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 Str