The Indian Dispossessed
directing the public business with due regard for the national honor.
Thus it is that the Vociferous Few—they may be attending the vanishing Indian in the West, or gathered upon velvet in the effete East—besmirch the whole official mass, and color national legislation with their filthy desires. The public servants cannot, under the Constitution, get above the level of their rulers.
While the San Pasqual tragedy was being enacted, a similar affair was attempted on another California reservation which illustrates well the prevailing conditions:
"By order of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, I caused two suits to be commenced for trespass on lands inside of the reservation fence. I expected to be able to test the validity of swamp-land claims to some of the best wheat-land now cultivated on the reservation. Lobby influence at Washington was too much for the Indian Department. A telegraph-order from the United States Attorney-General's Office to L. D. Latimer, United States district attorney, directed that officer to suspend all further proceedings against trespassers on the Round Valley reserve. . . .
"The Indian Department has in actual possession and under fence only about 4,000 acres, and a portion of that is falsely claimed as swamp-land. The balance of the valley is in possession of settlers, all
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