34 CALIFORNIA INDIANS. 
jected to a thorough washing in the river, and again appears in the superb covering which 
nature has afforded. This people never become bald, and grey hair is seen only upon persons 
feeble in old age. The men are remarkably tall and gracefully proportioned. The women, on 
the contrary, are short and thick; their features, however, are regular, with an oval contour 
of face, and large, merry-looking black eyes. 
Plate 26 is a sketch of Cahuillas of California, as seen at Coco Mongo rancho. They are 
squalid, miserable, and degraded. From children of the forest, as they had been before the 
Spanish conquest, they were by Jesuits led to an observance of the rites of the Christian church, 
PLATE 26. 
Cahuillas: Peons, or domestic Indians of California. 
and became obedient to their teachers. Although instructed in labor, their duties were light, 
and they were sufficiently clothed and fed. Those, probably, were the palmiest days of this 
people. When the priests were divested of authority, their converts became peons or slaves of 
the rancheros. At length the system of peonage is nominally abolished in California, but the 
Cahuillas are sunk in ignorance and sloth, and no provision has yet been made to lift them from 
their destitute condition. 
