HALFBREED INDIANS COME
HERE TO PURCHASE WIVES.
Pay Brides as Much as $100 to Go
Through Ceremony -- So They
Can Sell Lands.
Effie Smith remarked incidentally on the witness stand in the federal court yesterday that "there was a heap of them young Indians comin' up here to git mar'd so they could sell their lands," and immediately set the entire court retinue thinking. It was developed that scores of negroes with Indian blood in them, who had come in for 160-acre tracts in the old Indian Territory, had come to Kansas City to qualify to sell their lands by making themselves heads of families. This they did by getting wives.
"Had they any trouble in finding women who would be willing to marry them," Smith was asked.
"Nearly all of the lot I met up with, who came here to get married so they could sell, got their women form the colored rooming houses. They gave some of them as high as $100 to marry them."
"Did the marriages 'stick'?" was asked.
"They were not supposed to. I never heard of one that did. The boys just got married and then sold their lands and moved on."
Smith was on trial for cashing a post office order that had been stolen. He had been indicted two days before, and during the afternoon a trial jury found him guilty. This morning he will toe the mark in the federal court before Judge John C. Pollock, along with a cargo of Greeks and others for sentence.
