Sir,—In compliance with our instructions bearing dates November 28th, 1882, and January 12th, 1883, we have the honor to submit to you the following report on the subject of the Mission Indians in Southern California.

The term "Mission Indians" dates back over one hundred years, to the time of the Franciscan missions in California. It then included all Indians who lived in the mission establishments, or were under the care of the Franciscan Fathers. Very naturally the term has continued to be applied to the descendants of those Indians. In the classification of the Indian Bureau, however, it is now used in a somewhat restricted sense, embracing only those Indians living in the three southernmost counties of California, and known as Serranos, Cahuillas, San Luisenos, and Dieguinos; the last two names having evidently come from the names of the southernmost two missions, San Luis Rey and San Diego. A census taken in 1880, of these bands, gives their number as follows:

This estimate probably falls considerably short of the real numbers, as there are no doubt in hiding, so to speak, in remote and inaccessible spots, many individuals, families, or even villages, that have never been counted. These Indians are living for the most part in small and isolated villages; some on reservations set apart for them by Executive order; some on Government land not reserved, and some upon lands included within the boundaries of confirmed Mexican grants.

Considerable numbers of these Indians are also to be found on the outskirts of white settlements, as at Riverside, San Bernardino, or in the colonies in the San Gabriel Valley, where they live like gypsies in brush huts, here to-day, gone to-morrow, eking out a miserable existence by days' works, the wages of which are too often spent for whiskey in the village saloons. Travellers in Southern California, who have formed their impressions of the Mission Indians from these wretched wayside creatures, would be greatly surprised at the sight of some of the Indian villages in the mountain valleys, where, freer from the contaminating influence of the white race, are industrious, peaceable communities, cultivating ground, keeping stock, carrying on their own simple manufactures of pottery, mats, baskets, &c., and making their living,—a very poor living, it is true; but they are independent and self-respecting in it, and ask nothing at the hands of the United States Government now, except that it will protect them in the ownership of their lands,—lands which, in many instances, have been in continuous occupation and cultivation by their ancestors for over one hundred years.

From tract after tract of such lands they have been driven out, year by year, by the white settlers of the country, until they can retreat no farther; some of their villages being literally in the last tillable spot on the desert's edge or in mountain fastnesses. Yet there are in Southern California to-day many fertile valleys, which only thirty years ago were like garden spots with these same Indians' wheat-fields, orchards, and vineyards. Now, there is left in these valleys no trace of the Indians' occupation, except the ruins of their adobe houses; in some instances these houses, still standing, are occupied by the robber whites who drove them out. The responsibility for this wrong rests, perhaps, equally divided between the United States Government, which permitted lands thus occupied by peaceful agricultural communities to be put "in market," and the white men who were not restrained either by humanity or by a sense of justice, from "filing" homestead claims on lands which had been fenced, irrigated, tilled, and lived on by Indians for many generations. The Government cannot justify this neglect on the plea of ignorance. Repeatedly, in the course of the last thirty years, both the regular agents in charge of the Mission Indians and special agents sent out to investigate their condition have made to the Indian Bureau full reports setting forth these facts.

In 1873 one of these special agents, giving an account of the San Pasquale Indians, mentioned the fact that a white man had just pre-empted the land on which the greater part of the village was situated. He had paid the price of the land to the register of the district land office, and was daily expecting his patent from Washington. "He owned," the agent says, "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 San Pasquale village was a regularly organized Indian pueblo, formed by about one hundred neophytes of the San Luis Rey Mission, under and in accordance with the provisions of the Secularization Act in 1834. The record of its founding is preserved in the Mexican archives at San Francisco. These Indians had herds of cattle, horses, and sheep; they raised grains, and had orchards and vineyards. The whole valley in which this village lay was at one time set off by Executive order as a reservation, but by the efforts of designing men the order was speedily revoked; and no sooner has this been done than the process of dispossessing the Indians began. There is now, on the site of that old Indian pueblo, a white settlement numbering 35 voters. The Indians are all gone,—some to other villages; some living near by in caÑons and nooks in the hills, from which, on the occasional visits of the priest, they gather and hold services in the half-ruined adobe chapel built by them in the days of their prosperity.

