"Our first steps at accounting reform should begin with the first Americans," Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R- Ariz., said in pushing through an amendment late Wednesday to ensure that the United States accounts for money owed since 1887, when the first trust funds were created.

John Dossett, general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians, which represents 250 tribal governments, credited Hayworth with blocking what he says was a "back-door attempt" by other legislators to limit the federal government's responsibility for botched oversight.

However, other lawmakers say they merely were trying to designate a starting point for what is to be an exhaustive historical accounting for as much as $10 billion owed to Native Americans by the U.S. Treasury.

At issue was language initially contained in the $19.7 billion Interior spending bill, passed Wednesday night, that would have allowed officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an Interior Department agency, to go back only to 1985, not 1887, in its initial efforts to determine how much is owed. The controversy revolves around the government's mishandling of the proceeds from Indian lands it has held in trust, dating from passage of the Dawes Act in 1887.

That law was designed to make Native Americans more self-sufficient by giving them up to 160 acres apiece to own as individuals. But reflecting the paternalism of the times, the government typically held this land in trust - handling the leasing and revenue that followed from grazing, mining and lumber sales.

Dossett said that Native Americans have, over the decades, discovered the government had lost track of tens of thousands of beneficiaries, failed to pay them interest and couldn't even tell them how much money they were due. Today, the BIA continues to hold in trust about 11 million acres. Some valuable oil and gas leases pay thousands of dollars a month.