USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22
In the late Miocene, or early Pliocene, the central waters receded for ever, and the Sierra, during a long and blessed interval between igneous violence, was elevated again, and her streams, like herself, rejuvenated. During these intervals of repose she no doubt was almost as beautiful as she is to-day; although the cañons and scenery of the highest portions of the range are post- Tertiary, the work of the ice-chisels, her vigorous streams carved deep cañons into her lower slopes, quite as fine as those cut into the lost pedestal of the Coast Range.
Then once more her great chimneys sent forth their pillars of flame and smoke and were answered by the watch-fires on the heights opposite, and the valley was pounded with rock and covered with lava and dust and the bones of monsters, for which there was no escape.
To this long age of alternate turmoil and the heavy fatigue of convalescence, or the brief periods of rejuvena- tion and beauty, succeeded an epoch of terrible repose. After the trial by fire the punishment of the ice. Al- though California was too far south to be included in the great ice-sheet that came down out of the north in the Pleistocene (glacial) era she had an ice age of her own which, with the interglacial periods, lasted some five hundred thousand years.
During the greater part of this time the Sierra was
II
CALIFORNIA
covered with a continuous sheet of ice. The crystal masses were packed into every cañon and river and lake, covered every crag and table-land, rose in frozen waves from the dead craters of a thousand volcanoes. The ice laid its heavy weight on the harsh outlines of the moun- tains, mighty hands grasping a million little chisels to carve the high cañons, the pinnacles and domes and turrets, the arches and lacework and spires, that make the Sierra Nevada a thing of wonder to-day.
It was the turn of the Coast Range, less afflicted, to watch and admire and hold its breath in the face of that stupendous beauty which only death could create. For silent interminable centuries the crystal mountains flashed prismatically in the sunlight or lay white and cold under the gray mists that rose from the frozen earth. Then came the first long interglacial period, when the ice- sheets crept down the mountainsides, carrying great masses of decayed material to choke the Central Valley, whose lakes and rivers, released from the long and bitter winter, sparkled in a warmth and sunshine almost forgotten.
The rocks breathed again and called to the green hills of the coast, protected by the milder currents of the Pacific, from the assault of the ice, but only for a brief space of fifty to a hundred thousand years. Like the Coast Range, during her earlier trials, the Sierra was engulfed again, not by a vast and restless sea, but equally helpless under snow-fields and ice-sheets.
But all things come to an end, temporarily at least. The Coast Range witnessed the last of the interglacial periods, the last of the ice descents which is behind us; life struggled from below the soil; the mountainsides and
I2
THREE BROTHERS, SHOWING THE MERCED RIVER
GLACIER POINT, 3,300 FEET, AND SOUTH DOME
THE GEOLOGICAL DRAMA
the Central Valley turned green; acorns that had slept for centuries side by side with the nuggets torn from the veins of the high Sierra, stirred and swelled, and pushed their way out of the softened earth; trees burst from the mountainsides and lined her cañons. From the moun- tains of Asia wandered in due course what we call the Rocky Mountain goat, a beautiful spirited creature, as white as the polar bear. He is the surest proof that the Indians of our west came from the same region, following in his wake, or driving him before them. That was before a narrow neck of land between the hemispheres broke in two.
It is only twenty-five thousand years since the end of the ice age (or so we believe at this writing). Forests on the mountainsides, protected from the cold and blustering winds of the Pacific, rose and fell, were born and died, living for a longer period, perhaps, than man and the elements permit to-day. No one knows. The Merced book was old and closed long before Asia conceived the myth of Noah. The "Big Trees" (sequoia gigantea) are believed to have lived in Tertiary times, a few of their roots or seeds surviving the ice, to father those in exist- ence to-day. It is estimated that there may have been a time when these trees, peculiar to a few hundred miles of the Pacific coast, flourished for five thousand years instead of a paltry fifteen hundred. Certainly the miser- able degenerate Asiatics we call Indians-nowhere farther below the standards of the white races than in California -did not disturb them. The savages cut young trees for their wigwams or huts, as they lived on hares and goats and the rich products of the valley's soil which Nature planted and tended and watered.