This story of the San Pasquale Indians is only a fair showing of the experiences of the Mission Indians during the past fifty years. Almost without exception they have been submissive and peaceable through it all, and have retreated again and again to new refuges. In a few instances there have been slight insurrections among them, and threatenings of retaliation; but in the main their history has been one of almost incredible long suffering and patience under wrongs.

In 1851 one of the San Luiseno bands, the Aqua Caliente Indians, in the north part of San Diego County, made an attack on the house of a white settler, and there was for a time great fear of a general uprising of all the Indians in the country. It is probable that this was instigated by the Mexicans, and that there was a concerted plan for driving the Americans out of the country. The outbreak was easily quelled, however; four of the chiefs were tried by court-martial and shot by order of General Heintzelman, and in January of the following year a treaty was made with the San Luiseno and Dieguino Indians, setting off for them large tracts of land. This treaty was made by a United States commissioner, Dr. Wozencraft, and Lieutenant Hamilton, representing the Army, and Col. J. J. Warner, the settler whose house had been attacked. The greater part of the lands which were by this treaty assigned to the Indians are now within the boundaries of grants confirmed and patented since that time; but there are many Indian villages still remaining on them, and all Indians living on such lands are supposed to be there solely on the tolerance and at the mercy of the owners of said ranches, and to be liable to ejectment by law. Whether this be so or not is a point which it would seem to be wise to test before the courts. It is certain that in the case of all these Mission Indians the rights involved are quite different from and superior to the mere "occupancy" right of the wild and uncivilized Indian.

At the time of the surrender of California to the United States these Mission Indians had been for over seventy years the subjects, first of the Spanish Government, secondly of the Mexican. They came under the jurisdiction of the United States by treaty provisions,—the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, between the United States and Mexico, in 1848. At this time they were so far civilized that they had become the chief dependence of the Mexican and white settlers for all service indoors and out. In the admirable report upon these Indians made to the Interior Department in 1853, by the Hon. B. D. Wilson, of Los Angeles, are the following statements:—

"These same Indians had built all the houses in the country, planted all the fields and vineyards. Under the Missions there were masons, carpenters, plasterers, soap-makers, tanners, shoe-makers, blacksmiths, millers, bakers, cooks, brick-makers, carters and cart-makers, weavers and spinners, saddlers, shepherds, agriculturalists, horticulturalists, vineros, vaqueros; in a word, they filled all the laborious occupations known to civilized society."

The intentions of the Mexican Government toward these Indians were wise and humane. At this distance of time, and in face of the melancholy facts of the Indians' subsequent history, it is painful to go over the details of the plans devised one short half-century ago for their benefit. In 1830 there were in the twenty-one missions in California some 20,000 or 30,000 Indians, living comfortable and industrious lives under the control of the Franciscan Fathers. The Spanish colonization plan had, from the outset, contemplated the turning of these mission establishments into pueblos as soon as the Indians should have become sufficiently civilized to make this feasible. The Mexican Government, carrying out the same general plan, issued in 1833 an act, called the Secularization Act, decreeing that this change should be made. This act provided that the Indians should have assigned to them cattle, horses, and sheep from the mission herds; also, lands for cultivation. One article of Governor Figueroa's regulations for the carrying out of the Secularization Act provided that there should be given to every head of a family, and to all above twenty-one years of age, though they had no family, a lot of land not exceeding 400 varas square, nor less than 100. There was also to be given to them in common, enough land for pasturing and watering their cattle. Another article provided that one-half the cattle of each mission school should be divided among the Indians of that mission in a proportionable and equitable manner; also one-half of the chattels, instruments, seeds, &c. Restrictions were to be placed on the disposition of this property. The Indians were forbidden "to sell, burden, or alienate under any pretext the lands given them. Neither can they sell the cattle." The commissioners charged with the carrying out of these provisions were ordered to "explain all the arrangements to the Indians with suavity and patience;" to tell them that the lands and property will be divided among them so that each one may "work, maintain, and govern himself without dependence on any one." It was also provided that the rancherias (villages) situated at a distance from the missions, and containing over twenty-five families, might, if they chose, form separate pueblos, and the distribution of lands and property to them should take place in the same manner provided for those living near the missions.

