USA > California > Land in California, the story of mission land, ranches, squatters, mining claims, railroad grants, land scrip, homesteads > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19
Since eighteenth- and nineteenth-century missioniza- tion of Indians destroyed native cultures, there is little information about real property ideas among the groups that gave up their villages for the mission compound. The Gabrielinos, for example, the most advanced of the Sho- shonean peoples in southern California, held the most fertile land there, a stretch of pleasant coast, and Santa Catalina, the best of the Santa Barbara Channel islands. Yet only the scantiest source material is available about their holding of real property before they substituted the mission for the ranchería.
13
First Owners
In California Spanish rule yielded to Mexican in 1822. Henceforth, until the American conquest, California was a Mexican province, the first few months being under an imperial regime. The laws of Spain carried over into those of Mexico, with California landowners and land users-white or Indian-governed by the rulings of Mex- ico City.
On the secularization of the missions by the Mexican government, during the years 1834-1836, some of the mission holdings were distributed among Indian heads of families and those more than twenty-one years of age. Several Indian pueblos were then established. These proved temporary, for the Indians were largely incapable of assuming responsibility. There were exceptions, how- ever, for a number of Christianized Indians received Mexican grants of ranchos.
With the close of the Mexican War and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, California became a part of the United States, the California In- dians becoming subject to its jurisdiction. They num- bered then perhaps 110,000.
The Indians' right to occupy their lands until volun- tary relinquishment-traditionally recognized by the fed- eral government since the early days of the republic-did not prevent their being quickly dispossessed. The United States from the beginning admitted the Indians' right to occupy lands possessed by them, but it held-and the courts held-that the absolute title to the soil was vested in the government. Since the Indians could occupy land until voluntary relinquishment or until their rights were extinguished by "justifiable conquest," the young repub- lic had early to adopt a policy that would enable it to wipe out Indian claims to territory not in actual use. The
14
Land in California
policy adopted-and followed until March 3, 1871-was to recognize the tribes as nations and to enter into treaties with them as such. By these treaties specified lands were agreed upon as tribal, with a cession to the United States, for proper compensation, of outside areas.
Accordingly, when California became a part of the Union, three commissioners were appointed under the provisions of the Act of September 30, 1850, to effect a just settlement with the California Indians. Redick McKee, G. W. Barbour, and O. M. Wozencraft, repre- senting the United States, proceeded to negotiate with the headmen of California tribes. Between March 19, 1851, and January 7, 1852, they met 402 tribal heads at various central meeting places, and entered into eighteen treaties. It has been estimated that one half to one third of the Indians of California were involved in these treaties. Under the treaties the Indians relinquished their claims to lands in the United States, but they were to have the right to use and occupy certain areas specifically described, and were promised supplies, tools, livestock, clothing, the services of agents, teachers, and carpenters, together with necessary buildings. By these treaties a large part of the acreage of California was surrendered in return for promises-promises that were not kept. The Indians and the treaty negotiators acted apparently in good faith but the United States Senate refused to ratify a single treaty.
The mighty Gold Rush was on, with newcomers swarm- ing over part of the areas proposed to be set apart as In- dian reservations and with old-timers angry at the idea of good lands being awarded to "degraded" Indians. Most Californians had no use for the government's treaty mak- ing with the Indians. The editor of the Los Angeles Star
15
First Owners
represented this viewpoint when on March 13, 1852, he wrote:
We believe the action of the commissioners to be pregnant with the most disastrous consequences, and we can see no solution of the difficulties that will grow up around us, if the General Government ratify these treaties, except a general and exterminating war . .. To place upon our most fertile soil the most degraded race of aborigines upon the North Ameri- can Continent, to invest them with the rights of sovereignty, and to teach them that they are to be treated as powerful and independent nations, is planting the seeds of future disaster and ruin ... We hope that the general government will let us alone-that it will neither undertake to feed, settle or re- move the Indians amongst whom we in the South reside, and that they will leave everything just as it now exists, except affording us the protection which two or three cavalry com- panies would give.