13
CALIFORNIA
But the great trees of the Sierra awaited the coming not merely of the white man, but of the genus Americana to fall before anything but storm and time. There is no historic proof, but it seems indubitable that the men of the early surveying parties, or the emigrants who followed in their footsteps, who were obliged to build cabins in the Sierra, were the first to lay an ax to the roots of the great sequoia. The missions were built of adobe and were far from the redwood forests. The ranch-houses were all built of adobe, and so was Sutter's Fort, although he was close to the oak-trees of the Sacramento Valley. The redwoods felled by Luis Argüello were in the Coast Range and of an inferior variety. As a nation we are prone to hitch our wagon to a star, and we therefore lay claim to be the direct connecting-link between a time, reckoned- as time goes and as typified by the Sierra-at a hundred and fifty million years, and the apologetic modern period which will follow this chapter.
II
THE MISSION PADRES
CALIFORNIA's historic period began very late. When New England was burning witches on the green, and the South was dancing the minuet, and New York was found- ing an aristocracy out of Dutch burghers, this vast and lovely tract, with a soil as rich as the minerals within her, was peopled by a few Indian tribes, so stupid that they rarely learned one another's language, so lethargic that they rarely fought. The squaws did what work was done; the bucks basked in the sun for eight months in the year, and during the brief winter sweated out their always negligible energies in the temescals.
Nevertheless, there were strange legends about Cali- fornia, and in the light of her actual inhabitants it would be interesting to trace their origin. When Ordonez de Montalvo wrote his astonishing yarn all the world (at that time principally a Spanish world) believed that the vari- ously located California was a land of "romantic wonders and fabulous riches, splendid cities and vast magazines of wealth." There was a legendary "seven golden cities" which, Cortez failing to find during his visit to the southern peninsula in 1535, were later relegated to the western base of the great Sierra rampart. Montalvo begins his assur- ance to a credulous world in this wise:
Be it known unto you that at the right hand of the Indies [sic] there was an island formed of the largest rocks known and called California,
2
I5
CALIFORNIA
very near to the terrestrial Paradise. This island was inhabited by ro- bust dark women of great strength and great warm hearts, who lived almost as Amazons, and no man lived among them. Their weapons and the trappings of the wild beasts which they rode after taming them were entirely of gold, and no other metal existed on the island. The people lived in well-hewn caves. They had many ships in which they made excursions to other countries, where they caught men whom they carried away and subsequently killed. During periods of peace with their neighbors they commingled with them without restraint. When children were born the females were preserved, but the males were killed at once, saving only those required to guard against de- population, so that their domination over the land would be securely maintained.
There were many griffins on the island, and they were a great torment. There were also an infinite number of wild beasts which are found in no other part of the world. When these animals had young the women went to fetch them and carried them, covered with heavy skins, to their caves, and there bred them and fed them with the men and male children. The women brought up these animals with such skill that they knew them well and did them no harm, and they attacked and killed any man who entered the island and ate him; and when their appetite was sated they would take them up flying into the air and let them fall from great heights, killing them instantly.
This quotation, from a once famous book, is interesting, if only to reveal what a Spaniard of the sixteenth century believed to constitute a "great warm heart" in woman.
Certain romantic writers and even historians connected California with Asia via what we now call Newfoundland, and many expeditions were fitted out by Spain in the hope of discovering this golden land and claiming it in the name of God and the king.
But California might have taken one of her ancient dips beneath the sea, so elusive did she prove until 1542, when Cabrillo, convinced that the beautiful coast rising before his galleons was California (or might as well be), sailed into two of its bays and named them San Diego and Monterey. He took note of a country rich in scenery and
16
THE MISSION PADRES
naked savages, but with no visible Amazons or gold. He died, and his captain, Farello, sailed as far north as Cape Mendocino, and so did Viscaino in the following century. Neither saw anything of the Golden Gate and the great inland sheet of water encircled by hills.
