Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced several major personnel shifts in the Bureau of Indian Affairs as part of the administrative reorganization of the Bureau recently recommended by a survey team and now actively under way.
Allan G. Harper, area director at Window Hock, Arizona, is being transferred to Washington as a member of the Commissioner's coordinating staff, where his broad background of experience in Indian Affairs and intimate knowledge of Navajo administration will be directly available to Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons.
W. Wade Head, now area director at Anadarko, Oklahoma, will be the Bureau's area director at Gallup, Now Mexico, where he will supervise the Navajo Reservation and Indian agencies in New Mexico and Colorado.
G. Warren Spaulding, who has been director of the Program Division in the Washington Office of the Bureau since 1951, will become superintendent of the Navajo Agency at Window Rock, Arizona.
John M. Cooper, who has been area director at Aberdeen, S. Dak., for the past two and a half' years, will succeed Head at Anadarko.
Replacing Mr. Cooper at Aberdeen will be William O. Roberts, now area director at Muskogee, Oklahoma.
At Muskogee, Clinton Talley, now assistant area director, will serve as acting area director pending further decision on Bureau reorganization.
Don C. Foster, area director at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and E. Morgan Pryse, area director at Portland, Oregon, will exchange positions.
Mr. Harper, a native of Paterson, N.J., and a graduate of Harvard University, joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1935 as a field representative. From 1937 to 1939 he served as director of a technical cooperation program involving the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture at Denver. After four years as Bureau senior field representatives, he transferred to the Office of Inter-American Affairs with assignments in agricultural work in Costa Rica and Washington. He also served two years as chief of the program planning and review section of the Foreign Economics Administration. In 1946 he returned to the Bureau as assistant district director at Billings, Montana and in 1949 was transferred to the Navajo Agency as general superintendent and later that year was designated area director.
Mr. Head is a native of El Dorado, Ark., and entered the Indian Service in 1937. He had several years of experience as superintendent of schools, in Oklahoma and the Philippine Islands, and ono year as assistant general manager of a lumber company in the Philippines. His first job with the Indian Bureau was as reservation principal on the Papago Reservation at Sells, Ariz. After four years in this assignment he was designated as superintendent of the Papago Agency and served for one year, transferring to the War Relocation Authority in 1942. Following two years of service with WRA, he returned to the Indian Bureau in 1944 as superintendent of the Colville Agency, Nespelem, Washington, where he remained for three years. Transferring to Oklahoma in 1947, he served for one year as district director at Oklahoma City, and was appointed in 1948 to his present position as area director at Anadarko. He is a graduate of Northeastern State College at Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
Mr. Spaulding has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 30 years. He first joined the Bureau as a trade teacher at an Indian school in Flandreau, South Dakota, in 1924, and has steadily advanced to positions of increasing importance. Prior to his appointment as director of the Program Division in 1951, he served for two years as area director at Aberdeen and before that for five years as superintendent of the Cheyenne River Agency in South Dakota. His previous career with the Bureau was mainly in the field of Indian education. He was born in 1895 at Heron Lake, Minnesota, and was educated at South Dakota State College at Brookings, South Dakota, and Colorado State Teachers College, Greeley, Colorado.
Mr. Cooper also has a long background with the Indian Service. He came with the Bureau in 1935 as director of the Southwest Range and Sheep Breeding laboratory in Fort Wingate, New Mexico, and subsequently served as director of Resources and as assistant superintendent at the Navajo Agency in Window Rock, Arizona. In 1946 he became superintendent of the Wind River Agency in Wyoming and in 1950 was appointed director in charge of Bureau participation in Missouri River Basin Investigations. He has been area director at Aberdeen since 1951.
Before joining the Indian Bureau, Mr. Cooper worked with the United States Department of Agriculture for 14 years in the field of sheep breeding and allied research. He was born in 1899 at Canyon, Texas, and is a graduate in animal husbandry from the University of California at Berkeley.
Mr. Roberts was born in Schuyler County, Missouri, in 1890, and has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs continuously since 1917. During his first 10 years with the Bureau he served as a teacher at Pima, Arizona, a land lease clerk at Ponca, Oklahoma, financial clerk at Pawnee Agency, Oklahoma, chief clerk at Omaha, Nebraska and Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota and superintendent of the Indian school at Leupp, Arizona. In 1927 he rose to the rank of agency superintendent and served in that capacity at Cheyenne River Agency, Rosebud Agency, and Pine Ridge Agency, all in South Dakota. In 1946 he moved to Muskogee as superintendent of the Five Civilized Tribes Agency and was designated as area director in 1949.
Mr. Foster is a native of Kingfisher, Oklahoma, where he owned and operated a livestock ranch from 1922 to 1927. In 1928 he moved to Portales, New Mexico, where he was a high school superintendent and instructor of vocational agriculture for five years. After two years with the New Mexico State Extension Division, he joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1935 as head community worker at Warm Springs Agency, Oregon. In 1937 he became extension agent at the Carson Indian Agency, Stewart, Nevada, and in 1940 was named as superintendent at that agency. After four years in this position he became general superintendent f or the Indian Bureau at Juneau, Alaska, and was subsequently named area director. In 1950 he was transferred to his present position as area director at Minneapolis. He attended the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanics College and graduated from New Mexico State College in 1928.
Mr. Pryse, a native of Kentucky had military service in both World Wars and was promoted to the rank of Colonel during his most recent service. He first came with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1920 as a forest examiner and remained in that line of work until 1932. For the following eight years he was director of highways for the Bureau and organized the program of road construction and maintenance. After six years of military service, he rejoined the Bureau in 1946 as general superintendent at Portland, Oregon, and. was subsequently designated area director. He is a graduate of Oregon State College, has a M.A. degree from American University, and a law degree from National University.
