Said affiants therefore pray that said land be returned to the said Indians by the United States Government.
Signed by Patricio Soberano and Felipe Joqua in presence of the justice of the peace, in Pala.
Exhibit M.
THE PACHANGA INDIANS.
This little band of Indians is worthy of a special mention. They are San Luisenos, and formerly lived in the Temecula Valley, where they had good adobe houses and a large tract of land under cultivation. The ruins of these houses are still standing there, also their walled graveyard full of graves. There had been a settlement of Indians in this Temecula Valley from time immemorial, and at the time of the secularization of the missions many of the neophytes of San Luis Rey returned thither to their old home. At the time of the outbreak of the Aqua Caliente Indians, in 1851, these Temecula Indians refused to join in it and moved their families and stock to Los Angeles for protection. Pablo, their chief at that time, was a man of some education, could read and write, and possessed large herds of cattle and horses. This Temecula Valley was a part of the tract given to the San Luisenos and Dieguinos by the treaty of January 3d, 1853, referred to in the body of this report. (See page 460.) In 1873 a decree of ejectment against these Indians was obtained in the San Francisco courts without the Indians' knowledge. The San Diego Union of September 23d, 1875, says on the subject:
"For forty years these Indians have been recognized as the most thrifty and industrious Indians in all California. For more than twenty years past these Indians have been yearly told by the United States commissioners and agents, both special and general, as well as by their legal counsel, that they could remain on these lands. Now, without any previous knowledge by them of any proceedings in court, they are ordered to leave their lands and homes. The order of ejectment has been served on them by the sheriff of San Diego County. He is not only commanded to remove these Indians, but to take of their property whatever may be required to pay the costs incurred in the suit."
Comment on the extracts would be superfluous. There is not often so much of history condensed in the same number of newspaper paragraphs. A portion of these Temecula Indians, wishing to remain as near their old homes and the graves of their dead as possible, went over in the Pachanga cañon, only three miles distant. It was a barren, dry spot; but the Indians sunk a well, built new houses, and went to work again. In the spring of 1882, when we first visited the place, there was a considerable amount of land in wheat and barley, and a little fencing had been done. In July, 1882, the tract was set off by Executive order as a reservation for these Indians. In the following May we visited the valley again. Our first thought on entering it was, Would that all persons who still hold to the belief that Indians will not work could see this valley. It would be hardly an extreme statement to say that the valley was one continuous field of grain. At least four times the amount of the previous year had been planted. Corrals had been built, fruit orchards started; one man had even so far followed white men's example as to fence in his orchard a piece of the road which passed his place. The whole expression of the place had changed; so great a stimulus had there been to the Indians in even the slight additional sense of security given by the Executive order setting off their valley as a reservation. And, strangely enough, as if Nature herself had conspired at once to help and to avenge these Indians in the Temecula Valley from which they had been driven out, the white men's grain crops were thin, poor, hardly worth cutting; while the Indians' fields were waving high and green—altogether the best wheat and barley we had seen in the county. It is fortunate that this little nook of cultivable land was set aside as a reservation. Had it not been it would have been "filed on" before now by the whites in the region, who already look with envy and chagrin on the crops the Indian exiles have wrested from land nobody thought worth taking up.
A Government school has been opened here within the past year, and the scholars have made good progress. We found, however, much unpleasant feeling among the Indians in regard to the teacher of this school, owing to his having a few years before driven off four Indian families from their lands at Pala, and patented the lands to himself. There were also other rumors seriously affecting his moral character which led us to make the suggestion in regard to the employment of female teachers in these Indian schools. (See report recommendation.) As one of the Indians forcibly said, to set such men as this over schools was like setting the wolf to take care of the lambs.
These Pachanga Indians had, before the setting aside of their tract as a reservation, taken steps towards the securing of their cañon, and the dividing it among themselves under the provisions of the Indian Homestead Act. They were counselled to this and assisted in it by Richard Eagan, of San Juan Capistrano, well known as a good friend of the Indians. They have expressed themselves as deeply regretting that they were persuaded to abandon this plan and have the tract set off as a reservation. They were told that they could in this way get their individual titles just as securely and without cost. Finding that they have no individual titles, and cannot get them, they are greatly disappointed. It would seem wise to allow them as soon as possible to carry out their original intention. They are quite ready and fit for it.
Exhibit N.