well it is a hard question but i think the few true checkerboard
reservations actually were an original invention of president grant
tho possibly an unconscious one
& i believe they may all date from the same brief period in the mid 1870s
when he must have been drinking even more heavily than usual
having his hands full just then with the whiskey ring scandal & a
depression deep enough to dissuade him from seeking a thid term
i mean this was not just indian business as usual
but something perhaps a bit more inspired
railroad barons had long before been & were long afterwards getting paid
by the government in this checkerboard fashion with title to half the
public land ranges their prospective railroads would traverse
not that the rights of way were expected to snake thru the checkerboards
but such land grants were an early form of corporate welfare
& it was the resale of & the speculation in these lands that provided
much of the real locomotion westward
it is my guess that the railroad sections were deliberately staggered in
this peculiar way so as to promote the greatest possible economic & social
integration
& thus also produce the highest possible land values
even today the union pacific railroad is the biggest private landholder in
the country because of these 19th century grants
the novelty in palm springs was to divide the standard railroad
checkerboard with indians
that form of integration was probably not very well thought out
tho there was a policy of obliterating indians via assimilation
so the natives appear to have been incidental to the checker game really
nor was there probably any idea of fairness or equality in any of this
& i imagine they were cast in the role of such odd bedfellows here & in a
very few other places only because they had been living in the area of
certain springs for many centuries
& where were they to be sent packing to anyway
for there is no point in driving desert indians farther out into the desert
when you can just take half of their world away in alternating sections
anyway that is what i think must have happened
& the indians then made a killing creating this fabulous resort here
long before indian casinos were ever even thought of
it does seem rather unamerican tho
& hardly unitedstatish either
m
>
>I've been following this quest for a while now, and not knowing a lot
>about Indian reservations and regulations concerning these, I am
>getting a bit curious about the principles you Americans (or should I
>say Yanks - just not to mean native Americans) apply when defining
>boundaries. Is it just a case of "there is a certain area of land,
>and we get half, and you get half as well, and we don't want to split
>up the area arbitrarily in a way that one people get the best half,
>and the other people the less than best half, so we do it the
>chequered way", or is there another principle applied here? Just
>enlighten me, an ignorant inhabitant of the so-called "Old
>Continent", of your unitedstatish ways.
>
>Peter S.
>
>--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., michael donner <m@d...> wrote:
>> after further experimentation & checking against state topo index
>maps
>> & also against individual topo quads
>> i can report that the zoomable indian reservation map
>> representing some great fun & timely reinforcement from arif
>> <http://www.gdsc.bia.gov/districts> http://www.gdsc.bia.gov/districts
>> may leave a bit to be desired in some respects
>> & may even raise more questions than it answers
>> but
>> it does appear to be the best available map & plaything in this
>whole field
>> & it has proved to be entirely credible in some cases at least
>> so i couldnt help but proceed to complete a first estimated indian
>cross census
>> despite my several misgivings about it
>> & am just reduced to hoping that all the data are in fact correct
>>
>>
>> the turning point in my experience of this site came when i was
>pleasantly
>> surprised to find it indicating an indian cross right here in
>connecticut
>> which i do very much want to believe is the truth
>> despite the fact that the public land system grid
>> which was the proximate cause of just about all the crosses
>> was never used in connecticut
>> & even tho this cross like many of the others is unsubstantiated
>by topo
>> evidence
>> & moreover forces me to swallow so much else along with it
>>
>>
>> before proceeding with the boundary cross census report tho
>> it may be important to note that the staggering numbers i have
>racked up
>> here are not so much the result of the checkerboard or sectional
>> alternation that is so plain to see at agua caliente & torres
>martinez
>> & which got me into this ridiculous business in the first place
>> as they are the result of the much more widespread sort of random
>> scattershot property ownership
>> which however is curiously also called checkerboard
>>
>> while crosses were found to be rampant in the many scattershot areas
>> precious little new evidence of true checkerboard patterning was
>found anywhere
>>
>> in fact the only new such finds of any consequence
>> are the arizona portion of the tristate mojave reservation
>> & part of the laguna reservation in new mexico
>>
>> some navajo areas also seem almost to break into pure checkerboard
>at times
>> but they are nowhere very coherent or convincing
>> so i have not counted them in this bunch
>>
>>
>> all of which brings the updated cross counts of the true
>checkerboard
>> tribes to the following very probably final results
>> agua caliente 57
>> torres martinez 43
>> laguna 40
>> mojave 33
>> hualapai 13
>> morongo 12
>> plus some minor cases involving a few dozen crosses in all at most
>>
>>
>> several tribes have more crosses but none are so distinctly
>checkered as these
>>
>>
>> the single peneclave with the greatest known number of crosses
>> 8 in all
>> occurs at agua caliente
>>
>>
>> another highlight
>> many of the more complex boundaries cant even be drawn in a single
>> continuous line
>> a fact which presents the philosophical question of exactly what
>they are
>> if they are not lines
>>
>> presumably some fundamentally different kind of continuums
>>
>>
>>
>> & finally the piece of resistance
>> the staggering indian cross totals
>> of all types
>> by state
>> az 47
>> ca 125
>> co 1
>> ct 1
>> mi 5
>> mn 57
>> ms 11
>> mt 73
>> nv 25
>> nm 280 approx
>> nd 20
>> or 24
>> sd 160 approx
>> ut 8
>> wa 8
>> wi 34
>> total 880 approx
>>
>>
>> the only remaining question is how to evaluate these in relation to
>the
>> bicountry crosses & the bicounty cross & the bimeridian cross
>previously
>> found
>>
>> m
>
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