By the early 1900s, the relationship between some Native Americans and white settlers in Southern California had deteriorated to the point where the government knew a strong mediator was needed. In a surprise move, they called upon Clara True—a female Indian agent whom her boss at the time called “the best man for the job.”
True got the appointment in 1908—after 25 years of governmental bureaucracy, complete with studies, commissions and fact-finding regarding the problems between white settlers and the Morongo Band of Cahuilla Indians.
In the early 1880s, the U.S. Congress sent author/activist Helen Hunt Jackson (who would pen Ramona based on her experience) and activist Abbot Kinney to document the situation on California reservations. Their report on the difficult conditions was not immediately acted upon.
In the late 1880s, the Office of Indian Affairs ordered white squatters on the Morongo Indian Reservation to be removed by the county sheriff. The squatters sued the government, and given the political climate at the time, they had a good chance of winning. Congress then finally acted on the recommendations made by Jackson and Kinney and established the Mission Indian Commission.
The commission, which consisted of Albert K. Smiley, Charles Painter and Joseph P. Moore, visited Southern California in 1890-1891. The commission found a troubled situation in the Banning area, with about 100 Cahuilla Indians of the Morongo Band being exploited by about 300 white settlers. Commissioner Smiley commented that strong racial prejudice in the area would virtually prohibit any legal justice for the Indigenous residents—and indeed, nothing happened. For the next 18 years, relations got even worse.
Indian agents were non-existent or ineffectual. Tensions were high, with many whites considering Native Americans “good for nothing.” Liquor had become a serious problem among the Indigenous residents, and their lands were unsuitable for farming due to a lack of water.
The Office of Indian Affairs (OIA; it was renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947) had started offering then-unprecedented opportunities for women—mostly white, with some Native American women who had been educated in boarding schools—to work as teachers, nurses and field matrons. Thus, many women found a new calling: Reform work regarding the situation faced by Indigenous residents.
A lifelong reformer
Clara D. True (1867-1935) was born in Kentucky, went to college in Missouri, and spent more than 50 years of her life working as a reformer on behalf of Native Americans. In the 1890s, she was stationed as a boarding school teacher on the Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, eventually serving six years as principal.
From 1902 to 1907, True worked as the teacher in the day school at Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico. She and superintendent Clinton J. Crandall were the primary officials of the OIA for the Pueblo, also serving as de facto health officials, demographers, arbiters and legal consultants—as well as the eyes and ears of the government. Their experiences and records were released in a 2011 book by Adrea Lawrence, Lessons From an Indian School, published by the University Press of Kansas.
By 1908, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis E. Leupp faced a dilemma: He had to turn around the untenable situation on the Morongo Reservation. He reviewed his field staff and concluded, “The very man to do the job was Miss Clara D. True.” He later said, “I gave her a man’s work, and she has done it better than any man who has been in there for 30 years.”
True arrived in desolate Morongo, looked around—and decided to resign on the spot. Fortunately, she reconsidered and went on to become one of the most productive Indian agents of the era.
Working out of her headquarters on the Morongo Reservation in Banning from 1908 to 1910, she was also placed in charge of the Chemehuevi Reservation in Twentynine Palms and three other reservations. While the earlier Smiley Commission recommended that land be set aside for the Indigenous residents at Twentynine Palms, True was the first Indian Affairs employee to visit there. She obtained a surveyor to establish proper legal boundaries, ending disputes over the local water hole and protecting valuable water rights. She wrote to the OIA, noting that at Twentynine Palms, “the few Indians have for several years not known their exact rights and have suffered cattle depredations by Americans who claim that the spring is not on Indian land.”
True arrived in desolate Morongo, looked around—and decided to resign on the spot. Fortunately, she reconsidered.
She also discovered that the tribal cemetery was outside of the reservation, on land belonging to the railroad. She initiated plans for the government to acquire the cemetery land for them by trade with the railroad; the deal was finalized in 1911.
On the reservations, the feisty agent fought not only the bootleggers who supplied the Indigenous residents, but also all alcohol sales. She even enlisted the aid of nationally renowned saloon-breaker and prohibitionist William “Pussyfoot” Johnson to help her drive booze-peddlers from the area.
Agent True tried to ensure peace during the massive September-October 1909 manhunt for Willie Boy, a Paiute-Chemehuevi resident who was accused of murder. Fearing a possible revolt, she espoused caution in the apprehension of Willie Boy.
Not involved with suffrage
According to someone who knew her well, True was “a short, dynamic, little old maid.” The national issue of the day was the vote for women, but Clara True herself said she was no suffragette and wouldn’t vote if she could.
True set out to help, and she was able to assist Native Americans in sustaining themselves. She taught new methods of irrigation, and had them create tunnels and ditches. They were so successful that they created a labor shortage: With so many Indigenous residents busy working their own fields, white farmers had to bring in Native Americans from outside reservations to help.
Clara True also made a huge impact in her two years as the Indian agent in repairing Indigenous/white relationships. She spoke Spanish and conversed with Native Americans using that language. Her immediate supervisor once described her as “a woman of 40 years of age, small in stature but strong and wiry, with an indomitable will and courage, thoroughly able to handle the Indians and all questions arising in connection with her work.”
While stationed at Morongo, she was also credited for rescuing some Native American girls from a life of vice: “I robbed the Los Angeles Red Light and got back the girls, many of them Sherman Institute-educated but gone wrong from a bad start. … I made Southern California pretty safe for Indians.” Her friend Marah Ellis Ryan—an author, actress and activist considered an authority on Native Americans—agreed that True “did stop the sale of slave Indian girls at $10 each—formerly a habitual traffic across the (U.S.-Mexican) border.”
In 1910, True returned to New Mexico to settle near the Santa Clara Pueblo, where she owned and managed a series of ranches until her death.
One old photo of Clara True shows her with a group in a desert camp. Her long-sleeved shirt with bandana, long skirt and boots seemed appropriate for the climate and the era—but the oversized straw sombrero dwarfed the diminutive woman. A close-up photo shows what was under that sombrero: friendly, with compassionate eyes and a strong determined jaw.
She didn’t think she needed the right to vote. Instead, she made a difference all by herself.
Sources for this article include Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt by Harry Lawton (Malki Museum Press, 1960); The Chemehuevi Indians of Southern California by Ronald Dean Miller and Peggy Jeanne Miller (Malki Museum Press, 1967); The Chemehuevis by Carobeth Laird (Malki Museum Press,1976); “The Chemehuevi” by A.L. Kroeber in his Handbook of the Indians of California, 1925; Los Angeles Herald, June, 3, 1909; Clara True and Female Moral Authority by Margaret D. Jacobs (University of Nebraska, 2002); “The Native Americans of Joshua Tree National Park: An Ethnographic Overview and Assessment Study” by Cultural Systems Research, Inc. 2002.
