The Mission Indians
twenty thousand baptized, registered Indians. It is doubtful whether more than two-thirds of this number were actually attached to the missions in the sense of having permanent homes upon them. During the fifteen years which elapsed between the final dismemberment of the missions and the acquisition of California by the United States in 1848, it is safe to say that about half of the Mission Indians were driven from their lands by venturesome Mexicans who coveted their valuable homes. However accurate this estimate may be, the United States Government found in its new domain some seven thousand of these Indians still peacefully occupying the old mission lands, and cultivating the same parcels which had been the homes of their fathers and grandfathers before them. The earliest United States Government report of the Mission Indians appears in 1851:
"At the close of the Mexican war some of these old Mission Indians remained in possession of lands under written grants from the Mexican Government. Some have sold out, others have been elbowed off by white men. All are now waiting the adjudication of the commissioner of land titles. Many of them are good citizens in all respects save the right to vote and be witnesses. They are anxious to hold their title homesteads and resist all offers to buy as steadily as they can. How long their limited shrewdness can match the overreaching cupidity that ever assails them it is difficult to say.
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