew him quite well; what were his views?
Did he think that the Bureau of Indian Affairs should come under the Federal
Security Agency? Now we ought to add, the Federal Security Agency is what
later became HEW, in part anyway.
CHAPMAN: Well, in part it did. The Security Administration was still
more of a bond and banker business than it was a social aspect of--nevertheless,
that would have been a ten strike had you got the two together. And then
you would have had control of the very factors that I wanted under control.
HESS: Do you think that Mr. Ewing would have liked to have had the Bureau
of Indian Affairs under him?
CHAPMAN: I think he would.
HESS: Did you ever talk to him about that?
CHAPMAN: I have discussed that with him; we talked about it years ago,
and we talked then about the idea of putting the Indian office over in
the Federal Security Agency, but we had to be very careful that Ickes
didn't think that I was trying to get something taken away from Interior
Department.
HESS: Mr. Ickes would not have liked that?
CHAPMAN: Oh, no. No, he wouldn't like anything that took a tree away
from him, or a bush; he wanted that with the Interior Department at all
times.
HESS: Do you think he could be described as an empire builder?
CHAPMAN: Well, he was an empire builder, but, frequently, he always tied
that with the interest of the people that would be benefited by this empire.
Now that's what saved him. That's what saved Ickes as much as anything
else in the world. Now he...
HESS: His interest in an empire was what good it could do and not necessarily
for self-glorification, is this...
CHAPMAN: Not at all. No, it wasn't that. Of course, he wanted a little
glorification, too; he wanted a little of that. But he really did have
the other; he worked on it, he worked on it. When I say he worked on it,
he'd have meetings with four or five fellows, and we'd have dinner at
his office at night there. We'd have dinner and go over some of these
things at night.
Jebby was most helpful. Let me say he was the greatest help to me, as
far as I was concerned, in the area of dealing with where the human interest
came in, the human side came in. I could always count on his being on
what I considered the right side of the, say the Indian in this case,
but whether it was the Indian or a black man or anybody else.
HESS: Do you recall any plans or policies that Mr. Davidson might have
liked to have implemented to forward the progress of the Indian?
CHAPMAN: I don't know of any particular one program; he had the overall
idea that was overshadowing everything else, the drive to see if we couldn't
get it moved over to the other department.
HESS: What plans should have been implemented in the Truman administration
that were not? What could have been done in the Truman administration
to improve the Indian's situation?
CHAPMAN: Well, one thing that you have a problem with is getting the
right personnel to manage your program. John Collier, rest his soul; he
was one of the sweetest characters I ever knew in my life.
HESS: He was commissioner from '33 to '44.
CHAPMAN: That's right. He'd get into all kinds of trouble with his tribes;
the tribes all loved him, and then they would fight with him.
HESS: What would they fight about? What was their problem?
CHAPMAN: For instance, like this; when the grazing bill came into effect
we had to set up another unit in the Department of Interior, for the whole
Department, to manage all of the public lands, you see. So we had to set
up an organization with a director in charge of it, and that director
would go around; he'd ferret out the whole picture as best he could and
get some good assistants in there to help him. He was more a cattleman
than he was an Indian man, or some other kind of a man, but he was a cattleman.
That was his first interest. I worked with him and I recommended him for
the job. We were very good friends, but he got in such a fight with Ickes
so quickly that his value was lost because of his continuous argument
with Ickes. And he was a very bright fellow; he fooled you, he looked
like a farmer, just in off the farm.
HESS: You're speaking of Collier?
CHAPMAN: I'm speaking of [Farrington R.] Carpenter.
HESS: Carpenter. Was he head of the Grazing Service, Carpenter?
CHAPMAN: That was the Grazing Service and he helped set it up. Now, Carpenter
came in there with two degrees from Princeton; after he had gotten his
degree in landscape architecture, then he got his law degree. He fooled
and surprised a lot of people who came in here to work with him, and Ickes
and some of the people in the Department were quite surprised at him when
they found out the fellow was quite bright. He had more than just
his share of the marbles.
HESS: Now he served from 1938 to 1944.
CHAPMAN: That's right.
HESS: How did he and John Collier get along?
CHAPMAN: Not at all.
HESS: Too much of a conflict there...
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: ...with Collier looking after the Indians on the land...
CHAPMAN: That's right.
HESS: ...and Carpenter being in the beef raiser's industry, he taking
that view, is that right?
CHAPMAN: That's right. Carpenter was what I meant when I said he was
a cattleman.
HESS: That's right, he was the cattle industry man.
CHAPMAN: He was always plugging for them.
HESS: All right; now, you mentioned a while ago that one of the tough,
one of the serious points with the Bureau of Indian Affairs was personnel.
