[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 579-580]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           HISTORY OF THE TULE RIVER TRIBE INDIAN RESERVATION

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                            HON. DEVIN NUNES

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, January 22, 2010

  Mr. NUNES. Madam Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Tule River 
Indians, who I am privileged and proud to represent. The Tules have 
asked me to share a brief summary of their history, which was prepared 
by Gelya Frank, Ph.D., with my colleagues and the American people. As 
someone who is proud of his own heritage and understands its 
importance, I can well appreciate the pride the Tule River Indians have 
in their culture and their desire to make it known and am pleased to 
extend this courtesy to them.

       The Tule River Reservation was established in 1856 and 
     farming operations were immediately started with Indians 
     working the land. Initially known as the Tule River Indian 
     Farm, the reservation was set up and

[[Page 580]]

     administered as part of the Tejon Reservation, the first 
     reservation in California. An Act of Congress of March 3, 
     1853 authorized the creation of five reservations in 
     California, but they were not all fully established at once. 
     As in the case of Tule River, pieces of agricultural land 
     were located and added piecemeal because of the pressing need 
     to locate Indians in their homelands. This was especially a 
     problem in Tulare County, in the southern part of 
     California's Great Central Valley, or San Joaquin Valley, 
     where a large and stable Indian population remained 
     relatively untouched by the Gold Rush beginning in 1848.
       The establishment of the reservations in California 
     followed a failed process of treaty-making, with the Senate 
     abruptly refusing in 1852 to ratify any of the 18 treaties 
     that it had authorized three commissioners to negotiate with 
     the California tribes the previous year. In fact, the Senate 
     voted to seal all records of its deliberations related to 
     rejection of the treaties for 50 years. According to the 
     unratified Treaty of Paint Creek, of June 3, 1851, a large 
     tract of land in the Tule River region was reserved as a 
     permanent homeland for the local tribes, including the Koyeti 
     and Yowlumne. In 1856, stepping in to conclude a war between 
     settlers and the Tule River Indians, the government 
     established the Tule River Reservation on an existing 
     traditional village site of the Koyeti Tribe.
       In 1863, the government closed the Tejon Reservation 
     because of crop failures and the loss of its title to the 
     land to a private party. It relocated the Tejon Indians to 
     the Tule River Reservation, increasing the population at the 
     Tule River Reservation to about 800 Indians. The goal of 
     federal Indian policy in California was to establish 
     reservations as permanent homelands for local tribes where 
     the Indians could support themselves by farming. The 
     reservations were intended to provide land suitable for 
     agriculture and plenty of water for year-round irrigation, as 
     well as access to traditional hunting territories and timber 
     in the mountains. This goal was initially well met with the 
     establishment of the Tule River Reservation but then upended 
     when an employee of the Tejon Reservation, Thomas P. Madden, 
     gained title to 1,280 acres of the land.
       Thomas Madden applied for the 1,280 acres in 1857 under a 
     California State program permitting individuals to withdraw 
     public lands for the purpose of locating schools upon them. 
     Madden's activities were officially investigated and 
     documented by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1858 and again 
     by Congress in 1865, but the government did nothing to halt 
     his acquisition of the land or to assert its trust status on 
     behalf of the Tule River Indians. In 1860, when Madden 
     perfected his title, the government was obliged to begin 
     paying an exorbitant rental in order to continue the Tule 
     River Indians' use of the reservation. Although government 
     agents and inspectors recommended purchasing the 1,280 acre 
     ``Madden Farm,'' the government declined to secure the 
     Indians' homeland but continued the rental for sixteen years. 
     The reservation included at least 800 more acres of 
     government land that were fenced and cultivated.
       An Executive Order of January 9, 1873 established a new 
     reservation in a remote location, far from the settlers who 
     were taking up lands in region. The new Executive Order 
     reservation, with an estimated 48,000 acres, was much larger 
     than the old. But it was located in a steep rocky canyon on 
     land not nearly as well suited to agricultural development of 
     that era. The government agent and the Indians expressed 
     their dissatisfaction with it and resisted relocating. For 
     many years, the ``Madden Farm'' had been agriculturally the 
     most reliable and productive reservation in California. A 
     full generation of Tule River Indians was born on that site. 
     They had made major improvements including tilling the soil, 
     constructing government buildings and houses, digging a 5-
     mile-long ditch, clearing a 25-mile-long road into the timber 
     and fencing some 2,000 acres. Most of the Indians refused to 
     leave the old reservation. In 1876, the last families were 
     finally forced by soldiers to move to the new location in the 
     foothills.
       In the decade after relocation on the Executive Order 
     reservation, the Tule River Indian census steadily declined 
     by attrition to a mere third of the number that had been 
     removed. The diminished agricultural capacity of the 
     Executive Order reservation was evident to early inspectors, 
     but the government ignored their reports, which indicated 
     that only about 250 acres of relatively flat, irrigable land 
     were available for farming. Furthermore, this acreage along 
     the South Fork of the Tule River was not contiguous but 
     located in scattered patches. A second Executive Order was 
     issued on October 3, 1873 to augment the land base by 
     including the drainage of the Middle Fork of the Tule River, 
     about doubling the reservation to include 91,837 acres. The 
     additional lands were withdrawn five years later, however, by 
     an Executive Order of August 2, 1878.
       The Indian Service tried to entice the Tule River Indians 
     to settle on the new reservation by promising them new 
     irrigation ditches and help to reestablish themselves as 
     successful farmers. The extent to which the Indian Service 
     lived up to its promise to help the Tule River Indians with 
     the difficult task of irrigating the soil on the steep rocky 
     Executive Order reservation is detailed in a separate report. 
     In 1919 conflicts with the South Tule River Independent Ditch 
     Company, a group comprised of downstream non-Indian users, 
     threatened the reservation's water rights. Consequently, the 
     government undertook its most extensive project, that of 
     lining the existing ditches with cement and adding several 
     smaller modifications to the irrigation system.
       The irrigation work undertaken by the federal government, 
     while making an important starting contribution, was not 
     adequate to fulfill the promise of replacing the 
     agriculturally productive ``Madden Farm'' with a permanent 
     homeland of comparable value for the Tule River Indians. 
     Although they received insufficient help with irrigation, the 
     Indians persisted in maintaining their ditches as best they 
     could. Some tribal members continued to farm the land through 
     the mid-20th century. The Tribe's farming efforts were 
     disadvantaged by the great distance from flour mills for its 
     grain and from markets. The demands of a cash economy 
     eventually overtook the ability of most of the Tribe to 
     support itself on the poorly irrigated land. Money was 
     increasingly needed for food and clothing, medical bills, 
     building materials, household goods and other supplies. 
     Cattle-raising became a viable industry on the Tule River 
     Reservation by the 1930s for a few fortunate families. For 
     most Tule River Indians, however, agriculture was replaced 
     mainly by seasonal wage labor as fruit pickers, ranch hands, 
     workers in the timber industry, and various kinds of 
     unskilled labor. Despite persistent poverty and lack of 
     infrastructure on the reservation, a stable population began 
     to rebuild itself through the latter half of the 20th 
     century.

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