The Indian Dispossessed
the county court, acting under the advice of the district attorney, on the sole ground of their being Indians. They then referred the matter, through their attorney, C. N. Wilson, Esq., to the United States Commissioner at Los Angeles, asking him to take such action in the premises as would fully test their rights in this regard under the Constitution. He refused to have anything to do with the case, further than to transmit the affidavits of the Indians to the district attorney at San Francisco. Here the matter rests for the present, with little prospect that anything in their interest will be done by the officers of justice to whom they have made appeal."
Year after year the story of the Mission Indians appears in the official reports:
"I may first remark, in general, that I find them a much more numerous, civilized, and industrious people than I had supposed; properly provided for, their future is hopeful. Their relation to the Government, and the white population now pressing in upon them, is a sad commentary upon the Christian civilization of the age in its modes of dealing with the weak and defenceless. If citizens, their rights as such have been entirely overlooked and trampled upon; if wards of the Government, they have been most sadly neglected, left at the mercy and in the power of the citizens who are settling around and among them. While some treat them humanely, yet the too prevailing sentiment is that they have no
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