THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MISSION INDIANS
The disastrous effect of the order of secularization upon the Indians,
as well as the Missions themselves, has been referred to in a special
chapter. Here I wish to give, in brief, a clearer idea of the present
condition of the Indians than was there possible. In the years 1833-1837
secularization actually was accomplished. The knowledge that it was
coming had already done much injury. The Pious Fund, which then amounted
to upwards of a half-million dollars, was confiscated by the Mexican
government. The officials said it was merely "borrowed." This
practically left the Indians to their own resources. A certain amount of
land and stock were to be given to each head of a family, and tools were
to be provided. Owing to the long distance between California and the
City of Mexico, there was much confusion as to how the changes should be
brought about. There have been many charges made, alleging that the
padres wilfully allowed the Mission property to go to ruin, when they
were deprived of its control. This ruin would better be attributed to
the general demoralization of the times than to any definite policy.
For it must be remembered that the political conditions of Mexico at
that time were most unsettled. None knew what a day or an hour might
bring forth. All was confusion, uncertainty, irresponsibility. And in
the _mêlée_ Mission property and Mission Indians suffered.
What was to become of the Indians? Imagine the father of a family--that
had no mother--suddenly snatched away, and all the property, garden,
granary, mill, storehouse, orchards, cattle, placed in other hands. What
would the children do?
So now the Indians, like bereft children, knew not what to do, and,
naturally, they did what our own children would do. Led by want and
hunger, some sought and found work and food, and others, alas, became
thieves. The Mission establishment was the organized institution that
had cared for them, and had provided the work that supported them. No
longer able to go and live "wildly" as of old, they were driven to evil
methods by necessity unless the new government directed their energies
into right channels. Few attempted to do this; hence the results that
were foreseen by the padres followed.
July 7, 1846, saw the Mexican flag in California hauled down, and the
Stars and Stripes raised in its place; but as far as the Indian was
concerned, the change was for the worse instead of the better. Indeed,
it may truthfully be said that the policies of the three governments,
Spanish, Mexican, and American, have shown three distinct phases, and
that the last is by far the worst.
Our treatment of these Indians reads like a hideous nightmare.
Absolutely no forceful and effective protest seems to have been made
against the indescribable wrongs perpetrated. The gold discoveries of
1849 brought into the country a class of adventurers, gamblers, liquor
sellers, and camp followers of the vilest description. The Indians
became helpless victims in the hands of these infamous wretches, and
even the authorities aided to make these Indians "good."
Bartlett, who visited the country in 1850 to 1853, tells of meeting with
an old Indian at San Luis Rey who spoke glowingly of the good times they
had when the padres were there, but "now," he said, "they were scattered
about, he knew not where, without a home or protectors, and were in a
miserable, starving condition." Of the San Francisco Indians he says:
"They are a miserable, squalid-looking set, squatting or
lying about the corners of the streets, without occupation.
They have now no means of obtaining a living, as their lands
are all taken from them; and the Missions for which they
labored, and which provided after a sort for many thousands
of them, are abolished. No care seems to be taken of them by
the Americans; on the contrary, the effort seems to be to
exterminate them as soon as possible."
According to the most conservative estimates there were over thirty
thousand Indians under the control of the Missions at the time of
secularization in 1833. To-day, how many are there? I have spent long
days in the different Mission localities, arduously searching for
Indians, but oftentimes only to fail of my purpose. In and about San
Francisco, there is not one to be found. At San Carlos Borromeo, in both
Monterey and the Carmelo Valley, except for a few half-breeds, no one of
Indian blood can be discovered. It is the same at San Miguel, San Luis
Obispo, and Santa Barbara. At Pala, that romantic chapel, where once the
visiting priest from San Luis Rey found a congregation of several
hundreds awaiting his ministrations, the land was recently purchased
from white men, by the United States Indian Commission, as a new home
for the evicted Palatingwa Indians of Warner's Ranch. These latter
Indians, in recent interviews with me, have pertinently asked: "Where
did the white men get this land, so they could sell it to the government
for us? Indians lived here many centuries before a white man had ever
seen the 'land of the sundown sea.' When the 'long-gowns' first came
here, there were many Indians at Pala. Now they are all gone. Where? And
how do we know that before long we shall not be driven out, and be gone,
as they were driven out and are gone?"
At San Luis Rey and San Diego, there are a few scattered families, but
very few, and most of these have fled far back into the desert, or to
the high mountains, as far as possible out of reach of the civilization
that demoralizes and exterminates them.
