6th. The suggestion of the value of itinerary labor among the Indians leads to our next recommendation, which we consider of great importance, viz., that it should be made the duty of any Government agent in charge of the Mission Indians to make a round of inspection at least twice a year, visiting each village or settlement however small. In no other way can anything like a proper supervision of these Indians' interests be attained. This proof of the Government's intention to keep a sharp eye on all that might occur in relation to the Indians would have a salutary moral effect, not only on the Indians, but on the white settlers in their neighborhood. It would also afford the means of dealing with comparative promptitude with the difficulties and troubles continually arising. As it is now, it is not to be wondered at that the Indians feel themselves unprotected and neglected, and the white settlers feel themselves safe in trespassing on Indians' property or persons. In some of the villages, where pre-emption claims have been located within the last four years, no agent has ever been. It is safe to say, that had an agent been on the ground each year, with the proper authority to take efficient measures, much of the present suffering and confusion would have been prevented. In the case, for instance, of the Los Coyotes village, filed on a few months ago (see Exhibit F), there was no reason why those lands should not have been set apart for the Indians long ago, had their situation been understood; so in the San Ysidro case, and others. The whole situation of an agent in regard to the Mission Indians is totally different from that of ordinary agency on a reservation. The duties of an Indian agent on a reservation may be onerous, but they are in a sense simple. His Indians are all together, within comparatively narrow limits, and, so to speak, under his hand, and dependent largely on the Government. The Mission Indians, on the contrary, are scattered in isolated settlements thirty, forty, a hundred miles away from the agency headquarters, many of them in regions difficult of access. Moreover, the Indians are in the main self-supporting and independent. Protection or oversight worth anything to them can only be given by a systematic method of frequent visitation.
What is true in this respect of the agent's work is, if possible, still truer of the physician's. If there is to be an agency physician for the Mission Indians at all, he should be a young, strong, energetic man, who is both able and willing to make at least four circuits a year through the villages, and who will hold himself bound to go when called in all cases of epidemics, serious illness, or accidents occurring among Indians within one day's journey of the agency headquarters. Whatever salary it is necessary to pay to secure such service as this should be paid, or else the office of agency physician to the Mission Indians should be abolished. Anything less than this is a farce and a fraud.
7th. We recommend that there be secured the appointment of a lawyer, or a law firm in Los Angeles, to act as special United States attorney in all cases affecting the interests of these Indians. They have been so long without any protection from the law that outrages and depredations upon them have become the practice in all white communities near which they live. Indians' stock is seized, corraled and held for fines, sometimes shot, even on the Indians' own reservations or in the public domain. In seasons of dearth roving stockmen and shepherds drive their herds and flocks into Indians' grain-fields, destroying their subsistence for a whole year. Lands occupied by Indians or by Indian villages are filed on for homestead entry precisely as if they were vacant lands. This has been more than once done without the Indians receiving any warning until the sheriff arrived with the writ for their ejectment. The Indians' own lives are in continual danger, it being a safe thing to shoot an Indian at any time when only Indian witnesses are present. (See Exhibits C, E.) It is plain that all such cases as these should be promptly dealt with by equal means. One of the greatest difficulties in the position of the Mission Indians' agent is, that in all such cases he is powerless to act except through the at best slow and hitherto unsatisfactory channel of reporting to the Interior Department. He is in the embarrassing position of a guardian of wards with property and property rights, for the defence of which he is unable to call in prompt legal assistance. In instances in which the Indians themselves have endeavored to get redress through the courts, they have in the majority of cases—to the shame of the Southern California bar be it spoken—been egregiously cheated. They are as helpless as children in the hands of dishonest, unscrupulous men. We believe that the mere fact of there being such a United States legal authority near at hand to act for the Indians would in a short time, after a few effective illustrations of its power, do away with the greater proportion of the troubles demanding legal interference.
The question of the rights of Indians living on grant lands to remain there will, if the Department decides to test it by law, involve some litigation, as it will no doubt be contested by the ranch owners; but this point once settled, and the Indians secured in the ownership of their lands, a very few years will see the end of any special need of litigation in their behalf. We recommend in this connection and for this office the firm of Brunson & Wells, of Los Angeles. We have obtained from this firm a clear and admirable opinion on these Indians' right to their present homes (see Exhibit A), and we know them to be of high standing at the bar and to have a humane sympathy for Indians.