These provisions were in no case faithfully carried out. The administration of the Missions' vast estates and property was too great a temptation for human nature, especially in a time of revolution and misrule. The history of the thirteen years between the passing of the Secularization Act and the conquest of California is a record of shameful fraud and pillage, of which the Indians were the most hapless victims. Instead of being permitted each one to work, maintain, and govern himself without dependence on any one, as they had been promised, their rights to their plats of land were in the majority of cases ignored; they were forced to labor on the mission lands like slaves; in many instances they were hired out in gangs to cruel masters. From these cruelties and oppressions they fled by hundreds, returning to their old wilderness homes. Those who remained in the neighborhood of the pueblos became constantly more and more demoralized, and were subjected to every form of outrage. By a decree of the Los Angeles aqumiento, about the time of our taking possession of California, all Indians found without passes, either from the alcalde of the pueblos in which they lived, or from their "masters [significant phrase], were to be treated as horse-thieves and enemies." At this time there were, according to Mr. Wilson's report, whole streets in Los Angeles where every other house was a grog-shop for Indians; and every Saturday night the town was filled with Indians in every stage of intoxication. Those who were helpless and insensible were carried to the jail, locked up, and on Monday morning bound out to the highest bidders at the jail gates. "The Indian has a quick sense of justice," says Mr. Wilson; "he can never see why he is sold out to service for an indefinite period for intemperance, while the white man goes unpunished for the same thing, and the very richest and best men, to his eye, are such as tempt him to drink, and sometimes will pay him for his labor in no other way." Even the sober and industrious and best skilled among them could earn but little; it having become a custom to pay an Indian only half the wages of a white man.

From this brief and necessarily fragmentary sketch of the position and state of the Mission Indians under the Mexican Government, at the time of the surrender of California to the United States, it will be seen that our Government received by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo a legacy of a singularly helpless race in a singularly anomalous position. It would have been very difficult, even at the outset, to devise practicable methods of dealing justly with these people, and preserving to them their rights. But with every year of our neglect the difficulties have increased and the wrongs have been multiplied, until now it is, humanly speaking, impossible to render to them full measure of justice. All that is left in our power is to make them some atonement. Fortunately for them, their numbers have greatly diminished. Suffering, hunger, disease, and vice have cut down more than half of their numbers in the last thirty years; but the remnant is worth saving. Setting aside all question of their claim as a matter of atonement for injustice done, they are deserving of help on their own merits. No one can visit their settlements, such as Aqua Caliente, Saboba, Cahuilla Valley, Santa Ysabel, without having a sentiment of respect and profound sympathy for men who, friendless, poor, without protection from the law, have still continued to work, planting, fencing, irrigating, building houses on lands from which long experience has taught them that the white man can drive them off any day he chooses. That drunkenness, gambling, and other immoralities are sadly prevalent among them, cannot be denied; but the only wonder is that so many remain honest and virtuous under conditions which make practically null and void for them most of the motives which keep white men honest and virtuous.

Having thus given as brief a presentation as possible of the general situation and nature of these Indians, we will proceed to state what, to the best of our judgment, are the steps which ought to be taken by the United States Government in their behalf. The descriptions of the most important villages we visited, and the detailed accounts of circumstances and situations on which our suggestions are based, are given for convenience of reference in separate exhibits.

