sale or gift to Spaniards of tracts of land to the prejudice of
Indians, upon the suspicious testimony of witnesses," the king orders
that all sales and gifts are to be made before the attorneys of the
royal audiencias, and "always with an eye to the benefit of the
Indians;" and "the king's solicitors are to be protectors of the
Indians and plead for them." "After distributing to the Indians what
they may justly want to cultivate, sow, and raise cattle, confirming
to them what they now hold, and granting what they may want besides,
all the remaining land may be reserved to us," says the old decree,
"clear of any incumbrance, for the purpose of being given as rewards,
or disposed of according to our pleasure."
In those day's everything in New Spain was thus ordered by royal
decrees. Nobody had grants of land in the sense in which we use the
word. When the friars wished to reward an industrious and capable
Indian, and test his capacity to take care of himself and family, by
giving him a little farm of his own, all they had to do, or did, was
to mark off the portion of land, put the Indian on it and tell him it
was his. There would appear to have been little more formality than
this in the establishing of the Indian pueblos which were formed in
the beginning of the secularization period. Governor Figueroa, in an
address in 1834, speaks of three of these, San Juan Capistrano, San
Dieguito, and Las Flores, says that they are flourishing, and that the
comparison between the condition of these Indians and that of the
Spanish townsmen in the same region is altogether in favor of the
Indians.
On Nov. 16, 1835, eighty-one "desafiliados"--as the ex-neophytes of
missions were called--of the San Luis Rey Mission settled themselves
in the San Pasqual valley, which was an appanage of that mission.
These Indian communities appear to have had no documents to show their
right, either as communities or individuals, to the land on which they
had settled. At any rate, they had nothing which amounted to a
protection, or stood in the way of settlers who coveted their lands.
It is years since the last trace of the pueblos Las Flores and San
Dieguito disappeared; and the San Pasqual valley is entirely taken up
by white settlers, chiefly on pre-emption claims. San Juan Capistrano
is the only one of the four where are to be found any Indians' homes.
If those who had banded themselves together and had been set off into
pueblos had no recognizable or defensible title, how much more
helpless and defenceless were individuals, or small communities
without any such semblance of pueblo organization!
Most of the original Mexican grants included tracts of land on which
Indians were living, sometimes large villages of them. In many of
these grants, in accordance with the old Spanish law or custom, was
incorporated a clause protecting the Indians. They were to be left
undisturbed in their homes: the portion of the grant occupied by them
did not belong to the grantee in any such sense as to entitle him to
eject them. The land on which they were living, and the land they were
cultivating at the time of the grant, belonged to them as long as they
pleased to occupy it. In many of the grants the boundaries of the
Indians' reserved portion of the property were carefully marked off;
and the instances were rare in which Mexican grantees disturbed or in
any way interfered with Indians living on their estates. There was no
reason why they should. There was plenty of land and to spare, and it
was simply a convenience and an advantage to have the skilled and
docile Indian laborer on the ground.
But when the easy-going, generous, improvident Mexican needed or
desired to sell his grant, and the sharp American was on hand to buy
it, then was brought to light the helplessness of the Indians'
position. What cared the sharp American for that sentimental clause,
"without injury to the Indians"? Not a farthing. Why should he? His
government, before him, had decided that all the lands belonging to
the old missions, excepting the small portions technically held as
church property, and therefore "out of commerce," were government
lands. None of the Indians living on those lands at the time of the
American possession were held to have any right--not even "color of
right"--to them. That they and their ancestors had been cultivating
them for three quarters of a century made no difference. Americans
wishing to pre-empt claims on any of these so-called government lands
did not regard the presence on them of Indian families or communities
as any more of a barrier than the presence of so many coyotes or
foxes. They would not hesitate to certify to the land office that such
lands were "unoccupied." Still less, then, need the purchaser of
tracts covered by old Mexican grants hold himself bound to regard the
poor cumberers of the ground, who, having no legal right whatever, had
been all their years living on the tolerance of a silly, good-hearted
Mexican proprietor. The American wanted every rod of his land, every
drop of water on it; his schemes were boundless; his greed insatiable;
he had no use for Indians. His plan did not embrace them, and could
not enlarge itself to take them in. They must go. This is, in brief,
the summing up of the way in which has come about the present pitiable
state of the California Mission Indians.
In 1852 a report in regard to these Indians was made to the Interior
Department by the Hon. B. D. Wilson, of Los Angeles. It is an
admirable paper, clear and exhaustive. Mr. Wilson was an old
Californian, had known the Indians well, and had been eyewitness to
much of the cruelty and injustice done them. He says:--
"In the fall of the missions, accomplished by private cupidity
and political ambition, philanthropy laments the failure of one
of the grandest experiments ever made for the elevation of this
unfortunate race."
He estimates that there were at that time in the counties of Tulare,
Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego over fifteen thousand
Indians who had been connected with the missions in those counties.
