USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 3
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He ordered certain of his Indians, old and new, to fell trees and erect a stout inclosure for a church, garrison,
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living-rooms, huts, and a corral. This he baptized with the name Mission de San Carlos del Rio Carmel, but then, as now, more briefly known as Carmel.
When this energetic little padre, propelling his tormented body by the living flame within, was not designing, pro- jecting, overseeing, exhorting, or baptizing he was writing letters to the College of San Fernando in Mexico, dwelling with holy zeal and real descriptive ability upon the beau- ties of the new land, the richness of her soil, above all, of course, the precious souls to be saved. He asked for a hundred more missionaries, and he got thirty; not only did he communicate his enthusiasm to the Guardian of San Fernando, but to the more practical Viceroy of Mexico and the Visitador - general. The news of the solemn ceremonies on the shores of the Bay of Monterey had already been received, and the Marques de Croix, the viceroy, had published the news in the capital and ordered the cathedral and all the little churches to ring their bells.
Two years before when Portolá and his band were toil- ing over the Santa Lucia range Father Crespi had been deeply impressed by a valley seen from the summit and afterward crossed by the weary party. It was a valley of beautiful proportions, with waving fields of wild oats and grains, and fruits as wild. When word came from the College that the new missionaries with the necessary vest- ments, bells, and funds would start as soon as might be, Father Crespi recalled the beautiful fertile valley and in- fected Father Serra with his enthusiasm. That warrior soul mounted his mule, and, accompanied by two priests and a body-guard, set out for the spot, some twenty-five leagues south of Monterey. When he reached the wide valley, watered by a river, dotted with groves of stately
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THE MISSION PADRES
trees, the ripened oats looking like a waving sheet of gold, he lost the head that never had been as strong as his spirit, capered about in spite of his always swollen leg, and, as soon as the bells were hung in the trees, pulled the rope himself, shouting: "Come, oh ye Gentiles, come to the Holy Church! Come to the faith of Jesus Christ!"
Inasmuch as there was not a Gentile (Indian) in sight, and no church, and as his conduct was altogether unusual, his companions thought he had gone mad. But who knows what visions of the future flashed across his vision on that brilliant July morning? Given a starved and neglected body, a brain filled with the poisons of that body, an inner altar upon which the flame never burned low, surround these deviations from the normal by the blue and gold of a California morning, a thousand choirs of birds, the exquisite scents of the virgin earth, and visions follow as a matter of course.
Thus was founded the Mission of San Antonio de Padua. When I saw it more than a century later its ruins were crowded with evicted Mexican squatters, the women very fat, wearing a solitary calico garment, and the children, although the San Antonio Valley is bitter-cold in winter, quite naked. But it must have been a beautiful mission up to the days of secularization, long and low, red-tiled and painted white; the rancheria (Indian quarters) and factories close by, set in a magnificent valley, one of whose ranchos,1 when I saw it, covered forty-five thousand acres.
1 My father-in-law, Faxon D. Atherton, saw this ranch when a youth on his way to Chile in search of fortune. He vowed to himself that he would one day own it, and did obtain possession sometime in the 70's, after a lawsuit of several years; he had bought it as a Spanish grant, and the many squatters in possession claimed that it was government land. The Supreme Court decided in his favor, and the squatters (threaten- ing my husband and the sheriffs with death, but doing nothing), were evicted,
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During Father Serra's lifetime the neophytes numbered 1,084. Like all the missions, it was self-supporting; seeds and pits of fruits, cereals, grains, and vegetables, cattle and sheep were sent from Mexico, and the priests soon learned to cultivate the wild orange and grape.
San Gabriel was the next mission to be founded. It stands in another rich plain not far from the sea and walled in behind by a rampart of high mountains, white with snow when the oranges and olives are ripe in the valley. Near by to-day is the California Chicagito, still named for the little Spanish pueblo that once drowsed at its base, Los Angeles, City of the Angels! As few people know the meaning of the name they mispronounce, the incongruity is less painful than it might be.
