Of the nation's 216 million people, nearly 1 million are descended from the Indian tribes that were sprinkled about the continent when the Europeans first came settling. The Indians, since the confrontation at Wounded Knee in 1890 that marked the end of their serious resistance to the white newcomers, have lived in relative peace amid the prevalent society. They are among the poorest of all national minorities, the most prone to illness, the least educated, the most resistant to assimilation into the mainstream of American life. They have been, as well, the least conspicuous and most docile of minorities—until recently. Now they are on a warpath of sorts again, armed this time with old treaties and new court writs and led by sharpshooting lawyers whose allies include, to the chagrin of many non-Indians, the U.S. Government. Their stated aim: to recover huge swatches of land and some of the rights they yielded during the inexorable sweep of expanding American civilization. Their campaign seems to raise the improbable but not frivolous question: Should the country—or sizable parts of it—be given back to the Indians?
The Indians' declared objectives strike many Americans as naive or quixotic at best, and at worst mischievous. By laying legal claim to some areas that are heavily populated or commercially valuable or both, they have irritated and angered innumerable citizens—many of whom know that whatever the Indian grievance, it cannot be pinned on their late-arriving forefathers. Some Indian claims have created uneasiness and even turmoil in entire towns, paralyzing the real estate business, delaying bond issues, thwarting commercial and housing construction and beclouding future planning. At first the claims aroused amusement; now they are taken seriously. This was dramatized last week when the White House was the site for a conference called to introduce the President's own mediator, Georgia Supreme Court Justice William Gunter, to parties in the big Maine land case.
Spokesmen for the plaintiff Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes, their lawyers, and representatives of the Interior and Justice departments attended the largely ceremonial session.
Inevitably, the wave of claims has stirred up anti-Indian hostility. "We are bitter," says George Benway, chairman of the selectmen of Mashpee, Mass., one besieged town on Cape Cod. In a combative spirit sardonically known as "whitelash," the Town of Mashpee has filed a countersuit against the Wampanoag tribe —demanding $200 million as the cost of all accrued improvements'if the Wampanoags should win their claim to much of the town's property.