California, in spite of these formal acts of possession- the erection of cross and flag-seems to have lost her lure. Mexico (New Spain) already covered an immense area, in great part unexplored, much of it infested by savages, and but sparsely populated by the Spaniard. None of the explorers had learned aught of the fertile central valleys of California or of the golden skeleton within her. The Jesuits, against incredible odds, made repeated attempts to colonize that long strip of land that still belongs to Mexico, called Baja (Lower) California, and Christianize the Indians. But the country was so barren and arid that almost all material sustenance was brought from the other side of the gulf, and the Indians did not take kindly to the spiritual. Although the hardy priests managed to interest Spain to some extent in the pearl- fisheries, the beds could be ravaged without financing mis- sions, and the poor padres were supported mainly by private funds. In 1768 Spain drove the Jesuits out of all her possessions, and those in Baja California were forced to abandon the Indians after seventy years of devoted but almost futile labors in a cause to which they had given not only their youth and strength, but their personal means. They left California, still believing it to be an island, and having made no attempt to penetrate Alta (Upper) California, which they also assumed to be an island and bounded on the north by the "Straits of Amien."
But California's first and greatest pioneer was born,
I7
CALIFORNIA
and her historic period was to begin in 1769, the year after the expulsion of the Jesuits.
Twenty years earlier a priest had left Spain for Mexico and spent the intervening time either in the College of San Fernando or the lonely perilous missions of the Sierra Gorda. His piety and exaltation were on every tongue, and by many he was hailed as the most remarkable man of his order since it was founded by his prototype, Francis of Assisi. His name was Junípero Serra. There is a monument erected in his honor in the Golden Gate Park of San Francisco, and another overlooks the harbor of Monterey. No name shines in the brief history of California with a brighter and more persistent luster. While he looked nine-tenths spirit, and no doubt was, and was endowed with a humility and simplicity of mind that permitted him to see a miracle in every meager bit of good luck that fell to his share, he was the born pioneer, resourceful, practical, indomitable. He knew no obstacle where the glory of the Church was concerned; neither weary leagues infested by hostile tribes, nor the racking ills of his own frail body.
Simultaneously with the expulsion of the Jesuits the Franciscans determined to succeed where the rival order had failed. They were encouraged by Charles III., King of Spain, one of the most enlightened princes of his time. He was quite willing to save the souls of the pestilential savages if it could be done, but his ardent missionaries were a cloak for his ultimate design; he purposed to occupy and settle that land of all possibilities, explored along eight hundred miles of its coast by Cabrillo, Farello, and Viscaino-to say nothing of the insolent foreigner, Drake, who had presumed to call the land New Albion-
I8
STATUE OF PADRE JUNIPERO SERRA
He was the founder of the California missions. He was hailed as the most re- markable man of his order since it was founded by his prototype, Francis of Assisi
THE MISSION PADRES
thus linking it inseparably to the Spanish crown. The spiritual expedition was placed as a matter of course in charge of Junípero Serra, and he and his little band of priests went first to Loreto to re-establish the missions of Baja California. They arrived on Good Friday, April I, 1768, with orders to separate to the different mission establishments left by the Jesuits and, while saving souls by baptism, await further orders from Don José de Galvez, who had been appointed Visitador - general and charged with the execution of the real purpose of the king.
Galvez arrived in Loreto two months later and held a long consultation with Father Fr. Junípero Serra, who, as president of the California missions, was almost his equal in authority. They mutually agreed that forces and missionaries should be sent early in the following year by land and sea to take formal possession of Alta California.
Serra at this time was fifty-five years old; his body was wasted by fasting and scourging and tireless missionary work, but animated by one of the most remarkable wills ever developed in the psychical anatomy. Although three ships had been placed at the disposal of the explorers, he elected to go with one of the land expeditions, which, of course, meant traversing hundreds of thorny miles either on foot or the back of a mule.
The ships sailed (one of them was lost). The first of the two land expeditions started under the leadership of Capt. Rivera y Moncada. The second was in charge of Capt. Gaspar de Portolá (also appointed governor of Cali- fornia), and left Loreto on March 9, 1769. Serra was to have ridden at the head of this party, but was forced to re- main behind and in bed for several days. Since his arrival
19
CALIFORNIA
in Mexico in 1749, when he had insisted upon walking from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico for the glory of God, he had suffered from a painful ulcer in the leg, which was constantly irritated by his arduous and unremitting labors and received no attention from this devoted servant of the Church until he collapsed from weakness.
