ifornia who say that it is to the interest of the Indian Bureau to make
the whites hate the Indians.

The Indians were an industrious and harmless people; even the squaws
worked; the Indian men had learned to take contracts for clearing land,
weeding fields, and so forth; and many of them were so trustworthy that
the farmers made them small advances where it was necessary. They were not
turbulent, and I was surprised to be told that drunkenness was rare among
them.

After secret deliberations among the mean whites, incited by no one knows
who, and headed by the demagogues who are never found wanting when dirty
work is to be done, a petition was sent to the State Superintendent of
Indian Affairs at San Francisco for the removal of the Indians; but the
more decent people immediately prepared and sent up a counter-petition,
stating the whole case. This was in the spring of 1872.

I do not know the State Indian agent, but I am told that he hesitated, did
not act, and, in May of the same year, a mob, without authority from him
or from any body else, without notice to the Indians, and without even
giving these poor creatures time to gather up their household goods or to
arrange their little affairs, drove them out of their houses, and sixty
miles, over a cruel road, to the reservation.

[Illustration: CHISTOOK WOMAN AND CHILD.]

Against this act of lawless violence toward peaceable and self-supporting
men and women, who are, I notice, officially called "the nation's
unfortunate wards," the proper officer of the United States Government,
the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, did not protest, and for it no one
has ever been punished.

But this was not all. The Indians being thus driven out, a meeting was
called, at which it was announced that if they dared to return they would
be killed; and, in fact, three unfortunates, who ventured back after some
months to see their old homes, were shot down in cold blood; and, though
the men are known who did this, for it no one has ever been punished.
Why should they be? The mob was only carrying out the prevailing "Indian
policy," and the United States Government looked on with its hands folded.

It happens that the Indians of these little valleys are a mild race, not
prone to war. When the white settlers first came to this region they lived
unmolested by the Indians, who were numerous then, and might easily have
"wiped out," to use a California phrase, the intruding white men. It