servative 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