The Indian Dispossessed
lived for so long, and that they should be protected by law in the peaceful possession of the homes that have been handed down to them.
"I asked how they would like for their children to go to school, learn to speak the English language, and to live more like white people. It would be very nice, they replied, but it would do them little good if they could not have their homes protected.
"I asked them how they would like to be moved to some place where they would be better protected, have ground of their own secured to them, and more comfortable homes. The answer was, 'Our fathers lived and died here, and we would rather live here than at any other place.'"
Two years more, and another agent writes:
"The valleys of San Pasqual and Pala, in San Diego County, which were once set apart for a reservation would afford good homes for a large part of the people, and ought to be restored to them. The abolishment of this reservation four years ago was secured by interested parties, through a shameful perversion and falsification of the real facts of the case at that time, and the Indians yet remaining in these valleys are being shamefully imposed upon by the settlers."
Then San Pasqual disappears from the records for a period of several years. It has officially ceased to exist. But in 1883 a special commissioner writes the final chapter:
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