The Indian Dispossessed
tional life. Under the very system of government which is supposed to secure to all men an active participation in its benefits, the Indian's vital interests—establishment upon good land, with protection and equality of opportunity during his long endeavor to adopt the new civilization—are hopelessly entangled with the merely sordid, commercial side of national legislation. In all the conglomerate mass that makes up the nation, he is the only human factor without representation by vote; he has no political asset with which to gain consideration for himself from a government which apportions its consideration according to representation.
Thirty years ago a Commissioner of Indian Affairs delivered himself of a fervent opinion which should become classic. The miserable story of the California Indians had dragged itself through twenty-five years; every measure of relief had been blocked in Congress by the interested few,—the Vociferous Few in the Indian country. "This class of Indians," concludes the Commissioner, "seems forcibly to illustrate the truth that no man has a place or a fair chance to exist under the Government of the United States who has not a part in it." A more illuminating commentary on the Indian's unhappy status in the land of the Free can hardly be written in one sentence. The Indian's story does not argue that the Indian should have been at any time given the protection of the franchise; but it does argue that in
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