Note 68 — Chapter XXXI · THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA

When Kelsey took charge he found on no reservation was there an adequate supply of water for irrigation and on most of them none at all. This in a country where irrigation is absolutely life. On no reservation was there any attempt made to protect the water supply, and land which controlled the water was carefully left out of the reservations in most cases. I think the surveyors must have done so knowingly. This meant fifteen or twenty years’ slow starvation for the Indians, and greatly increased difficulties later when we tried to correct things. I presume I have spent one-third of my time during the last ten years in fighting for things for the Southern California Indians, which ought to have been settled twenty years before.