single instance of anything but kindness
and humanity; but the truth cannot be ignored, however much it grieve us
to know it. Let us turn to Pomponio. His is a strange tale.

Distant about a league south from Mission San Francisco stood a little
Indian hut, made from the tules and rushes which were found growing with
such luxuriance in all parts of Nueva California. It was built in the
form of a cone with a blunt apex, was less than ten feet in diameter,
and but little more than that in height. An opening near the ground gave
communication with the outer air, and a small hole at the top of the
hut allowed the smoke from the fire to pass away. This hut stood in the
centre of a small open spot among the trees of the dense forest which
surrounded it on all sides; small in extent like the many other wooded
spots in the peninsula which terminated at the mission and the presidio
of San Francisco, but sufficiently large to force a stranger to them
to lose his way almost at the first step. But, difficult to find by the
stranger, this little open space was correspondingly safe from pursuit
by any one bent on hostile deeds; and for this reason it had been
selected by Pomponio for a retreat for himself.

Pomponio was a mission Indian, had been connected with the religious
establishment since boyhood, and had made, great progress on the way to
becoming a civilized human being. He had a mind above the low level
of the average Californian Indian intellect, and had been an object of
solicitude to the padres, arousing in them an interest in his mental and
spiritual welfare seldom evoked by the neophytes in general. For years
Pomponio had been contented with the life he led under the tutelage and
control of the fathers, receiving unquestioningly their teaching, and
regarding their ordering and direction of his and his parents' life and
actions in every particular with indifferent eyes. But when Pomponio
left childhood and youth behind him, and acquired the mind of a man,
Indian though it was, he began to see the state of things in a different
light. "What right have these padres," he would say to himself, "to come
here from far away, take our land from us, make us work for them, and
order us about as we should women and children taken from our enemies in
war? And what do they give us in return? They teach us the religion
of their God, and make us learn their catechism. Is their religion any,
better than ours their God more powerful th