

An Account of the Indians of the Santa Barbara Islands in California. 29 



were small-pox, syphilis and dysentery. Of the other diseases men- 

 tioned we can now not recognise any sufficiently to identify them. 

 Fevers, cholera, typhoid, etc. were words frequently used by the 

 Spaniards. What they were we do not know. 



But perhaps the most important point in connection with the 

 ex'inction of the Indians was their changée! mode of living. 

 Instead of roaming around the hüls at their free will, hunting, fishing 

 and collecting seeds and acorns, and changing their habitations with 

 the seasons, we now find a complète change in their mode of living. 

 The missionaries caused the Indians to be gathered around the mis- 

 sions, and made them live in stationary huts. The absence of ail 

 sanitary conditions soon told on the natives. As the ground became 

 infîltrated with filth, diseased germs thrived and the robust nature of 

 the natives became weak, In our day what few indians remain 

 are doomed to extinction. A friend who lately visited the convent 

 school at San Diego where numerous indián children were taught by 

 nuns, remarked that nearly ail the children were ill, some of them 

 with tuberculosis. They were shut up within four walls and were 

 giving their lives in exchange for a little knowledge of the prayer- 

 book. And when lie asked the prioress of the school, „why don't you 

 give the children air and sun ? she simply stated that" it was against 

 the iules". When we failed to hear any thing of the 18 women and 

 children who were removed from the island of San Nicolas in 1838, 

 and when we learn that not one of them was evidently alive in 1853, 

 wliile the poor old survival left on the island was healtliy and hearty, 

 we may well présume that the new mode of living had quickly carried 

 them off. 



