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Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. XLI MISSION INDIANS. The necessity for early legislation to provide a suitable and permanent home for the Mission Indians of California is urgent. They are esti-mated to number about 3,000, and are scattered in small bands over San Uiego, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles Counties, earning a preoarious livelihood by cultivating small patches of land, and working for ranch-men and white settlers when opportunity offers. Many of themarenow occupying by sderance lands which their ancestors have cult.ivated from time immemorial, and to which they supposed they had an indisl pntable right; but those lands have lately been found to be within the limits of private land-claims confirmed by the courts to grantees uunder the Mexican Government before the acquisition of California by the United States. In many cases the owners or occupants of these ranches have availed themselves of the labor of the Indians in cultivating the land (often at most u~!just and oppressively low rates, however), *nd the Indians have also been permitted to occupy andcultivate small tracts forthemselves; but now, desiring to dispose of the ranches, or to use the whole for their own purposes, the owners have threatened the Indians with summary ejectment This, together with the conflicts arising from trespass upon the lands of the ranchmen and settlers, by stock belonging to the Indians, has kept these poor people in doubt and anxiety for two yeam *st, until at the present day they are in a state of the most abject poverty to be found anywhere on the American Continent. Several small reservations have been set apart by Executive order for these Indians, but on account of the lack of water for irrigating pur-poses, and the consequent steri1it.y of the soil, they have been found to be of little value. Attentlion is invited to the annual report of Agent Lawson, on page 13, from which it will be seen that the Mission Indians are a hard-work-iug people, and asknothing from the government except 8 reservation; and inasmuch as there are no public lands in Southern Califoruiawhich have any agriculttural value, an appropriation of about $50,000 will be needed for the purchase of sufficient land to enable these Indians to sup- . port themselves by their own labor. SANITARY. The samtary condition of the Werent tribes of Indians of course de-pends very much upon their surroundings, and largely upon whether they are located in river-bottoms or upon bids away from the unfavora-ble influences conseqnent upon such proximity. The monthly sanitary reports hmphysicians have begn for the most part satisfactory, and the ratio of mortality to the number of oases treated indicates a remarkable degree of success. The number of eases of treatment of the sick recorded at the different agencies during the fiscal year ending the 30th of June |