This story of the San Pasquale Indians is only a fair showing of the experiences of the Mission Indians during the past fifty years. Almost without exception they have been submissive and peaceable through it all, and have retreated again and again to new refuges. In a few instances there have been slight insurrections among them, and threatenings of retaliation; but in the main their history has been one of almost incredible long suffering and patience under wrongs.
In 1851 one of the San Luiseno bands, the Aqua Caliente Indians, in the north part of San Diego County, made an attack on the house of a white settler, and there was for a time great fear of a general uprising of all the Indians in the country. It is probable that this was instigated by the Mexicans, and that there was a concerted plan for driving the Americans out of the country. The outbreak was easily quelled, however; four of the chiefs were tried by court-martial and shot by order of General Heintzelman, and in January of the following year a treaty was made with the San Luiseno and Dieguino Indians, setting off for them large tracts of land. This treaty was made by a United States commissioner, Dr. Wozencraft, and Lieutenant Hamilton, representing the Army, and Col. J. J. Warner, the settler whose house had been attacked. The greater part of the lands which were by this treaty assigned to the Indians are now within the boundaries of grants confirmed and patented since that time; but there are many Indian villages still remaining on them, and all Indians living on such lands are supposed to be there solely on the tolerance and at the mercy of the owners of said ranches, and to be liable to ejectment by law. Whether this be so or not is a point which it would seem to be wise to test before the courts. It is certain that in the case of all these Mission Indians the rights involved are quite different from and superior to the mere "occupancy" right of the wild and uncivilized Indian.
At the time of the surrender of California to the United States these Mission Indians had been for over seventy years the subjects, first of the Spanish Government, secondly of the Mexican. They came under the jurisdiction of the United States by treaty provisions,—the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, between the United States and Mexico, in 1848. At this time they were so far civilized that they had become the chief dependence of the Mexican and white settlers for all service indoors and out. In the admirable report upon these Indians made to the Interior Department in 1853, by the Hon. B. D. Wilson, of Los Angeles, are the following statements:—
"These same Indians had built all the houses in the country, planted all the fields and vineyards. Under the Missions there were masons, carpenters, plasterers, soap-makers, tanners, shoe-makers, blacksmiths, millers, bakers, cooks, brick-makers, carters and cart-makers, weavers and spinners, saddlers, shepherds, agriculturalists, horticulturalists, vineros, vaqueros; in a word, they filled all the laborious occupations known to civilized society."
The intentions of the Mexican Government toward these Indians were wise and humane. At this distance of time, and in face of the melancholy facts of the Indians' subsequent history, it is painful to go over the details of the plans devised one short half-century ago for their benefit. In 1830 there were in the twenty-one missions in California some 20,000 or 30,000 Indians, living comfortable and industrious lives under the control of the Franciscan Fathers. The Spanish colonization plan had, from the outset, contemplated the turning of these mission establishments into pueblos as soon as the Indians should have become sufficiently civilized to make this feasible. The Mexican Government, carrying out the same general plan, issued in 1833 an act, called the Secularization Act, decreeing that this change should be made. This act provided that the Indians should have assigned to them cattle, horses, and sheep from the mission herds; also, lands for cultivation. One article of Governor Figueroa's regulations for the carrying out of the Secularization Act provided that there should be given to every head of a family, and to all above twenty-one years of age, though they had no family, a lot of land not exceeding 400 varas square, nor less than 100. There was also to be given to them in common, enough land for pasturing and watering their cattle. Another article provided that one-half the cattle of each mission school should be divided among the Indians of that mission in a proportionable and equitable manner; also one-half of the chattels, instruments, seeds, &c. Restrictions were to be placed on the disposition of this property. The Indians were forbidden "to sell, burden, or alienate under any pretext the lands given them. Neither can they sell the cattle." The commissioners charged with the carrying out of these provisions were ordered to "explain all the arrangements to the Indians with suavity and patience;" to tell them that the lands and property will be divided among them so that each one may "work, maintain, and govern himself without dependence on any one." It was also provided that the rancherias (villages) situated at a distance from the missions, and containing over twenty-five families, might, if they chose, form separate pueblos, and the distribution of lands and property to them should take place in the same manner provided for those living near the missions.
