The Story of the Bitter Root
ing in large tracts of bad land, in order to enclose two or three acres of good soil. The few acres of good farming-land along and on both sides of Finley Creek have been taken up long since by half-breeds, and two or three white men married to Indian women. . . ."
Yet the Bitter Root Valley, with its four hundred and fifty acres of growing crops, its houses and cattle, its Indian church and its Indian graves of many generations, was declared "in the judgment of the President, not to be better adapted to the wants of the Flathead tribe" than this unsubdued waste in the Jocko!
President Grant's record as a steadfast friend of the Indian is too secure to be called into question, but this executive order is eloquent of a system which can procure the signature of an illustrious president to as black a lie as ever Russia's bureaucracy compelled from the hand of the Czar. Can this business be charged to the American people? Certainly not. Public opinion, whenever it has been sufficiently aroused to take notice of Indian affairs, has invariably been with the Indians. But it can be charged to the extremely popular system of government which holds every national official with his ear to the ground, listening to popular clamor. Rule by "the voice of the people" is well enough when all the people are interested, but a disinterested, contented people will not take the trouble to rule any-
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