1st. The first and most essential step, without which there is no possibility of protecting these Indians or doing anything intelligently for them, is the determining, resurveying, rounding out, and distinctly marking, their reservations already existing. The only way of having this done accurately and honestly, is to have it done by a surveyor who is under the orders and constant supervision of an intelligent and honest commissioner; not by an independent surveyor who runs or "floats" reservation lines where he and his friends or interested parties choose, instead of where the purpose of the United States Government, looking to the Indians' interests, had intended. There have been too many surveys of Indian reservations in Southern California of this sort. (See Exhibits C, H, I, J, L.) All the reservations made in 1876—and that comprises nearly all now existing—were laid off by guess, by the surveyor in San Diego, on an imperfect county map. These sections, thus guessed at by the surveyor, were reported by the commissioner to the Interior Department, set aside by Executive order, and ordered to be surveyed. When the actual survey came to be made, it was discovered that in the majority of cases the Indian villages intended to be provided for were outside the reservation lines, and that the greater part of the lands set apart were wholly worthless. The plats of these reservations are in the surveyor-general's office at San Francisco. On each of them was marked by the surveyor an additional line in color, showing what tracts ought to be added to take in the Indian villages and fields. So far as we could learn, no action was taken in regard to these proposed additions.

The reservation lines, when thus defined, should be marked plainly and conspicuously by monuments and stakes, leaving no room for doubt. A plat of each reservation should then be given to the Indians living on it. It was pathetic, in our visits to village after village, to hear the Indians' request reiterated for this thing,—"a paper to show to the white men where their lands were." Every fragment of writing they had ever received, which could by any possibility bear on their title to their lands, they had carefully preserved; old tattered orders from Army officers thirty years back, orders from justices of the peace, &c., all worthless of course, but brought forward with touching earnestness to show us. In no single instance had the reservation lines ever been pointed out to them. One band, the Sequan Indians, who had never seen any agent, said they had been told that they were on a reservation, but they did not know if it were true or not. They had been obliged to give up keeping stock, because they could not find any place where the whites would let them pasture cattle. (See Exhibit J.)

There are some settlements of Indians on Government lands not set off as reservations, in some instances not surveyed. These tracts should all be surveyed, their boundaries marked, and the lands withdrawn from market to be permanently set aside for the Indians' use. We use the term "rounding out" in regard to these reservations chiefly on account of the complication which results from their being in some cases within the limit of railroad grants, and made subsequent to those grants. Some are actually within the limits of the Southern Pacific Railroad grant; others will be within the limits of the Texas Pacific grant, should that be confirmed. The odd sections thus belonging to the railroads should be secured to the Indians. There are also a few claims to lands within reservation boundaries, which are legal on account of their having been made before the reservations were set off. These should be extinguished. (See Exhibit O.)

2d. All white settlers now on reservations should be removed. For the last four years stray settlers have been going in upon reservation tracts. This is owing to the lack of boundary definitions and marks as aforesaid, also to the failure of the surveys to locate the reservations so as to take in all the ground actually occupied by Indian villages. Thus, in many instances, the Indians' fields and settlements have been wrested from them, and they in their turn have not known where they could or could not go. There is not a single reservation of any size which is free from white settlers. It would seem that agents in charge of these Indians should have been authoritatively instructed in no case to allow squatters to settle on lands known to be within reservation lines, whether they were occupied by Indians or not. (See Exhibits H, I, O.)

The amount of land set off in Indian reservations in Southern California appears by the record to be very large, but the proportion of it which is really available is very small. San Diego County itself is four-fifths desert and mountain, and it is no exaggeration to say that the proportion of desert and mountain in the reservation is even larger than this. By thus resurveying, rounding out, and freeing from white settlers the present reservations, adding to them all Government lands now actually in occupation by Indians, there will be, according to the best of our judgment, nearly land enough for the accommodation of all the Mission Indians except those whose settlements are on grants.

