Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/261

 enforce, if necessary, full and prompt reparation for the outrage. Uncle Sam is impotent only within his own realm.

And the story of the Mission Indians goes on in the annual reports:

"The teachings of the padres saved them from savagism. Neglect and white man's greed have robbed them of land, and his vices have reduced their numbers from 15,000 in 1834, to 7,000 in 1852, to 3,000 in 1890. No man with a particle of humanity left can meet these people as an agent does without feeling ashamed as the agent of this good Government, which has forcibly taken possession of this country and assumed the care for this weak people, that we should have by neglect and dishonesty of its paid agents reduced them to such abject poverty and helplessness. Our own records of the past are humiliating. Cortez robbed the Aztecs of gold, but left them their land and water. Americans posing as Christians have robbed these poor children of nature, by legal trickery, of their land made sacred by the graves of their ancestors. As agent for this Government, that I know desires to deal fairly with this people, now I ask and urge that a commissioner may be appointed to come here and settle all land titles, give these people from ten to twenty acres of available land with water for homes, tools to work with, and enforce attendance in school until every child has secured a common 16