Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-05-13
THE MussE1 SLOUGH CELEBRATION.

The celebration of the anniversary of the
deaths of the Mussel Slough settlers who
were killed last year while resisting the
law, is very remarkable proceeding. 1t
appears to belong to class of celebrations
properly indigenous in France, where IL
has been customary to hold defiant ies'i-
walls to the memory of revolntionsries. a
stranger unacquainted with the facts IN
this case might suppose that the men VINO
have Just been honored in this extraordi-
nary vav had fallen in the defense OF some
principle, or in resistance to some great
wrong. 1t is easy to conceive that some
years hence the imaginary aspect which
has been given to the Mussel Slough case
might crystalline into the semblance of his
tory, but if this is the way in which history
is generally made, the seeker after truth
may as well burn his books and abandon
the quest in despair.
For when it is asked what the real cir
cumstances were under which those Mussel
Slough settlers met their death, it must be
answered that they were men who had
squatted upon lands belonging to other peo-
pie; that when called upon to pay the
rightful owners for these lands, they stub
bornly refused to do SO that they were
equally determined not to resign posses
sion of the lands that when other parties
purchased some of these lands from the
lawful owners, and the United States Mar
shall appeared to give those purchasers pos
session, the squatters turned out in force.
armed with guns and revolvers, and under
took to drive the representative of the
United States off the land; that out of
taeir unlawful actions a fight proceeded, in
the course of which several of their num-
Der, and also two OF the purchasers OF the
lands, were killed. This is the affair which
is now celebrated in a solemn way as
sort of HOLIDAY, and it is. of the men who
| fell in such an alteration that their friends
now speak as having died in defense of
''their homes.
There is no room for controversy as to
the facts. The squatters, as they must in
strictness be designated, have been in the
wrong throughout. They deliberately
banded together to resist the law. They
undertook to drive away both the officers
of the law and the men who had acquired
legal title to the lands they held unlaw-
fully. The evidence in support of the
theory that they opened the fight is almost
conclusive. And it is certain that after
the first shooting was over some of the
squatters hunted, and finally shot from an
ambush, one of the purchasers of the land.
A more high.handed outrage than these
men thus perpetrated it would be difficult
to find. They were law breakers, and de-
liberate law-breakers. Whatever injuries
theirparty sustained in the encounter which
they provoked they themselves were
wholly responsible for. They had for
long time striven to hold land to which
they had no shadow of title, first by sys-
tematic misrepresentation, and then by sys
tematic terrorism. Whenever they entered
the Courts they were condemned. No
legal tribunal had anything to say in their
behalf. And but for the amazing false
hoods by which they have misled the pub.
lie they never could have been sympa-
thized with anywhere.
Of late their own neighbors, disguised at
length by the impudence and mendacity of
their pretenses. have come forward with
statements which demonstrate the hollow
ness of their cause. 1t has been shown
that these squatters, while protesting
against the reasonable and moderate grad
ing of the lands held by them, have been
taking splendid crops off those lands for
years, and that according to their own ad-
missions the lands are worth four or FIVE
times as much as they have ever been
asked for them. The truth appears to be
that they have found it profitable to trade
upon the current hostility to the railroad
corporations, and that by concocting cock.
and. bull stories about oppression they have
succeeded in living rent free for from six
to ten years, all the time taking heavy
crops off the land, and defrauding the
actual owners of it out of every cent OF
profit. Two or three shrewd demagogues
have engineered the whole agitation, and
have doubtless lived in clover, and escaped
work, by levying contributions upon their
neighbors to carry on the war.
Meantime the public have been hood
winked by specious representations about
the dreadful sufferings of these impudent
and prosperous squatters, and so public
sympathy has been enlisted on their be-
half, and especially among that class
which naturally sides with all rebellions
against the constituted authorities, what.
ever and wherever they may be. And SO
the movement has at length eliminated In
the conversion of the anniversary of the
lawless outbreak of last year into a new
kind OF saints day, and the de magogue
leaders of the League have gathered to-
gether and made windy speeches for the
purpose of still further Disgusting the real
facts and the real issue. That issue
il. whether any number of men can
be permitted to defy the laws of the coun-
try, and to steal and hold the land Of their
neighbors, with impunity. 1t is not true
that the men who were killed last year
died in defense of their homes" The
homes which they were holding were not
theirs. They died in endeavouring to re-
tain possessions which they had no legal
claim to, and which they were withholding
unlawfully from the rightful owners. 1t
seems necessary to say this, as seasonsble
protest against the misrepresentation which