CHAPMAN: Following up what we've just said about personnel, Collier was
one of the great characters in this country, a great humanitarian. Sometimes
they are not the best administrators; they are wonderful writers of theses
on the subject of the Indian. He did some wonderful writing on the Indian
Bureau and books on Indians.
HESS: Was he a poor administrator?
CHAPMAN: Yes. He was not a good administrator in the sense of being a
good administrator. He didn't know how to even get the people to
work together.
Now, I'll tell you the brightest operator they had in the field was this
woman Dr. [Sophie D.] Aberle.
HESS: What was her position?
CHAPMAN: She was Superintendent of these Southwest Pueblo tribes; all
of the Pueblos came up under her and she had quite a few tribes, ten or
fifteen, I imagine.
HESS: What was it about her that made her so outstanding?
CHAPMAN: First, she had a degree in medicine; she has a chair at Yale,
and she is a very bright woman.
HESS: She was an Indian?
CHAPMAN: No.
HESS: No.
CHAPMAN: No, she was a very bright woman and very interested in what
could be done for the Indians. She'd survey out this thing pretty carefully
at first, solve it. They lacked coordination of management and she soon
found that Mr. Collier was a wonderful fellow; she was just crazy about
him, but she couldn't go along with him on some of his ideas that he had.
HESS: Do you recall what ideas?
CHAPMAN: Well, for instance, he would want to promote a health unit for
the Indians, to be worked out. Instead of having a stationary clinic,
we'd have a mobile clinic, and you'd have two or three trailers put together,
staffed with sufficient number of nurses and doctors, and they'd staff
each one and it'd cover certain areas in the Southwest, which was her
area, for instance. And she would manage that; she handled that in such
a fine way. She managed it like she was running a grocery store. She knew
where every item was and what the cost was. She was a business woman along
with it, and she was very good and just a very fine person.
Well, John was fond of her and he promoted her very much, but he got
discouraged with her, or differed with her, when she wanted to double
these units instead of having them so small. The cost went up accordingly,
you see.
HESS: The mobile units.
CHAPMAN: Yes. The mobile units; the smaller you had the mobile unit the
cost went up in degree.
HESS: The larger the unit got.
CHAPMAN: Well, the unit would get more costly per person if you had a
smaller unit, but if you build a big enough unit, have a big enough unit
to, say, for instance, take the whole Southwest--I've done this by map
from time to time with her--you take the whole Southwest and as near as
you can get it, get to the center of the population, Indian population,
put a permanent station there. That is, make it not a mobile unit, but
a stationary unit. Then from that unit here, you would feed your supplies
into your mobile units going out and they'd be coming in to here and going
out; and she showed where she could cut down on the cost of getting the
supplies, medicine of every kind, sent out to this lady way down here
in this little remote place, for half what it would cost if she had to
have the unit, say up at Albuquerque, way up here in the other section
of the country. If she had to have four or five stationary units, they
immediately become basically big operating units and you'd get yourself
overcrowded with overhead expense and she couldn't keep it down by doing
it that way, by running it too small.
So, she--I think Davidson supported her in this, I'm not sure, but I
think he did--she fought hard for establishing these mobile units and
setting them up just right.
And then we sent her down to Puerto Rico. She was a doctor and they had
great respect for her, and we set up some mobile units there based on
her experience out there in the Southwest; some of the climatic conditions
were similar. She started in and set up three or four mobile units, with
as much money as we could get. We should have had eight units, money enough
to run about eight units, but we didn't get them.
Now, [Ernest H.] Gruening was a liberal that didn't give one damn about
anybody's feelings one way or another. If he thought of something that
he ought to have for this he'd go right to the top for it. He'd go over
the top of Ickes and of course, that would be the end of that. He'd go
over the top of Ickes, or try to, and Roosevelt--he used to go to Roosevelt
regularly. Roosevelt liked him; he knew him. He knew him before
he was appointed Director of Territories, Gruening and Roosevelt. So,
Roosevelt worked very well with Gruening, just like that; no problem at
all because Ickes just let him alone, didn't fool with him, and it was
all right.
But Jebby had, too, in that period, a rather hot conversation sometimes,
and our people had some warm conferences about what we ought to do and
we couldn't do in regard to the type of a project that was going to be
set up here or should be set up here for the Indians. Now, Davidson was
very helpful there; I like to give a man credit where his services really
justify, whether I agreed with him or not, that he was a man--Davidson
had gotten some experience with the Bonneville Dam program. In that he
set out to try to set up a TVA...
HESS: In the Northwest, which would have been the CVA.
