UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE LINES ON THE LAND: THE SAN LUIS REY RIVER RESERVATIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE MISSION INDIAN FEDERATION, 1850-1934 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By DAMON B. AKINS Norman, Oklahoma 2009 LINES ON THE LAND: THE SAN LUIS REY RIVER RESERVATIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE MISSION INDIAN FEDERATION, 1850-1934 A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY ________________________________ Dr. Albert L. Hurtado, chair ________________________________ Dr. Donald J. Pisani ________________________________ Dr. Terry Rugley ________________________________ Dr. Warren Metcalf ________________________________ Dr. Morris Foster © Copyright by DAMON AKINS 2009 All Rights Reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is sobering to realize how much of the last eight years of my life have depended on the support of others. But they have, and this project would not have been possible without the support of a wide variety of people. In the His- tory Department at the University of Oklahoma I found a group of engaged and productive scholars, who nonetheless devoted a tremendous amount of time, energy and interest to me and my work. The climate of the department is due in part to the able leadership of Rob Griswold who is a model teacher, scholar and chair. My own path through the program owes a lot to Al Hurtadoʼs advice and guidance. He gave me the freedom to work through my own interests while gently nudging me to focus. He guided me through the research and writing of the dissertation, picking me up and dusting me off when I stumbled along the way. His exacting demands for clarity and simplicity in my writing, and the fine examples he has provided with his own, have made me a better scholar, writer and teacher. My dissertation committee deserves a thankful note of gratitude for ac- commodating my teaching schedule during the final stages of writing. All of the members helped me to navigate a number of very complicated points and saved me from a number of embarrassing mistakes. Donald Pisaniʼs willingness to devote an incredible amount of time to his students is well known among those who have worked with him, and that was certainly my experience as well. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Paul Gilje, the director of graduate studies, for iv recruiting me, and Terry Rugeley, who followed him in that position, for helping to get me out. A number of fellowships made possible the research upon which this dissertation is based. At the University of Oklahoma I was the recipient of a Hudson Fellowship, which greatly eased the financial strain of returning to graduate school. In addition, I received substantial support for extended re- search trips to California through the Anne Hodges Morgan and H. Wayne Mor- gan Dissertation Fellowship in 2004. Additional departmental funding came from the Bea Mantooth Estep Scholarship. Beyond the university, a Phillips Fund Grant from the American Philo- sophical Society, a Doctoral Scholarship from Phi Alpha Theta, and research support from the Historical Society of Southern California, all in 2004, helped to keep me in California much longer than my family would have liked. And the success of those research trips would have been considerably less successful without the gracious assistance of a number of archivists and librarians. Teresa Salazar at the Bancroft Library pointed me to a number of useful sources. At the National Archives in Laguna Niguel, Paul Wormser and Lisa Gezelter both shared their broad expertise on navigating the byzantine records of the Indian Office. Kim Walters at the Southwest Museumʼs Braun Research Library facili- tated my work in the Lummis manuscript collection. The staff at the Huntington Library upheld its well-deserved reputation as the primary reason the Hunting- ton is such an ideal place to research and write. Likewise I am thankful for the help I received from the staffs at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, the v Cupa Cultural Center in Pala, the San Diego Historical Society, the Water Re- source Center Archives at the UC-Berkeley, and the Special Collections De- partments at UCLA, UC-San Diego, UC-Irvine and UC Riverside. Leroy Miranda and Steven Karr both provided timely and helpful informal advice. Despite all the generous guidance, advice and criticism outlined above, I bear sole respon- sibility for any errors in my work that may remain. I feel very lucky to have landed at Guilford College where I have learned a tremendous amount from my students and colleagues. Particularly deserving mention are Kathryn Shields for being the solid and rational voice of optimism and encouragement, Jane Redmont for helping me keep