A special committee appointed by the California legis- lature reported against the policy followed by the com- missioners, and the legislature, by an overwhelming vote, recommended that Congress be prevented from confirm- ing the Indian reservations. The resolutions from Cali- fornia did their work and on July 8, 1852, the Senate of the United States rejected each of the eighteen treaties.
Meanwhile the Indians who had been induced to re- move to specified reservations met the opposition of any white pioneers claiming or in possession of such areas. . Lands ceded by the Indians, if not within privately granted ranchos, remained a part of the public domain. Lands promised for Indian use and occupancy-but not given-were also largely "public lands" and remained such. On top of all this the courts held that the failure of the California Indians-an almost wholly illiterate people-to present their claims before the Board of Land
16
Land in California
Commissioners, whose hearings took place in the 1850's, `debarred them from later establishing any interest in California lands, even the right of occupancy.
The Indians of California, accordingly, who once occu- pied, after a fashion, three-quarters of the state's more than 100,000,000 acres of land-along the seashore, in the mountains and the deserts, and along the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Russian, Pit, Klamath, Trinity, and other rivers-were exposed to eviction, persecution, exploita- tion, enslavement, and massacre. Many became homeless wanderers. By 1910 California Indians numbered 16,350.1
When the United States did get around to setting aside, as Indian reservations, certain lands out of the public domain or out of privately owned land bought for that purpose, too often miners and settlers had already taken the best. What was left was sometimes, as in southern California especially, waste land, desert, mountain, graz- ing, isolated, or waterless areas.
The year-by-year story of what lands the Indians of California relinquished to the United States, of what lands were set aside out of the public domain or elsewhere for their use as "reservations"-between the years 1851 and 1894-and of the transfer of tribes from one reserva- tion to another is told in Charles C. Royce's exhaustive Indian Land Cessions in the United States. Descriptions . and maps of the tracts involved accompany the schedule of cessions. This study includes the first "treaty" reserva- tion, a tract between the Merced and Tuolumne rivers, established March 19, 1851. It tells of Superintendent E. F. Beale's establishment of a "reserve," the first of its
1 The population had apparently increased to 23,281 by 1940, according to the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs made on June 30, 1940. This figure possibly does not represent an actual increase, but, in- stead, the inclusion of many Indians who had not been enrolled before.
17
First Owners
kind, at Tejon Pass. A listing of important cessions or dispositions of Indian lands after the year 1894 is pre- sented in Daniel M. Greene's Public Land Statutes of the United States, a compilation for the United States De- partment of the Interior.
The map of California today shows several hundred thousand acres of land in Indian reservations. The largest is the Hoopa (Hupa) Valley reservation in Humboldt County. Other reservations are the Round Valley, in Mendocino County, the Tule River in Tulare County, the Yuma in the southeast corner of Imperial County, and the large group of "mission" Indian reservations in Riverside and San Diego counties. The last group num- bers less than thirty and includes, among others, the Morongo, Soboba, Agua Caliente (Palm Springs), Santa Ysabel, and Pala reservations. Each reservation was estab- lished after a long struggle by or on behalf of the Indians. Lands within these reservations could be disposed of only under the provisions of special acts of Congress.
Although there was Congressional legislation in 1875 and in 1884 to enable certain Indians to secure home- steads on the public domain, the restrictions in the acts defeated their purposes. Probably, too, no California In- dian was ever informed of his rights.
Allotments of lands to Indians were provided for by Congress in 1887. These allotments could be within es- tablished reservations or outside on the public domain. Their size ranged from 40 to 160 acres, depending upon whether the land was "irrigable," "non-irrigable agri- cultural," or "grazing." A large number of allotments ultimately were made in California, mostly in the
2 The Office of Indian Affairs had under its jurisdiction on January 1, 1940, 666,817 acres of California land: 198,368 "trust allotted"; 458,934 "tribal"; and 9, 515 "government owned."
18
Land in California
northeastern counties, by special agents sent out from Washington.3 The act provided for the issuance of patents in the names of the allottees, but the United States was to hold the land allotted in trust for twenty-five years. In some cases the allotments were of great value, but many were absolute desert, and to most of California's Indians the allotment laws brought little relief.
