"A Government school has been opened here within the past year, and the scholars have made good progress. We found, however, much unpleasant feeling among the Indians in regard to the teacher of this school, owing to his having a few years before driven off four Indian families from their lands at Pala, and patented the lands to himself. There were also other rumors seriously affecting his moral character, which led us to make the suggestion in regard to the employment of female teachers in these Indian schools. As one of the Indians forcibly said, to set such men as this over schools was like setting the wolf to take care of the lambs."

From: Helen Hunt Jackson, Eyewitness Story; Additional educational source: Intergenerational Trauma and Historical Grief in American Indians: A Review of Conceptualizations from Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, by Melanie Ottenbacher

The Treaty at the Village of Temecula was made by on behalf of the United States with the Pechanga tribe on September 18, 1851. Commissioner O.M. Wozencraft signed the Treaty of Temecula as one of three commissioners appointed under the California Land Claims Act by the President Fillmore of the United States, and authorized and funded by the United States Senate to negotiate treaties on September 50, 1850. The Treaty of Temecula was one of eighteen treaties presented to the U.S. Senate for ratification on July 8, 1852.

After being held in secrecy for over fifty years on the orders of the United States Senate the treaties became available to the public domain in 1905. During the same time period hundreds of thousands of Native American lives in California were lost.

Without the protections provided by ratified treaties, California's Indian Tribes and their peoples were in a legal 'no-man's land.' The federal acknowledgement of a Tribe's legal 'right to exist' was hidden at the instruction of the Senate by ordering the Treaty Made and Concluded at the Village of Temecula, along with 17 others, to be held in secret for 50 years. In the meanwhile, state laws made it possible for all California native people to be legally exterminated, and/or enslaved. The application of state laws regarding land claims, without the clear legal claims to Native homelands that were ordered hidden in the "18 Lost Treaties," made it possible for individuals and businesses to apply for and gain title to Native American lands without having to address issues of Tribal sovereignty and claim. A process such as this resulted in our people, Payomkawichum , Western People, being evicted from our homelands in the 1870's. While our Tribal homelands were restored by Presidential Executive Order in 1882, in California many millions of acres of lands were gained by the state and by individuals and corporations gaining title from the state during the 1850's - 1900's.

"Taken all together, one cannot imagine a more poorly conceived, more inaccurate, less informed: and less democratic process than the making of the 18 treaties in 1851-52 with the California Indians. It was a farce from beginning to end: though apparently the Commissioners: President Fillmore and the members of the United States Senate were quite unaware of that. The alternative is that all of these were simply going through motions in a matter which did not in the slightest degree really concern them. What better evidence of the latter possibility do we require than the fact that the Senate rejected on July 8,1852 the very treaties it had itself authorized and appropriated funds for their negotiation on September 29, 1850 ." -- Robert F. Heizer, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford

It may be coincidental that in 1850:

• California gained statehood gained statehood into the Union in September
• The US Senate appropriated funds for the negotiations of treaties with the California Tribes in September
• The President of the United States authorized treaty negotiations with California Tribes
• The President of the United States authorized the creation of the San Francisco Mint to mint coins for the federal government

It may be coincidental that in the ensuing two years 1850-1852:

• The state of California created laws to authorize and pay for the extermination of California Indians or to provide for their enslavement
• The federal government continued to pay for the negotiation of treaties with California Indians that were not yet exterminated or enslaved
• California land claims laws were created that provided barriers to Native people to file
• The US Senate refused to ratify treaties affirming the legal standing of California Tribes and ordered the treaties hidden

It may be coincidental that by 1853 and for decades afterward:

• California Indians had no protections from the federal government resulting from legitimate treaty negotiations
• The law left to 'protect' California Indians was California state law and California state law provided for their legal extermination, enslavement and/or the 'legal' dispossession of their lands
• Millions upon millions of dollars of gold was exported from California for ultimate use in federal Mints in Philadelphia and San Francisco

Fifteen of these treaties made were:

