Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/156

146 and despoiled the children of future generations of their heritage. A scheme that worked so admirably for this purpose must have been devised with this in view. It happened in the years immediately following — and probably foreseen by the conspirators — that the national government created several Indian reservations in Oregon. Sections 16 and 36 would then not be secured by the state as school lands, but become base for lieu land selections. These reservations with the amount of base made available in each were as follows :

1887 — Umatilla Reservation 16,980.03 acres

1888 — Klamath Reservation 63,011.94 "

1889 — Grand Ronde Reservation 6,014.14 "

1889 — Siletz Reservation 10,864.14 "

1891 — Warm Springs Reservation 36,643.66 "

Total 133,564.91

Surely the task of supplying this amount of base to intending purchasers was not an arduous one. The records at the state land office should have shown at a glance also all other base available. Yet "the applicant was compelled to pay from $160 upwards for the very arduous service of designating a like basis from one of the Indian reserves."

Sources of base other than the Indian reservations there were. The state was entitled to sections of full measure. So the deficits in fractional sections became base. The sum of these deficits during the years from 1887 to 1895 amounted to 10,000 acres. But to ascertain the amount of base available in each instance required, instead of a glance at a map, some painstaking calculation. The performance of these computations meant land for the people, but their official at the state land office confined himself strictly to taking in money. This work of computing deficits was left to the trafficker in base. He then had the amounts to disclose for a price. But what would be inevitable under such conditions with such transactions? It would have been more than miraculous if there had not been several thousand acres of baseless base — baseless