San Luis Obispo, surrounded by bare chrome hills and beautiful valleys, arose next. Then, after passionate rep- resentations on the part of Father Serra as well as a trip to Mexico, during which he nearly expired of fever and exhaustion, funds and missionaries were sent, and the following missions built in quick succession: San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de Assisi, Santa Clara, San Bueneventura, Santa Barbara, La Purissima, Santa Cruz, Soledad, San José, San Juan Bautista, San Miguel, San Fernando, San Luis Rey, and Santa Inez. These missions, with their barracks, factories, and rancherias for the neophytes, were about thirty miles, or one day's ride, apart. The spots chosen were as far as possible from the mountains on either side of the long valleys, and a con- stant lookout was maintained by sentries for hostile In- dians. The churches were humble in the beginning, but were gradually replaced by large buildings of adobe, painted white, the roofs covered with bright-red tiles, and
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SANTA BARBARA MISSION-FOUNDED 1786
SAN GABRIEL MISSION (FIRST GOLD FOUND IN 1842)
THE MISSION PADRES
were, for the most part, of Moorish architecture. There was a long corridor before the living-rooms and facing the plaza, or courtyard, and under its sheltering roof a friar might tell his beads and meditate upon the hopeless Indian; few being as unremittingly enthusiastic as Father Serra.
The chain of missions beginning at San Diego on the south finished for many years at San Francisco, the bay being then an insurmountable obstacle to further progress. A road was gradually beaten out between the establishments, and the chance traveler was always sure of a welcome, a good bed, and a far better meal. Each was a hive of industry, for the Indians worked if the padres stood over them, and they had learned how to make cakes of choco- late and other delicacies, to till the soil, to turn the grape into wine and the wheat into fine bread. A sheep or a beef was always killed in honor of the guest; he was in- vited to remain as long as he pleased, and sent on his way with a fresh horse. No questions were asked, but he was expected to attend mass. For the visitors soon ceased to be merely priests. Many explorers cast anchor in the bays-La Perouse, Vancouver, Puget, Duflot de Mofras are the most celebrated-sailors deserted ships, and set- tlers had been encouraged to emigrate from Mexico at once. These came by every packet-boat-which, to be sure, was not often !- and they were given small farms near the presidios and furnished with two cows, two sheep, two goats, a mule, farming-implements, and a yoke of oxen. Those that settled at the pueblos (towns), founded in due course at San José and Los Angeles, were treated with even more paternalism, for the central gov- ernment was anxious that these and other pueblos should
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grow and flourish. Houses were built for each inhabitant, his farm and orchard staked off and his irrigation ditches dug. In addition he was stocked as generously as the farmer. Little can be said for these first settlers. Some were convicts, and all were idle and dissipated. The fine old Spanish-California families are descended, not from them, but from the officers that protected the missions. Many of these sent for their families and in course of time -although bitterly opposed by the priests-obtained large grants of land and became the great ranchers of California's pastoral era; sometimes the younger officers, hastening eagerly to the City of Mexico, when their term of duty expired, returned by the next packet-boat, ac- companied by their brides, and settled in a country which even then seems to have exercised a curious fascination. There was little to do, an abundance of game and every other delicacy that cost nothing, sunshine for eight months of the year, a climate electric in the north and soporific in the south, and not too much discipline-save at the missions.
Padre Serra, in spite of his increasing ills and feebleness, spent much of his time visiting his long chain of missions. He was granted the right to confirm by a special edict, there being no bishop in the country, and month after month, year after year, he traveled over those terrible roads, choked with dust in summer, knee-deep in mud in winter, making sure that his idle, thieving, stupid, but affectionate Indians would pass the portals of heaven. A motorist skimming up and down El Camino Real to-day would stare hard at the vision of a shrunken figure in a brown habit, with a shining face above, plodding along on a mule, his body-guard of soldiers a few respectful paces
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THE MISSION PADRES
behind. There was not an inch of that long road between San Diego and Dolores, nor any trail that led from it, that was not as familiar to him as to the pleasure-seekers of to-day.
