THE INDIANS AT THE COMING OF THE PADRES It is generally believed that the California Indian in his original condition was one of the most miserable and wretched of the world's aborigines.

As one writer puts it: "When discovered by the padres he was almost naked, half starved, living in filthy little hovels built of tule, speaking a meagre language broken up into as many different and independent dialects as there were tribes, having no laws and few definite customs, cruel, simple, lazy, and--in one word which best describes such a condition of existence--wretched.

There are some forms of savage life that we can admire; there are others that can only excite our disgust; of the latter were the California Indians." This is the general attitude taken by most writers of this later day, as well as of the padres themselves, yet I think I shall be able to show that in some regards it is a mistaken one.

I do not believe the Indians were the degraded and brutal creatures the padres and others have endeavored to make out.

This is no charge of bad faith against these writers.