seem that if the Government received the benefits of the treaties, it should pay the price agreed, whether the treaties were ratified or not, and that the Government should have taken some steps to acquire the Indian right of occupancy, a right which has not been legally terminated to this day. The failure of the treaties and the ensuing period of inaction by the National Government, were disastrous to the Indians of California. Not a foot of land remained which they could call their own. There was no source of aboriginal food supply which might not be appropriated by some white man any day, and most of the country was soon appropriated for mines or cattle or agriculture. The Indians were forced into a hand-to-mouth existence, interspersed with periods of famine, during which the rising generation perished. A great variety of diseases, previously unknown, were introduced among the Indians, against which they had no inherited immunity. Diseases which among white people are considered of little consequence, such as whooping-cough, measles, etc., are fatal to Indians, especially during periods of scarcity. The more virulent diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, etc., also took their toll from the Indian camps, and whiskey claimed its thousands of victims. In any other part of the United States, the failure of the treaties would doubtless have resulted in a general Indian war. This was not possible in California. The extraordinary number of Indian dialects (over 135 are now known), belonging to some twenty diverse and antagonistic racial stocks, was enough in itself, to have prevented anything like united action. Within a year or so California was occupied by from 100,000 to 200,000 active, vigorous, masterful men, armed with the best weapons of the day. The Indians could not have mustered 30,000 warriors in the mining districts and possibly not in all California, and they were armed with bows and arrows and clubs.[62] The Indian cause was hopeless from the start. Nevertheless, there ensued a period of near war, with occasional clashes between Indians and Whites, which was fully as disastrous to the Indians as an open campaign would have been. The encounters are referred to, locally, as “battles”, of which quite a large number are recorded. The Indians were usually surrounded and shot down by posses of miners and citizens, in retaliation of some aggression by the Indians, or some alleged aggression. Some Indian bands are known to have been “wiped out” because their room was wanted by cattle men or settlers. No action by the Federal Government for the protection of the Indians is recorded. In one case the difficulties resulted in actual border warfare. The Hupa Indians, goaded into action by the influx of settlers into their valley, went on the warpath, during the sixties. They were joined by their neighbors, the Yurocs, or Lower Klamaths, and a sharp frontier war ensued for a couple of years. The Government