| OCR Text |
Show 22 REPORT OF THE relative to the children of murdered emigrants now held in captivity by the Bannacks of the Hnmboldt river. Owing to the remoteness of California and the length of time necessarily employed in transmitting communications to and from the same, the deputment is compelled in a great measure to rely upon the sagacity and integrity of the superintending agents located there, and for the sme reason those agents are often under the necessity of assuming grave responsibilities, as to await in-structions would be, in many instances, to .allow the opportunity to prevent flagrant wrongs, correct existing abuses, and secure valuable ends to pass unim-ol. oved. I desire to call especial attention to the reports of the superintending agents of the two districts, (northern and southern,) into which, for Indian purposes, the State has been divided. From those reports it will be seen that a complete change in the mauagement of our Indian relations is demanded. A change in-volving the breaking up of some of the existing reservations ; the correction of gross and palpable wrongs npon others; the establishment of new reserva-tions, as I trust will be the case, upon a far more ample scale than any hereto-fore established ; the furnishing of an almoat entirely new outfit of tools and other necessary articles to those established and to be established; and a thorough investigation, and, if possible, a correction of outrageous wrongs perpetrated, under color of law, against not only the property but also the persons and liberty of the Indians. To effect this Change will require time, a considerable expenditure of money, and the exercise, on the part of all persons connected therewith, of great care, patience, and circumspection. The remarks made under the head of the snperintendency of Nelv Mexico upon the subject of Indian reservations, and the methods by which they should be establishcd, apply to California with peculiar force. Within the southern district of the State not a single reservation exists that is not claimed or owned by the whites, nor is there one that is at all adequate in extent to the wants of the Indians. They appear to be simply farms, a few hundred acres in extent, about and upon which the Indians are e.xpected by hundreds, and, in sonlc in-stances, by thousands to congregate, and from which a small portion of their wants are supplied. These farms, in several instances, are in the midst of regions thickly inhabited by whites, to whom the Indians prove a constant source of annoyance, and by whom they are prevented from wandering over large tracts of country, as they are by nature and long habit so strongly in-clined to do. Thus the chief objects for which I-servations are desirable are frustrated. Instead of being a retreat from the encroachments of the whites upon which they may concentrate and gradually become accustomed t,o a sct-tled mode of life, while learning the arts and advnntages of civilization, and + which at a proper time is to be subdivided and allotted to them in severalty, and thus a home furnished to each of them, aronnd which shall cluster all those fond associations and endeel~nents so highly prised by all civilized people, and they in a condition to appreciate the samc, the rese.rvation is a place where a scanty subsistence is doled out to them from year to year; they become accns-tamed to rely upon charity rather than their own exertions ; are hemmed in by people by whom they are detested, and whose arts and customs they have neither the power nor inclination to acquirc, and thus they become vagrants and vagabonds, accomplishing for themselves no desirable end, and are a nuisance to their white neighbors. Within the northern district the reservations are owned by gove~ment,b ut with the exception perhaps, of that of Ro ~ u ~vadll ey, they, too, are iusofricient in size, and in conscquencc of their occnpation nnder one pretext or anothcr, by whites, are of no more real utility to the Indians than those of the southern dis-trict. At Nome Lacke reservation there were at one time between two and three thousand Indians, but owing to encroachments of whites npon the reserva- |
