USA > California > History of California, Volume I > Part 29
USA > California > History of California, Volume I > Part 29
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201
CONDITION OF THE MISSIONS.
men garrison the presidio under the commandant's direct orders. The civil and political authority is blended theoretically, for there is no record of the practical exercise of any such power in these earliest days, with the military, and vested in the commandant, who is in civil matters responsible and subordinate to the governor of the Californias, residing at Loreto. The population consists of military officials and soldiers, friars and their neophytes, a few mechanics under gov- ernment pay, servants and slaves-all these of Spanish, negro, Indian, and mixed blood-some natives of Baja California serving as laborers without other wages than their sustenance, and, finally, thousands of gen- tile natives. There are as yet no colonists or settlers proper.8
Glancing first at the mission work par excellence, the conversion of the heathen to Christianity, we find a total of 491 baptisms for the first five years, 29 of them having died, and 62 couples, representing doubt- less nearly all the adult converts, have been united in marriage by Christian rites.9 The two northern mis- sions with 165 and 158 baptisms are far above the southern establishments, which are 83 and 73 respect- ively, while the newly founded San Luis has only twelve converts.1º It is to be noted, however, that the friars have not in several of the missions baptized so many as they might have done, preferring that the candidates should be well instructed, and often re- strained by an actual or prospective lack of supplies, since they are unwilling to receive formal neophytes whom they may not be able to supply with food. Again, more than half the whole number have been baptized during the year and a half since Serra's departure. The gentiles are now everywhere friendly
8 The matter of the preceding paragraph has not been drawn from the reports of Palou and Serra.
" Complete statistics of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and population for every mission and every decade from the beginning will be given in their proper place.
10 So say the general reports; yet the mission baptismal register shows a total of 34 baptisms in 1772 and 4 in 1773.
202
SERRA'S LABORS IN MEXICO.
as a rule, and have for the most part overcome their original timidity, and to some extent also the distrust caused by outrages of the soldiers.11 Only at San Diego have there been unprovoked hostilities. Near each mission, except San Luis, is a ranchería of gen- tiles living in rude little huts of boughs, tules, grass, or of whatever material is at hand. Many of these sav- ages come regularly as catechumens to doctrina, and often those of more distant rancherías are induced to come in and listen to the music and receive trifling gifts of food and beads. The neophytes are generally willing to work when the friars can feed them, which is not always the case; but it does not appear that at this early period they live regularly in the mission buildings as in later times. At San Diego there are eleven rancherías within a radius of ten leagues, living on grass, seeds, fish, and rabbits. A canoe and net are needed that the christianized natives may be taught improved methods of fishing.12 At San Gabriel the native population is larger than elsewhere, so large in fact that more than one mission will be needed in that region. The different rancherías are unfortunately at war with each other, and that near the mission being prevented from going to the sea for fish is often in great distress for food. Here the conduct of the sol- diers causes most trouble, but the natives are rapidly being conciliated. At San Luis the population is also very large and the natives are from the first firm friends of the Spaniards; but as they have plenty of deer, rabbits, fish, and seeds, being indeed far better supplied with food than the Spaniards, it is difficult to
11 That the irregular conduct of the soldiers was one of the chief obstacles to missionary success there can be little doubt; yet it is not likely that the comandante was so much to blame as Serra says. His dislike for Fages colors his report. Have misfortunes of any kind occurred at a mission, they were entirely due to the mismanagement of 'a certain official;' has another mission been prosperous, it was in spite of that mismanagement.
12 According to Serra nearly all in the rancheria that had formerly attacked the mission had been converted. The 'oficial ' was displeased that so many had been haptized, and he had wished to remove the natives to a distance on pretence of danger to the presidio, but Serra had objected strenuously and every one else ridiculed the proposal !
203
PRE-PASTORAL ARCHITECTURE.
render mission life fascinating to them, articles of eloth- ing being the chief attraction. They come often to the mission but do not stay, having no ranchcría in the vicinity. At San Antonio the natives are ready to live at the mission when the priests are ready for them, and far from depending on the missionaries for food they bring in large stores of pine-nuts, acorns, rabbits, and squirrels.13 At San Carlos converts are inost numerous, but for want of food they cannot be kept at the mission. Here and also at San Antonio three soldiers have already married native women.
