Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/22

The Indian Dispossessed attorney reported in 1904: "There is no doubt but that the case could be taken up and prosecuted to a favorable ending, but ... it would be impossible for the court to enforce its decree, and the expense of prosecuting such suit would cost between twenty and thirty thousand dollars."

This Government long ago lost the right to say that it could not enforce a federal law against less than a thousand of its agricultural citizens. Its officials would not disturb the political balance of Arizona.

Agriculturists one hundred years before the pilgrims landed; agriculturists until white men stole their water; now, looking pitifully for rain in a rainless country. "No rain has fallen for more than a year," says the report of 1904, "consequently they were cut off from any agricultural achievements, but found employment in various ways. The men worked on the railroad, on farms, and in the adjacent towns. The building of the Tonto Reservoir afforded work for many. The women do laundry work, cook, raise chickens, make baskets, and in many ways keep the wolf from the door."

The crime of it cannot be charged to the frontiersman; it is upon the Government that surrendered this portion of its trust to those who were unfit to administer it. It was a trust involving the welfare of a race not contemplated in our free institutions—an unrepresented people under a representative government. The Indian was left without the protection which 12