INSENSIBILITY TO DEATH. 127 that the immoderate use of these baths by the Indians, cause many diseases of a rheumatic character. The most wretched of mankind have their pastimes, and like other savages, the Indians of California have their dances, and the extent to which the men dress their heads in plumes for a pas de deux," gives them the appearance of having been picked clean of their feathers everywhere besides. 66 The Indians of the Sierras of the Tularés, stretching nearly the whole length of Upper California, are said to be the most numerous in the country. They are also about the greatest rogues that infest it, stealing numbers of tame horses from the white settlers on or near the coast only to use for food-the Indian generally making no other use of the horse. When the theft is discovered, the predatory band are immediately pursued, and if overtaken, which they generally are, the lives of the whole gang pay the forfeit for this offence, which in the eyes of a Californian, is of a most heinous nature. As the Americans are generally more prompt than the Californians in the pursuit of their stolen animals, the marauders generally prefer the horses of the latter, well knowing the superior energy of the Yankee settler, and that on these occasions he is apt to be quite as remorseless as the rancheros. The indifference to death which prevails among the pacific Indians of California is very remarkable—the more remarkable because they are pacific, and easily overawed and conquered. Like most savages, they reason with a rude but true philosophy, that the loss of a life so hard and precarious as theirs is little to be regretted. I have inquired after Indians employed at the port of Sonoma, whose leave of absence had run out, and have been answered that they were dead. At first I supposed they were keeping out of the way, and had got up these reports to deceive me; but afterwards I have found that they were really dead. Not the least emotion was ever shown by those 128 DUTY OF OUR GOVERNMENT. who communicated the information to me, but the laconic announcement was made in a tone as indifferent as if the subject were a dead dog. "Es muerto"-he is dead-that was the whole story; and if the cause of death were inquired into, the reply was the everlasting "Quien sabe? Es muerto."-Who knows? He is dead. And, indeed, if familiarity with death can disarm it of its terrors, well may these poor wretches laugh in the face of the King of Terrors. Wherever they come in contact with the white man, they rapidly melt away under the effects of his diseases; and, like their eastern fellows, they will now have to contend with the white man's poisonous liquors. General Vallejo told me, that when he first came to Sonoma, in 1836, that valley was inhabited by twenty thousand Indians, and there were as many more in the neighborhood. Twenty thousand of them were carried off in a single year by the ravages of small-pox, and the tribes of Sonoma have now been swept from the face of the earth -mowed down, as I said to a friend-mowed UP, as he beautifully replied. When it is remembered, that smallpox is not the only desolating disease which follows in the wake of the white man, and that his rum has proved among our Indians as fatal as his natural disorders, it is very clear, that unless measures be promptly taken to protect and preserve the inoffensive natives of California, the present generation will live to read the epitaph of the whole race. Taking into consideration that the Indians of California are pacific, tractable, and useful to the white population; that they have no national character—each rancheria being an independent and isolated community, claiming only the little land on which it stands; that we find them nevertheless upon their native soil, to which they hold an equitable title derived directly from the Almighty; that they have been already partially civilized by the missions; that many of them have learned something of the customs of the LAWS SUGGESTED. 129 whites; that if removed to the sterile border region, they would become a tribe of horse and cattle thieves, and drag out a wretched and precarious existence in the midst of the savage 66 Digger" tribes, a warlike and cruel race, subsisting on snails, roots and larvæ,-their preservation and regulation becomes a question of great moment to the governments of the United States and of California, worthy the serious attention of just and enlightened statesmen. As I have already stated, their numbers must still be very large, their rancherias extending throughout California, and enjoying various degrees of prosperity. When I have inquired as to their numbers in various parts of the country, the answer has always been, that in such and such localities there were "miles de Indios"-thousands of Indians. To give them civil rights, on an equality with the whites, would be more absurd than to grant such rights to children under ten years of age. The elective franchise, in such hands, would be both a farce and a curse. But to extend over them the protection of just statutes, devised for their advantage; to make them equal with the white population before the law, so that the atrocities heretofore practised by kidnappers should be restrained by the remedies which the civil and criminal law extends to white persons; to secure to them the right of trial by jury, and the right to hold land in limited quantities-would be measures not only righteous in themselves, but expedient, in point of policy, and creditable to the humanity of the United States. |