On March 25th, accompanied by two soldiers and a servant, he began his march over roads that might have been designed by Nature in her most vicious geological mood to test his unfaltering spirit. Baja California is little more than a rough mountain-chain, parched, stony, already blistering at this time of the year under a tropic sun. The only game was rattlesnake.
Serra's leg became so swollen that it threatened not only to become insupportably painful, but useless. But re- monstrance availed not; resting but a day or two at the successive missions (where the beds were probably boards), he continued his march, losing himself in religious medita- tion or dreams of the beautiful land he was about to redeem. Mind triumphed over matter (aided by an opportune mule-doctor who poulticed him with herbs) ; he caught up with Portolá in May. On July Ist they arrived on the shores of the Bay of San Diego and found the party of explorers that had preceded them camped in the sandy valley, and two of the ships in the harbor. Serra went to work the day he arrived upon the latent religious sensibilities of a particularly suspicious and bloodthirsty tribe of Indians. First he celebrated mass, and then he made them presents.
Portolá gave them their first taste of beef. He and Capt. Rivera y Moncada had driven before them the ancestors of the herds and flocks the Americans found
20
THE MISSION PADRES
in the California valleys three - quarters of a century later.
Portolá, having seen his missionaries and their guard safe, as he supposed, within a stockade, set out on the 14th of July to rediscover the Bay of Monterey. He was accompanied not only by his peons and a large body- guard of soldados de cuera (leather-jacketed soldiers), but by Capt. Rivera y Moncada, Don Pedro Fages, Don Miguel Constanzo (engineer), Father Gomez, and Father Crespi-to whose diary the historian is so deeply indebted. A train of mules carried provisions for the journey. But Portolá could not find the Bay of Monterey. Indifferent to the Bay of San Francisco, which, pushing on north, he inadvertently discovered, and convinced that the bay most famous among California explorers had disappeared, he wended his weary and hungry way back to San Diego. There he was horrified to learn that Father Serra and his little colony barely had escaped massacre by the Indians; they had saved themselves less with their firearms than with their wits.
Portolá was thoroughly discouraged. He had been tramping for the greater part of six months over a dusty or muddy unbroken country, whose magnificent scenery was no compensation for the mule diet to which he finally had been reduced. The bay coveted by the King of Spain evidently had been obliterated by the elements; and, although he had found a superb bay farther north, he scorned it, convinced that it was the harbor discovered by Drake and the Spanish explorers, and held by Spain as of little account. As the Drake harbor was named San Francisco on the Spanish maps, he rechristened the inland sheet after the patron saint of the expedition;
21
CALIFORNIA
to the unbounded delight of Father Serra, who looked upon Portolá's march north and discovery of the bay already named for St. Francis in the light of a miracle.
He was a handsome and gallant young officer, this Don Gaspar de Portolá, first governor of California, but there is no denying that he was stupid; and when he dis- covered later that he had camped for several days on the beach before the Bay of Monterey, perhaps he thought so himself. As none of the Spaniards ever appreciated the Bay of San Francisco, he lived and died in blissful ignorance of the greatest of his mistakes.
Only one of the ships remained in the Bay of San Diego, the San Carlos. The San Antonio had been sent back to San Blas in July, not only for provisions, but for sailors and soldiers, many having died on the voyage out from diseases caused by the abominable conditions. The San Antonio had not returned; Portolá doubted if it ever would. The provisions on hand were running low. He made up his mind to return to Mexico at once, and would have done so had it not been for the prayers and deter- mination of Father Serra. There is no doubt that if the Spaniards had abandoned California at that time the government, upon receiving the discouraging reports of such seasoned officers as Portolá and Rivera y Moncada, would have lost interest once more. Without the pic- turesque if imperfect civilization of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries men of a more energetic and adventurous breed never would have heard of California. Her "American" history would have been delayed for a century or more; and those enterprising citizens that have wrested fortunes from her vitals, her fertile surfaces, or their fellow-citizens, should render yearly thanks to that
22
THE MISSION PADRES
old priest of racked body and unquenchable enthusiasm, and of a will too strong for Gaspar de Portolá. Otherwise they might be battling with the wilderness themselves instead of reaping the harvest of the argonauts and pio- neers of '49.
