Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/264

The Indian Dispossessed he pauses in the work of conquest to jot down in his great diary this agent's memorandum of the inferior race at home:

"During the past fiscal year I have visited each and every reserve, even to those situated in the remotest districts. At many reservations I found the poor Indians eking out a miserable existence, in a half-civilized condition, with never enough food and clothing to sustain them properly, and as a make-shift making pilgrimages to the Sierra Madre Mountains, in Mexico, to gather the pine nuts for food during the pinching days of winter; yet I will give them the credit, even under greatly adverse circumstances, many of them were trying hard to raise something from their small patches of dry ground."

Vale, Mission Indian! Struggle as you may to gather sustenance from your gravel patch; fill your belly with the acorn, the pine nut, and the mesquite bean, if you will; but the day is coming when the white man will need your gravel patch; when his genius will devise some use in his own economic system for the acorn, the pine nut, and the mesquite bean.

Vale, Mission Indian!

And fifty years from now, when the more venturesome among the Noble Free—free from every restraint not imposed by themselves upon themselves, free to pursue happiness to the limit of their own desires—shall have exercised their God-given rights 244