Congratulations to Sharon for providing the wonderful new site: Yosemite and Mariposa Natives http://home.earthlink.net/~syvonne/Miwok.html To aid in the research of the Mariposa Native Americans, these records , if found, will be of great historical interest and may answer some genealogical questions as well. SLAVERY PAPERS and INDIAN INDENTURES- the following information is from the _County Archives of California, pub, 1919. Although slavery was forbidden by the state constitution many documents to be found in the county archives give abundant proof that this institution did exist for many years after California became a state. These are usually single documents in the form of emancipation or manumission papers which are recorded in deed books or in the volumes devoted to miscellaneous records. Examples of this may be found in the archives of El Dorado, Los Angeles, Mariposa, Placer, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and elsewhere. In the archives of Humboldt County was found an interesting bundle of documents entitled "Indian Indentures". It is probable the miscellaneous records of other counties having a large Indian population may also contain similar documents . An act passed April 22, 1850, provided that any person having obtained a minor Indian through the consent of the parents or relatives of the child might go before a justice of the peace and after having shown that no compulsion had been employed to secure the child, require the justice to issue a certificate authorizing the applicant to have the "care, custody, control and earnings " of the child until he was eighteen years of age if a male, fifteen if a female. On the other hand, the applicant agreed to feed and clothe the child and to treat him in a humane manner. In 1860 the act was amended, action now being taken before a district or county judge who was to issue duplicate copies of the articles of indenture, one copy to be filed in the office of the recorder. This act extended the provisions of the former law to include not only children but adults as well if they were held as prisoners of war, or vagrant Indians, who had "no settled habitation or means of livelihood, and have not placed themselves under the protection of any white person." In 1863 the acts permitting this practice were repealed. ============= These records -INDIAN INDENTURE- are not specifically noted in the Mariposa County Archives Inventory of 1916- careful research of court documents and miscellaneous records will hopefully reveal these records Coy mentions finding here in Mariposa. Carolyn