CHAPMAN: Yes. I was shooting for that strong. I supported Davidson. He
was taking the lead on that. I was giving him all the support I could
on that. I thought it was a good thing, and I thought that eventually
we would tie a grid, as we call it, for power; tie those lines together
and you build a dam here and another one over there two or three hundred
miles away, or five hundred miles away. The first thing you know you've
got them just like playing chess. You've got these dams built in the most
strategic places that you can build enough power that you could transport
it over these wire lines at a cost that is not too prohibitive; then you
can afford to sell it for the cost factor base. The little farmer then
gets his co-op power. He sets up a co-op and he buys and sells his power
and oil and other supplies that he needs through that co-op, you see,
and that co-op comes in under this management of the CVA development there.
HESS: Let's mention the four men who held the job of Commissioner of
Bureau of Indian Affairs during the Truman administration. Of course Mr.
Collier left in 1944...
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: ...and then from '45 to '47 was William A. Brophy. In 1948 the
Acting Commissioner was William R. Zimmerman; in 1949 the Commissioner
was John R. Nichols and from '50 to '53 was Dillon S. Myer. Let's just
start at the first with William A. Brophy. How closely did you work with
Mr. Brophy?
CHAPMAN: Very closely with Brophy. I was...
HESS: How good a Commissioner was he?
CHAPMAN: He was very good; he was a very good Commissioner. He was not
the kind of aggressive person that would be considered a man that gets
into everybody else's way by pushing his program. But he did push
his program pretty well with the help of this woman that I was telling
you about, Dr. Aberle, and with her help he pushed those programs and
helped develop them. She was pushing him hard, giving him support, furnishing
him memoranda that he could handle, and people began to notice a difference
of what was happening down there in the Pueblo areas that wasn't happening
in other places. I was sitting where I could see what was happening to
it.
Then, Bill made a good Commissioner; as I said he was not an aggressive
type of a man, not a Jebby Davidson type; but he was interested in nailing
down the technical things that were the rights of the Indians. Being a
lawyer, he was interested in seeing that they got their rights tied down
under law; that's what he wanted to do, and he spent a lot of time on
that kind of a thing.
HESS: Was that the main emphasis of his planned program?
CHAPMAN: That was the main emphasis of his program, to get their titles
clarified for them so that in the future somebody couldn't come on after
him and help take it away from them. Now, he did a good job on that; he
didn't push too hard, but he did a good job.
HESS: What about Mr. William R. Zimmerman, who was acting commissioner
in 1948?
CHAPMAN: Well he was--I'd rather not comment on him.
HESS: Was he there fox just a short time?
CHAPMAN: Yes, he wasn't in there very long.
HESS: Had he been in the Bureau of Indian Affairs for some time?
CHAPMAN: Well, I'll tell you what he had been in; he'd been an adviser
to the Secretary on the Indian matters, you see.
HESS: Adviser to the Secretary of Interior on Indian Affairs.
CHAPMAN: Yes, that put him, in many ways, over the Indian Commissioner.
In other ways he wasn't. That was a conflict of administrative action
and law; that was the kind of thing that Ickes would do and get everybody
mad.
HESS: You could cross up lines of role or administration?
CHAPMAN: Yes. You cross up lines of the Indian crew whether you agreed
with him or didn't.
HESS: Was this something that Mr. Ickes had instituted?
CHAPMAN: I wouldn't say that he instituted it necessarily, but he overused
it a lot. He used it too much. You could write two books on Ickes, and
they wouldn't be together; they wouldn't be the same book, and you wouldn't
know that you were writing about the same man, and you could tell the
truth absolutely in both of them. He was a man that was interested in
the human side of the people he worked for and was responsible to and
all that, and he was always interested in the human side. But before he'd
get very far in the organization developing that particular program, he
would have crossed lines with another overlapping organization that he
set up, like he brought Bill Zimmerman in as an adviser, consultant. Bill,
in his point of view, was all right. Bill was all right in his thinking
and in his efforts to try to help the Indians, but he never did get out
the--I didn't think he was well, now to tell the truth. I didn't think
he was well, and therefore, I'm a little cautious about saying anything,
because he didn't live many years after he left the service and he was
not well and I knew it. I got quite close to him and I tried to get him
away so he could get some rest and vacation time. When you're working
under Ickes you are working under a triphammer, because he...
HESS: An awful lot of pressure.
CHAPMAN: Every minute. Every minute. He wants what he's asking for, he
wants it yesterday and he just...
HESS: Just like working in a pressure cooker.
CHAPMAN: That's the way he was. He worked that way, too, and I'll say
he did the same thing; he worked that way, he worked hard. But what he
did--this is the thing that I always--I just have to say that he was just
so wrong in. Ickes would waste more time writing up memoranda about these
employees he got mad with, trying to build a record on them, and he spent
more of his time, he wasted more of his time, in these so-called public
fights. He would take on and create a fight; if he didn't have one he'd
create one. Absolutely! He'd always pick on a Senator if he could; he'd
pick out a good Senator and go to work on him.