3d. In regard to this latter class, i.e., those whose villages are now within the boundaries of confirmed grants, the Government has to choose between two courses of action,—either to remove them and make other provision for them, or to uphold and defend their right to remain where they are. In support of the latter course we believe a strong case could be made out, and we have secured from one of the ablest firms in Southern California a written legal opinion on this point. (See Exhibit A.) It seems clear that this contest should be made by the Government itself. It is impossible for these poverty-stricken and ignorant people to undertake on their own account and at their own expense the legal settlement of this matter. It would be foolish to advise it; inhuman to expect it. A test case could be made which would settle the question for all. (See Exhibit B.) In case the decision be favorable to the Indians remaining, the ranch owners should then be called on to mark off the boundaries of the Indians' lands according to the California State law covering such cases. (See Exhibit R.) Whether the lands thus reverting to the Indians could properly be considered as Government lands or not, would be a question to be determined. Probably the surest way of securing them for the Indians' permanent use would be to consider them as such and have them defined as reservations by act of Congress.

4th. And this brings us to our fourth recommendation, which is, that all these Indians' reservations, those already set off by Executive order, and all new ones made for them, whether of Government lands now in their occupation, or of lands which may be hereafter by legal process reclaimed for them from the grant lands on which they are now living, be patented to the several bands occupying them; the United States to hold the patent in trust for the period of twenty-five years; at the expiration of that time the United States to convey the same by patent to said Indians, as has been done for the Omaha Indians. The insecurity of reservations made merely by Executive order is apparent, and is already sadly illustrated in Southern California by the history of the San Pasquale Reservation, that of Aqua Caliente, and others. The insecurity of reservations set apart by act of Congress is only a degree less. The moment it becomes the interest and purpose of white men in any section of the country to have such reservation tracts restored to the public domain, the question of its being done is only a question of influence and time. It is sure to be done. The future of these industrious, peaceable, agricultural communities ought not to be left a single day longer than is necessary, dependent on such chances; chances which are always against and never for Indians' interests in the matter of holding lands. The best way and time of allotting these Indians' lands to them in severalty must be left to the decision of the Government, a provision being incorporated in their patent to provide for such allotments from time to time as may seem desirable, and agents and commissioners being instructed to keep the advantages of this system constantly before the Indians' minds. Some of them are fit for it now, and earnestly desire it, but the majority are not ready for it. The communal system, on which those now living in villages use their lands, satisfies them, and is apparently administered without difficulty. It is precisely the same system as that on which the pueblo lands were cultivated by the early Spanish settlers in Southern California. They agree among themselves to respect each other's right of occupancy; a man's right to a field this year depending on his having cultivated it last year, and so on. It seems not to occur to these Indians that land is a thing to be quarrelled over.

In the village of Aqua Caliente, one of the most intelligent of the young men was so anxious to show us his fields that we went with him a little distance outside the village limits to see them. He had some eight acres in grain, vine, and fruit trees. Pointing first in one direction, then in another, he indicated the places where his ground joined other men's ground. There was no line of demarcation whatever, except it chanced to be a difference of crops. We said to him, "Alessandro, how do you know which is your land and which is theirs?" He seemed perplexed, and replied, "This was my mother's land. We have always had it." "But," we persisted, "suppose one of these other men should want more land and should take a piece of yours?" "He couldn't," was all the reply we could get from Alessandro, and it was plain that he was greatly puzzled by the suggestion of the possibility of neighbors trespassing on each other's cultivated fields.

5th. We recommend the establishment of more schools. At least two more are immediately needed, one at the Rincon, and one at Santa Ysabel. (See Exhibits G, L.) As the reservations are gradually cleared, defined and assured for the Indians' occupancy, hundreds of Indians who are now roving from place to place, without fixed homes, will undoubtedly settle down in the villages, and more schools will be needed. It is to be hoped, also, that some of the smaller bands will unite with the larger ones, for the sake of the advantages of the school and other advantages of a larger community. The isolated situation of many of the smaller settlements is now an insuperable difficulty in the way of providing education for all the children. These Indians are all keenly alive to the value of education. In every village that we visited we were urged to ask the Government to give them a school. In one they insisted upon ranging the children all in rows, that we might see for ourselves that there were children enough to justify the establishing of a school.