The missions, after an interval of warfare with the more aggressive and unfriendly tribes, in which they lost both priests and soldiers, settled down to a long period of simple peace and prosperity. Immense fields of grain were cultivated, vineyards were planted, and wine was made; the women were taught weaving and spinning, all fruits and vegetables seemed to flourish, and the horses and cattle and sheep multiplied in the land. That long chain of snow-white red-tiled missions, hedged with Cas- tilian roses, surrounded by olive-orchards, whose leaves were silver in the sun, orange-groves heavy with golden fruit, the vast sweep of shimmering grain-fields broken by stately oaks, winding rivers set close with the tall pale cottonwoods, lakes with the long branches of willows trailing over the surface; bounded by forest and mountain and sea, and not a city to break the harmony, must have been the fairest sight in the modern world.
But there was another side to the picture. Father Serra and the other devoted priests who were willing to give their lives to the saving of heathen souls were terrific disciplinarians. It was not only their mission to convert and save at any price, but to use these instruments God had given them to insure the wealth and perfection of their establishments. Haussmann took no more pride in rebuilding Paris nor Ludvig I. in modern Munich than these clever priests, exiled to the wilderness, but educated in Madrid or the City of Mexico, in their beautiful adobe missions, some severely plain, others sculptured, but all
3
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symmetrical and built by their brains with Indian hands. It is to be confessed that the hands had a sorry time of it. Father Serra had no cruelty in him, but many of the other priests in their pious zeal developed more than was good for either the soul or body of the neophyte. It was after Serra's death, and while Lausen was president of the missions, that La Perouse visited California. He wrote the story of his voyages, and as follows of Monterey:
The Indian population of San Carlos consisted of seven hundred and forty persons of both sexes, including children. They lived in some fifty miserable huts near the church, composed of stakes stuck in the ground a few inches apart and bent over at the top so as to form oven- shaped structures, some six feet in diameter and the same in height, and illy thatched with straw. In such habitations as these, closely packed together at night, they preferred to live rather than in houses such as the Spanish built, alleging that they loved the open air which had free access to them, and that when the huts became uncomfortable on account of fleas and other vermin they could easily burn them down and in a few hours build new ones. The condition of the neophyte was that of abject slavery. The moment an Indian allowed himself to be baptized that moment he relinquished every particle of liberty and subjected himself, body and soul, to a tyranny from which there was no escape. The Church then claimed as its own himself, his labor, his creed, and his obedience, and enforced its claims with the strong hand of power. His going forth and his returning were prescribed; his hours of toil and his prayers fixed; the time of his meals and his sleep prearranged. If he ran away and attempted to regain his native independence he was hunted down by the soldiers, brought back, and lashed into submission. His spirit, if he ever had any, was entirely broken, so much so that in a short while after the estab- lishment of a mission anything like resistance was almost unknown, and its three or four hundred or a thousand neophytes were driven to their labors by three or four soldiers like so many cattle. . . . They were roused with the sun and collected in the church for prayers and mass. These lasted an hour. During this time three large boilers were set on the fire for cooking a kind of porridge, called atole, consist- ing of a mixture of barley, which had first been roasted and then pounded or ground with great labor by the Indian women into a sort of meal, with water. . .. Three-quarters of an hour were allowed for
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breakfast. Immediately after it was over all the neophytes, men and women, were obliged to go to work, either tilling the ground, laboring in the shops, gathering or preparing food, as might be ordered by the missionaries, under whose eyes, or the eyes of other taskmasters appointed by them, all the operations were performed. At noon the church-bells announced the time for dinner. . .. At about two o'clock the Indians were obliged to return to their labors and continue until about five, when they were again collected in the church for an hour of evening prayers. They lived on porridge, but on rare occasions meat was given them in small quantities. This was eaten raw. When a cow was slaughtered the poor wretches who were not at work would gather round like hungry ravens, devouring with their eyes what they dare not touch with their hands, and keeping up a croaking of desire as the parts for which they had the greatest avidity were exposed in the process of dressing. ... In rainy weather they were kept as hard at work indoors, and on Sundays, although they were allowed an hour or two of games, they were driven for the most part into the church to pray.