HESS: Isn't that a little dangerous?
CHAPMAN: Yes, as dangerous as it could be.
HESS: Senators don't like that do they?
CHAPMAN: I'll say they don't. But the next day I'd have to go up and
testify.
HESS: And you'd catch the fire that he would...
CHAPMAN: I'd get the fire that he started. And he did that...
HESS: Wouldn't that work to the detriment of the Department?
CHAPMAN: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, we lost time and again, cases that we should
have won our whole program on.
HESS: Did you ever try to explain to Ickes that his actions were not
only causing you problems, but were causing the Department to lose
cases that they would ordinarily have won?
CHAPMAN: I picked out two cases which I made it my business to clarify
to him very carefully, to show him why we lost them.
HESS: This was a direct result of an action that he had taken.
CHAPMAN: Direct result of a stinking letter that he wrote to a Senator.
HESS: What did he say when you pointed that out? What was his reaction?
CHAPMAN: Well, he said, "You can't let these folks run over you; you've
got to run your department." Well, there's two ways to say that, to do
it; you can do a thing the right way and the wrong way. He picked the
wrong way every time.
Now, if he'd had good judgment on important matters, the thing that would
explain it to you quicker than anything in the world, to show you how
he would do a thing wrong, would be his break with President Truman. He
didn't tell me what he was doing; I didn't know he was writing that letter.
HESS: When he wrote the letter about Mr. Pauley?
CHAPMAN: Yes. Now, I didn't know he was writing that letter.
HESS: All right, Mr. Chapman, in 1949 John R. Nichols was the Commissioner
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; what particular plans and policies did
he have?
CHAPMAN: Krug would have been the one that brought him in, I think.
HESS: And you don't know why he was brought in, is that right?
CHAPMAN: No, I don't, I never did know. What's the date of his appointment?
HESS: All I have is 1949.
CHAPMAN: Well, he was appointed...
HESS: So he probably came in before you became...
CHAPMAN: Probably Krug appointed him. If he didn't then, of course, Truman--I
mean Ickes would have recommended him.
HESS: Well, Ickes was gone.
CHAPMAN: He was gone by that time.
HESS: In '46, he had left in '46.
CHAPMAN: Yes, he was gone by then. Oh, yes, yes he was gone. Had Ickes
gone by '46?
HESS: Yes, it was in February of '46 when the trouble over Pauley occurred.
And that's when Krug came in.
CHAPMAN: You know, I want to tell you something before I quit today,
while it is in my mind. I was coming back in on the train on one of my
Western trips; I haven't yet got straightened in my mind whether we had
two trips in May. I think we had one in May and June, both. I had a good
chance to visit with Truman coming in on the train through Pennsylvania.
That was a time that Clark and myself worked it very carefully through
Matt Connelly, that Clark would see him first and then I'd be given a
little briefing on that. Matt was to tell me what his reaction was on
that; Clark was going to tell him, and this was about the state of Jerusalem.
And I went in to see the President right after Clark left, just as he
went out, and I was the last person to see him and I stayed all the way
from Pennsylvania on in, another 40 minutes coming in.
Jerry, I would like to clarify a little further. The other two members
that were commissioners of the Indian office. I did not know Mr.--who
was that?
HESS: Nichols, John R. Nichols.
CHAPMAN: Mr. Nichols, very well at all. He wasn't there very long and
I didn't get to know him very well. He was traveling a good deal and I
didn't get to see him very much to talk with him. What was the other fellow's
name?
HESS: Dillon S. Myer. Now, he was there from '50 to '53 and that was
after the time that you became Secretary of the Interior.
CHAPMAN: That's right, I appointed him as commissioner.
HESS: Was he a very good commissioner?
CHAPMAN: Let me say this; he was a better commissioner of the Indian
office than he was of the Japanese relocation camps. You realize that
the War Relocation camps were put in our Department.
HESS: And had he been in charge of those?
CHAPMAN: We put him in charge of those and he was transferred over to
our department. All of that work was transferred to our department when
he was the head of that. He was the head of it.
HESS: Had he handled those operations poorly or something?
CHAPMAN: This was what he and I differed about. He was handling them
all right in many ways, but I wanted to close those camps...
HESS: You were just against them in principle?
CHAPMAN: In principle I was against them and I wanted to close them as
fast as I could.
HESS: Now, what time was this, what year?
CHAPMAN: Now, this was beginning right in '51. I started in to try to
get them out of there, close them as fast as I could.
HESS: The Japanese relocation camps?
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: Did they still have those in 1951? Six years after the war?
CHAPMAN: Oh, no, no, no. Not six years afterwards.
