“These thousands of Indians had been held in the most rigid discipline by the Mission Fathers, and after their emancipation by the Supreme Government of Mexico, had been reasonably well governed by the local authorities, who found in them indispensable auxiliaries as farmers and harvesters, hewers of wood and drawers of water, and besides, the best horse-breakers and herders in the world, necessary to the management of the great herds of the country.  These Indians were Christians, docile even to servility, and excellent laborers.  Then came the Americans, followed soon after by the discovery of, and the wild rush for, gold, and the relaxation for the time being of a healthy administration of the laws.  The ruin of this once happy and useful people commenced.  The cultivators of vineyards began to pay their Indian peons with aguardiente, a real ‘firewater.’  The consequence was that on receiving their wages on Saturday evening, the laborers habitually met in great gatherings and passed the night in gambling, drunkenness, and debauchery.  On Sunday the streets were crowded from morning until night with Indians,—­males and females of all ages, from the girl of ten or twelve to the old man and woman of seventy or eighty.

“By four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, Los Angeles Street, from Commercial to Nigger Alley, Aliso Street from Los Angeles to Alameda, and Nigger Alley, were crowded with a mass of drunken Indians, yelling and fighting:  men and women, boys and girls using tooth and nail, and frequently knives, but always in a manner to strike the spectator with horror.

“At sundown, the pompous marshal, with his Indian special deputies, who had been confined in jail all day to keep them sober, would drive and drag the combatants to a great corral in the rear of the Downey Block, where they slept away their intoxication.  The following morning they would be exposed for sale, as slaves for the week.  Los Angeles had its slave-mart as well as New Orleans and Constantinople,—­only the slaves at Los Angeles were sold fifty-two times a year, as long as they lived, a period which did not generally exceed one, two, or three years under the new dispensation.  They were sold for a week, and bought up by vineyard men and others at prices ranging from one to three dollars, one-third of which was to be paid to the peon at the end of the week, which debt, due for well-performed labor, was invariably paid in aguardiente, and the Indian made happy, until the following Monday morning, he having passed through another Saturday night and Sunday’s saturnalia of debauchery and bestiality.  Those thousands of honest, useful people were absolutely destroyed in this way.”

In reference to these statements of the sale of the Indians as slaves, it should be noted that the act was done under the cover of the law.  The Indian was “fined” a certain sum for his drunkenness, and was then turned over to the tender mercies of the employer, who paid the fine.  Thus “justice” was perverted to the vile ends of the conscienceless scoundrels who posed as “officers of the law.”