 On January 12, 1891 the U.S. Congress passed "An Act for the Relief of the Mission Indians in the State of California" which further sanctioned the original grants of the Mexican government to the natives in southern California and sought to protect their rights while giving railroad corporations a primary interest.In 1927, Sacramento Bureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent Lafayette A. Dorrington was instructed by Assistant Commissioner E. B. Merritt in Washington D.C. to list tribes in California that Congress had not yet purchased land to be used as reservations.As part of the 1928 California Indian Jurisdictional Act enrollment, Native Americans were asked to identify their “Tribe or Band.” The majority of applicants supplied the name of the mission that they knew their ancestors were associated with.