Through an interpreter, Wickersham explained that the government couldn't stop the white people, but did offer two possible solutions on how the Indians could protect their land (1) by obtaining 160-acre allotments for their homes, or (2) by asking for the establishment of a reservation.
Below are selections of the remarks of the Native leaders at the meeting regarding the offer of reservations, and also Reverend Madera comments on the problems of the alternative solution of individual land allotments.
Chief Ivan of Crossjacket:
We don't want to go on a reservation, but wish to stay perfectly free, just as we are now, and go about just the same as now, and believe that a reservation will not be a benefit to us...We don't want to be put on a reservation.
Chief Thomas of Nenana:
All of us Alaska Natives and other Indians will agree with us, that we don't want to be put on a reservation. That one thing, that you people of the Government... you people don't go around enough to learn the way that the Indians are living, so we want to talk with you to explain our living to you.
Paul Williams of Fort Gibbon:
We feel that just as soon as you take us from the wild country and put us on reservations that we would soon all die off like rabbits. We live like the wild animals...We lived on fish, the wild game, moose and caribou and ate blueberries and roots. That is what we are made to live on, not vegetables, cattle, and things like the white people eat. As soon as we are made to leave our customs and wild life, we will all get sick and soon die.... I feel that the Natives are entitled to their own land, and should not be put on reservations...
Reverend Madera:
The question is a hard one to settle. We don't want a reservation...[nor can] the majority of the Indians [take up individual allotments]. There is in the Indian life one very sweet feature - that is their mutual helpfulness. There is no such thing in an Indian village as one person having plenty and others being hungry. If one person has long and get a black fox and sells it, he has plenty of grub. He stores it in a tent or cabin and everybody goes in and eats. If one man kills a moose, this moose belongs to the whole village. That is what we call a community life. It would be too bad if that were taken away, which it certainly would be if they had to all live on separate allotments. The reservations would result in the Indian soon perishing for they could not live in one place. Today the Indians are self-supporting and independent. They do not bother anybody to give them grub.
Chief Joe of Salchaket
We are suggesting to you just one thing, that we want to be left alone. As the whole continent was made for you, God made Alaska for the Indian people, and all we hope is to be able to live here all the time.