my nose to the grind- stone, but not too much, and Phil Slaby for his astounding blend of cynical comic relief, Mencken-esque wit and trenchant insight into the way the world works. Friends and family had a knack for asking me how the work was going when it wasnʼt going well, and listening patiently to me talk about it when it was. My parents have been a constant source of support for the project in too many ways to recount. My father, Winford Akins, has a natural predisposition to re- main calm. As children, he admonished my sister and I, telling us that one hun- dred years from now, not much will matter. As a historian, I hope to prove him wrong. But as a junior scholar in the midst of a grueling and often lonely proc- ess, I often welcomed his sage advice. He and my mother, Judy Akins, have always nurtured my intellectual growth by encouraging me to follow my inter- ests. It is a model I hope to replicate with my own children. vi Amanda Taylor-Montoya and I entered graduate school together, and we will leave it together as well. Over the last eight years, she pushed me to exam- ine my own biases and assumptions, and to stop historicizing and make an ar- gument. While she receives only a few mentions in the text that follows, it is in- delibly stamped with her influence. Long conversations about the forces that move history, her presence a constant sounding board who nonetheless never shied away from rendering harsh criticism, and her own meticulous scholarship and careful writing made it possible for me to find myself as a scholar and as a person. I know I can provoke her hearty and contagious laugh by suggesting that “the next time we do a Ph.D....” we might do some aspects differently. Hav- ing her as a colleague and friend along the way is not one of those things I would change. Neither of my sons remember a life before the dissertation and so per- haps they can not see how heavily it has weighed on my time. Lori Akins how- ever does remember a life before the dissertation, and I know how much she looks forward to reclaiming some of it. I owe all three more than I can ever re- pay but look forward to spending the rest of my life trying. vii CONTENTS introduction: Lines Along a River 1 chapter one Indian Subjects: Indian Peoples of the San Luis Rey River Basin, and the Mission System 22 chapter two Making Indian Citizens: the Legal Construction of Indian Citizenship in California, 1850 to 1924 43 chapter three “To Attach them to the Soil”: Indians and the Landscapes of Southern California, 1795 to 1903 99 chapter four Making Reservations: Indian Activism at Pala, La Jolla and Rincon, 1880 to 1906 133 chapter five “A Shadow Overhanging Us”: Irrigation and Allotment on the San Luis Rey River Reservations, 1905 to 1924 163 chapter six “Not Organized for Amusements Nor Curiosities”: The Emergence of the Mission Indian Federation, 1908 to 1921 192 viii chapter seven “Human Rights and Home Rule”: Making Indian Policy in Southern California, 1920 to 1932 231 conclusion 268 epilogue 273 maps 276 bibliography 280 ix ILLUSTRATIONS figure 1 Logo of the Mission Indian Federation 242 map 1 San Diego County Water Systems and Drainage Areas 276 map 2 San Diego County Water Systems and Drainage Areas (detail) 277 map 3 Southern California Indian Communities, circa 1800 278 map 4 The San Luis Rey River Basin 1922 279 x ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the environmental and legal context of political activism among southern California Indians between 1850 and 1934. Specifi- cally, it tracks the rise of the Mission Indian Federation in the early part of the twentieth century as one example of the ways Indians reacted to the creation of federal reservations, regional water development, and the agricultural models of “civilization” the Indian Office sought to implement. Across the region, Indians turned toward the courts and the newly-formed political institutions of the reser- vations to carve out indigenous political power and sovereignty for themselves. They articulated a vision of Indian sovereignty under the motto “Human Rights and Home Rule,” and used it to challenge the power of the federal government. xi INTRODUCTION Lines Along a River This project began as a study of the effects of environmental change on racial identity and political activism among the Indians of southern California be- tween 1870 and 1934. However, with seven major ethnic groups and nearly thirty reservations in San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial and San Diego coun- ties, scholarship on the Indians in the region requires careful attention to cate- gorical definitions. I initially focused on San Diego County because of the vari- ous reclamation projects and changes in land-use, and the corresponding rise in Indian political activism in the area.