Moreover, the Indians saw that their main sources of food supply
were being rapidly destroyed. The oak trees, which produced the
acorns--one of their staple articles of food,--were being cut
down and burned by miners and others in clearing up land for
cultivation, and the deer and other food game were being
rapidly killed off or driven from the locality.

[Illustration: _Copyrighted Photograph by Boysen_.
AN INDIAN DANCER.
Chow-chil-la Indian in full war-dance costume.]

In the "early days," before California was admitted as a free
State into the Union, it was reported, and was probably true,
that some of the immigrants from the slave-holding States took
Indians and made slaves of them in working their mining claims.
It was no uncommon event for the sanctity of their homes and
families to be invaded by some of the "baser sort," and young
women taken, willing or not, for servants and wives.


RETALIATION.

In retaliation, and as some compensation for these many grievous
outrages upon their natural inalienable rights of domain and
property, and their native customs, the Indians stole horses and
mules from the white settlers, and killed them for food for their
families, who, in many instances, were in a condition of
starvation.