Other travelers were horrified at the conversion, not so much of the heathen to Catholicism as of a race inde- pendent for centuries into unhappy machines; and there is no doubt that many of the instances of reported cruelty are true. But it must be remembered that this was in a day when more enlightened nations than Spain were buy- ing and selling slaves, whipping them, and separating them from their families. Even the white underdog had not learned to raise his head, and schoolmasters and parents all over the world used the rod unsparingly. The Spanish priests had come to the wilderness not only to save souls, but to do their share in welding California to the crown of Spain. Moreover, no nation that brings its children up in the bull-ring can be otherwise than cruel, or callous at the best. These savages were the only instruments an all-wise Providence had deposited in Cali- fornia for the priests to use in the performance of their task, and they used them. If the instruments had to be
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remade, even by the process of fire, why not, if it were to the glory of God and the King of Spain?
There is no question of their pious zeal. And all for naught. Never were devoted services in the Garden of the Lord more futile. Brainless, little higher in the scale of life than the wild beasts of their plains and forests, these native Indians of California, so aptly renamed "Diggers" at a later date by the American, did not rise one step in the scale of civilization. Further enervated by diseases in- troduced by the Spanish soldiers, and reduced almost seventy-five per cent. by the ravages of smallpox, while still under the sway of the missions, they relapsed into savagery as soon as the priests were shorn of their power; meaner objects than before, for they had lost their an- cient independence. It may be argued against the padres that the results of modern methods in California show that a certain amount of intelligence and character in the Indian can be developed by education and kindness. Even so he is far below any white standard, and there is no evidence of modern or any sort of civilization in his villages. He merely has the benefit of what he can assimilate from a more enlightened era, an era of which the priests of Spain had no vision; nor would have treated with aught but scorn and contempt had it been interpreted to them by an oracle. God made the poor to toil for the rich, the weak to be oppressed by the strong, and, as both were put upon the earth to glorify Him, why not?
Padre Serra loved them all, individually and collectively, being not a priest,' but a saint. He saw nothing of their ugly squat bodies and stupid faces, only the soul within, which, of course, he never guessed was but a projection
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THE MISSION PADRES
from his own radiant and supernormal ego. He died at the Mission of Carmel, August 28, 1784, full of years and honors and bodily sores, and was buried under the floor of the church he loved best-the church in the Mission de San Carlos del Rio Carmel. It became in due course a magnificent ruin, with an owl-haunted belfry, and the weeds grew over his grave, and all the tombs were broken. But it is now restored and quite hideous.
Father Fr. Junípero Serra may have failed to reap the great harvest of Indian souls he had baptized with such gratitude and exultation, and that consoled him for all his afflictions, but he lifted California from the unread pages of geological history and placed it on the modern map. I wonder what he thinks of it.
III
THE SPANISH GOVERNORS-I
CHARLES III. had not a suspicion of the gold that lacquered the Sierra cañons and spangled the beds of the rivers, but it was the policy of Spain to add land and more land to her American dominions, and so recover, if possible, the power and prestige she had lost in Europe. There is no doubt that this far-sighted ruler purposed to encroach upon as much of the American continent as his soldiers could hold and his missionaries civilize. This, it must be remembered, was during the last third of the eighteenth century; the English and French were on the far eastern rim, curving north and south; Vancouver had not yet visited the northwest, nor is it likely that an echo of the rising storm of "American" discontent had reached the Spanish king. What we now call Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada already had been invaded by the Spaniards from their central stronghold, Mexico; no doubt, like the great Russian, Rezánov, after him, Charles dreamed of a new American empire that should extend as far as the Rocky Mountains, at least, and farther still, mayhap.
Portolá was succeeded as governor of the Californias by Felipe de Barri in 1771; and if he possessed even as much personality as Don Gaspar it has not come down to us through those early meager pages of California history.
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His short administration was distinguished chiefly by rows with the missionaries over the vexed question of supremacy. Portolá, although a strict disciplinarian in the army, had too much respect for the president to inter- fere with the missions, but Barri aspired to be lord of all this vast domain, with the priests as his humble subjects. He was routed by Father Serra, although the friction con- tinued. The chief weapon in the missionaries' moral armory, and one they never failed to flourish, was the avowed purpose of Spain to annex the Californias solely for the glory of God and the redemption of heathen souls. The military was sent along merely to protect the mis- sions; and the civil administrations necessary to pueblos were even more incidental.
