Oscar L. Chapman Oral History Interview, November 3, 1972

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened 1980
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[667]

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?

[668]

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?

[669]

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

[670]

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

[671]

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.

[672]

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.

[673]

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

[674]

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.

[675]

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

[676]

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.

[677]

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

[678]

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

[679]

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

[680]

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

[681]

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

[682]

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.

[683]

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

[684]

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

[685]

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.

[686]

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

[687]

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.

[688]

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

[689]

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

[690]

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?

[691]

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

[692]

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.

[693]

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

[694]

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.

[695]

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.

[696]

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

[697]

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?

[698]

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

[699]

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

[700]

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,

[701]

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

[702]

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

[703]

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?

[704]

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

[705]

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.

[706]

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?

[707]

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.

[708]

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.

[709]

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.

[710]

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

[711]

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;

[712]

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

[713]

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

[714]

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

[715]

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.

[716]

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?

[717]

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?

[718]

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

[719]

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

[720]

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...

[721]

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?

[722]

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?

[723]

CHAPMAN: Well, he didn’t really have any particular policies or anything promoting the welfare of the Indians. Should I say that he was not a crusader for the Indians like Collier was?

HESS: Why was he chosen then?

CHAPMAN: I don’t know; I never could tell. I don’t even know who recommended him.

HESS: At what time of the year did he come in? he was appointed probably by Krug, is that right?

CHAPMAN: Krug, yes.

HESS: See, you were sworn in on the first day of the last month of 1949…

CHAPMAN: Yes, that is right; that’s right.

HESS: … December the 1st of 1949; so Nichols was brought in by Krug, right?

CHAPMAN: That’s right.

HESS: And you don’t know why he was appointed.

[724]

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

[725]

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

[726]

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?

[727]

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.

[728]

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

[729]

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

[730]

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...

[731]

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

[732]

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

[733]

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

[734]

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.

[735]

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...

[736]

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

[737]

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

[738]

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.

[739]

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,

[740]

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.

[741]

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?

[742]

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

[743]

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

[744]

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

[745]

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?

[746]

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

[747]

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.

[748]

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?

[749]

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."

[750]

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

[751]

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

[752]

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,

[753]

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.

[754]

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

[755]

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.