The superintendent said to me, "They have plenty of every thing; they have
often several bags of flour in the house at once; no man can say they are
wronged."

The earthen floors of the houses were usually cleanly swept; there are
wells at which the people get water; the school-houses are well furnished,
and as good as the average country-school, and the Indians seem to suffer
no hardship of the merely physical kind. The agent, Mr. Burchard, seems to
be a genuinely kind person, simple-hearted, and, I should think, honest;
and his assistants, whom I saw, struck me as respectable men. Indeed,
several persons in the valley, unconnected with the reservation, told me
that under Mr. Burchard's rule the Indians were much better treated than
by his predecessor. I suppose, therefore, that I saw one of the most
favorable examples of the reservation system.

In what follows, then, I criticise the reservation system, so far, at
least, as it applies to the Indians of California, and not the management
at Round Valley; and I say that it is a piece of cruel and stupid
mismanagement and waste for which there is no excuse except in the
ignorance of the President who continues it.

Most of the Indians of these northern coast counties, as well as those of
Southern California, have for some years been a valuable laboring force
for the farmers. They were employed to clear land, to make hay, and
in many other avocations about the farm; they lived usually in little
rancherias, or collections of huts, near the farm-houses; the women washed
and did chores for the whites about the houses; and there has been, for at
least half a dozen years, no pretense even that their presence among the
whites was dangerous to these. Mr. Burchard told me himself that more than
half the Indian men at Round Valley were competent farmers, and that