They were classified as the Tulareños, Cahuillas, San Luiseños, and
Diegueños, the latter two being practically one nation, speaking one
language, and being more generally Christianized than the others. They
furnished, Mr. Wilson says, "the majority of the laborers, mechanics,
and servants of San Diego and Los Angeles counties." They all spoke
the Spanish language, and a not inconsiderable number could read and
write it. They had built all the houses in the country, had taught the
whites how to make brick, mud mortar, how to use asphalt on roofs;
they understood irrigation, were good herders, reapers, etc. They were
paid only half the wages paid to whites; and being immoderate
gamblers, often gambled away on Saturday night and Sunday all they had
earned in the week. At that time in Los Angeles nearly every other
house in town was a grog-shop for Indians. In the San Pasqual valley
there were twenty white vagabonds, all rum-sellers, squatted at one
time around the Indian pueblo. The Los Angeles ayuntamiento had passed
an edict declaring that "all Indians without masters"--significant
phrase!--must live outside the town limits; also, that all Indians who
could not show papers from the alcalde of the pueblo in which they
lived, should be treated as "horse thieves and enemies."
On Sunday nights the squares and streets of Los Angeles were often to
be seen full of Indians lying about helpless in every stage of
intoxication. They were picked up by scores, unconscious, carried to
jail, locked up, and early Monday morning hired out to the highest
bidders at the jail gates. Horrible outrages were committed on Indian
women and children. In some instances the Indians armed to avenge
these, and were themselves killed.
These are a few out of hundreds of similar items to be gathered from
the newspaper records of the time. Conditions such as these could have
but one outcome. Twenty years later, when another special report on
the condition of the California Mission Indians was asked for by the
Government, not over five thousand Indians remained to be reported on.
Vice and cruelty had reaped large harvests each year. Many of the rich
valleys, which at the time of Mr. Wilson's report had been under
cultivation by Indians, were now filled by white settlers, the Indians
all gone, no one could tell where. In some instances whole villages of
them had been driven off at once by fraudulently procured and
fraudulently enforced claims. One of the most heart-rending of these
cases was that of the Temecula Indians.
The Temecula valley lies in the northeast corner of San Diego County.
It is watered by two streams and has a good soil. The Southern
California Railroad now crosses it. It was an appanage of the San Luis
Rey Mission, and the two hundred Indians who were living there were
the children and grandchildren of San Luis Rey neophytes. The greater
part of the valley was under cultivation. They had cattle, horses,
sheep. In 1865 a "special agent" of the United States Government held
a grand Indian convention there. Eighteen villages were represented,
and the numbers of inhabitants, stock, vineyards, orchards, were
reported. The Indians were greatly elated at this evidence of the
Government's good intentions toward them. They set up a tall
liberty-pole, and bringing forth a United States flag, which they had
kept carefully hidden away ever since the beginning of the civil war,
they flung it out to the winds in token of their loyalty. "It is
astonishing," says one of the San Diego newspapers of the day, "that
these Indians have behaved so well, considering the pernicious
teachings they have had from the secessionists in our midst."
There was already anxiety in the minds of the Temecula Indians as to
their title to their lands. All that was in existence to show that
they had any, was the protecting clause in an old Mexican grant. To be
sure, the man was still alive who had assisted in marking off the
boundaries of their part of this original Temecula grant; but his
testimony could establish nothing beyond the letter of the clause as
it stood. They earnestly implored the agent to lay the case before the
Interior Department. Whether he did or not I do not know, but this is
the sequel: On April 15, 1869, an action was brought in the District
Court, in San Francisco, by five men, against "Andrew Johnson,
Thaddeus Stevens, Horace Greeley, and one thousand Indians, and other
parties whose names are unknown." It was "a bill to quit title," an
"action to recover possession of certain real estate bounded thus and
thus." It included the Temecula valley. It was based on grants made by
Governor Micheltorena in 1844. The defendants cited were to appear in
court within twenty days.
The Indians appealed to the Catholic bishop to help them. He wrote to
one of the judges an imploring letter, saying, "Can you not do
something to save these poor Indians from being driven out?" But the
scheme had been too skilfully plotted. There was no way--or, at any
rate, no way was found--of protecting the Indians. The day came when a
sheriff, bringing a posse of men and a warrant which could not be legally
resisted, arrived to eject the Indian families from their house and drive
them out of the valley. The Indians' first impulse was as determined
as it could have been if they had been white, to resist the outrage.
But on being reasoned with by friends, who sadly and with shame
explained to them that by thus resisting, they would simply make it
the duty of the sheriff to eject them by force, and, if necessary,
shoot down any who opposed the executing of his warrant, they
submitted. But they refused to lift hand to the moving. They sat down,
men and women, on the ground, and looked on, some wailing and weeping,
some dogged and silent, while the sheriff and his men took out of the
neat little adobe houses their small stores of furniture, clothes, and
food, and piled them on wagons to be carried--where?--anywhere the
exiles chose, so long as they did not chance to choose a piece of any
white man's land.
