Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/379

Rh to have been removed in 1835 to the main, with the exception of one woman, who was found and brought over eighteen years later. At San Luis Rey a plot was revealed to capture no less a personage than the governor when he should arrive from the north. An examination of arrested plotters in April indicated, however, nothing more serious than a design to protest against the granting of Temécula rancho, which the Indians claimed as their own property.

While Indian hostilities were thus for the most part trifling as recorded, yet in one phase of the subject they were much more serious than could be made to appear from a series of petty local items, even if all those items were extant, which is far from being the case. The constant depredations of renegade neophytes, in alliance with gentile bands, and instigated by New Mexican vagabond traders and foreign hunters, kept the country in a state of chronic disquietude in these and later years, being the most serious obstacle to progress and prosperity. Murders of gente de razon were of comparatively rare occurrence, but in other respects the scourge was similar to that of the Apache ravages in Sonora and Chihuahua. Over a large extent of country the Indians lived mainly on the flesh of stolen horses, and cattle were killed for their hides when money to buy liquor could not be less laboriously obtained by the sale of other stolen articles. The presence of the neophytes and their intimate relations with other inhabitants doubtless tended to prevent general attacks and bloody massacres, as any plot was sure to be revealed by somebody; but they also rendered it wellnigh impossible to break up the complicated and destructive system of robbery. Far be it from me to blame the Indians for their conduct; for there was little in their