A few scattered remnants are all that remain.
Let us seek for the real reason why.
The system of the padres was patriarchal, paternal. Certain it is that
the Indians were largely treated as if they were children. No one
questions or denies this statement. Few question that the Indians were
happy under this system, and all will concede that they made wonderful
progress in the so-called arts of civilization. From crude savagery they
were lifted by the training of the fathers into usefulness and
productiveness. They retained their health, vigor, and virility. They
were, by necessity perhaps, but still undeniably, chaste, virtuous,
temperate, honest, and reasonably truthful. They were good fathers and
mothers, obedient sons and daughters, amenable to authority, and
respectful to the counsels of old age.
All this and more may unreservedly be said for the Indians while they
were under the control of the fathers. That there were occasionally
individual cases of harsh treatment is possible. The most loving and
indulgent parents are now and again ill-tempered, fretful, or nervous.
The fathers were men subject to all the limitations of other men.
Granting these limitations and making due allowance for human
imperfection, the rule of the fathers must still be admired for its
wisdom and commended for its immediate results.
Now comes the order of secularization, and a little later the domination
of the Americans. Those opposed to the control of the fathers are to set
the Indians free. They are to be "removed from under the irksome
restraint of cold-blooded priests who have held them in bondage not far
removed from slavery"!! They are to have unrestrained liberty, the
broadest and fullest intercourse with the great American people, the
white, Caucasian American, not the dark-skinned Mexican!!!
What was the result. Let an eye-witness testify:
"These thousands of Indians had been held in the most rigid
discipline by the Mission Fathers, and after their
emancipation by the Supreme Government of Mexico, had been
reasonably well governed by the local authorities, who found
in them indispensable auxiliaries as farmers and harvesters,
hewers of wood and drawers of water, and besides, the best
horse-breakers and herders in the world, necessary to the
management of the great herds of the country. These Indians
were Christians, docile even to servility, and excellent
laborers. Then came the Americans, followed soon after by the
discovery of, and the wild rush for, gold, and the relaxation
for the time being of a healthy administration of the laws.
The ruin of this once happy and useful people commenced. The
cultivators of vineyards began to pay their Indian _peons_
with _aguardiente_, a real 'firewater.' The consequence was
that on receiving their wages on Saturday evening, the
laborers habitually met in great gatherings and passed the
night in gambling, drunkenness, and debauchery. On Sunday the
streets were crowded from morning until night with
Indians,--males and females of all ages, from the girl of ten
or twelve to the old man and woman of seventy or eighty.
"By four o'clock on Sunday afternoon, Los Angeles Street,
from Commercial to Nigger Alley, Aliso Street from Los
Angeles to Alameda, and Nigger Alley, were crowded with a
mass of drunken Indians, yelling and fighting: men and women,
boys and girls using tooth and nail, and frequently knives,
but always in a manner to strike the spectator with horror.
"At sundown, the pompous marshal, with his Indian special
deputies, who had been confined in jail all day to keep them
sober, would drive and drag the combatants to a great corral
in the rear of the Downey Block, where they slept away their
intoxication. The following morning they would be exposed for
sale, as slaves for the week. Los Angeles had its slave-mart
as well as New Orleans and Constantinople,--only the slaves
at Los Angeles were sold fifty-two times a year, as long as
they lived, a period which did not generally exceed one, two,
or three years under the new dispensation. They were sold for
a week, and bought up by vineyard men and others at prices
ranging from one to three dollars, one-third of which was to
be paid to the _peon_ at the end of the week, which debt, due
for well-performed labor, was invariably paid in
_aguardiente,_ and the Indian made happy, until the following
Monday morning, he having passed through another Saturday
night and Sunday's saturnalia of debauchery and bestiality.
Those thousands of honest, useful people were absolutely
destroyed in this way."
In reference to these statements of the sale of the Indians as slaves,
it should be noted that the act was done under the cover of the law. The
Indian was "fined" a certain sum for his drunkenness, and was then
turned over to the tender mercies of the employer, who paid the fine.
Thus "justice" was perverted to the vile ends of the conscienceless
scoundrels who posed as "officers of the law."
Charles Warren Stoddard, one of California's sweetest poets, realized to
the full the mercenary treatment the Missions and the Indians had
received, and one of the latest and also most powerful poems he ever
wrote, "The Bells of San Gabriel," deals with this spoliation as a
theme. The poem first appeared in _Sunset Magazine, the Pacific
Monthly,_ and with the kind consent of the editor I give the
last stanza.
