Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/433

Rh are engaged entirely in agricultural pursuits, and, as tax-paying Indians, would be entitled to the privileges of citizens, and of the elective franchise in Texas.

"The census taken in New Mexico the year before the entrance of General Kearney into that Territory, showed the population to be one hundred thousand and two or three hundred over. This may not have been taken with great accuracy, but the best informed persons, and those who have lived there longest agree with me that we have not less than ninety thousand. Dr. Wislizenius, who is generally correct in his accounts of travel, and who is relied upon as good authority, in his statistics of that country, is certainly mistaken in saying that ten-twentieths, or one-half of the population, are Pueblo Indians. I have travelled through the settled parts of that country two or three times a year for the last three years, and I know that not a fifth, or even one-sixth are Indians.

"There are in New Mexico from twelve to fifteen hundred resident American voters, emigrants from the different States, principally from the State of Missouri; the rest of the population is Mexican and Spanish."

Upon these estimates and calculations it would perhaps be fair, in arriving at a proximate enumeration of inhabitants, to give the following ratios:—

The more civilized inhabitants of New Mexico resemble their parent stock in character and manners, save that they are somewhat tinctured with the habits of the Indian race, whose blood is mingled