These provisions were in no case faithfully carried out. The administration of the Missions' vast estates and property was too great a temptation for human nature, especially in a time of revolution and misrule. The history of the thirteen years between the passing of the Secularization Act and the conquest of California is a record of shameful fraud and pillage, of which the Indians were the most hapless victims. Instead of being permitted each one to work, maintain, and govern himself without dependence on any one, as they had been promised, their rights to their plats of land were in the majority of cases ignored; they were forced to labor on the mission lands like slaves; in many instances they were hired out in gangs to cruel masters. From these cruelties and oppressions they fled by hundreds, returning to their old wilderness homes. Those who remained in the neighborhood of the pueblos became constantly more and more demoralized, and were subjected to every form of outrage. By a decree of the Los Angeles aqumiento, about the time of our taking possession of California, all Indians found without passes, either from the alcalde of the pueblos in which they lived, or from their "masters [significant phrase], were to be treated as horse-thieves and enemies." At this time there were, according to Mr. Wilson's report, whole streets in Los Angeles where every other house was a grog-shop for Indians; and every Saturday night the town was filled with Indians in every stage of intoxication. Those who were helpless and insensible were carried to the jail, locked up, and on Monday morning bound out to the highest bidders at the jail gates. "The Indian has a quick sense of justice," says Mr. Wilson; "he can never see why he is sold out to service for an indefinite period for intemperance, while the white man goes unpunished for the same thing, and the very richest and best men, to his eye, are such as tempt him to drink, and sometimes will pay him for his labor in no other way." Even the sober and industrious and best skilled among them could earn but little; it having become a custom to pay an Indian only half the wages of a white man.
From this brief and necessarily fragmentary sketch of the position and state of the Mission Indians under the Mexican Government, at the time of the surrender of California to the United States, it will be seen that our Government received by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo a legacy of a singularly helpless race in a singularly anomalous position. It would have been very difficult, even at the outset, to devise practicable methods of dealing justly with these people, and preserving to them their rights. But with every year of our neglect the difficulties have increased and the wrongs have been multiplied, until now it is, humanly speaking, impossible to render to them full measure of justice. All that is left in our power is to make them some atonement. Fortunately for them, their numbers have greatly diminished. Suffering, hunger, disease, and vice have cut down more than half of their numbers in the last thirty years; but the remnant is worth saving. Setting aside all question of their claim as a matter of atonement for injustice done, they are deserving of help on their own merits. No one can visit their settlements, such as Aqua Caliente, Saboba, Cahuilla Valley, Santa Ysabel, without having a sentiment of respect and profound sympathy for men who, friendless, poor, without protection from the law, have still continued to work, planting, fencing, irrigating, building houses on lands from which long experience has taught them that the white man can drive them off any day he chooses. That drunkenness, gambling, and other immoralities are sadly prevalent among them, cannot be denied; but the only wonder is that so many remain honest and virtuous under conditions which make practically null and void for them most of the motives which keep white men honest and virtuous.
Having thus given as brief a presentation as possible of the general situation and nature of these Indians, we will proceed to state what, to the best of our judgment, are the steps which ought to be taken by the United States Government in their behalf. The descriptions of the most important villages we visited, and the detailed accounts of circumstances and situations on which our suggestions are based, are given for convenience of reference in separate exhibits.
1st. The first and most essential step, without which there is no possibility of protecting these Indians or doing anything intelligently for them, is the determining, resurveying, rounding out, and distinctly marking, their reservations already existing. The only way of having this done accurately and honestly, is to have it done by a surveyor who is under the orders and constant supervision of an intelligent and honest commissioner; not by an independent surveyor who runs or "floats" reservation lines where he and his friends or interested parties choose, instead of where the purpose of the United States Government, looking to the Indians' interests, had intended. There have been too many surveys of Indian reservations in Southern California of this sort. (See Exhibits C, H, I, J, L.) All the reservations made in 1876—and that comprises nearly all now existing—were laid off by guess, by the surveyor in San Diego, on an imperfect county map. These sections, thus guessed at by the surveyor, were reported by the commissioner to the Interior Department, set aside by Executive order, and ordered to be surveyed. When the actual survey came to be made, it was discovered that in the majority of cases the Indian villages intended to be provided for were outside the reservation lines, and that the greater part of the lands set apart were wholly worthless. The plats of these reservations are in the surveyor-general's office at San Francisco. On each of them was marked by the surveyor an additional line in color, showing what tracts ought to be added to take in the Indian villages and fields. So far as we could learn, no action was taken in regard to these proposed additions.
The reservation lines, when thus defined, should be marked plainly and conspicuously by monuments and stakes, leaving no room for doubt. A plat of each reservation should then be given to the Indians living on it. It was pathetic, in our visits to village after village, to hear the Indians' request reiterated for this thing,—"a paper to show to the white men where their lands were." Every fragment of writing they had ever received, which could by any possibility bear on their title to their lands, they had carefully preserved; old tattered orders from Army officers thirty years back, orders from justices of the peace, &c., all worthless of course, but brought forward with touching earnestness to show us. In no single instance had the reservation lines ever been pointed out to them. One band, the Sequan Indians, who had never seen any agent, said they had been told that they were on a reservation, but they did not know if it were true or not. They had been obliged to give up keeping stock, because they could not find any place where the whites would let them pasture cattle. (See Exhibit J.)