"Where are they now, O tower!
The locusts and wild honey?
Where is the sacred dower
That the Bride of Christ was given?
Gone to the wielders of power,
The misers and minters of money;
Gone for the greed that is their creed--
And these in the land have thriven.
What then wert thou, and what art now,
And wherefore hast thou striven?
REFRAIN
And every note of every bell
Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel!
In the tower that is left the tale to tell
Of Gabriel, the Archangel."
To-day, the total Indian population of Southern California is reported
as between two and three thousand. It is not increasing, and it is good
for the race that it is not. Until the incumbency by W.A. Jones of the
Indian Commissionership in Washington, there seems to have been little
or no attempt at effective protection of the Indians against the land
and other thefts of the whites. The facts are succinctly and powerfully
stated by Helen Hunt Jackson in her report to the government, and in her
_Glimpses of California and the Missions_. The indictment of churches,
citizens, and the general government, for their crime of supineness in
allowing our acknowledged wards to be seduced, cheated, and corrupted,
should be read by every honest American; even though it make his blood
seethe with indignation and his nerves quiver with shame.
In my larger work on this subject I published a table from the report of
the agent for the "Mission-Tule" Consolidated Agency, which is dated
September 25, 1903.
This is the official report of an agent whom not even his best friends
acknowledge as being over fond of his Indian charges, or likely to be
sentimental in his dealings with them. What does this report state? Of
twenty-eight "reservations"--and some of these include several Indian
villages--it announces that the lands of eight are yet "not patented."
In other words, that the Indians are living upon them "on sufferance."
Therefore, if any citizen of the United States, possessed of sufficient
political power, so desired, the lands could be restored to the public
domain. Then, not even the United States Supreme Court could hold them
for the future use and benefit of the Indians.
On five of these reservations the land is "desert," and in two cases,
"subject to intense heat" (it might be said, to 150 degrees, and even
higher in the middle of summer); in one case there is "little water for
irrigation."
In four cases it is "poor land," with "no water," and in another
instance there are "worthless, dry hills;" in still another the soil is
"almost worthless for lack of water!"
In one of the desert cases, where there are five villages, the
government has supplied "water in abundance for irrigation and domestic
use, from artesian wells." Yet the land is not patented, and the Indians
are helpless, if evicted by resolute men.
At Cahuilla, with a population of one hundred fifty-five, the report
says, "mountain valley; stock land and little water. Not patented."
At Santa Isabel, including Volcan, with a population of two hundred
eighty-four, the reservation of twenty-nine thousand eight hundred
forty-four acres is patented, but the report says it is "mountainous;
stock land; no water."
At San Jacinto, with a population of one hundred forty-three, the two
thousand nine hundred sixty acres are "mostly poor; very little water,
and not patented."
San Manuel, with thirty-eight persons, has a patent for six hundred
forty acres of "worthless, dry hills."
Temecula, with one hundred eighty-one persons, has had allotted to its
members three thousand three hundred sixty acres, which area, however,
is "almost worthless for lack of water."
Let us reflect upon these things! The poor Indian is exiled and expelled
from the lands of his ancestors to worthless hills, sandy desert,
grazing lands, mostly poor and mountainous land, while our powerful
government stands by and professes its helplessness to prevent the evil.
These discouraging facts are enough to make the just and good men who
once guided the republic rise from their graves. Is there a remnant of
honor, justice, or integrity, left among our politicians?
There is one thing this government should have done, could have done,
and might have done, and it is to its discredit and disgrace that it did
not do it; that is, when the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred the
Indians from the domination of Mexico to that of the United States,
this government "of, for, and by" the people, should have recognized the
helplessness of its wards and not passed a law of which they could not
by any possibility know, requiring them to file on their lands, but it
should have appointed a competent guardian of their moral and legal
rights, taking it for granted that _occupancy of the lands of their
forefathers would give them a legal title which would hold forever
against all comers_.
In all the Spanish occupation of California it is doubtful whether one
case ever occurred where an Indian was driven off his land.
In rendering a decision on the Warner's Ranch Case the United States
Supreme Court had an opportunity offered it, once for all to settle the
status of all American Indians. Had it familiarized itself with the laws
of Spain, under which all Spanish grants were made, it would have found
that the Indian was always considered first and foremost in all grants
of lands made. He must be protected in his right; it was inalienable. He
was helpless, and therefore the officers of the Crown were made
responsible for his protection. If subordinate officers failed, then the
more urgent the duty of superior officers. Therefore, even had a grant
been made of Warner's Ranch in which the grantor purposely left out the
recognition of the rights of the Indians, the highest Spanish courts
would not have tolerated any such abuse of power. This was an axiom of
Spanish rule, shown by a hundred, a thousand precedents. Hence it
should have been recognized by the United States Supreme Court. It is
good law, but better, it is good sense and common justice, and this is
especially good when it protects the helpless and weak from the powerful
and strong.