A Mexican woman is now living in that Temecula valley who told me the
story of this moving. The facts I had learned before from records of
one sort and another. But standing on the spot, looking at the ruins
of the little adobe houses, and the walled graveyard full of graves,
and hearing this woman tell how she kept her doors and windows shut,
and could not bear to look out while the deed was being done, I
realized forcibly how different a thing is history seen from history
written and read.
It took three days to move them. Procession after procession, with
cries and tears, walked slowly behind the wagons carrying their
household goods. They took the tule roofs off the little houses, and
carried them along. They could be used again. Some of these Indians,
wishing to stay as near as possible to their old home, settled in a
small valley, only three miles and a half away to the south. It was a
dreary, hot little valley, bare, with low, rocky buttes cropping out
on either side, and with scanty growths of bushes; there was not a
drop of water in it. Here the exiles went to work again; built their
huts of reeds and straw; set up a booth of boughs for the priest, when
he came, to say mass in; and a rude wooden cross to consecrate their
new graveyard on a stony hill-side. They put their huts on barren
knolls here and there, where nothing could grow. On the tillable land
they planted wheat or barley or orchards,--some patches not ten feet
square, the largest not over three or four acres. They hollowed out
the base of one of the rocky buttes, sunk a well there, and found
water.
I think none of us who saw this little refugee village will ever
forget it. The whole place was a series of pictures; and knowing its
history, we found in each low roof and paling the dignity of heroic
achievement. Near many of the huts stood great round baskets woven of
twigs, reaching half-way up to the eaves and looking like huge
birds'-nests. These were their granaries, holding acorns and wheat.
Women with red pottery jars on their heads and on their backs were
going to and from the well; old men were creeping about, bent over,
carrying loads of fagots that would have seemed heavy for a donkey;
aged women sitting on the ground were diligently plaiting baskets, too
busy or too old to give more than a passing look at us. A group of
women was at work washing wool in great stone bowls, probably hundreds
of years old. The interiors of some of the houses were exquisitely
neat and orderly, with touching attempts at adornment,--pretty baskets
and shelves hanging on the walls, and over the beds canopies of bright
calico. On some of the beds, the sheets and pillow-cases were trimmed
with wide hand-wrought lace, made by the Indian women themselves. This
is one of their arts which date back to the mission days. Some of the
lace is beautiful and fine, and of patterns like the old church laces.
It was pitiful to see the poor creatures in almost every one of the
hovels bringing out a yard or two of their lace to sell; and there was
hardly a house which had not the lace-maker's frame hanging on the
wall, with an unfinished piece of lace stretched in it. The making of
this lace requires much time and patience. It is done by first drawing
out all the lengthwise threads of a piece of fine linen or cotton;
then the threads which are left are sewed over and over into an
endless variety of intricate patterns. Sometimes the whole design is
done in solid button-hole stitch, or solid figures are filled in on an
open network made of the threads. The baskets were finely woven, of
good shapes, and excellent decorative patterns in brown and black on
yellow or white.
Every face, except those of the very young, was sad beyond
description. They were stamped indelibly by generations of suffering,
immovable distrust also underlying the sorrow. It was hard to make
them smile. To all our expressions of good-will and interest they
seemed indifferent, and received in silence the money we paid them for
baskets and lace.
The word "Temecula" is an Indian word, signifying "grief" or
"mourning." It seems to have had a strangely prophetic fitness for the
valley to which it was given.
While I am writing these lines, the news comes that, by an executive
order of the President, the little valley in which these Indians took
refuge has been set apart for them as a reservation. No doubt they
know how much executive orders creating Indian reservations are worth.
There have been several such made and revoked in California within
their memories. The San Pasqual valley was at one time set apart by
executive order as a reservation for Indians. This was in 1870. There
were then living in the valley between two and three hundred Indians;
some of them had been members of the original pueblo established there
in 1835.
The comments of the California newspapers on this executive order are
amusing, or would be if they did not record such tragedy. It was
followed by an outburst of virtuous indignation all along the coast.
One paper said:
"The iniquity of this scheme is made manifest when we state the
fact that the Indians of that part of the State are Mission
Indians who are settled in villages and engaged in farming like
the white settlers.... It would be gross injustice to the
Indians themselves as well as to the white settlers in San
Pasqual.... These Indians are as fixed in their habitations as
the whites, and have fruit-trees, buildings, and other valuable
improvements to make them contented and comfortable. Until
within the past two or three years they raised more fruit than
the white settlers of the southern counties. There is belonging
to an Indian family there a fig-tree that is the largest in the
State, covering a space sixty paces in diameter.... A
remonstrance signed by over five hundred citizens and indorsed
by every office-holder in the county has gone on to Washington
against this swindle.... This act on the part of the Government
is no better than highway robbery, and the persons engaged in
it are too base to be called men. There is not a person in
either of these valleys that will not be ruined pecuniarily if
these orders are enforced."
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.'"