The Post here was established about 1857 to overawe the Yumas, then a stalwart and numerous tribe of Indians, occupying both banks of the Colorado for a hundred miles or more. Though much reduced, they still numbered over a thousand souls; and physically speaking, were the finest specimens of aborigines we had seen yet. They cultivate the river-bottoms to some extent, and raise barley, wheat, beans, melons, etc.--for their surplus of which, when any, they find a ready market at Fort Yuma and Arizona City. Some chop wood for the river-steamers, and others indeed we found employed on the steamers themselves, as deck-hands, firemen, etc. Altogether, these Yumas seemed to have more of the practical about them, than any savages we had met yet, and no doubt they might be saved to the race for generations to come, were proper efforts made to protect and care for them. They had been peaceable for years, and scores of them thronged the Post and the depot, every day we were there. The men wore only a breech-cloth, with long ends fluttering fore and aft; the women but little more, though some of them affected a rude petticoat. Both sexes, as a rule, were naked from the waist up, and many of each were superb specimens of humanity; but all seemed corrupted and depraved, by contact with the nobler white race. The open and unblushing looseness and licentiousness of the riff-raff of Arizona City, with these poor Indians, was simply disgusting, and it is a disgrace to a Christian government to tolerate such orgies, as frequently occur there, under the very shadow of its flag. Great blame attaches to the army, in former years, for ever admitting these poor creatures within the precincts of the Post there at all. Some time before, it was said, the commanding officer sent for Pasquol, their head-chief, and bade him order his squaws away. "_My_ squaws?" he indignantly responded; "no _my_ squaws now! White man's squaws! Before white man come, squaws good--stay in wigwam--cook--fish--work in field--gather barley--heap good. But now squaws about Fort all day--City all night--and Yumas no want 'em. White man made squaws a heap bad. White man keep 'em!" And with this, old Pasquol, a stately old savage, wrapped his blanket about his shoulders, and strode haughtily away. As far as we could learn, there had never been a missionary, or teacher of any kind, among these poor Yumas; and to all who feel a call in that direction, we would suggest the place as a superb field, for earnest missionary work. Will not some of our religious organizations, now that they have got the Red Man so fully in their hands, make a note of this, and try to look a little after these splendid savages, degraded though they be, as well as the Cheyennes and Sioux, and other more eastern tribes?