As land in California became more sought after by white settlers, life became harder for the Indian popula- tion. When ejected from one tract which had been filed on by some white man, the Indian families affected had to find a landowner who would tolerate their "squatting" on his lands. The wanderers thus tended to crowd into certain rancherías or settlements where living conditions were deplorable. In the 'eighties Helen Hunt Jackson had called the attention of the nation to the sad state of the California Indians by the publication of her A Cen- tury of Dishonor and Ramona. Congress took faltering steps in 1890 to give relief, and the Smiley Commission increased and enlarged the southern California reserva- tions. A branch of the National Indian Association was established in northern California and schools for In- dians were organized. The California Indian Association began an educational campaign in 1904 to secure land from Congress. Other groups joined. The most active in southern California was the Sequoya League, organized by Charles F. Lummis, David Starr Jordan, Frederick Webb Hodge, Phoebe A. Hearst, and others. Congres- sional appropriations for relief followed. C. E. Kelsey, General Secretary of the Northern California Indian As-
8 C. E. Kelsey, special agent, reported in 1906 that 2,058 allotments had been made in California with 261 canceled, leaving 1,797 outstanding, these being in Modoc, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta, and Siskiyou counties. Kelsey also found a few Indian communities owning land in common in Humboldt, Lake, and Mendocino counties.
19
First Owners
sociation, in charge of purchasing and allotting required lands, served until the appropriations were exhausted.
The eighteen treaties of 1851 and 1852 lay in the ar- chives of the United States Senate until 1905. With the discovery in that year of these skeletons in the closet, various groups, such as San Francisco's Commonwealth Club of California, took steps to publicize the unfortu- nate situation of the remaining California Indians and to work for their relief. In 1927 the California legislature finally passed an act authorizing the attorney general, provided Congressional authority was given, to bring suit in behalf of the Indians against the United States in the Court of Claims. Congress reciprocated and passed the California Indians' Jurisdictional Act of 1928, affording a limited means of relief. Under its provisions a petition was filed in the Court of Claims-the case being entitled "The Indians of California, Claimants, by U. S. Webb, Attorney General of the State of California v. The United States, No. K-344." Following the court's decision, on October 5, 1942, that the plaintiffs were entitled to re- cover, subject to allowable offsets, they were awarded the sum of $5,024,842.34 on December 4, 1944. This amount was appropriated by Congress and paid into the United States Treasury to draw interest at 4 per cent per annum. It remains in the Treasury-less $27,842.50 allowed the state for expenses incurred in conducting the litigation. It is subject to reappropriation by Congress "for educa- tional, health, industrial and other purposes for the bene- fit of said Indians, including the purchase of lands and building of homes," but not for per capita payments to Indians.4 In August, 1946, Congress passed an act pro-
+ From the Jurisdictional Act of 1928, 45 Stat. 602, 46 Stat. 259, and as contained in Opinion No. 47/205 issued August 29, 1947 by Fred N. Howser, Attorney General, by Hartwell H. Linney, Chief Assistant.
20
Land in California
viding for an Indian Claims Commission of three mem- bers to be appointed by the President to hear the claims of Indians residing in the United States or Alaska against the United States.
Such is the fund and the machinery finally set up to compensate the Indians of California for the injustice practiced upon them by the rejection of the treaties nego- tiated in 1851-1852. Representation of Indian claims by the state attorney general and the use of sums authorized for that purpose by the state in 1947 is at present contin- gent upon the Indians of California uniting in one group.
If, in 1852, the Senate had approved the eighteen treaties, could we assume that all would have been well? No. If the hunting, fishing, and acorn-gathering tribes had been given some of the best lands in the state in 1852 serious trouble would have resulted for the Indians. It is certain they could not have maintained their lands against the influx of aggressive, impatient white settlers, men who saw gold in the hills and visioned farms and towns in the valleys. Conflict between civilization and primitive living was inevitable. An early awareness by the government, however, of its moral obligations as guardian of a helpless people, together with definite pro- vision in the Act of 1851 for possessory rights of Indians, would have saved California's Indians from much of the misery that overwhelmed them.
