hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

ATTITUDE OF THE GOVERNMENT. 489
While refusing to admit any claim on the part of
the California Indians for their land, the United
States government recognized that in dispossessing
them from their hunting and berrying grounds some
compensation must be made, if only out of consideration
for the safety of the intruding settlers. Superintendent
Beale received instructions accordingly.
He approved the reservation plan of the agents and
commissioners of 1851-2, yet with improvements.
Impressed by the success of the early missions, he
proposed a system of discipline and instruction under
resident agents and the protecting care of military
posts, together with communal farming to promote
self-support. This received the approval of congress,
which appropriated $250,000 toward the formation of
five military reservations. Beale proceeded energetically
to his task, although reporting it difficult to
persuade the Indians to leave their old homes and
hunting grounds for the restraining limits of an uncongenial
reservation or to convince the citizens of the
necessity for keeping his wards within the state
them too low. The smaller figures are due to early travellers and residents,
some of whom evidently went to an extreme in the other direction. The
mission padres could not be expected to lower the results of their labors
among converts, so that the 17,000 or 20,000 neophytes reported by them
during the first decades of the century may be excessive, ana include a large
number of relapsed fugitives. Nevertheless their reports indicate that in
the southern half of California alone the natives must have numbered more
than 15,000, perhaps double, while a still larger total is generally allowed for
the north. But it is also known that a large proportion, sometimes entire
tribes, were swept away by small-pox at different tunes. Chest diseases and
fevers carried off thousands, and a more insidious malady undermined in
a slower but equally effectual manner, far more so than wars, whiskey, and
other less defined concomitants of foreign civilization. One result was a
startling excess of deaths over births in Mexican times. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the census of 1852 reported only about 32,000 'domesticated'
Indians, and that of 1860 reduces the number to less than 18,000.
But these figures evidently neglect the tribes of the north, and those roaming
in the mountains, not to mention the bands driven into the adjoining
territories before the advancing and aggressive white men. The census of
1870 raises the total to 31,000; yet by 1880 it is again lowered to a little
more than 16,000, and this with a detailed enumeration that appears conclusive.
The diminution since 1848 is due not alone to wars, diseases and
famine, but to the retreat of bands into adjoining territories before the advance
of the aggressive settlers. The more humane policy lately in vogue,
with greater medical care and attention to bodily comforts, will no doubt
prevent any rapid decline, and the growing settled condition, with gradual
adaptation to new circumstances, favoring the rearing of female as well as
male children, cannot fail to have a beneficial effect