Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/229

 of an Indian family or families on land upon which a white man desires to settle is, in law, no more a bar to such settlement than would be the presence of a stray sheep or cow. And so, like sheep or cattle, they have been too often driven from their homes and their cultivated fields, the Government, through its officers, refusing to hear their protests, as though in equity as well as in law they had no rights in the least deserving consideration."

The story of the Mission Indians is best told in the annual reports of the Indian Office. It is a tale too incredible to be told in any other way.

"The Coahuilas, of San Timoteo, during the existence of the smallpox two or three years ago, fled in dismay, leaving their lands, not with the intention of abandoning them, but from fear of the epidemic. The white settlers near the Indian lands immediately took forcible possession of them, and have positively refused to give them up. It is of the utmost importance that immediate steps be taken to examine fully into this matter, to the end that strict and impartial justice be done in the premises. . ..

"Some nine miles from Temecula is a place called Pajamo. When the Indians left this place for their summer grounds, a number of villainous Americans, headed by two men named Breeze and Woolfe, burned the Indian houses or 'jacablo,' and then took forcible possession of their lands and ditches. This is the complaint made by the Indians, and it 14