In this connection we would suggest that if a boarding and industrial school, similar to those at Hampton and Carlisle, could be established in Southern California, it would be of inestimable value, and would provide opportunities for many children who, owing to the isolation of their homes, could not be reached in any other way.

We would further suggest that, in our judgment, only women teachers should be employed in these isolated Indian villages. There is a great laxity of morals among these Indians; and in the wild regions where their villages lie, the unwritten law of public sentiment, which in more civilized communities does so much to keep men virtuous, hardly exists. Therefore the post of teacher in these schools is one full of temptations and danger to a man. (See Exhibit M.) Moreover, women have more courage and self-denying missionary spirit, sufficient to undertake such a life, and have an invaluable influence outside their school-rooms. They go familiarly into the homes, and are really educating the parents as well as the children in a way which is not within the power of any man, however earnest and devoted he may be.

We would also suggest that great good might be accomplished among these Indians by some form of itinerary religious and educational labor among them. In the list of assignments of Indian agencies to different religious denominations, as given in the report of the Indian Bureau for 1882, the Mission Agency is assigned to the Evangelical Lutheran; but we could not learn that this denomination had done any work among them. So far as the Mission Indians have any religion at all they are Catholics. In many of the villages are adobe chapels, built in the time of the missions, where are still preserved many relics of the mission days, such as saints' images, holy-water kettles, &c. In these chapels on the occasions of the priest's visits the Indians gather in great numbers, women sometimes walking two days' journey, bringing their babies on their backs to have them baptized. There are also in several of the villages old Indians, formerly trained at the missions, who officiate with Catholic rites at funerals, and on Sundays repeat parts of the Mass. As these Indians are now situated in isolated settlements so far apart, and so remote from civilized centres, the only practicable method of reaching them all would be by some form of itinerary labor. A fervent religious and practical teacher, who should spend his time in going from village to village, remaining in each a few days or weeks, as the case might be, would sow seed which would not cease to grow during the intervals of his absence. If he were a man of sound common-sense and knowledge of laws of life, fitted to instruct the Indians in matters of hygiene, cleanliness, ventilation, &c., and in a few of the simple mechanical arts, as well as in the doctrines of religion and morality, he would do more for the real good of these people at present than can be accomplished by schools.

6th. The suggestion of the value of itinerary labor among the Indians leads to our next recommendation, which we consider of great importance, viz., that it should be made the duty of any Government agent in charge of the Mission Indians to make a round of inspection at least twice a year, visiting each village or settlement however small. In no other way can anything like a proper supervision of these Indians' interests be attained. This proof of the Government's intention to keep a sharp eye on all that might occur in relation to the Indians would have a salutary moral effect, not only on the Indians, but on the white settlers in their neighborhood. It would also afford the means of dealing with comparative promptitude with the difficulties and troubles continually arising. As it is now, it is not to be wondered at that the Indians feel themselves unprotected and neglected, and the white settlers feel themselves safe in trespassing on Indians' property or persons. In some of the villages, where pre-emption claims have been located within the last four years, no agent has ever been. It is safe to say, that had an agent been on the ground each year, with the proper authority to take efficient measures, much of the present suffering and confusion would have been prevented. In the case, for instance, of the Los Coyotes village, filed on a few months ago (see Exhibit F), there was no reason why those lands should not have been set apart for the Indians long ago, had their situation been understood; so in the San Ysidro case, and others. The whole situation of an agent in regard to the Mission Indians is totally different from that of ordinary agency on a reservation. The duties of an Indian agent on a reservation may be onerous, but they are in a sense simple. His Indians are all together, within comparatively narrow limits, and, so to speak, under his hand, and dependent largely on the Government. The Mission Indians, on the contrary, are scattered in isolated settlements thirty, forty, a hundred miles away from the agency headquarters, many of them in regions difficult of access. Moreover, the Indians are in the main self-supporting and independent. Protection or oversight worth anything to them can only be given by a systematic method of frequent visitation.