It is a rude architecture, that of pre-pastoral Cali- fornia, being stockade or palisade structures, which were abandoned later in favor of adobe walls. At every mission a line of high strong posts, set in the ground elose together, eneloses the rectangular space which contains the simple wooden buildings serving as church and dwellings, the walls of which also in most instances take the stockade form. The buildings at San Carlos are somewhat fully described by Serra. The rectangle here is seventy yards long and forty- three wide, with ravelins at the corners. For want of nails the upright palisades are not secured at the top, and the ease with which they can be moved renders the strong gate locked at night an object of ridicule. Within, the chief building, also of palisade walls plas- tered inside and out with mud or elay, is seven by fifty yards and divided into six rooms. One room serves as a church, another as the minister's dwelling, and another as a storehouse, the best rooms being white- washed with lime. This building is roofed with mud supported by horizontal timbers. A slighter structure used as a kitchen is roofed with grass. The quarters
13 They had revealed, as Serra says, the locality of the eave where their idols were kept, so that those idols could be destroyed at any time. The assessor of Monterey County in his report to the surveyor-general, according to an item going the rounds of local newspapers, mentions a large cave in this region eovered on the inside with hieroglyphics and having a cross cut in its walls traditionally by the hands of Serra himself. Near the eave is a hot sul- phur spring. It would be difficult to prove the non-identity of the two caves.
204
SERRA'S LABORS IN MEXICO.
of the soldiers are distinct from the mission and are enclosed by a separate palisade, while outside of both enclosures are the simple huts of the ranchería. Between the dates of the two reports it is found that the mud roofs do not prove effective against the winter rains; and a new church partly of rough and partly of worked timber is built and roofed with tules. The timber used is the pine and cypress still so abundant in that region. At San Luis and San Gabriel the buildings are of the same nature, if somewhat less extensive and complete, there being also a small house within the stockade for each of the Baja Californian families. At San Diego, where the stockade is in a certain sense a presidio, two bronze cannons are mounted, one pointing toward the harbor, and the other toward the rancheria. Here, in addition to wood and tules, or rushes, adobes have also been used in con- structing the friars' house.14 Four thousand adobes have been made, some stone have been collected, and the foundation laid of a church ninety feet long; but work has been suspended on account of the non-arrival of the supply-vessels in 1773. At San Antonio the church and padres' dwelling are built of adobes, and the three soldiers married to native women have each a separate house. The presidio at Monterey is also a stockade enclosure with a cannon mounted in each of its four ravelins at the corners. The soldiers' quarters and other rooms within are of wood with mud roofs, except a chapel and room for the visiting friar, which are of adobe, as in the commandant's house and the jail.
But slight progress has been made in agriculture; though by repeated failures the padres are gaining experience for future success, and a small vegetable garden at each mission, carefully tended and irrigated by hand, has been more or less productive. At San Diego, at first, grain was sown in the river-bottom and the crop entirely destroyed by a rising of the stream.
14 Serra says that a large part of the buildings were of adobes.
205
PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE.
Next year, it was sown so far away from the water that it died from drought all but five or eight fanegas saved for seed. The river now dried up, affording no running water as we are assured even in the rainy season, though plenty of water for the cattle and for other uses could always be found in pools or by slight digging in the bed of the stream. Irrigation being thus impossible the rain must be depended on, and while Palou was here a spot was selected for the next experiment in the river-bottom, about two leagues from the mission, at a spot called Nuestra Señora del Pilar, where rain was thought to be more abundant and the risk of flood and drought somewhat less.15 San Gabriel is in a large, fertile, well watered plain, with every facility for irrigation. Though the first year's crop, according to Serra, had been drowned out and entirely lost, the second, as Palou tells us, pro- duced one hundred and thirty fanegas of maize and seven fanegas of beans, the first yielding one hundred and ninety-five fold and the latter twenty-one fold. Planting the next year was to be on a much larger scale with every prospect of success. San Luis has also plenty of fertile, well watered, and well wooded land which has yielded a little maize and beans the first year, and promised well for the future. At San Antonio two fanegas of wheat are to be sown on irri- gated land. San Carlos has some good land, and though there are no advantages for irrigation, it is thought maize and wheat can be raised. By reason of late sow- ing only five fanegas of wheat were harvested in 1772.
