Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/342

324 women, and children, having on their side five wounded, one of the number mortally. This achievement was coolly reported by Mercado to Figueroa in a letter of the 25th, with a request for reënforcements to aid in pacifying the rancherías. The governor was naturally indignant that his promises to the Indians had been thus shamefully violated, and with the advice of Asesor Gomez, sent the case Prefect García Diego, the competent ecclesiastical judge. The prefect suspended Mercado from his ministry, summoned him to Santa Clara, and announced his intention to send him to his college for trial. Meanwhile Vallejo, by Figueroa's orders, liberated Toribio and his companions at San Francisco; went to San Rafael with a military force and freed the captives there; and then made a tour through the rancherías to Solano, pacifying the excited Indians, and explaining to them Figueroa's kind intentions and the wickedness of Padre Mercado, dilating on the latter topic very reluctantly — perhaps. In the middle of the next year, Mercado was freed from arrest and restored to San Rafael, two friars having been sent to make an investigation, and having learned from fourteen witnesses that the padre had nothing to do with the outrage!

Returning to the topic of secularization, or to progress in that direction during 1833, I have first to notice Figueroa's instructions on this point from the Mexican government — instructions that emanated from the same administration which had appointed Victoria, and similar in spirit probably to those given that officer, and certainly to those under which Echeandía