William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[115] some censures of a general kind. They took possession of the soil, and held their prize with an unyielding hand. They woke no sense of property in the Indian mind. They were inclined to keep all tribal usages and customs. Caring little for freedom, they retained in thrall a people who had always lived in thrall. They seldom interfered with family life. Tley let the sale of girls go on; and visited hutches where the bucks had several squaws. They left the ancient superstitions in the lodge, content with giving them new names.

Yet, be their errors small or great, these brethren kept the tribes alive. A race of savages was drawn by them into a semblance of Christian order, and endowed with some slight knowledge of domestic arts. A prospect of improvement for the children yet unborn was opened out. Who says the fathers left no fruits? Why, thirty years after landing on these coasts, they had cleared and settled the choicest spots from San Diego to San Francisco. They owned sixty-seven thousand horned cattle, a hundred and seven thousand sheep, three thousand horses and mules. When the Mexicans broke in, they had a colony of eighteen hundred converts in this valley of I 2