It was during the administration of the third governor, Filipe de Neve, although while he was still detained in Baja California, that the presidio of San Francisco and the neighboring mission were founded. During the previous year, 1775, Bucareli, the enlightened Viceroy of Mexico, had sent Juan de Ayala, Lieutenant of Frigate of the Royal Navy, to survey the Bay of San Francisco. This was done, not because even he realized its strategical importance, but to gratify Father Serra, who had long importuned him for means to establish a mission at a point hallowed by the name of the patron saint of Cali- fornia.
Ayala, the first white man, so far as is known, to sail through the Golden Gate, arrived in the Gulf of the Farallones on August 5th, and sent a launch ahead to navigate the straits. He followed on the same evening in his packet-boat, the San Carlos, and navigated the bay as thoroughly as one might in those days. He also named
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the islands-Alcatraz and Nuestra Señora de los Angeles (Angel Island). In the following year, while men of English birth at the other end of the continent were filling the land with the clamor of liberty bells, the peninsula of San Francisco wrote her own first chapter in modern history. To the terrific cataclysms of the geological cen- turies had succeeded the camp-fires and dances and lazily gliding canoes of Indians; nothing more momentous enlivening the shores of the bay on any side than a war- dance or a battle between rival tribes. But now there were to be forts on her heights and a fine presidio not far from the beach, officers strutting about in uniform, parades, love-making at grated windows, and cock- fights. It was not a change that threatened the peace of the world, but it marked the end of the prehistoric era and the embarcation of San Francisco upon her changeful seas.
A league to the south the Mission of St. Francis d'Assisi was founded, to be known almost at once from the lake on which it stood, as the Mission Dolores. It had been the intention of Captain Anza, who had charge of the expedition, to found a pueblo close by, but the settlers whom he brought with him had just sufficient intelligence to see no prospect of farming sand-dunes. Governor Neve, when he arrived, sent Lieutenant Moraga to con- duct them down to the Mission of Santa Clara, and the pueblo of San José was founded. The padres, however, appropriated many hundreds of acres to the south of Dolores, and this mission soon became almost as flourish- ing as the others.
Governor Neve also founded the pueblo of Los Angeles, and he composed a code of legislation (Reglamento) for
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THE SPANISH GOVERNORS-I
both presidios and pueblos, so minute and so far-seeing that it would serve them did they ever attain to the growth of large cities. But he was too big a man for a mere province, and was soon recalled to the City of Mexico with high honors. The missionaries saw him go with no regret. He disliked them intensely and did not hesitate to tell them that their policy of repression and cruelty was both unwarranted and short-sighted.
Pedro Fages succeeded him. He was one of the pio- neers, and had accompanied Portolá on that first futile expedition in search of the Bay of Monterey. He was a man of enterprise and industry and high in favor with the Viceroy and the Visitador-general. He was also a favorite of Father Serra, but he disliked the missionaries in general and resented their power.
Fages had the ability to rule as well as the instinct, and if he could not force the missionaries to their knees he managed to make them feel the weight of his authority. He got a law passed that no one should leave the Cali- fornias without the consent of the governor. The priests had been in the habit of running over to Mexico to refresh their souls with civilization and the holy conversa- tion of the College San Fernando. The new law emanated from the City of Mexico, and, although the priests gnashed their teeth and hated Fages, they were helpless. Cali- fornia in those days was pastoral, but not too pastoral.
He also curbed the immorality of the soldiers, and encouraged them to marry the neophyte girls, settle down, and become the real pioneers of the country. He seems to have been the first to punish horse-stealing and to interfere with the excessive sale and consumption of liquor. The eight years of his administration were spent
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either in reforms or in enforcing the original laws, and he took an equal interest in the domestic affairs of the colonists, settling their quarrels, prodding them to their work, berating and encouraging them.
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