finally bought out the squatters, restored the land to the Indians and gave the Hupas and Yurocs definite reservations. A similar trouble arose at Round Valley in the eighties, but war was averted by one of those compromises well known in the West, under which the Indians received one-quarter of their own land and the settlers received three-quarters. Reports published from time to time at Washington show that the Indian Office was not wholly without knowledge of Indian conditions in California, but little was attempted and less accomplished for Indian relief. Several reservations were established, or attempted to be established by Executive order. One was invalidated by the Courts, which held the land to be within a Mexican land grant. One was raided and seized by settlers, who had sufficient political influence to hold the land and secure the cancellation of the Executive order. One was laid out with fine timber included and another was desired by cattlemen and sufficient influence was concentrated upon Congress to secure their “opening to settlement”. Only one small reservation of that period remains to this day, and this one, Tule River, was diminished in size more than half, without the knowledge or consent of the Indians. The few items appearing in the Indian Office reports, or in reports to the Board of Indian Commissioners, were rather more optimistic than the situation warranted, for the officers making those reports were at the same time giving an account of their own stewardship and doubtless mentioned as many favorable things as they could. The fact that favorable items were so few is eloquent of the conditions then existing. Dr. C. Hart Merriam estimates that the California Indians were decreasing at an average rate of 7,000 per annum[63], and this must have been under conditions involving an appalling amount of misery and suffering. It was well understood that the California Indians were “fading away” rapidly, yet it seems to have occurred to no one to look into the matter and see why the Indians were decreasing in numbers or what the physical steps were by which the Indians were being faded. Commissioner Wozencraft, in the early fifties, published an appeal to the people of California, but it met with no particular response. The process of ejecting Indians from the ownership or possession of anything considered of value to any white man went on without check, and the number of Indians who perished diminished each year, simply because there were fewer Indians left to die. It was hardly to be expected that the members of this savage race could at once readjust themselves to the fierce civilization under which they had been submerged so suddenly, and only a few Indians were able to do so. Nor could it be expected, doubtless, that the new white population, so largely from the Middle West, with 200 years’ traditions of Indian fighting behind them, should show any particular consideration for Indians who were unable to fight.