HESS: The war was over in 1945. Weren't the relocation camps pretty well
phased out right after the war?
CHAPMAN: Well, they came over to me; they were assigned to me. It's a
funny way how I got them, too, how they were assigned to me. Ickes assigned
me those things, that work. He commented about Myers; he said, "Now, he's
a stubborn fellow and he sort of wants his own way, but," he said, "you
had better stick to your guns if you’re going to fight this out."
I told him that I was going to try to close them down. I wanted to find
a way to do it, with the least public expression about them, and try to
get them closed as fast as I could. Now they were not closed in '52. They
were still open in early '52.
HESS: That I didn't know; I thought they had been closed right after
the war.
CHAPMAN: No, they were not; they were not closed immediately. Let's check
that to double check it because they were closed; we had begun phasing
them out. As soon as they came over to my department I started doubling
up what they were doing, getting them out of there as fast as we could.
Myers and myself had our differences because he didn't want them to go
out unless he had a job for each one. Well, I didn't want to wait until
they had to go through the rigamarole of trying to get a job for every
one, because I know how long it takes the Government to get a job for
a man, and I didn't want to wait that long. So, I said...
HESS: He wanted for everyone of the Japanese that was in there, is that
right?
CHAPMAN: Yes, to have a job; when we released him he had to have a job
to go to. Well, I knew you couldn't get one; it would take too long to
do that; that would take a long time. It could be done, but it would just
take too long. And so, I just ordered them closed, but finally when we
got them down pretty close, I just closed the rest of them up. I signed
the order.
HESS: How many Japanese were left in the camps at that time?
CHAPMAN: Not many. By that time there weren't very many, because I'd
be pushing them out as fast as I could.
HESS: Now I understand that one of the...
CHAPMAN: Now there is another thing that Jebby helped me about a great
deal. Jebby helped me wonderfully on that. He was really good on that;
he was right on the nail of that, our working together was really the--I
give him credit, we succeeded where we couldn't have done it had we been
not together on the thing.
HESS: I understand that one of the objectives was to relocate the Japanese
in areas other than the West Coast.
CHAPMAN: Yes, they had that idea.
HESS: In other words, to try to see if they could have a small settlement
or move some of them into Nebraska, and some into Arkansas, some into
Texas, some to Kansas, instead of having such heavy concentrations along
the California coast, is that correct?
CHAPMAN: There was some discussion of that, but I don't believe there
were ever any orders written about it. But there was some discussion about
that.
HESS: Okay, now, coming back to Mr. Myers as a commissioner of Bureau
of Indian Affairs, we have discussed his handling of the Japanese relocation
matter, but just in comparison of the way that he handled that job and
the way that he handled the job of commissioner of Bureau of Indian Affairs,
what plans and programs did he have to forward the life of the Indians?
CHAPMAN: I thought he did a very good job of running that bureau at the
time. He was a hard working fellow, and he was stubborn, but he was conscientious
and I got along with him. I could work with him, even though I could disagree
with him; we could work together. He did a good job with the Indian Service,
I thought, and when you say, what did he promote, he did more good, I
thought, in promoting the health program and education programs that we
were trying to get some money for. He kept working until we got some more
money for it than we had been getting, and we got more money for it at
that time due to his efforts. And he was entitled to the credit for that,
and I thought he did a good job in that. That's one of the many things,
see; he did many other things that were very good. He coordinated his
actions and his work in the Indian Service so differently from--he was
like a different man on that Japanese thing. He just didn't seem to have
the same approach to them as he did the Indians. I had the same approach
to them just as human beings. The war was over; let's turn them loose.
HESS: Did he seem to have a more humanitarian attitude towards the Indians
than he did...
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: ...the Japanese?
CHAPMAN: Yes, he did.
HESS: All right, now you mentioned education; that's a very important
point that we should cover this morning concerning the Indians.
CHAPMAN: Very important, and he did a very good job in trying to promote
the educational field of the Indians, and he tried to push that health
program of the Indian Service that Dr. Aberle had set up for him; and
she set up a good program for him for the Indian Service.
HESS: What are some of the problems in education of the Indians? Now,
so many of them are scattered, and I know that they take Indians from
some of the reservations and they move them into a particular school.
The one I have in mind is Haskell Indian Institute in Lawrence [Kansas].
CHAPMAN: Been there for years.
HESS: And it's been there, but this was a way that was used in the education
of the Indians, to move Indians out of the reservations and bring them
to a central point.
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: Do you think that it would be better to have more of the schools
on the reservations rather than schools such as Carlisle, which hasn't
been an Indian school a long time, but there used to be one up there in
Pennsylvania, the Carlisle School?
CHAPMAN: Carlisle School was...
HESS: That's right, and then Haskell Indian Institute. What is your opinion?
