The Department of the Interior today announced the retirement of one Indian Bureau agency superintendent and the transfer of two others in a related series of moves.
Retiring August 31 is Elbert J. Floyd, Superintendent of the Zuni Agency in New Mexico for the past five years. He will be replaced September 6 by Richard D. Butts, Superintendent at the Cherokee Agency in North Carolina since 1955. Mr. Butts, in turn, will be succeeded September 20 by Darrell Fleming, who for the past two years has headed the work at Uintah and Ouray Agency, Fort Duchesne, Utah. Anew superintendent for Uintah and Ouray has not yet been named.
Born at Hartsville, Missouri, in 1900, Mr. Floyd came with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1925 at the Consolidated Ute Agency in Colorado and served there for 17 years as laborer, farm leader, and agricultural extension agent. In 1942 he transferred to the Klamath Agency in Oregon as agricultural extension agent and remained in that position until he was appointed superintendent at Consolidated Ute in 1950. Four years later he transferred to the Zuni post.
Mr. Butts is a native of Harrington, Kansas, and a graduate of the Oklahoma A. and M. College. He joined the Bureau in 1948 as a soil conservationist at Colville Agency, Nespelem, Washington. Since that time he has served as superintendent of the Umatilla Agency in Oregon and the Red Lake Agency in Minnesota in addition to his more recent duties at Cherokee. Prior to 1948 he served for six years in the Army and attained the rank of Major.
Mr. Fleming was born of Cherokee Indian descent in 1911 at Bernice, Oklahoma, and attended the Haskell Indian Institute at Lawrence, Kansas. He carne with the Bureau in 1933 as a clerk at Crow Agency, Montana, and subsequently served in a variety of administrative positions with the Bureau. In 1954 he was named superintendent of the Fort Belknap Agency, Harlem, Montana, and served there three years before transferring to Uintah and Ouray. He was in the Navy for two years during World War II.
