The Mission Indians
that they had come with two wagons, loaded with over seven thousand pounds of wheat, which they were having ground into flour for sale and for their own use. This amount the two men had raised by their own labor; and they report that their people have plenty of wheat and are doing well.
"It is doubtful, however, whether they will be allowed to gather another harvest from those fields which they have long cultivated, and which, until recently, they believed to be reserved lands. Two years ago a 'land-grabber' suddenly discovered that these Indians were not on the lands reserved for them in a given township east of the meridian line, but in the corresponding township west of the meridian, and at once filed upon the land they occupied under the 'desert-land act.' How lands cultivated by these people for more than a generation can be called 'desert' I am not able to answer. But it is quite likely that certain land officials in these parts who consider the occupancy of lands by Indians as of no more significance than their occupancy by so many coyotes will have less difficulty with such questions. The Indian 'must go' if he is on a patch of ground that a white man wants, and no matter that he has lived on and cultivated it for a generation. It is wanted all the more on account of its improved condition. . . .
"Other wrongs practiced upon these helpless people
231
