When a crime has been committed by Indians, justice, or rather vengeance, is not so tardy.  One Sunday afternoon, while I was at San Diego, an Indian was sitting on his horse, when another, with whom he had had some difficulty, came up to him, drew a long knife, and plunged it directly into the horse’s heart.  The Indian sprang from his falling horse, drew out the knife, and plunged it into the other Indian’s breast, over his shoulder, and laid him dead.  The fellow was seized at once, clapped into the calabozo, and kept there until an answer could be received from Monterey.  A few weeks afterwards I saw the poor wretch, sitting on the bare ground, in front of the calabozo, with his feet chained to a stake, and handcuffs about his wrists.  I knew there was very little hope for him.  Although the deed was done in hot blood, the horse on which he was sitting being his own, and a favorite with him, yet he was an Indian, and that was enough.  In about a week after I saw him, I heard that he had been shot.  These few instances will serve to give one a notion of the distribution of justice in California.

In their domestic relations, these people are not better than in their public.  The men are thriftless, proud, extravagant, and very much given to gaming; and the women have but little education, and a good deal of beauty, and their morality, of course, is none of the best; yet the instances of infidelity are much less frequent than one would at first suppose.  In fact, one vice is set over against another; and thus something like a balance is obtained.  If the women have but little virtue, the jealousy of their husbands is extreme, and their revenge deadly and almost certain.  A few inches of cold steel has been the punishment of many an unwary man, who has been guilty, perhaps, of nothing more than indiscretion.  The difficulties of the attempt are numerous, and the consequences of discovery fatal, in the better classes.  With the unmarried women, too, great watchfulness is used.  The main object of the parents is to marry their daughters well, and to this a fair name is necessary.  The sharp eyes of a duena, and the ready weapons of a father or brother, are a protection which the characters of most of them—­ men and women—­ render by no means useless; for the very men who would lay down their lives to avenge the dishonor of their own family would risk the same lives to complete the dishonor of another.

Of the poor Indians very little care is taken.  The priests, indeed, at the missions, are said to keep them very strictly, and some rules are usually made by the alcaldes to punish their misconduct; yet it all amounts to but little.  Indeed, to show the entire want of any sense of morality or domestic duty among them, I have frequently known an Indian to bring his wife, to whom he was lawfully married in the church, down to the beach, and carry her back again, dividing with her the money which she had got from the sailors.  If any of the girls were discovered by the alcalde to be open evil livers, they were whipped, and kept at work sweeping the square of the presidio, and carrying mud and bricks for the buildings; yet a few reals would generally buy them off.  Intemperance, too, is a common vice among the Indians.  The Mexicans, on the contrary, are abstemious, and I do not remember ever having seen a Mexican intoxicated.