What is true in this respect of the agent's work is, if possible, still truer of the physician's. If there is to be an agency physician for the Mission Indians at all, he should be a young, strong, energetic man, who is both able and willing to make at least four circuits a year through the villages, and who will hold himself bound to go when called in all cases of epidemics, serious illness, or accidents occurring among Indians within one day's journey of the agency headquarters. Whatever salary it is necessary to pay to secure such service as this should be paid, or else the office of agency physician to the Mission Indians should be abolished. Anything less than this is a farce and a fraud.

7th. We recommend that there be secured the appointment of a lawyer, or a law firm in Los Angeles, to act as special United States attorney in all cases affecting the interests of these Indians. They have been so long without any protection from the law that outrages and depredations upon them have become the practice in all white communities near which they live. Indians' stock is seized, corraled and held for fines, sometimes shot, even on the Indians' own reservations or in the public domain. In seasons of dearth roving stockmen and shepherds drive their herds and flocks into Indians' grain-fields, destroying their subsistence for a whole year. Lands occupied by Indians or by Indian villages are filed on for homestead entry precisely as if they were vacant lands. This has been more than once done without the Indians receiving any warning until the sheriff arrived with the writ for their ejectment. The Indians' own lives are in continual danger, it being a safe thing to shoot an Indian at any time when only Indian witnesses are present. (See Exhibits C, E.) It is plain that all such cases as these should be promptly dealt with by equal means. One of the greatest difficulties in the position of the Mission Indians' agent is, that in all such cases he is powerless to act except through the at best slow and hitherto unsatisfactory channel of reporting to the Interior Department. He is in the embarrassing position of a guardian of wards with property and property rights, for the defence of which he is unable to call in prompt legal assistance. In instances in which the Indians themselves have endeavored to get redress through the courts, they have in the majority of cases—to the shame of the Southern California bar be it spoken—been egregiously cheated. They are as helpless as children in the hands of dishonest, unscrupulous men. We believe that the mere fact of there being such a United States legal authority near at hand to act for the Indians would in a short time, after a few effective illustrations of its power, do away with the greater proportion of the troubles demanding legal interference.

The question of the rights of Indians living on grant lands to remain there will, if the Department decides to test it by law, involve some litigation, as it will no doubt be contested by the ranch owners; but this point once settled, and the Indians secured in the ownership of their lands, a very few years will see the end of any special need of litigation in their behalf. We recommend in this connection and for this office the firm of Brunson & Wells, of Los Angeles. We have obtained from this firm a clear and admirable opinion on these Indians' right to their present homes (see Exhibit A), and we know them to be of high standing at the bar and to have a humane sympathy for Indians.

8th. We recommend that there should be a judicious distribution of agricultural implements among these Indians. No village should be omitted. Wagons, harness, ploughs, spades, and hoes are greatly needed. It is surprising to see what some of these villages have accomplished with next to no implements. In the Santa Ysabel village the Indians had three hundred acres in wheat; there were but three old broken ploughs in the village, no harness, and no wagon. (See Exhibit G.) There is at present much, and not unfounded, sore feeling in some of the villages which have thus far received no help of this kind, while others of the villages have been supplied with all that was needed.

