The Indians 23 



ment Agent, whose headquarters are at the town of 

 San Jacinto, on the other side of the mountain. 



The reproach of laziness, commonly levelled 

 against Indians, cannot fairly be laid against the 

 Indians of Palm Springs. The men either farm 

 their own little holdings, or work for their white 

 neighbors, or "hire out" on Coachella or Imperial 

 ranches, or, at fruit-picking time, in the prune or 

 almond orchards of the mountains. Some of them 

 are well-to-do, with cattle or alfalfa to sell and 

 horses to rent; besides which they have their patri- 

 mony of monumental old fig-trees, scions of the 

 famous Black Mission figs of San Gabriel (and you 

 may have noticed that Palm Springs early figs do 

 not go begging in Los Angeles markets.) Old 

 Marcos is even the proud owner of a few of those 

 original epoch - making date-palms which have 

 opened a new chapter in American horticulture, and 

 his Deglet Nurs have been adjudged by the knowing 

 ones to be second to none. 



Of the women, some find time from their own 

 employments to do laundry or other household 

 work in the village, while, fortunately, one or two 

 still practise the old arts and are notable weavers 

 of baskets: a basket by Dolores, wife of Francisco 

 Patencio, who lives down by the fiesta house, may 

 well be counted a prize. The making of pottery, 

 sad to say, has ceased: the white man's cheap tin- 

 ware has driven the artistic but fragile oUa from 

 the field. But about the sites of vanished Indian 

 homes you will find the ground strewn with frag- 