• Treaty at Camp Belt, Signed May 13, 1851, Commissioner George W. Barbour
• Treaty at Camp Keyes, Signed May 30, 1851, Commissioner George W. Barbour
• Treaty at Camp Buron, Signed June 3, 1851, Commissioner George W. Barbour
• Treaty at Camp Persifer F. Smith, Signed June 10, 1851, Commissioner George W. Barbour
• Treaty at Dent's and Vantine's Crossings, Signed May 28, 1851, Commissioner O.M. Wozencraft
• Treaty at Camp Union, Signed July 18, 1851, Commissioner O.M. Wozencraft
• Treaty at Bidwell's Ranch, Signed August 1, 1851, Commissioner O.M. Wozencraft
• Treaty at Camp Colus, Signed September 8, 1851, Commissioner O.M. Wozencraft
• treaty at the Village of Temecula, Signed January 5, 1852, Commissioner O.M. Wozencraft
• Treaty at the Village of Santa Isabel, Signed January 7, 1852, Commissioner O.M. Wozencraft
• Treaty at Camp Fremont, Signed March 19, 1851, Commissioners Redick McKee, George W. Barbor and O.M. Wozencraft
• Treaty at Camp Barbour, Signed April 29, 1851, Commissioners Redick McKee, George W. Barbour and O.M. Wozencraft
• Treaty at Camp Lu-pi-yu-ma, Signed August 20, 1851, Commissioner Redick McKee
• Treaty at Camp Klamath (Lower Klamath), Signed October 6, 1851, Commissioner Redick McKee
• Treaty at Camp in Scott's Valley (Upper Klamath), Signed November 4, 1851, Redick McKee

"I regard the other provisions of the treaties, although they be considered novel in their character, as both suitable and appropriate the wants and desires of the Indians. The supply of beef-cattle for present or temporary subsistence being limited, the comparative consention given them for the extinguishment of their title to their lands: be justly considered as trifling in amount..."

In 1849 Gold was discovered in California. In 1850 California obtained statehood. Within the first two years of statehood, California created laws designed to exterminate or enslave the Native peoples within its borders. Native American ownership of the vast majority of 'California' lands was an impediment to the economic benefits the state sought, and individual, corporate or federal interests sought, to obtain from the lands.

During the same time period of 1850-52, the President of the United States authorized a series of treaty negotiations designed to remove Native American occupancy and claim to their California homelands. This series of treaty negotiations was unique in that the treaties negotiated offered far less in 'benefits' to Tribes than any that had been historically offered in previous treaties ratified by the United States and Tribal Nations. Important to our Pechanga history, The Treaty Made and Concluded at the Village of Temecula, on January 7, 1852 was among the treaties negotiated.

So few benefits were offered for the relinquishment by California Tribes of vast millions of acres of California's most valuable lands to the United States that it was commented upon and justified in report to the United States Senate in 1852. A primary focus of treaty negotiations was to assure that access to gold exports from California were assured, as excerpts from an 1852 report to the Senate on the treaty negotiations illustrate:
"Admitting, however, that some of these reservations contain gold enough to add a few thousands even, to the many millions taken from the soil, I ask, is it not expedient and politic to permit them (the Tribes) to take them (the reservations)?"

"During the Indian war of last spring, whole mining districts were abandoned, and, although unacquainted with the statistics of the State, I will venture the remark that the exports of gold were less by millions during that period than during the months immediately succeeding. If this was the result of a war with a very few tribes, what may be considered as the effects of a war with the entire Indian population of California" Popular feeling prejudicial to the treaties has been assigned as a reason for their rejection, and cannot the question be properly and naturally asked, will popular feeling point out a substitute, I venture the prediction in this matter, that an entire change in popular feeling will take place, at least among such as regard the Indians as having a right even to a bare and scanty living."

"To those who regard the stipulations of these treaties as novel, I would simply remark, that beef and flour are but substitutes for annuities in money, powder, lead, and guns, and that while the treasury is being drawn upon annually to fulfill the obligations of other treaties, these supplies are to cease after the short term of two or three years."

- EDWARD F. BEAL, Superintendent Indian Affairs for California. Hon. L. Lea, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Washington City, D.C., May 11, 1852

The US Senate did not ratify the treaties. Negotiated in good faith by Tribes, and at little relative cost by federal negotiators, the US Senate decided instead to order the treaties and the evidence they confirmed of Tribal land rights in California to be hidden in secret for 60 years. The result for California tribal members was that they had little protection from the state of California's legislation and court systems encouraging Native American extermination, slavery, and the dispossession of Native homelands. This continued for all of the late 1800's and well into the 1900's. Conversely, during the late 1800?s tens of millions of dollars worth of gold annually was exported from California, much of it to the east coast of the United States where it was converted into coins by the federal government's Philadelphia Mint. Other coins were minted by authorization of an 1850 Presidential Order at the San Francisco Mint.