Pasturage is everywhere excellent, and the little live-stock distributed among the missions has flourished from the beginning. Each mission has received 18 head of horned cattle and has now from 38 to 47 head, or 204 in the aggregate, with 63 horses, 79 mules, 102 swine, and 161 sheep and goats at San Diego and
13 Palou, Not., i. 240-1. The place must have been near the site of the later mission. Serra says it was the crop of 1772 that was destroyed by flood, only 8 fanegas being saved.
206
SERRA'S LABORS IN MEXICO.
San Gabriel alone. Some memoranda of farmers' and mechanics' tools are given in connection with each mission; but there are no mechanics save at the pre- sidio. Palou has something to say of the missions to be founded in the future, but nothing that requires attention here, except perhaps that the proposed Santa Clara is not identical with the mission that is later founded under that name, but is to be on the Santa Clara River in the southern part of the province.16
Having thus laid before the reader the condition of California in 1773, the end of the first period of her history, I have now to consider the important meas- ures for her welfare, urged and adopted at the capital of New Spain during the same year. First, however, a royal order of September 10, 1772, must be briefly noticed in which the king issued a series of regula- tions and instructions for the new line of royal pre- sidios, to be formed along the northern frontier of his American possessions.17 These regulations, the mili- tary law in California as in all the north-west for many years, will require to be studied somewhat in detail when I come to describe the presidio system; but as an historical document under its own date it did not affect California as it did other provinces, where it abolished or transferred old presidios, established new ones, and effected radical changes in their manage- ment. Its last section is as follows: "I declare that
16 The receipt of Palou's report was acknowledged by the viceroy in a letter of May 25, 1774, received July 6th, and answered July 28th; but there is nothing of importance in this correspondence. A résumé with extracts of Palou's report was published in the S. F. Bulletin, Oct. 12, 1865. In Sun Gabriel, Lib. de Mision, MS., 6-8, is a circular letter addressed to the padres of California by Palou, requiring each of them, or each pair of them, at the end of every December to send in full reports of their respective missions to the president, from which he might form his general report to the viceroy, since it would be impossible for him to visit each mission annually. This let- ter was dated San Gabriel, Oct. 9, 1773, while the writer was at work on his first report.
17 Presidios, Reglamento é Instruccion para los Presidios que se han de formar en la linea de frontera de la Nueva España. Resuelto por el Rey N. S. en cédula de 10 de Septiembre de 1772, Madrid, 1772. Sm. 4to, 122 pages. My copy was presented by Viceroy Bucareli to Melchor de Peramas. I have also the edition of Mexico, 1773. Svo, 132 pages.
207
REGLAMENTO DE PRESIDIOS.
the presidios of California are to continue for the pres- ent on their actual footing according to the provisions made by my viceroy after the conquest and reduction had been extended to the port of Monterey; and on the supposition that he has provisionally assigned the annual sum of thirty-three thousand dollars for the needs and protection of that peninsula, I order and command that this sum be still paid at the end of each year from the royal treasury of Guadalajara, as has been done of late; and that my viceroy sustain and aid by all possible means the old and new estab- lishments of said province, and inform me of all that he may deem conducive and useful to their progress, and to the extension of the new reductions of gentile Indians."18
President Serra, having left California in the pre- ceding September, arrived at the city of Mexico in February 1773. The objects of his visit were to see to it that California was not neglected through igno- rance or indifference on the part of the new viceroy, to urge certain general measures for the good of his province suggested by his experience of the past five years, to get rid of the commandant, Fages, his bitter foe and the cause, from the friar's point of view, of all that was not pure prosperity in the missions, and to procure such regulations as would prevent similar troubles with future commandants by putting all the power into the friars' hands and reducing the military element to a minimum.19 He found Bucareli not less favorably disposed than had been his predecessor Croix, and was by him instructed to prepare a memo- rial, in which were to be embodied his views on the questions at issue. Being authorized to do so by his superior, the guardian of San Fernando, and having