Worthy of a place among famous Indian orations is the speech of Cecilio Blacktooth, captain of Agua Cali- ente, principal Indian village on Warner's Ranch in San Diego County, made by him there on March 17, 1902, a year before his tribe's forced removal to Pala Valley. On the next page is Captain Blacktooth's speech at a meeting held with Charles F. Lummis.
21
First Owners
We thank you for coming here to talk to us in a way we can understand. It is the first time anyone has done so. You ask us to think what place we like next best to this place where we always live. You see that graveyard over there? There are our fathers and our grandfathers. You see that Eagle- Nest mountain and that Rabbit-Hole mountain? When God made them He gave us this place. We have always been here. We do not care for any other place. It may be good but it is not ours. We have always lived here. We would rather die here. Our fathers did. We cannot leave them. Our children born here-how can we go away? If you give us the best place in the world, it is not so good for us as this. My people cannot go anywhere else; they cannot live anywhere else. Here they always live; their people always live here. There is no other place. This is our home. We ask you to get it for us. If Harvey Downey say he own this place, that is wrong. The Indians always here. We do not go on his land. We stay here on ours. Everybody knows this Indian land. These Hot Springs always Indian. We cannot live anywhere else. We were born here, and our fathers are buried here. We do not think of any place after this. We want this place and not any other place. There is no other place for us. We do not want you to buy any other place for us. If you will not buy this place we will go into the mountains like quail and die there, the old people and the women and the children. Let the Government be glad and proud. It can kill us. We do not fight. We do what it says. If we cannot live here, we want to go into those mountains and die. We do not want any other home.
Blacktooth's speech appears in the Warner's Ranch Report made by the Congressionally approved commis- sion of five southern Californians-Russell C. Allen, Clar- ence L. Partridge, Charles F. Lummis, William Collier, and R. Egan-appointed to serve without compensation and to select a new site for the Indians who were about to be evicted from their ancestral home on Rancho San José del Valle or Warner's Ranch. This rancho was a Mexican grant; the title of its owners had been upheld by the
22
Land in California
United States Land Commission and the courts; the be- lated claims of the Indians had been rejected by the United States Supreme Court in 1901. The case had at- tracted national attention. The commission, with Lum- mis as chairman, chose 3,438 acres in Pala Valley, the best available place and actually a better location than Warner's Ranch.
It was inevitable that Indian claims to land in Cali- fornia, whether of individuals or of groups, should fade before the white invasion. What remains to them are the allotments granted and the areas substituted and set aside by the United States as reservations out of the public do- main or bought by it from private owners. These reserva- tions, too, probably will pass, with California Indians taking their place as individual landowners like Cali- fornia citizens of white or other races.
CHAPTER III
Missionary Empire
TODAY a Californian on vacation tour of his own state, having been escorted through one of the restored Fran- ciscan missions, makes a contribution to the guide, and steps out into the bright sun of the road where his car is parked. He is in a mood of happy benevolence, satisfied with his excursion into the past and content with a good world.
This Californian is visiting every one of the twenty-one missions or mission sites. He began with the first of the missions, San Diego de Alcalá, founded in 1769, in the warm and fertile valley of the San Diego River, and he ends with San Francisco Solano in the sunny Sonoma Valley, the last of the missions, established in 1823. In most of the restored or partly restored mission establish- ments there is a priest to escort the visitor through a charming garden, gay with hollyhocks or roses, down through arched corridors, through thick-walled, cool adobe rooms-heavy with the presence of the past-the
[23]
24
Land in California
former dormitories, workshops, and storerooms of gray- robed Franciscans and brown-skinned natives, a crude but impressive church, and an old cemetery where sev- eral thousand Indians are buried five deep. The priest shows the treasured paintings, the embroidered robes, the illuminated music books bound in rawhide, the Indian- made tables and benches, the tools and relics of early days, and perhaps points to the remains of an effective irriga- tion system. He tells the story of the founding, the first baptism of Indians, the rise to prosperity, the vast herds of cattle, the wine making, the work and the play, and the occasional disciplining of the neophytes, the epi- demics of smallpox, the sacrilege of secularization, the years of dishonor and disintegration, the final rescue by the United States of a small part of the land holdings, the partial restoration, and the hopes for the further restora- tion of the original buildings. Some of the missions, the visitor finds, are today parish churches, taking an active part in community work. Others are training schools for young priests.