What is the best way to educate them, to bring them to an Indian school
or to have schools on the reservation?
CHAPMAN: I don't think you can give a real honest answer to that question
unless you can have a survey made and have a better judgment about the
location of the Indians, a survey of their location; how many Indians
do you have that would come in this school district, and how many in this
one. You see, get your...
HESS: So many of them are so scattered that they would have to travel
from miles and miles.
CHAPMAN: That's right.
HESS: And they do need a boarding type of school.
CHAPMAN: You do need something like that because if you don't have that--we
have one boarding school right there in Albuquerque, a very good school,
very good. I thought that was a very good school. And again, Dr. Aberle
was the person who was promoting and pushing that.
HESS: All right, now we have mentioned Mr. Truman's interest in Indian
Affairs, and the principal thing that we had mentioned was his interest
in clearing up of the land titles. What other points would you give to
illustrate Mr. Truman's interest in Indian affairs? Anything else come
to mind?
CHAPMAN: Yes. Truman felt that none of us had hit the right tone yet
in our approach to the Indians in handling them. He didn't think we had
hit quite the right tone, and that we should handle it with a different
attitude and approach. And he caught that very fast. The thing that I
was telling you...
HESS: Did you discuss that with him?
CHAPMAN: Well, what I've discussed with you in the first part of this
conversation is what I've discussed with him at one time, almost give
him every word of that, what I said; and he said, "Well, now, that's your
job to clean that up and you stay with it and I'll back you."
Well, he did back me, I'll say this. Now, he backed me, and I may have
hurt myself with Ickes doing that, because I talked to Truman when I was
Assistant Secretary, and he talked with me and we discussed the Indian
problem, and I said, "Let me give you a memorandum on it." Somewhere in
my files there's a copy of that memorandum. I don't have it here, but
I have put all of those in the files in there.
HESS: All right, now at the end of our first tape we were discussing
a conversation that you had with Mr. Truman on board the train coming
back from Pennsylvania. I don't think we finished that thought before
we ran out, and we were mentioning that you were talking with him about
the Israeli question...
CHAPMAN: Yes, that was the one I mentioned on the train.
HESS: And that Clark Clifford was speaking with the President and your
visit with the President and Mr. Clifford's had been coordinated by Matthew
Connelly.
CHAPMAN: Matt had told me pretty much; he didn't go into the details.
He said, "Clark's done his job."
HESS: But this was in connection with the matter of the recognition of
the State of Israel.
CHAPMAN: That's right.
HESS: That's right; now this we have covered. We have covered this in
previous interviews...
CHAPMAN: Yes, we have covered that...
HESS: ...because I found a quote that said that Clark Clifford and Oscar
Chapman were instrumental in changing Mr. Truman's views. In promoting
this with Mr. Truman, and we've discussed that before.
CHAPMAN: Well, that was wrong, we...
HESS: That was a misstatement on my part.
CHAPMAN: Frankly I don't think Mr. Truman had ever had an idea not to
really recognize these people when the time was right, and the only thing
we did, I think we helped speed it up for him to be the first one
to do it. And we got him to send his telegram off that night and Dean
Acheson was out here on his farm and he got him over the phone and he
told Dean what he wanted and he said, "Well, Mr. President, can't we send
it off tomorrow?"
He said, "No, I want to be the first one to send it." He said, "Don't
you come in just for that;" he said, "I'll get it written up right here."
HESS: I understand Mr. Acheson was opposed to that move, is that right?
CHAPMAN: He was; he was opposed.
HESS: Did you discuss that with him? Did you talk with him about that
at a later date?
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: What did he have to say?
CHAPMAN: With Dean?
HESS: With Dean.
CHAPMAN: Yes, I talked with Dean just a bit about it. Dean was a very
cautious diplomat; he wouldn't say much about anything of his position
about anything.
HESS: Why had he been against the recognition of Israel at that
time?
CHAPMAN: He thought that we were going to involve ourselves and get us
all involved with our allies, with the Arabs, and the whole group in there.
There are four or five of those states he thought would turn against us,
and be very damaging to us.
HESS: Did he mention the situation of the oil interests?
CHAPMAN: He just said they, of course--they would be devastated by this.
That was all he said; Dean was not in the habit of saying very much about
anything about his position. He's talking to you today, and you have lunch
with him tomorrow; he wouldn't say anything about what I said yesterday.
I believe in this or I opposed this. He won't tell you whether he opposed
it yesterday or not.
HESS: Pretty good diplomat, wasn't he?
CHAPMAN: I found that out to be a very smart thing. Don't quote what
you said about your position to somebody. If you've told it, it's all
right to tell it, but let it stay and don't say anything more about it.
Then you keep it from becoming an argument.
