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On Oct. 28, the friction turned ugly. Twice that early evening, Steven Drake, 22, and his brother drove by. On the first pass, they war-whooped and were answered, they said, by gunfire. On the second pass, Steven was hit his the left shoulder. Three hours later, Tourists Roger and Jean Madigan and their two children drove by. Daughter Aprile, 9, was hit by a ricocheting bullet. Both Drake and the girl were placed under medical care, and a bullet fragment remains lodged below Aprile's heart. Police counted five bullet holes and two shotgun hits on the Drake car and eight bullet holes and one possible shotgun hit on the Madigan car. The Indians claim that they shot in self-defense, saying that they had taken fire from both cars. The Drakes and the Madigans deny that they even had had weapons with them.
Police efforts to investigate the shootings have been stymied. The Indians contend that the matter must be handled by direct talks between the leaders of the Six Nations and the U.S. Government, that local authorities have no jurisdiction. They say that the treaty of 1794 between the U.S. and the Six Nations provides for such federal involvement. District Attorney Henry D. Blumberg retorts: "I don't think anybody can shoot anyone in Herkimer County with impunity." He obtained a search warrant authorizing state police to enter the camp and confiscate all shotguns and rifles in order to perform ballistics tests on them. But when he discovered that the state planned to use 300 troopers to carry out the warrant, Blumberg, fearing a full-scale outbreak of violence, retrieved the warrant and quietly allowed it to expire last week.
Both sides have written to President Ford. The White House reply cited federal acts of 1948 "and 1950 assigning jurisdiction for all civil and criminal matters involving Indians on reservations to the state courts. That has failed to move the Indians, who point out that the camp is not a reservation and more dubiously argue that it is their sovereign territory. The Federal Government has thus far continued to decline to intervene. However, as Norman E. Ross Jr., assistant director of the Domestic Council, explained U.S. policy, "that doesn't say the treaty [of 1794] is null and void. The laws [of 1948 and 1950] don't supersede it, they augment it. Federal action is not precluded."
Great Law. The Indians say that their dream is to withdraw from the white man's civilization, to learn again to exist without cars and automatic washers, to live in harmony with the land as their forefathers did. "We're talking about public land," says Kakwirakeron, an Indian spokesman. "We have no intention of taking private land. We can't evict these [white] people. Our Great Law says we can't. We are a religious people, a law-abiding people."