Page:Looters of the Public Domain.djvu/475

Chapter XXX

The story of Siletz—How the Indians were robbed of their homes for the benefit of palefaced looters, under the guise of treaty rights—The scheme to open the reservation to settlement under a special homestead law merely a cloak for grabbing the timber by dishonest methods, as only a few entrymen were acting in good faith—The part United States Senator Fulton, of Oregon, took in the game of trying to induce the Secretary of the Interior to expedite the issuance of patents to the bogus entries of Willard N. Jones—How old soldiers were lured into committing perjury by the clink of land fraud gold—Fulton's senseless warfare on William C. Bristol prevents the latter from being confirmed as United States Attorney for Oregon, and also helps materially in the overthrow of Fulton at the polls.

ASSOCIATED with the restoration of public entry and the subsequent alleged settlement of the former Siletz Indian reservation, situated on the Western coast of Oregon, is a story of intrigue from the moment of inception of the idea of throwing this vast domain upon the market, down to the time when some of those involved in the plundering scheme to acquire title to the lands in a fraudulent manner have stood palefaced before the bar of justice and listened to the scathing rebukes of a committing magistrate.

There must be something in the irony of fate when All-Hallowe'en's Day was selected by the representatives of the Government for concluding a treaty with those who had held almost undisputed possession of the wilderness since time immemorial. Perhaps they regarded it as a period when gobblins might be holding high carnival within the confines of the dense forests, and it would be an auspicious occasion for appealing to the imagination of the aboriginess, to the end that they might be induced, by glittering promises, to barter their heritages for a song.

At all events, on October 31, 1892, a treaty agreement was entered into, according to the official records, between Reuben P. Boise, William H. Odell, (he of Oregon State School land notoriety) and H. H. Harding, Commissioners on the part of the United States, and the chiefs, headmen and other male adults of the Alsea and kindred tribes residing upon the Siletz Reservation, whereby the Indians disposed of all their holdings, aggregating ten full townships in extent, and embracing some of the finest timber in the world, for the paltry sum of $142,000! What the Indians were coaxed into giving for this comparatively insignificant amount represents an area equivalent to about 1,300 homestead claims of 160 acres each, or practically 200,000 acres in round numbers, and is worth today at a conservative estimate, more than $8,000,000! If Uncle Sam could do as well on all his real estate investments, he could afford to retire, satisfied with his sagacity, if not his conscience.

The territory ceded comprises the. four tiers of townships from the center of Township 6 South to the center of Township 10 South, and from the western bounds of Range 8 West to the Pacific ocean. Not more than one township was reserved for Indian allotments, and from this congested district must come the miserable existence of a race that has been referred to poetically in the dim, distant past as the "noble redmen of the forest"—after they have been further robbed by designing whites— until such time as the last one has answered the final call to the happy hunting grounds, and his memory lives only as a tradition of wrong.

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