8th. We recommend that there should be a judicious distribution of agricultural implements among these Indians. No village should be omitted. Wagons, harness, ploughs, spades, and hoes are greatly needed. It is surprising to see what some of these villages have accomplished with next to no implements. In the Santa Ysabel village the Indians had three hundred acres in wheat; there were but three old broken ploughs in the village, no harness, and no wagon. (See Exhibit G.) There is at present much, and not unfounded, sore feeling in some of the villages which have thus far received no help of this kind, while others of the villages have been supplied with all that was needed.
9th. There should always be provided for the Mission Indians' agency a small fund for the purchase of food and clothing for the very old and sick in times of especial destitution. The Mission Indians as a class do not beg. They are proud-spirited, and choose to earn their living. They will endure a great deal before they will ask for help. But in seasons of drought or when their little crops have, for any cause, failed, there is sometimes great distress in the villages. Last winter the Cahuillas, in the Cahuilla Valley (see Exhibit C), were for many weeks without sufficient food. The teacher of their school repeatedly begged them to let her write to the agent for help, but they refused. At last one night the captain and two of the head men came to her room and said she might write. They could no longer subdue the hunger. She wrote the letter; the next morning at daylight the Indians were at her door again. They had reconsidered it, they said, and they would not beg. They would rather starve, and they would not permit her to send the letter.
10th. The second and third special points on which we were instructed to report to the Department were, whether there still remains in Southern California any Government land suitable for an Indian reservation, and if not, in case lands must be bought for that purpose, what lands can be most advantageously purchased. There is no Government land remaining in Southern California in blocks of any size suitable for either white or Indian occupancy. The reason that the isolated little settlements of Indians are being now so infringed upon and seized, even at the desert's edge and in stony fastnesses of mountains, is that all the good lands—i.e., lands with water or upon which water can be developed—are taken up.
We recommend two purchases of land,—one positively, the other contingently. The first is the Pauma Ranch, now owned by Bishop Mora, of Los Angeles. (See Exhibit P.) This ranch, lying as it does between the Rincon and Pala Reservations on the north and south, and adjoining the La Jolla Reservation, affords an admirable opportunity to consolidate a large block of land for Indian occupancy. It is now, in our opinion, a desirable tract. While it is largely hilly and mountainous, there is considerable good sheep and cattle pasturing on it, and a fair amount of bottom land for cultivation along the river. The price asked for it is, as lands are now selling in Southern California, low. If the already existing reservations are cleared of whites, unified, and made ready for Indian occupancy, and the Government lands now in actual occupation by Indians be assured to them, the addition of this Pauma Ranch will be, in our opinion, all that will be required to make comfortable provision for all the Indians, except those living within the boundaries of confirmed grants.
Should the Department decide to remove all these and provide them with new homes, we recommend the purchase of the Santa Ysabel ranch. (See Exhibit Q.) The purchase of this ranch for an Indian reservation was recommended to the Government some years ago, but it was rejected on account of the excessive price asked for it. It is now offered to the Government for $95,000. During the past ten years the value of lands in Southern California has in many places quadrupled; in some it is worth more than twenty times what it was then. We have no hesitation in saying that it is not now possible to buy an equally suitable tract for any less money. The ranch contains 17,719.40 acres; is within the rain belt of San Diego County, is well watered, and, although it is largely mountainous, has good pasture, some meadow land, and some oak timber. It is, moreover, in the region to which the greater proportion of these Indians are warmly attached and in the vicinity of which most of them are now living. One large Indian village is on the ranch. (See Exhibit G.) Father Ubach, the Catholic priest of San Diego, who has known these Indians for seventeen years, says of it, "it is the only tract to which human power can force these Indians to remove." We recommend this purchase only as a last resort in the event of the Department's being compelled to provide new homes for all the Indians now living within the boundaries of confirmed grants.
In conclusion, we would make the suggestion that there are several small bands of Mission Indians north of the boundaries of the so-called Mission Indians' agency, for whom it would seem to be the duty of the Government to care as well as for those already enumerated. One of these is the San Carlos Indians, living near the old San Carlos Mission at Monterey. There are nearly one hundred of these, and they are living on lands which were given to them before the Secularization Act in 1834. These lands are close to the boundaries of the ranch San Francisquito of Monterey. These boundaries have been three times extended, each time taking in a few more acres of the Indians' lands, until now they have only ten or twelve acres left. There are also some very destitute Indians living in the neighborhood of the San Antonio Mission, some sixty miles south of Monterey, and of San Miguel, forty miles farther south, and of Santa Juez near Santa Barbara. These Indians should not be overlooked in arrangements made for the final establishing of the Mission Indians in Southern California.