In four cases it is “poor land,” with “no water,” and in another instance there are “worthless, dry hills;” in still another the soil is “almost worthless for lack of water!”

In one of the desert cases, where there are five villages, the government has supplied “water in abundance for irrigation and domestic use, from artesian wells.”  Yet the land is not patented, and the Indians are helpless, if evicted by resolute men.

At Cahuilla, with a population of one hundred fifty-five, the report says, “mountain valley; stock land and little water.  Not patented.”

At Santa Isabel, including Volcan, with a population of two hundred eighty-four, the reservation of twenty-nine thousand eight hundred forty-four acres is patented, but the report says it is “mountainous; stock land; no water.”

At San Jacinto, with a population of one hundred forty-three, the two thousand nine hundred sixty acres are “mostly poor; very little water, and not patented.”

San Manuel, with thirty-eight persons, has a patent for six hundred forty acres of “worthless, dry hills.”

Temecula, with one hundred eighty-one persons, has had allotted to its members three thousand three hundred sixty acres, which area, however, is “almost worthless for lack of water.”

Let us reflect upon these things!  The poor Indian is exiled and expelled from the lands of his ancestors to worthless hills, sandy desert, grazing lands, mostly poor and mountainous land, while our powerful government stands by and professes its helplessness to prevent the evil.  These discouraging facts are enough to make the just and good men who once guided the republic rise from their graves.  Is there a remnant of honor, justice, or integrity, left among our politicians?

There is one thing this government should have done, could have done, and might have done, and it is to its discredit and disgrace that it did not do it; that is, when the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred the Indians from the domination of Mexico to that of the United States, this government “of, for, and by” the people, should have recognized the helplessness of its wards and not passed a law of which they could not by any possibility know, requiring them to file on their lands, but it should have appointed a competent guardian of their moral and legal rights, taking it for granted that occupancy of the lands of their forefathers would give them a legal title which would hold forever against all comers.

In all the Spanish occupation of California it is doubtful whether one case ever occurred where an Indian was driven off his land.