Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/260

The Indian Dispossessed consent of the governed"—therefore, if the governed do not consent, they have only to cry, "Hands off!" and the Government may only view from the outside their unique efforts to govern themselves.

The spectacle of Round Valley is not an unusual one. Nothing short of a general and bloody riot, threatening destruction under conditions manifestly beyond all local control, will induce the America people to tolerate the interference of the Federal Government, so grounded are they in the belief that their full measure of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" can come only through the sacred right of each and every community to be a "law unto itself" in its local affairs. The scheme of "Government by the people" does not contemplate a central authority which shall exercise a salutary control over widely diverse social conditions in the interest of a homogeneous and consistent whole. A community has only to fortify itself with its own public sentiment that, in the pursuit of happiness, Indians may be driven to the deserts, or negro citizens burned at the stake; that community is as secure from Federal interference as would be any neighboring Spanish-American State that might indulge in similar pastimes. More secure, for if an American negro citizen were to be burned alive in any country on the face of the globe except his own, one of the most efficient navies afloat would 240