THE LOS COYOTES.
Five miles up from the head of the San Ysidro Cañon, to be reached only by a steep and narrow trail, lies a small valley on the desert side of the mountains. It is little more than a pocket on a ledge. From its rim one looks down directly into the desert. Few white men have ever penetrated to it, and the Indians occupying it have been hitherto safe, by reason of the poverty and inaccessibility of their home. No agent has ever visited them; they have supported themselves by keeping stock and cultivating their few acres of land. There are not more than eighty acres all told in the valley. About three weeks before our arrival at Warner's Ranch a man named Jim Fane, a comrade of Helm, who had usurped the San Ysidro Cañon, having, no doubt, learned through Helm of the existence of the Los Coyotes Valley, appeared in the village and offered the Indians $200 for their place. They refused to sell, upon which he told them that he had filed on the land, should stay in any event, and proceeded to cut down trees and build a corral. It seems a marvellous forbearance on the part of a community numbering twenty-six able-bodied men and twenty-one women not to take any forcible measures to repel such an intruder as this. But the South California Indians have learned by long experience that in any contest with white men they are sure to be found in the wrong. Not an Indian laid violent hands on Fane. He seems to have gone about as safely in the heart of this Indian village, which he was avowedly making ready to steal, as if he had been in an empty wilderness. Mr. Kinney found him there, hard at work, his belt full of cartridges and pistols. He was a rough fellow, at first disposed to be defiant and blustering, but on being informed of the Department's action in the case of Cloos's filing, he took a milder tone, and signed a paper saying that he would take $75 for his "improvements." Later in the day, after consulting with his friend Helm, he withdrew the paper and announced his determination to stay in the valley. On inquiry at the land office at Los Angeles we found that his filing had been returned to him for correction of errors. We were therefore in time to secure the stopping of all further proceedings on his part through the land office. Nothing, however, but authorized and authoritative action on the part of the agent representing the Interior Department will stop his proceedings on the ground. Just before leaving California we received an urgent letter from the Los Coyotes' captain, saying that Fane was still there—still cutting down their trees and building corrals.
The Indians of this band are robust, active, and finely made, more nearly in the native health and strength of the race than any other band in the country. The large proportion of children also bore testimony to their healthful condition, there being thirty-five children to twenty-one women and twenty-six men. The captain had the lists of his people kept by three lines of notches on a stick, a new notch being made for each birth and crossed out for each death. They could count only up to five. Everything beyond that was "many." Their houses were good, built of hewn pine timber with thatched roofs made from some tough fibrous plant, probably the yucca. Each house had a thatched bower in front of it and stood in a fenced enclosure. These Indians raise beans, pumpkins, wheat, barley, and corn. They have twenty-five head of cattle and more horses. They say they have lived in this valley always, and never desire to leave it. The only things they asked for were a harness, chain, coulter, and five ploughs. They have now one plough.
This village is one of the best illustrations of our remarks on the need of itinerary labor among the Mission Indians. Here is a village of eighty-four souls living in a mountain fastness which they so love they would rather die than leave it, but where the ordinary agencies and influences of civilization will never reach, no matter how thickly settled the regions below may come. A fervent religious and practical teacher spending a few weeks each year among these Indians might sow seed that would never cease growing during the intervals of his absence.
Exhibit G.
THE SANTA YSABEL RANCH.
The Santa Ysabel Ranch is adjoining to Warner's Ranch. It is a well-wooded, well-watered, beautiful country, much broken by steep and stony mountains. The original grant of this ranch was confirmed March 17th, 1858, to one José Ortego and the heirs of Edward Stokes. The patent was issued May 14th, 1872. It is now owned by a Captain Wilcox, who has thus far not only left undisturbed the Indian village within the boundaries of his estate, but has endeavored to protect the Indians by allowing to the ranch lessee a rebate of $200 yearly on the rent on account of the Indians' occupancy. There is in the original grant of this ranch the following clause: "The grantees will leave free and undisturbed the agricultural lands which the Indians of San Diego are actually occupying."
We found on arriving at the Santa Ysabel village that an intelligent young Indian living there had recently been elected as general over the Dieguino Indians in the neighborhood. He showed to us his papers and begged us to wait till he could have all his captains gathered to meet us. Eight villages he reported as being under his control,—Santa Ysabel, Mesa Grande, Mesa Chilquita, San José, Mataguay, La Puerta, Laguna, and Anaha. He was full of interest and inquiry and enthusiasm about his people. "I want know American way," he said in his broken English. "I want make all my people like American people. How I find out American laws? When white men lose cow, lose pig, they come here with pistol and say we must find or give up man that stole. How we know? Is that American law? We all alone out here. We got nobody show us. Heap things I want ask about. I make all my people work. We can't work like American people; we ain't got work with; we ain't got wagon, harness; three old broked ploughs for all these people. What we want, some man right here to go to. While you here white man very good; when you go away trouble same as before."
There are one hundred and seventy-one Indians in this village. They are very poor. Many of their houses are of tule or brush, their clothes were scanty and ragged, some of the older men wearing but a single garment. That they had not been idle their big wheat-field proved; between three and four hundred acres fenced and the wheat well up. "How do you divide the crops?" we asked. "Every man knows his own piece," was the reply. They sell all of this wheat that they can spare to a storekeeper some three miles away. Having no wagon they draw the wheat there on a sort of sledge or wood triangle, about four feet long, with slats across it. A rope is tied to the apex of this, then fastened to the horn of a saddle on a horse ridden by a man, who steers the sledge as best he may. The Indians brought this sledge to show us, to prove how sorely they needed wagons. They also made the women bring out all the children and arrange them in rows, to show that they had enough for a school, repeating over and over that they had many more, but they were all out digging wild roots and vegetables. "If there was not great many them, my people die hungry," said the general; "them most what we got eat." It is a sore grievance to these Santa Ysabel Indians that the Aqua Caliente Indians, only twenty miles away, have received from the Government a school, ploughs, wagons, &c., while nothing whatever has been done for them. "Them Aqua Caliente Indians got everything," said the general; "got hot springs too; make money on them hot springs; my people got no chance make money."
On the second day of our stay in this region we saw four of the young general's captains, those of Puerta San Felipe, San José, Anaha, and Laguna. In Puerta San Felipe are sixty-four people. This village is on a confirmed grant, the "Valle de San Felipe," confirmed to Felipe Castillo. The ranch is now leased to a Frenchman, who is taking away the water from the Indian village, and tells the captain that the whole village belongs to him, and that if anybody so much as hunts a rabbit on the place he will put him in prison. These people are in great destitution and trouble, being deprived of most of their previous means of support. The Anaha captain reported fifty-three people in his village. White men had come in and fenced up land on both sides of him. "When he plants his wheat and grain the white men run their hogs into the fields;" and "when the white men find anything dead they come to him to make him tell everything about it, and he has not got anything to tell." The San José captain had a similar story. The Laguna captain was a tall, swarthy, well-to-do-looking Indian, so unlike all the rest that we wondered what there could have been in his life to produce such a difference. He said nobody troubled him. He had good land, plenty of water, raised grain and vegetables, everything he wanted except watermelons. His village contained eleven persons; was to be reached only by a steep trail, the last four miles. We expressed our pleasure at finding one Indian captain and village that were in no trouble and wanted for nothing. He smiled mysteriously, as we afterward recalled, and reiterated that nobody troubled him. The mystery was explained later, when we discovered accidentally in San Diego that this Laguna village had not escaped, as we supposed, the inroads of white men, and that the only reason that the Laguna Indians were not in trouble was that they had peaceably surrendered half their lands to a white man, who was living amicably among them under a sort of contract or lease.