One Banker's Fight for a Half-Million Indians

WASHINGTON, April 19 — Like many other American Indians, Elouise Cobell, a banker and Blackfoot from Montana, inherited some land from her parents. The federal government had long agreed to pay her family for farming, grazing and timber-cutting on the property.

But the government checks arrived in what seemed like a haphazard way, Ms. Cobell says. Some years the checks arrived, but many years they did not.