9th. There should always be provided for the Mission Indians' agency a small fund for the purchase of food and clothing for the very old and sick in times of especial destitution. The Mission Indians as a class do not beg. They are proud-spirited, and choose to earn their living. They will endure a great deal before they will ask for help. But in seasons of drought or when their little crops have, for any cause, failed, there is sometimes great distress in the villages. Last winter the Cahuillas, in the Cahuilla Valley (see Exhibit C), were for many weeks without sufficient food. The teacher of their school repeatedly begged them to let her write to the agent for help, but they refused. At last one night the captain and two of the head men came to her room and said she might write. They could no longer subdue the hunger. She wrote the letter; the next morning at daylight the Indians were at her door again. They had reconsidered it, they said, and they would not beg. They would rather starve, and they would not permit her to send the letter.

10th. The second and third special points on which we were instructed to report to the Department were, whether there still remains in Southern California any Government land suitable for an Indian reservation, and if not, in case lands must be bought for that purpose, what lands can be most advantageously purchased. There is no Government land remaining in Southern California in blocks of any size suitable for either white or Indian occupancy. The reason that the isolated little settlements of Indians are being now so infringed upon and seized, even at the desert's edge and in stony fastnesses of mountains, is that all the good lands—i.e., lands with water or upon which water can be developed—are taken up.

We recommend two purchases of land,—one positively, the other contingently. The first is the Pauma Ranch, now owned by Bishop Mora, of Los Angeles. (See Exhibit P.) This ranch, lying as it does between the Rincon and Pala Reservations on the north and south, and adjoining the La Jolla Reservation, affords an admirable opportunity to consolidate a large block of land for Indian occupancy. It is now, in our opinion, a desirable tract. While it is largely hilly and mountainous, there is considerable good sheep and cattle pasturing on it, and a fair amount of bottom land for cultivation along the river. The price asked for it is, as lands are now selling in Southern California, low. If the already existing reservations are cleared of whites, unified, and made ready for Indian occupancy, and the Government lands now in actual occupation by Indians be assured to them, the addition of this Pauma Ranch will be, in our opinion, all that will be required to make comfortable provision for all the Indians, except those living within the boundaries of confirmed grants.

Should the Department decide to remove all these and provide them with new homes, we recommend the purchase of the Santa Ysabel ranch. (See Exhibit Q.) The purchase of this ranch for an Indian reservation was recommended to the Government some years ago, but it was rejected on account of the excessive price asked for it. It is now offered to the Government for $95,000. During the past ten years the value of lands in Southern California has in many places quadrupled; in some it is worth more than twenty times what it was then. We have no hesitation in saying that it is not now possible to buy an equally suitable tract for any less money. The ranch contains 17,719.40 acres; is within the rain belt of San Diego County, is well watered, and, although it is largely mountainous, has good pasture, some meadow land, and some oak timber. It is, moreover, in the region to which the greater proportion of these Indians are warmly attached and in the vicinity of which most of them are now living. One large Indian village is on the ranch. (See Exhibit G.) Father Ubach, the Catholic priest of San Diego, who has known these Indians for seventeen years, says of it, "it is the only tract to which human power can force these Indians to remove." We recommend this purchase only as a last resort in the event of the Department's being compelled to provide new homes for all the Indians now living within the boundaries of confirmed grants.

In conclusion, we would make the suggestion that there are several small bands of Mission Indians north of the boundaries of the so-called Mission Indians' agency, for whom it would seem to be the duty of the Government to care as well as for those already enumerated. One of these is the San Carlos Indians, living near the old San Carlos Mission at Monterey. There are nearly one hundred of these, and they are living on lands which were given to them before the Secularization Act in 1834. These lands are close to the boundaries of the ranch San Francisquito of Monterey. These boundaries have been three times extended, each time taking in a few more acres of the Indians' lands, until now they have only ten or twelve acres left. There are also some very destitute Indians living in the neighborhood of the San Antonio Mission, some sixty miles south of Monterey, and of San Miguel, forty miles farther south, and of Santa Juez near Santa Barbara. These Indians should not be overlooked in arrangements made for the final establishing of the Mission Indians in Southern California.

Hoping that these recommendations may be approved by the Department, we are,

Hon. H. Price, Commissioner of Indian Affairs