The Indian Dispossessed
soil; and as that Government regarded itself as the absolute and unqualified owner of it, and held that the Indian had no usufructuary or other rights therein which were to be in any manner respected, they, the United States, were under no obligations to treat with the Indians occupying the same for the extinguishment of their title." Thus it happened that the Indians, who had, according to generally accepted views as to the rights acquired by long-continued occupancy and cultivation, the best right of all Indians to the land of their ancestors, were to receive from the Government not even the color of recognition. In all the great book of Indian treaties, there is not one treaty or agreement with the Mission Indians. They had nothing for which to treat.
Under these conditions the Mission Indians were delivered to the tender mercies of the never-to-be-stopped pioneer at a time when great discoveries of placer gold had brought hordes of more than usually adventurous and reckless prospectors into the new country. No attitude of the Government toward the Indians could have better pleased the on-coming white men.
"In accordance with this view," writes a special commissioner, "the assumed Indian title has always been disregarded by the land-officers of the Government in this district, and by settlers. As expressed by the present register of the land-office, the location
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