SEMINOLE INDIAN HOUSES AND CYCLONE CELLAR. WEWOKA, OKLAHOMA, 1913
“In 1886 the Whites began to divert the waters of the Gila River. A suit in the federal court was talked of to maintain the clear rights of the Indians, but never pressed. No district attorney who would prosecute such a case against voting white men could expect to live politically. Within seven years the Pimas were reduced from independence to the humiliation of calling for rations, while the white settlers used the Indians water undisturbed.
“‘Enough has been written about the need of water for the starving Indians to fill a volume,’ wrote the discouraged Agent, after ten years. ‘It has been urgently presented to your honorable office time and again, and yet the need of water is just as great and the supply no greater.’ So the years went on. In 1900 came the cry from the desert, ‘This water, their one resource, their very life, has been taken from them, and they are, perforce, lapsing into indolence, misery, and vice.’ Thirty thousand dollars was appropriated for more rations.
“Finally, after eighteen years, the suit to recover the Indians’ rights received its final quietus. The district attorney reported in 1904: ‘There is no doubt but that the case could be taken up and prosecuted to a favorable ending, but ... it would be impossible for the court to enforce its decree, and the expense of prosecuting such suit would cost between twenty and thirty thousand dollars.’
“This Government long ago lost the right to say that it could not enforce a federal law against less than a thousand of its agricultural citizens. Its officials would not disturb the political balance of Arizona.”
As to the opposing forces—the uplift, and its antithesis—he writes:—
“But there is another side to this picture. During all these years of trouble, the Indian was faithfully attended by a great Unselfishness, always striving to re-establish him, to educate and enlighten him. The Government met with no opposition in administering this portion of its trust, and the workers were granted its most generous and intelligent support; for the high ideals of the people have always been the Government’s inspiration, even though it be often led to action by a selfish few.
“It is not within the scope of this book to recount the great good that has come to the Indian through this branch of the Indian Service, save to make full acknowledgment here of its greatness. It has done much more than attend the Indian’s education. Many a tribe, and many individual Indians have had saved to them tracts of good land, upon which they have worked their way toward civilization. Indeed, had it not been for the constant presence of these among the Indians who labored for their good, little good land would have been left to any Indians.
“These are the two great influences which have shaped the Indian’s destiny; one, steadily hewing away the foundation—his land; the other, faithfully moulding the superstructure—his education; both generously supported by a vote-seeking Congress.
“Where the first has failed, the Indian is coming into full citizenship through agriculture, education, and Christian teaching. Where both have succeeded in their opposing efforts, we find the Indian figuratively, and often literally, on the rocks; educated, saved, and forlorn,—amiable, but aimless, in his arrested development. He has missed the fundamental lesson of mankind.”