100 years ago in the White House: President Harding granted a land extension to the Yakima people, but only for a decade

President Warren G. Harding agreed to the arguments of Yakima tribal leaders (today rendered as Yakama) and signed an order for their reservation lands to be held in trust for at least another 10 years.

Chief Meninock and other leaders traveled to Washington D.C. to protest an allotment plan for their land.

They met with the commissioner of Indian affairs in what a correspondent called “one of the most dramatic” sessions ever conducted in the Interior Department.”

Meninock told the commissioner that distributing their reservation lands in allotments would be “a mistake and an injustice” because it would mean that they would soon fall prey to white men who would fleece them out of all of their land.

Meninock said he wanted the original treaties to be honored.

Harding’s order was for only ten years, but Meninock asked for the order to be continued “forever.” The commissioner assured him that 10 years was as long as an extension could be made, but it could be extended again in 1932. Meninock said his tribe would “take it.”

After the agreement was signed, the commissioner “urged the Indians to adopt the customs of the white man around him, particularly as to the cultivation of the land on their reservation.”

Meninock was unmoved.

“We want to be Indians as long as the sun rises and sets,” he said.

Also on this day

(From the Associated Press)

2008: Cuba’s parliament named Raul Castro president, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel.