Mr. Kelsey at my request kindly prepared for me a summary of the California Indians and the work of rescue as projected by friends, and carried to perfection through his intelligent and unselfish labors. He has also written me a long letter and I take the liberty of appending in the form of footnotes a number of extracts from his letter, in addition to the article. MR. KELSEY’S BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS The aboriginal population of California was large, possibly equal to that of all the rest of the United States. Powers, in his “Indians of California,” 1877, a work which has been liberally quoted by about everyone who has since written of the California Indians, estimates the number at 750,000. Barbour and Wozencraft, who traveled over the State in 1851 as members of the California Indian Commission, estimated the native population to be between 200,000 and 300,000. C. Hart Merriam[60] estimates the numbers at the beginning of the nineteenth century at 260,000. Dr. Kroeber estimates the number at not less than 150,000. The figures of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 1913 shows a little less than 20,000, being slightly larger than the U. S. census for 1910. This decrease is certainly extraordinary, being nearly 90% of the most conservative estimate of former population, and nearly all taking place within the memories of persons now living. The causes are variously given as war, famine, whiskey, disease, etc., and all doubtless played their parts in the decrease. Dr. Merriam states the causes as follows: [Illustration: LINGUISTIC STOCKS IN CALIFORNIA From Handbook of American Indians. ] “The principal cause of the appallingly great and rapid decrease in the Indians of California is not the number directly slain by the Whites, or the number directly killed by whiskey or disease, but a much more subtle and dreadful thing: it is the gradual but progressive and resistless confiscation of their lands and homes, in consequence of which they are forced to seek refuge in remote and barren localities, often far from water, usually with an impoverished supply of food, and not infrequently, in places where the winter climate is too severe for their enfeebled constitutions. Victims of the aggressive selfishness of the Whites, outcasts in the land of their fathers, outraged in their most sacred institutions, weakened in body, broken in spirit, and fully conscious of the hopelessness of their condition, must we wonder that the wail for the dead is often heard in their camps?” The Special Investigating Agent, appointed under the Act of March 3, 1905, states it as largely due to the “progressive absorption by the white race of the Indians’ every means of existence.”[61] During the famines to which all Indian bands were subject after the American occupation, the old people and especially the children would die.