18 Presidios, Reglamento, 120-1.
19 Serra had received from California a certificate from Fages dated Mon- terey, Dec. 22, 1772, to the effect that the missions were all supplied with padres and that Serra had left on business connected with his work. Prov. St. Pap., MS., i. 86. It seems strange that Serra did not get this certificate at his departure if necessary, and that Fages should have sent it voluntarily, for there was no time to send back for it.
208
SERRA'S LABORS IN MEXICO.
hastened the sailing of the San Carlos with supplies, Padre Junípero set himself diligently to work, com- pleted the required document on March 13th, and presented it two days later to the viceroy.20
His suggestions or claims were thirty-two in num- ber, formed without any attempt at classification into as many articles of the memorial. I shall avoid much confusion and repetition by referring to the several points in the order in which they were acted upon rather than as they were presented. His first and second claims were for a master and mate to aid Perez on the transports, since Pino had leave of ab- sence, and Cañizares was too young to have full charge of a vessel; and that the new vessel be made ready as soon as possible. He soon found, however, that in order to cut down expenses to agree with the royal order of September 10, 1772, already alluded to, it had been determined in Mexico to give up the San Blas establishment and to depend on mule trains for the forwarding of supplies to San Diego and Monterey.
Against this policy the California champion sent in a new memorial dated the 22d of April.21 In this document he argued that the conveyance of supplies by land would be very difficult if not impossible, that it would cost the royal treasury much more than the present system, and that it would seriously interfere with the spiritual conquest. Besides at least a hun- dred men and horses, there would be required eleven hundred, and probably fifteen hundred, mules for the service, which it would be impossible to obtain in time to prevent much suffering in California if not its total abandonment, to say nothing of the excessive cost. The great expense of the San Blas establish- ment had been largely due to the building of new vessels and warehouses, not necessary in the future. There had possibly been some mismanagement that
20 Serra, Representacion de 13 de Marzo 1773, MS .; also in Palou, Not., i. 514-38; and elsewhere in fragments and abridgments.
21 Serra, Memorial de 22 de Abril, sobre suministraciones á los Establecimien- tos de California y conduccion de ellas, MS.
209
MEASURES ADVOCATED.
might be avoided; in any case some kind of a marine establishment must be kept up for the transport of supplies to Loreto, and the muleteers would be quite as numerous and expensive as the sailors. Moreover, the oft-repeated passage of large caravans of careless, rough, and immoral men across the long stretch of country between Velicatá and Monterey could not fail to have a bad effect on the natives along the route. These arguments proved unanswerable, and the viceroy ordered that for the present, until the king's pleasure could be known, the San Blas trans- ports should continue their service, with the slight changes suggested by Father Junípero, who thus gained the first two points of his original demand.
The thirty remaining points of the representacion were by the viceroy submitted to the junta de guerra y real hacienda22. board of war and royal exchequer -which august body on May 6th granted eighteen of them and part of another, denying only a part of article 32, in which Serra asked to have paid the ex- penses of his journey to Mexico. Thus twenty-one of the original points were disposed of almost entirely in Serra's favor.23 Four of these bore upon the past troubles between the Franciscan and military author- ities, and were designed to curtail the powers which, as the former claimed, had been assumed by the latter. By the decision the commandant was required to transfer from the mission guard to the presidio, at the minister's request, any soldier of irregular conduct and bad example, and this without the padre being obliged to name or prove the soldier's offence; the missiona- ries were to have the right to manage the mission Indians as a father would manage his family, and the
22 The document had, however, previously, March 16th to April 5th, been in the handsof the fiscal Areehe, whose report was favorable; and had then been passed to the proper bureau to be prepared for presentation to the junta. Prov. St. Pap., MS., i. 88-9.
