Trouble in the Land of the Flint

Residents of the wooded resort country round Big Moose, N. Y. (population about 150), awoke one morning last May to find they had some new neighbors. In the predawn hours, a band of Indians had taken over a 612-acre former girls' camp, now a forest preserve in New York's Adirondack State Park. They claimed the camp land and, thinking big, some 9 million additional acres in New York and Vermont, as Ganienkeh--the Land of the Flint, an independent Indian nation. Since then, to the frustration of state authorities and the growing anxiety of Big Moose's white settlers, the Indians have refused to budge. The squat-in is fast approaching a legal crunch, and TIME Cor respondent Don Sider recently visited the Indian camp. His report:

The land is much as it must have been in colonial times, when the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy held most of northeastern New York and portions of Vermont, Ontario and Quebec. The trees still whisper in the chill wind, and the delicate tracks of deer fleck the snow. Yet the primeval peace is reguarly broken now by the roar of a silver Porsche gunning out of the camp gate onto Big Moose Road, heading for the Food Town market or the Laundromat two miles away. These are 20th century Indians, fired by the militancy that prompted the occupations of Alcatraz in 1969 and Wounded Knee in 1973. They ride in cars toward their encounters with the white man. Their warriors are lawyers, who fight with manifestoes and 200-year-old treaties. But their aim is to return to the old ways. To do that they demand their ancestral lands.

For a while, New York State did nothing about the invaders, hoping that the problem--and the Indians-- would simply go away. Only in September did the state go into federal court seeking to evict the Indians, basing its case on the fact that the Mohawks had been pro-British belligerents during the Revolutionary War and had later signed away their lands. The Indians reject that claim. "The Mohawk land was lost by fraud, and its possession by New York State and the State of Vermont constituted] illegal usurpation," charges the Ganienkeh Manifesto.

Through the summer, the white community waited with waning confidence for state or federal officials to act. Meanwhile, the Indians planted corn, beans, potatoes and tomatoes and moved in a dozen head of cattle, as well as rabbits, pigs, chickens, ducks and geese. They felled trees to block the snowmobile trails that cross the camp and erected a tall tepee near the old camp gate. They barred all non-Indian visitors, courteously but firmly escorting out occasional vacationers who strayed onto the site. Their numbers were, and are, a mystery. By some estimates, they are as few as 30; by others, 90 or more, including women and children.

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."

The Indians intend to go into federal court this week to reply to the New York eviction suit and are expected to file a motion to dismiss, arguing that the issue should be decided in "an international forum or by diplomatic negotiations between the U.S. and the Six Nations." The office of New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz would then file an answer, and a hearing date would be set. "We will resist anyone who tries to remove us from our lands again," vows Kakwirakeron. "They will be met by whatever force is necessary. We will be here when they leave." There, as the snows begin to deepen, the impasse for the moment uneasily rests.

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