In our dealings with the Indians in our school system, we are making the
mistake of being in too great a hurry. A race of aborigines is not
raised into civilization in a night. It will be well if it is done in
two or three generations.
Contrast our method with that followed by the padres. Is there any
comparison? Yes! To our shame and disgrace. The padres kept fathers and
mothers and children together, at least to a reasonable degree. Where
there were families they lived--as a rule--in their own homes near the
Missions. Thus there was no division of families. On the other hand, we
have wilfully and deliberately, though perhaps without _malice
aforethought_ (although the effect has been exactly the same as if we
had had malice), separated children from their parents and sent them a
hundred, several hundred, often two or three _thousand_ miles away from
home, there to receive an education often entirely inappropriate and
incompetent to meet their needs. And even this sending has not always
been honorably done. _Vide_ the United States Indian Commissioner's
report for 1900. He says:
"These pupils are gathered from the cabin, the wickiup, and
the tepee. _Partly by cajolery and partly by threats; partly
by bribery and partly by fraud; partly by persuasion and
partly by force_, they are induced to leave their homes and
their kindred to enter these schools and take upon themselves
the outward semblance of civilized life. They are chosen not
on account of any particular merit of their own, not by
reason of mental fitness, but solely because they have Indian
blood in their veins. Without regard to their worldly
condition; without any previous training; without any
preparation whatever, they are transported to the
schools--sometimes thousands of miles away--without the
slightest expense or trouble to themselves or their people.
"The Indian youth finds himself at once, as if by magic,
translated from a state of poverty to one of affluence. He is
well fed and clothed and lodged. Books and all the
accessories of learning are given him and teachers provided
to instruct him. He is educated in the industrial arts on the
one hand, and not only in the rudiments but in the liberal
arts on the other. Beyond the three r's he is instructed in
geography, grammar, and history; he is taught drawing,
algebra and geometry, music and astronomy and receives
lessons in physiology, botany, and entomology. Matrons wait
on him while he is well, and physicians and nurses attend him
when he is sick. A steam laundry does his washing, and the
latest modern appliances do his cooking. A library affords
him relaxation for his leisure hours, athletic sports and the
gymnasium furnish him exercise and recreation, while music
entertains him in the evening. He has hot and cold baths, and
steam heat and electric light, and all the modern
conveniences. All the necessities of life are given him, and
many of the luxuries. All of this without money and without
price, or the contribution of a single effort of his own or
of his people. His wants are all supplied almost for the
wish. The child of the wigwam becomes a modern Aladdin, who
has only to rub the government lamp to gratify his desires.
"Here he remains until his education is finished, when he is
returned to his home--which by contrast must seem squalid
indeed--to the parents whom his education must make it
difficult to honor, and left to make his way against the
ignorance and bigotry of his tribe. Is it any wonder he
fails? Is it surprising if he lapses into barbarism? Not
having earned his education, it is not appreciated; having
made no sacrifice to obtain it, it is not valued. It is
looked upon as a right and not as a privilege; It is accepted
as a favor to the government and not to the recipient, and
the almost inevitable tendency is to encourage dependency,
foster pride, and create a spirit of arrogance and
selfishness. The testimony on this point of those closely
connected with the Indian employees of the service would, it
is believe, be interesting."
So there the matter stands. Nothing of any great importance was really
done to help the Indians except the conferences at Mohonk, N.Y., until,
in 1902, the Sequoya League was organized, composed of many men and
women of national prominence, with the avowed purpose "to make better
Indians." In its first pronunciamento it declared:
"The first struggle will be not to arouse sympathy but to
inform with slow patience and long wisdom the wide-spread
sympathy which already exists. We cannot take the Indians out
of the hands of the National Government; we cannot take the
National Government into our own hands. Therefore we must
work with the National Government in any large plan for the
betterment of Indian conditions.
"The League means, in absolute good faith, not to fight, but
to assist the Indian Bureau. It means to give the money of
many and the time and brains and experience of more than a
few to honest assistance to the Bureau in doing the work for
which it has never had either enough money or enough
disinterested and expert assistance to do in the best way the
thing it and every American would like to see done."