23 Those were 1-4, 8, 9, 12, 15-25, 27, 28, and 32, leaving 11 points yet undecided. The junta was composed of Viceroy Bucareli, Valcarcel, Toro, Areche, Barroeta, Abad, Toral, Valdés, Gutierrez, Mangino, Arce, and José Gorraez.
HIST. CAL., VOL. I. 14
210
SERRA'S LABORS IN MEXICO.
military commandant should be instructed to pre- serve perfect harmony with the padres;24 property and letters for the friars or missions were to be for- warded separately instead of being enclosed to the presidio commander; and the friars' correspondence was not to be meddled with, passing free of mail charges like that of the soldiers. By the terms of the decision on the other points Serra was to receive his regular pay as a missionary, during his whole absence from California. Contributions of food from the Tepic region were to be forwarded expressly for the missions, and Governor Barri was not to hinder the removal of the church property at Velicatá. Sail- ors might be enlisted at San Blas and employed as laborers at the missions, receiving rations for one year as if on board vessels, but they could not be forced to remain after the year had passed, and the regular crews of the transports must not be inter- fered with. Two blacksmiths, two carpenters, with some tools and material were to be sent from Guada- lajara for the exclusive use of the missions. Seven additional bells were to be furnished, four of them having already been sent to Monterey. Additional vestments were to be sent to take the place of soiled, worn, and 'indecent' articles contained in some of the cases from Baja California. San Blas measures were. to be adjusted on a proper basis and a full set of standards sent to each mission. Greater care was to be taken in packing food for California, where it often arrived in bad condition. Cattle for the proposed missions were to be under the temporary care of the missionaries, who might use their milk. A new sur- geon was to be sent in the place of Prat, deceased, and finally a copy of the junta's decision was to be
21 This was hardly what had been asked for by Serra, who wished officers and soldiers notified that the entire management of the Indians belonged exclusively to the padres, and that the military had no right to interfere in matters of discipline or punishment except in the case of delitos de sangre. The junta was very careful not to commit itself very decidedly in the quarrel between Serra and Fages. The viceroy, however, in subsequent instructions came nearer to Serra's views.
211
ECHEVESTE'S REGULATIONS.
given to Serra, that the missionaries might hereafter act understandingly.
The president was charged to return as soon as possible to his post, after having made a complete report on the condition of each mission. 25
Several points of Serra's petition connected with the military and financial aspects of the subject under consideration had been left by the junta to be pro- vided for in a new regulation for the Californias. This document was drawn up on May 19th by Juan José Echeveste, deemed an expert in the matter, since he had superintended for some years the forwarding of supplies. 26 This plan provided for California a cap- tain, a lieutenant, eighty soldiers, eight mechanics, two store-keepers, and four muleteers, with salaries amounting to $38,985 per year; for Baja California a commissary, a lieutenant, and thirty-four soldiers, with a governor of both Californias, all at an annual cost of $16,450; a commissary and dock-yard depart- ment at San Blas to cost, including rations for soldiers and employés in both Californias, $29,869; and a transport fleet of a fragata and two paquebotes serving both Californias at an annual cost for wages and rations of $34,038, forming a grand total of $119,342. Payment was to be made, however, to officers and men in the Californias, save to the governor and com- missary, in goods at an advance on the original cost of one hundred per cent for the peninsula, and of one hundred and fifty per cent for New California; a regulation which reduced the total cost to $90,476. To meet this expense27 there were the $33,000 prom-
25 May 12th, the viceroy decreed the execution of the junta's resolutions, the issuance of the necessary orders, and the preparation of records in duplicate. May 13th, the secretary Gorraez certifies the delivery of a copy to Serra. May 14th, a certified copy was made for the king. Copin de lo determinado por la Real Junta de Guerra y Real Hacienda, in Palou, Not. i., 540-53; also in Prov. St. Pap., MS., i. 89.
26 Reglamento é instruccion provisional para el auxilio y conservacion de los nuevos y antiguas establecimientos de las Californias con el departamento de San Blas, etc., MS .; also in Palou, Not. i., 556-71. The printed copy is, however, full of errors in figures. Also in Arch. Col., St. Pap. Ben., MS., 1-24.
27 This part of the reglamento is omitted in Palou's printed copy.
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