Portolá unwillingly consented to wait till the 19th of March. On that date if the San Antonio had not arrived he should abandon California. She arrived on the 19th (another miracle), and only because she needed an anchor-she had been ordered to Monterey. Portolá, now convinced that God and the authorities were on the side of the heathen, and that if he valued his career he had better be also, immediately organized another expedition to search for the Bay of Monterey. But this time he went by sea, already half persuaded by Father Serra (who took care to accompany him) that the bay above which Viscaino had erected a cross-still remaining- could not have disappeared. Even when the ship steered straight for the cross, however, Portolá saw nothing that resembled a bay, but Serra recognized it at once and pro- nounced it a beautiful port. Portolá, who seems to have been able to see anything that was ticketed and labeled, agreed with him, and they took possession of Monterey with impressive ceremonies.
This was on June 3, 1770, a fateful day in the history of California. San Diego, sandy, barren, intensely hot, differing little from Baja California, would hardly have unloosed the purse-strings of the "pious fund" of Mexico had that second expedition north not been undertaken. But now even Portolá admitted that California was a vast orchard of plums, all worthy of the active appetite of Spain, He had eaten wild grapes and oranges himself
23
CALIFORNIA
in the lovely valleys he had traversed, he now remembered, and seen pine forests of which seventy-times-seven cities might be built. These same forests had towered on the coast above them as the San Antonio crawled north; and along the cliffs was a narrow belt of ancient cypress trees, an advance-guard from the Holy Land to greet the cross.
Seals crowded the outlying rocks, over which the pon- derous waves of the Pacific dashed on their way to assault the cliffs. They kept up an incessant and horrible racket, but the scene above was very cool and green and inviting to eyes weary of the glare of the desert.
On the ship had been packed not only the necessaries of camp life, but altars, vestments, all the paraphernalia of the Church, as well as the parade uniforms of the officers. On the morning of June 3d priests and officers arrayed themselves magnificently and assembled about an altar under the great oak named for Viscaino. The priests rang the silver bells they had hidden among the branches, sum- moning all that might hear to prayer. The Indians, who were hidden behind every rock, ignored the invitation, but felt sufficient awe of the impressive ceremonies to remain passive.
The little congregation was composed of Don Gaspar de Portolá and his officers, several priests, many soldiers, and the native muleteers, who had been Christianized in Baja California. They all knelt while Father Serra, in the white ceremonial robes of his order, blessed them and consecrated the ground and sands of the shore, sprinkled them with holy water, and planted an immense cross. The chanting was incessant, and, as there were no musical instruments, salvos of artillery and musketry were fired
24
THE MISSION PADRES
during the mass. With the Te Deum the religious cere- monies finished and the military ceremonies began.
The royal standard was planted, and California (which extended to the north pole, for all they knew) taken posses- sion of in the name of Charles III., King of Spain. The day finished with a great feast on the beach. The brave little band was tired and hungry, but happy. Not only had the Mission of San Carlos de Monterey been founded, but a royal presidio.
When the barracks were built the high stockade in- cluded not only the quarters of the governor and his officers and barracks for the soldiers and peons, but a parish chapel and rooms for the missionaries. Later a castillo (fort) was erected on an eminence above the har- bor, and the presidio was rebuilt far from the shore and about a large plaza.
The natives proved docile and willing to be baptized. Father Serra soon made up his mind that Monterey was no place for a mission, owing to the absence of broad acres to till and waters to irrigate. Serra, like all the priests that came after him, was an excellent judge of soils; moreover, he was far-sighted, and did not mean that his missions should be encroached upon by future towns. Prowling up and down the coast, he soon discovered, about a league to the south, a beautiful and fertile valley on the shores of a river, which he named Carmel. The waves dashed over Point Pinos, and the mountains were black with pines, but there were hundreds of acres of rolling land which could be covered with grain and fruit, and there was a lake of fresh water besides the river.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.