CALIFORNIA 1 PREFACE. In pursuance of a general plan involving the production of a series of works on the western half of North America, I present this delineation of its aboriginal inhabitants as the first. To the immense territory bordering on the western ocean from Alaska to Darien, and including the whole of Mexico and Central America, I give arbitrarily, for want of a better, the name Pacific States. Stretching almost from pole to equator, and embracing within its limits nearly one tenth of the earth's surface, this last Western Land offers to lovers of knowledge a new and enticing field; and, although hitherto its several parts have been held somewhat asunder by the force of circumstances, yet are its occupants drawn by nature into nearness of relationship, and will be brought yet nearer by advancing civilization; the common oceanic highway on the one side, and the great mountain ramparts on the other, both tending to this result. characteristics of this vast domain, material and social, are comparatively unknown and are essentially peculiar. To its exotic civilization all the so-called older nations of the world have contributed of their energies; and this composite mass, leavened by its destiny, is now working out the new problem of its future. The modern history of this West antedates that of the East by over i century, and although there may be apparent hetero (vii) The 885852 geneity in the subject thus territorially treated, there is an apparent tendency toward ultimate unity. To some it may be of interest to know the nature and extent of my resources for writing so important a series of works. The books and manuscripts necessary for the task existed in no library in the world; hence, in 1859, I commenced collecting material relative to the Pacific States. After securing everything within my reach in America, I twice visited Europe, spending about two years in thorough researches in England and the chief cities of the Continent. Having exhausted every available source, I was obliged to content myself with lying in wait for opportunities. Not long afterward, and at a time when the prospect of materially adding to my collection seemed anything but hopeful, the Biblioteca Imperial de Méjico, of the unfortunate Maximilian, collected during a period of forty years by Don José María Andrade, litterateur and publisher of the city of Mexico, was thrown upon the European market and furnished me about three thousand additional volumes. In 1869, having accumulated some sixteen thousand books, manuscripts, and pamphlets, besides maps and cumbersome files of Pacific Coast journals, I determined to go to work. But I soon found that, like Tantalus, while up to my neck in water. I was dying of thirst. The facts which I required were so copiously diluted with trash, that to follow different subjects through this trackless sea of erudition, in the exhaustive manner I had proposed, with but one life-time to devote to the work, was simply impracticable. In this emergency my friend, Mr Henry L. Oak, librarian of the colle tion, came to my relief. After many consultatic and not a few partial failures, a system of indexing . subject-matter of the whole library was devised, sufficiently general to be practicable, and sufficiently particular to direct me immediately to all my authorities on any given point. The system, on trial, stands the test, and the index when completed, as it already is for the twelve hundred authors quoted in this work, will more than double the practical value of the library. Of the importance of the task undertaken, I need not say that I have formed the highest opinion. At present the few grains of wheat are so hidden by the mountain of chaff as to be of comparatively little benefit to searchers in the various branches of learning; and to sift and select from this mass, to extract from bulky tome and transient journal, from the archives of convent and mission, facts valuable to the scholar and interesting to the general reader; to arrange these facts in a natural order, and to present them in such a manner as to be of practical benefit to inquirers in the various branches of knowledge, is a work of no small import and responsibility. And though mine is the labor of the artisan rather than that of the artist, a forging of weapons for abler hands to wield, a producing of raw materials for skilled mechanics to weave and color at will; yet, in undertaking to bring to light from sources innumerable essential facts, which, from the very shortness of life if from no other cause, must otherwise be left out in the physical and social generalizations which occupy the ablest minds, I feel that I engage in no idle pastime. A word as to the Nations of which this work is a description, and my method of treating the subject. Aboriginally, for a savage wilderness, there was here a dense population; particularly south of the thirtieth parallel, |