Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/257

The Mission Indians fondly imagines himself! The grossest, most palpable injustices have only awaited his coming, that a simple recital of self-evident abuses with their equally patent remedies (strange that previous agents have overlooked them!) shall bring happiness out of misery and order out of chaos.

Poor fellow! He soon discovers himself—a mere speck in the political firmament, just below the horizon. The squatter continues to do as he pleases, and the great Government continues to do as the squatter pleases.

After forty years of wild and reckless "Freedom" at the expense of the miserable Mission Indians, the squatters met their first—and only—reverse. The great Government automaton suddenly refused to respond to invisible political pulls. Its executive head—horrible discovery!—had the temerity to respond to impulses from his own nerve-centres.

"The position of these intruders," proclaimed President Grover Cleveland, "is one of simple and bare-faced wrong-doing, plainly questioning the inclination of the Government to protect its dependent Indian wards and its ability to maintain itself in the guaranty of such protection. These intruders should forthwith feel the weight of the Government's power."

This expressed the attitude of the Cleveland administration toward the persecuted Indian. A short time previous to this declaration the removal of the 237