US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism 169out restraint of consensual policy would not do, Downing declared:
"To us, it appears that once cut loose from our treaty moorings,
we will roll and tumble upon the tempestuous ocean of American
politics and congressional legislation, and shipwreck [will] be our
inevitable destination."14
Entering the 1920s, Indigenous peoples were at their lowest
point-both in population and possibility for survival after decades
of violent military operations during and following the Civil War,
along with federal theft of Indigenous treaty-guaranteed funds and
then two decades of allotment of Indigenous lands. Then the US
government imposed unsolicited citizenship on American Indians
with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, gesturing toward assimila
tion and dissolving the nations. It was a boom time for the national
economy, but life threatening for Native Americans everywhere.
Robert Spott of the Yurok Nation in Northern California, also an
army veteran of World War I, described his community's situation,
which could have been applied to every Native community. Speak
ing before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in 1926, he
said:
There are many Indian women that are almost blind, and they
only have one meal a day, because there is no one to look after
them. Most of these people used to live on fish, which they
cannot get, and on acorns, and they are starving. They hardly
have any clothing to cover them. Many children up along the
Klamath River have passed away with disease. Most of them
from tuberculosis. There is no road into there where the In
dians are. The only road they have got is the Klamath River.
To reach doctors they have to take their children down the
Klamath River to the mouth of the Klamath. It is 24 miles
to Crescent City, where we have to go for doctors. It costs us
$25 .oo. Where are the poor Indians to get this money from to
get a doctor for their children? They go from place to place
to borrow money. If they cannot get it, the poor child dies
without aid. Inside of four or five years more there will be
hardly any Indians left upon the Klamath River.
I came here to notify you that something has to be done.