Tribe Gambles That It Can Turn Profit Without Bingo

The $3 million to $25 million a year they might gain by opening a splashy bingo parlor looks enticing, but the Catawba Indians here say they will not follow scores of other tribes into such a business venture.

Instead, Catawba Chief Gilbert Blue says, the tribe will invest the $50 million it expects to receive as settlement of its land claim in an industrial park, a museum and a replica of a historic Indian village.

“Most of our members are Mormons, and we don’t believe in gambling,” said Blue, the Catawba chief for two decades. “I talked with the Cherokee chief not long ago and he said they’ve got all kinds of money coming in on bingo, but we’re looking at it from a religious point of view. Our people would rather do without all those millions than live with gambling.”

About 170 Indian tribes, roughly half of those that are federally recognized, stage bingo games now, and 58 of them have some sort of casino operation along with it. Fifteen California tribes offer bingo or other gaming activities.

Most tribes will not disclose their income, but Reid Walker, a spokesman for the National Indian Gaming Assn. in Washington, says the payroll alone for the Mashantucket Pequot’s bingo and 24-hour casino in Connecticut is $20 million a year. The tribe used a land-claim settlement of $900,000 to start the venture.

Near Indio, Calif., the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians’ Desert Oasis Casino generates about $40 million in sales from 175,000 visitors a year.

“Bingo is saving the cultures of so many tribes,” Walker said. “The poverty is intense, alcoholism is high and nothing else has worked. Gaming is the first thing that’s worked.”

But the Catawbas, although struggling, are not so bad off that they will set aside their religious beliefs, Blue said. The tribe’s alcoholism rate is low; so is its unemployment. The Catawbas’ 640-acre reservation is just outside Rock Hill, an attractive college town about 35 miles south of Charlotte, N.C. The tribe has about 1,400 members and 60 families live on the reservation, a wooded tract with a single paved road and many mobile homes and run-down houses.

“We don’t live at the poverty level but we’re a long way from middle class,” said Blue, who works as a machinist at a nearby tire company.

In the land settlement, the tribe will give up its claim to 144,000 acres in and around Rock Hill in exchange for $32 million from the federal government and $18 million from state and local public and private sources. The tribe claimed ownership of virtually all of the city and some of the surrounding countryside, including Winthrop College and Heritage USA, the Christian theme park developed by imprisoned television evangelist Jim Bakker.

The settlement agreement, which has been approved by the South Carolina General Assembly and will soon be before Congress, will ease the tribe’s struggles, particularly with health care and education, Blue said.

King George III gave the Catawbas a 15-mile-square parcel in 1763 in return for a much larger tract. Within 60 years, however, South Carolina had control of virtually all of the Catawba reservation. In 1840, the state agreed to give the tribe 5,000 acres, but three years later gave them only the 640 acres they own today.

The Catawbas have been pressing their claim for nearly 100 years, Blue said.

According to the terms of the settlement, the Catawbas will be allowed to expand the reservation to 4,000 acres. Leaders hope to build a housing development, a tribal government center, a community center, a museum and perhaps an industrial park.

The tribe wants to slip into the tourism industry with a historic Indian village and museum. Members will demonstrate traditional crafts like flint and pottery making, arts that have been handed down over generations.

Blue hopes that alone--without bingo--will be enough to attract thousands of tourists each year, enough to turn the long-anticipated settlement into an enduring legacy.