Pembroke. In 1899, North Carolina Congressional representatives introduced the first bill in Congress to appropriate federal funds to educate the Indian children of Robeson County. They introduced another bill a decade later, and yet another in 1911. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, T. J. Morgan, responded to Congress and the Croatan Indians, writing that, "so long as the immediate wards of the Government [Indians on reservations] are so insufficiently provided for, I do not see how I can consistently render any assistance to the Croatans or any other civilized tribes." [sic, civilized tribes were defined in contrast to Indians on reservations, who were wards of the government.] Those Indians in the Southeast and elsewhere who were not on reservations, such as those in Robeson County, were considered to be United States citizens and thus the responsibility of state governments. The federal government funded Indian education only for Indians on reservations. By the first decade of the 20th century, a North Carolina Representative introduced a federal bill to establish "a normal school for the Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina," to be paid for by the federal government. Charles F. Pierce, U.S. Supervisor of Indian Schools in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, opposed the legislation since, "[a]t the present time it is the avowed policy of the government to require states having an Indian population to assume the burden and responsibility for their education, so far as is possible." Ku Klux Klan conflict During the 1950s, the Lumbee made nationwide news when they came into conflict with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist terrorist organization, then headed by Grand Dragon James W. "Catfish" Cole. Cole began a campaign of harassment against the Lumbee, claiming they were "mongrels and half-breeds" whose "race mixing" threatened to upset the established order of the segregated Jim Crow South. After giving a series of speeches denouncing the "loose morals" of Lumbee women, Cole burned a cross in the front yard of a Lumbee woman in St. Pauls, North Carolina, as a "warning" against "race mixing". Emboldened, Cole called for a Klan rally on January 18, 1958, near the town of Maxton. The Lumbee, led by veterans of the Second World War, decided to disrupt the rally. The "Battle of Hayes Pond", also known as "the Klan Rout", made national news. Cole had predicted more than 5,000 Klansmen would show up for the