HESS: Well, to wind up matters today, would you tell me your evaluation
of the handling of Indian matters during the Truman administration?
CHAPMAN: I thought the Indian matters were handled, under the circumstances
of what we inherited, I thought they were handled very well. I was disappointed
in not being able ever to accomplish what I wanted to try out with the
Indians on two or three things, and some of those were things that Jebby
was strong for and was very helpful.
HESS: Have we covered those?
CHAPMAN: Yes, we've covered those, but Jebby was most helpful in programs
that I was interested in in Indian Affairs; he certainly supported them
as far as I know. There's one other thing that I want to get in here some
way or another. You know, the Secretary had a policy that he would assign
a number of bureaus to each Assistant Secretary and he changed them every
two years.
HESS: Is that right? That was the routine to make those changes every
two years.
CHAPMAN: Yes. But the oil matters--he gave them to me the day I went
in and he never changed them, anything dealing with the oil, having oil…
HESS: You kept that responsibility right on through.
CHAPMAN: Right on through, never changed the whole time.
HESS: Did you ever discuss with Mr. Ickes why he did not make that change
every two years, why he just left that responsibility in your hands?
CHAPMAN: No, I never did. I never talked with him about it, because he
had some reason for it and it was only up to me to do what I thought was
right about this as it came along. Evidently, on the handling of the oil
things, he learned that I was doing them the way he wanted them done.
I guess that was about all I could tell; and I never asked him anything
about it, one way or another. And that stayed as a matter of jurisdiction
under me, petroleum matters; and that was the only thing that did. All
of the other bureaus were changed. I had two or three bureaus and he changed
those.
HESS: I believe that after you became Secretary of the Interior didn't
you follow the same policy of rotating the assignments under your Assistant
Secretaries?
CHAPMAN: Pretty much. Pretty much the same policy.
HESS: Did you find that to be an advantage to the Department to rotate
the jobs of the Assistant Secretaries? To have one man in charge of public
power, one man in charge of mineral resources for about two years and
then to change them around?
CHAPMAN: I did. I found that that was some advantage in the administrative
training and technique. You wanted to give that assistant secretary an
opportunity to be acquainted with every part of the Department. Well,
if he's just staying in this cubby hole here, just this area, all together,
why, he would never know very much about the Department; he'd only know
just that area, nothing else.
So, I will close by saying that I was satisfied that we had done all
that we could for the Indian office program, and we had some programs
we were working on that were very helpful and forward looking and we were
cut short, really, by the fight that Ickes had carried on all the time
with the Congressmen on the Hill, and I couldn't get an appropriation
for it.
HESS: Do you think you could have been more successful if you had had
more money? Was money the problem?
CHAPMAN: That is one; that isn't all. No, there is something more than
just money. You've got to have the atmosphere around you more conducive
and more active in behalf of your programs, or what you are interested
in; that is among your Congressmen, particularly your committees. See,
those committees in the House have around 20 or 25 members. You ought
to get to know them, and you ought to get to know them and sell them your
program. Well, I did that pretty much, all I could. You see, when Krug
came in, I continued to do the thing--he asked me to continue doing what
I was doing, not to change. So, I kept on running the Department and he
didn't bother with it. He got tired of that afternoon mail that would
come in there at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, stacked up on your desk,
and you would have to try to sign them out that night.
HESS: What seemed to be the attitude of the Senators and Representatives
from the Western States? Were they pro-Indian, were they anti-Indian,
were they neutral, were they helpful?
CHAPMAN: They were pretty much pro-Indian as a whole; not all of them.
You had two or three like Pat MacCarran and Jed Johnson that were sitting
in strategic places up on the Hill that were opposed to anything we did
for the Indians.
HESS: Their interest ran more to the business interests in their area,
did it not, cattle and cattle interests?
CHAPMAN: Cattle and mining.
HESS: Mining.
CHAPMAN: Of course, that became a problem; the cattle people wanted all
the grazing land, and they tried to get it. Then Carpenter came in as
Director of the new division and he was...
HESS: He was an industry man?
CHAPMAN: He was an industry man; he started to help them.
Now, as I said here awhile ago, I made a comment upon Ickes' choice of
people, picking people. There's one that I made a mistake on. I recommended
him.
HESS: Carpenter?
CHAPMAN: Yes. I recommended him, and he surprised me very much; I was
quite surprised and disappointed in him. We were very good friends; we
were social friends, but we were miles apart on him handling the grazing
situation.
HESS: Before he came in you did not think that he would take the cattlemen
and the beef industries' view, be on their side?
CHAPMAN: I didn't think he would; I thought he had made enough money
that he could live on anyhow, whether he raised another steer or not,
because he had made a lot of money, and I didn't think he was that interested
in making more.
