The Department of the Interior today announced the selection of three new superintendents for Indian agencies in Minnesota, Montana and Washington.
At the Minnesota Agency in Bemidji, Herman P. Mittelholz, superintendent of the Turtle Mountain Agency in North Dakota since 1957, will succeed W. Wendell Palmer who retired May 13. No successor has been designated for Turtle Mountain.
At the Flathead Agency, Dixon, Montana, Presley T. La Breche replaces Charles S. Spencer who transferred to the Fort Hall Agency in Idaho last month. La Breche is a career employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and has been serving 8S industrial development specialist at Phoenix, Ariz., since 1958.
The new superintendent at the Yakima Agency, Toppenish, Washington, will be Melvin L. Robertson succeeding Floyd H. Phillips who retired May 12. Robertson has been superintendent for the past six years at the Menominee Agency, Keshena, Wis., where Federal trust supervision was terminated on April 30 under terms of a 1954 law.
Mittelholz has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs since 1941 when he was appointed teacher at the Fort Berthold Agency Community School, Elbowwoods, N. Dak. Subsequently he served in a variety of positions ranging from the principalship of the Jicarilla Apache Agency School in New Mexico to realty work with the Great Lakes Agency, Ashland, Wis. Prior to his 1957 appointment at Turtle Mountain, he served for over a year as realty officer at the Minnesota Agency. He was born in 1909 at Munich, N. Dak., and is a graduate of the Bemidji State Teachers College, Bemidji, Minn.
Robertson was born at Kalispell, Mont., in 1900 and has had 33 years of continuous service with the Bureau. From 1928 to 1948 he served in various capacities from timber scaler to forest ranger at the Colville Agency in Washington and the Klamath Agency in Oregon. In 1948 he was named assistant to the superintendent of the California Agency at Sacramento and later was made district agent at the Hoopa Agency in northern California. His first superintendency appointment was in 1950 at the Northern Idaho Agency, Lapwai, Idaho. Four years later he transferred to the Western Washington Agency, Everett, Wash., and served there a little over a year before transferring to the Menominee post in July 1955.
La Breche, who is of Blackfeet Indian descent, first came with the Bureau in 1937 as an unskilled laborer at the Chemawa School in Oregon. Over the years he rose to positions of increasing responsibility in finance and credit work serving at a number of Indian Bureau offices throughout the country. For one year prior to his industrial development assignment at Phoenix in 1958 he was in the central office of the Bureau at Washington, D. C., as a program officer. Born in 1915 at Glacier Park, Mont., he served for four years with the Air Force during World War II and emerged with the rank of captain.