Spain began actual colonization of this fabled and far away country in 1769. With colonization through a co- ordinated, threefold plan that called for missions, pre- sidios, and pueblos, Spain established its claims to ownership of California.
The building of a chain of missions was begun under capable, zealous Fray Junípero Serra. Strategic spots throughout the state were chosen, the locations usually being those the Indians themselves had found best for their own needs. But this activity was not accompanied by any conveyance to missions or priests of California land. Under the Spanish theory of colonization the mis- sionary establishments were not intended to be perma-
25
Missionary Empire
nent. When the Indians were Christianized and civilized, the mission settlements were to become pueblos. They were always subject, therefore, to secularization, that is, subject to being turned over to lay administration and to having the lands disposed of as a part of the public domain. The missions were permitted, under the Spanish and Mexican governments, to occupy and use certain lands for the benefit of the Indians, but not to own them. They were, in effect, trustees only.
Nevertheless, long before the chain had been com- pleted-with El Camino Real (the Royal Highway) con- necting the establishments-the missionaries had so thoroughly "taken over" and had so extended their pos- session of the land that the "limits" of one mission tended to form those of another. This extension took place de- spite the fact that only a part of these lands was actually used for grazing and agriculture. The mission system grew naturally to huge proportions, though the whole of the mission-controlled area was only about one-sixth of Cali- fornia. The success of the system depended on the Indians leaving their villages or rancherías and living in the shadow of the church. Most of the near-by Indians did leave their rancherías, either voluntarily or through com- pulsion, giving up freedom for security. During the first twenty years the method of kindliness and persuasion was used to bring in the heathen. The missionaries held out the inducements of clothing, shelter, and food, along with emphasis on religious ceremony, music, and processions. After the adjacent natives had been assimilated, the fathers broadened the field of conversion and used more forcible methods, even military, to bring in recalcitrant Indians. Each mission center was an almost self-sufficing unit, extending its feudal activities over a vast surround-
26
Land in California
ing area. At each mission lived a few hundred to two or three thousand dependent neophytes who worked for food, clothing, and shelter at the tasks assigned them. The Indians themselves had no individual property rights. The missions soon became wealthy in material possessions and dominated the state. With guest rooms available, they even offered the traveler the only possible hotel service.
Inevitably the missionaries resisted the giving of land concessions by the governor to individual Californians. They rightly regarded the rancho movement, which began in 1784, as a threat to the success of their effort. Rancheros, they felt, with their free and easy life, set a bad example to Indians and used land they and their neophytes needed. This attitude was expressed in a gently phrased report dated September 3, 1795, to Father Lasuén, president of the missions, from Father Santa María, who was on a site-hunting expedition that resulted in the establishment of San Fernando Mission.
What I have to say to Your Reverence is that on this expedi- tion I observed that the whole pagandom, between this mis- sion (San Buenaventura) and that of San Gabriel, along the beach, along the camino real, and along the border of the north, is fond of the Pueblo of Los Angeles, of the rancho of Mariano Verdugo, of the rancho of Reyes, and of the Zanja. Here we see nothing but pagans passing, clad in shoes, with sombreros and blankets, and serving as muleteers to the set- tlers and rancheros, so that if it were not for the gentiles there would be neither pueblo nor rancho; and if this be not ac- cepted as true let them bring proof. Finally these pagan In- dians care neither for the mission nor for the missionaries.1
To avoid conflict early-day rancheros sought land as far as possible from mission centers. Observe, for example, the coastal ranchos of Los Angeles County: San Pedro
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.