the Indian women were used at the agency houses as servants, and made
excellent and competent house-help.

Scattered through Potter, Little Lake, Ukiah, and other valleys, they were
earning their living, and a number of farmers of that region have assured
me that it was a serious disadvantage to them to lose the help of these
Indians. Nor was it even necessary to speak their language in order to
use their labor, for the agent told me that, of the Potter Valley tribe,
nine-tenths speak English; of the Pitt Rivers, four-fifths; of the Little
Lakes, two-thirds; of the Redwoods, three-quarters; of the Concows and
Capellos, two-thirds. The Wylackies and Ukies speak less; they have been,
I believe, longer on the reservation. As I walked through the Indian camp,
English was as often spoken in my hearing as Indian.

The removal of the useful and self-supporting part of the Indian
population to the reservation was brought about by means which are a
disgrace to the United States Government. There is in all this northern
country a class of mean whites, ignorant, easily led to evil, and
extremely jealous of what they imagine to be their rights. Among these
somebody fomented a jealousy of the Indians. It was said that they took
the bread out of white men's mouths, that their labor interfered with
the white men, and so forth. In fact, I suspect that the Indians were
too respectable for these mean whites; and you can easily find people in
California who say that it is to the interest of the Indian Bureau to make
the whites hate the Indians.

The Indians were an industrious and harmless people; even the squaws
worked; the Indian men had learned to take contracts for clearing land,
weeding fields, and so forth; and many of them were so trustworthy that
the farmers made them small advances where it was necessary. They were not