HESS: But it turned out that way?
CHAPMAN: But it turned out so that he let his ideas go down the line
of free enterprise. Free for the cattle people.
HESS: Overgrazing the land.
CHAPMAN: Overgrazing the area and then he got the--I managed to save
one little part of that fight. We were in a major fight about whether
we should give the advisory boards any authority.
Now, I saw that he had us licked on it, because every Congressman up
there was for it. Just everyone I talked to was for it. Well, what I did,
when I say that I was going to be licked on that, I got a friend of mine,
who was chairman, Wayne Aspinall--he was chairman of the Public Lands
Committee, the Interior Department’s committee--and I got Wayne and I
said, "Look, Wayne, if you can’t support this idea of not
giving any authority to the board, put the final authority in the Secretary
of Interior and let him handle it. Let him take the headaches now."
Well, that kind of caught Carpenter off base; he didn't expect that at
all. I kept it very cautiously and didn't say anything. So, the day came
for us to send the bill up on the Hill an endorse it. Krug wouldn't send
up anything. Well, Ickes didn't either; he wouldn't send it--Ickes would
never have made that. Ickes made the appointment on that, too. I recommended
it. Ickes didn't bother about the thing at all. He just didn't get interested
in that public land part of it. He was interested in the fight the cattlemen
were always having with the regular farmer in trying to take his land
and all, but never was interested enough to take up the fight for him.
Now, I moved in on that at a crucial moment, and at the last minute--and
Wayne was on the conference committee between the House and the Senate--I
had gotten the Senate to agree to stick together and support me on it--sent
it to conference--I had a difference of opinion between the two, so I
got a conference on it--and I got Wayne Aspinall, chairman of the House
committee, to put himself on as chairman for the Interior Committee. He
did, and he said, "Oscar, why don't we do this? Why don't we put [John
Phillips] Saylor," who was a Republican from Pennsylvania, "why don't
we put him on that?" He said, "He'd appreciate that as a little boost."
And he said, "Some of my colleagues will jump on me a little about it,
but I can take it, and put him on it. I'll put the authority in the Secretary's
hands and just put a little phrase in there for the Secretary of Interior
and that means it'll come back to me."
So, while Ickes was in there, I still got that through, got that piece
of legislation through, and I thought I'd never get it, because Ickes
was running a fight with Congressman Johnson every day, and I was having
a rough time getting around the thing.
Incidentally, that was one of the cases that I got the President to personally
talk to me about that. "How are these cattle people, what are they doing
out here, are they eating up all the range?"
I said, "Yes, they are, Mr. President."
He said, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
I said, "I'm going to stop it, because when their next year's application
comes in for his permit for use of the range, he's going to have to give
me the number of cattle he ran the last year and I'm going to make each
member of his advisory board to sign that."
So, I'll have all of the advisory board, and there are usually 10 or
15 on these districts, and I said, "I'm going to have all of them sign
it. I'll tie it up tight around their neck, and then they'll have to fight
it out with their cattle people right out there on their home ground.
Now, here's why I can do that. If this cattleman here, who's on that advisory
board, finds out that John Smith over here, who's on that board, too,
has made an application for 500 head of cattle this year and he only ran
three last year, they're going to catch him trying to steal 200 head of
cattle extra to run on the range. And that's going to be a violation of
the rules, because we're going to say how many he can run."
HESS: Yes, the total number.
CHAPMAN: The total number. And then from that you divide it up equally
among the people and there are only so many spaces, see. We caught them
in a month. I got them in a fight; I got them in the damndest fight that
you ever saw in your life, and it didn't bother me anymore. Never bothered
me anymore.
I got them stewing about the thing; they were mad because they didn't
have any authority, they had lost that. And then I found out this other
thing was even more powerful than having the authority written in the
bill. It didn't make any difference. They fought so hard. All they had
to do was have one of my supervisors check these range headquarters every
month. I had them check up on two or three on which I got some information.
It was known that I wanted them to report it to me if they found anybody
asking for more than they had last year. They didn't think it was going
to amount to anything, so they assumed it didn't make much difference.
They went on and did what I said. Instead of putting what they'd asked
for last year, they'd add another hundred to it, another hundred head
of cattle. I don't know why; that seemed to be a magic number. They would
add another hundred to their run.
HESS: You can always go up another hundred.
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: Or at least by units anyway, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred.
CHAPMAN: Go up by units, and they would start in at a hundred. They'd
add a hundred. The second year I found one fellow had run a hundred the
year before and he put another hundred on this year. Well, we just caught
him by the neck, because he was fined so many hundred dollars for the
number of cattle he ran and then we cut back his head to run.
HESS: Shall we shut it off for the day?
CHAPMAN: Yes.
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