to set these Indians entirely apart from the approach of the white man, draw an impassable line, in fact, behind which the Indian would be secure in his lands, his simple life, his integrity, and his purity. . . . It was a hard undertaking at best, perilous, almost as much as a man's life was worth to befriend an Indian in those stormy days on the border, when every gold-hunter . . . counted it his privilege, if not his duty to shoot an Indian on sight. An Indian sympathizer was more hated in those days, is still, than ever was an abolitionist. . . . De Bloney gradually gathered about twenty-five men around him in the mountains, took up homes, situated his men around him, planted, dug gold, did what he could to civilize the people and subdue the savages. . . . But he had tough elements to deal with. The most savage men were the white men. The Indians, the friendly ones, were the tamest of his people. These white men would come and go; now they would marry the Indian women and now join a prospecting party and disappear for months, even years. At one time nearly all went off to join Walker in Nicaragua."
Under the influence of this odd character, young Joaquin seems for the time to have forgotten the Oregon homestead, and to have embraced the dream of a little Indian republic on Mt. Shasta. Between 1855 and 1859 he represents himself as living in the shadow of the mountains with De Bloney and the Indians and "Indian Joe," a scout and horsetrader
