For example, the Dawes Act of 1887 and the laws that followed it removed over 100,000,000 acres from established treaty protected Indian Reservations and President Theodore Roosevelt transferred over 140,000,000 acres from Indian Tribal Lands, Spanish and Mexican Land Grants, and from the Western States and Territories, all without authority or compensation.
Presently the federal government controls 31,000,000 acres in Arizona and 26,000,000 acres in New Mexico.
Compare those totals to the acreage it controls in Connecticut (161 acres), Delaware (5 acres), Georgia (10.1 acres), Illinois (349 acres), Indiana (714 acres), Iowa (2 acres), Kentucky (4 acres), Louisiana (259 acres), Maine (196 acres), Maryland (152 acres), Massachusetts (573 acres), New Hamphire (15 acres), New Jersey (426 acres), New York 390 acres), Ohio (25 acres), Pennsylvania (638 acres), Rhode Island 44 acres), South Carolina (11 acres), Tennessee (2 acres), Vermont (28 acres) and Virginia (572 acres).
If the Western States would join with the Indian Tribes and the Land Grant heirs in requesting return of the land taken from them over a century ago all three would stand a better chance of having some of their land returned.
Please feel free to pass this information along to Western state and local governments, Indian Tribes and Land Grants throughout the West and web sites and blogs that consider the return of the land is long overdue.
Thank you!
Mike Scarborough
justice1O1@aol.com (The "O" in 1O1 is a capital "O".
