HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 61 



because they had nothing of the war-like self-asser- 

 tive character of the other Indians of the Pacific 

 Slope and made no fight against being civilized. Nor 

 did they contribute anything to the agriculture of 

 the State, for they practiced no agricultural arts. 

 They subsisted on nature's bounty and were not even 

 hunters with prowess against big game. They were 

 contented with vegetable food which they gathered 

 from wild trees and shrubs and with such land and 

 sea animals as they could catch in the fields and 

 forests or dig from the sea shore. If they had been 

 fierce like the Indians of the great plains, California 

 settlement by the white race would have been delayed 

 and accomplished with difficulty. If these Indians 

 had ancestral agriculture,, there would have been 

 vestiges remaining as there are now of prehistoric 

 farming in Arizona and New Mexico. Although the 

 pious padres may have reinforced the heavenly hosts 

 with California Indians, they did nothing to improve 

 their hold on the earth. The early Spanish and 

 Mexican settlers reduced them near to slavery and 

 though their successors, the Americans,, had perhaps 

 more regard for their manhood and employed them 

 at good wages, they did not otherwise advance their 

 interests until quite recently. Of the large aboriginal 

 population there now remain only about 15,000 living 

 peaceably on reservations or doing useful work for 

 farmers and in a few cases engaging in successful 

 farming on their own account in American ways. 



There is wide agreement among historians that 

 the chief contribution to the development of Call- 



