Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Looking through files of newspapers of that time, I found only one that had the moral courage to uphold the measure. That paper said,—

"Most of the inhabitants are now Indians who desire to be protected in their ancient possessions; and the Government is about to give them that protection, after a long delay."

One editor, having nearly exhausted the resources of invective and false statement, actually had the hardihood to say that Indians could not be induced to live on this reservation because "there are no acorn-bearing trees there, and the acorns furnish their principal food."

The congressmen and their clients were successful. The order was revoked. In less than four years the San Pasqual Indians are heard from again. A justice of the peace in the San Pasqual valley writes to the district attorney to know if anything can be done to protect these Indians.

"Last year," he says, "the heart of this rancheria (village) was filed on and pre-empted. The settlers are beginning to plough up the land. The Los Angeles Land Office has informed the Indians that, not being citizens, they cannot retain any claim. It seems very hard," says the judge, "aside from the danger of difficulties likely to arise from it."

About this time a bill introduced in Congress to provide homes for the Mission Indians on the reservation plan was reported unfavorably upon by a Senate committee, on the ground that all the Mission Indians were really American citizens. The year following, the chief of the Pala Indians, being brought to the county clerk's office to register as a voter, was refused on the ground that, being an Indian, he was not a citizen. In 1850 a small band of Indians living in San Diego County were taxed to the amount of six hundred dollars, which they paid, the sheriff said, "without a murmur." The next year they refused. The sheriff wrote to the district attorney, who replied that the tax must be paid. The Indians said they had no money. They had only bows, arrows, wigwams, and a few cattle. Finally, they were compelled to drive in enough of their cattle to pay the tax. One of the San Diego newspapers spoke of the transaction as "a small business to undertake to collect taxes from a parcel of naked Indians."

The year before these events happened a special agent, John G. Ames, had been sent out by the Government to investigate and report upon the condition of the Mission Indians. He had assured them "of the sincere desire of the Government to secure their rights and promote their interests, and of its intention to do whatever might be found practicable in this direction." He told them he had been "sent out by the Government to hear their story, to examine carefully into their condition, and to recommend such measures as seemed under the circumstances most desirable."

Mr. Ames found in the San Pasqual valley a white man who had just built for himself a good house, and claimed to have pre-empted the greater part of the Indians' village. He "had actually paid the price of the land to the register of the land office of the district, and was daily expecting the patent from Washington. He owned that it was hard to wrest from these well-disposed and industrious creatures the homes they had built up. 'But,' said he, 'if I had not done it, somebody else would; for all agree that the Indian has no right to public lands.'"

This sketch of the history of the San Pasqual and Temecula bands of Indians is a fair showing of what, with little variation, has been the fate of the Mission Indians all through Southern California. The combination of cruelty and unprincipled greed on the part of the American settlers, with culpable ignorance, indifference, and neglect on the part of the Government at Washington has resulted in an aggregate of monstrous injustice, which no one can fully realize without studying the facts on the ground. In the winter of 1882 I visited this San Pasqual valley. I drove over from San Diego with the Catholic priest, who goes there three or four Sundays in a year, to hold service in a little adobe chapel built by the Indians in the days of their prosperity. This beautiful valley is from one to three miles wide, and perhaps twelve long. It is walled by high-rolling, soft-contoured hills, which are now one continuous wheat-field. There are, in sight of the chapel, a dozen or so adobe houses, many of which were built by the Indians; in all of them except one are now living the robber whites, who have driven the Indians out; only one Indian still remains in the valley. He earns a meagre living for himself and family by doing day's work for the farmers who have taken his land. The rest of the Indians are hidden away in the cañons and rifts of the near hills,—wherever they can find a bit of ground to keep a horse or two and raise a little grain. They have sought the most inaccessible spots, reached often by miles of difficult trail. They have fled into secret lairs like hunted wild beasts. The Catholic priest of San Diego is much beloved by them. He has been their friend for many years. When he goes to hold service, they gather from their various hiding-places and refuges; sometimes, on a special fête day, over two hundred come. But on the day I was there, the priest being a young man who was a stranger to them, only a few were present. It was a pitiful sight. The dilapidated adobe building, empty and comfortless; the ragged poverty-stricken creatures, kneeling on the bare ground,—a few Mexicans, with some gaudiness of attire, setting off the Indians' poverty still more. In front of the chapel, on a rough cross-beam supported by two forked posts, set awry in the ground, swung a bell bearing the date of 1770. It was one of the bells of the old San Diego Mission. Standing bareheaded, the priest rang it long and loud: he rang it several times before the leisurely groups that were plainly to be seen in doorways or on roadsides bestirred themselves to make any haste to come. After the service I had a long talk, through an interpreter, with an aged Indian, the oldest now living in the county. He is said to be considerably over a hundred, and his looks corroborate the statement. He is almost blind, and has snow-white hair, and a strange voice, a kind of shrill whisper. He says he recollects the rebuilding of the San Diego Mission; though he was a very little boy then, he helped to carry the mud mortar. This was one hundred and three years ago. Instances of much greater longevity than this, however, are not uncommon among the California Indians. I asked if he had a good time in the mission. "Yes, yes," he said, turning his sightless eyes up to the sky; "much good time," "plenty to eat," "atole," "pozzole," "meat;" now, "no meat;" "all the time to beg, beg;" "all the time hungry." His wife, who is older than he, is still living, though "her hair is not so white." She was ill, and was with relatives far away in the mountains; he lifted his hand and pointed in the direction of the place. "Much sick, much sick; she will never walk any more," he said, with deep feeling in his voice.

During the afternoon the Indians were continually coming and going at the shop connected with the inn where we had stopped, some four miles from the valley. The keeper of the shop and inn said he always trusted them. They were "good pay." "Give them their time and they'll always pay; and if they die their relations will pay the last cent." Some of them he would "trust any time as high as twenty dollars." When I asked him how they earned their money, he seemed to have no very distinct idea. Some of them had a little stock; they might now and then sell a horse or a cow, he said; they hired as laborers whenever they could get a chance, working at sheep-shearing in the spring and autumn, and at grape-picking in the vintage season. A few of them had a little wheat to sell; sometimes they paid him in wheat. There were not nearly so many of them, however, as there had been when he first opened his shop; not half so many, he thought. Where had they gone? He shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows?" he said.