490 HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 



der instructions from the commander of the division, 

 as an escort for Captain Warner, topographical engi- 

 neers, and company E, 1st dragoons, when en route 

 for the station, was diverted from that route, for the 

 purpose of securing the perpetrators of some murders 

 committed by Indians on or near Los Reyes River. 



The difficulties apprehended from a collision be- 

 tween the different classes of the mining population 

 have not yet occurred in the form which it was feared 

 they would assume, and at present I do not apprehend 

 any serious difficulty from that source. Some serious 

 Indian disturbances have occurred on the American 

 fork of the Sacramento, and a few isolated murders 

 have occurred at other points ; but at the date of the 

 last report from the frontier, every thing was quiet. 

 The Indians of the Sierra Nevada, although in a great 

 number, are of a degraded class, and are divided into 

 so many different tribes, or rancherias, speaking differ- 

 ent languages, that any combination on their part is 

 scarcely to be apprehended. Their depredations 

 heretofore have been confined generally to horse-steal- 

 ing, and only occasionally have murders been com- 

 mitted by them. These, however, have been made 

 the pretence, by the whites in their neighborhood, for 

 the commission of outrages of the most aggravated 

 character — in one or two cases involving in an indis- 

 criminate massacre the wild Indians of the Sierra 

 and the tame Indians of the ranchos. The command- 

 ers of detachments serving on the Indian frontiers are 

 instructed to prevent any authorized interference with 

 the Indians by the whites, and to support the Indian 

 agents of their districts in the exercise of their appro- 

 priate duties. From the character of the mining 

 population, and the nature of their occupations, unless 



