USA > California > Riverside County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume I > Part 46
USA > California > San Bernardino County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume I > Part 46
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The thrifty padres from the start insisted that the missions would hardly support the neophytes, let alone providing for the presidios or frontier posts and settlements ; wherefore the government contemplated as early as 1776 establishing pueblos or towns in fertile regions. This plan had a double object, namely, supplying the new presidios at reduced cost, and settling the land by civilized people.
After the occupation of California by Spain in 1769 the absolute title of land rested in the crown. There was no individual ownership of land. Usufructory titles or titles for production and use only existed during the Spanish rule. The king held actual title to the ground occupied by the presidios and a few adjoining lands. The aborigines were recognized as the owners under the crown of all lands needed for their support. This arrangement limited the area, thus leaving a portion open to coloniza- tion. So it was that under the general laws of the Indies four square leagues, or their equivalent, could be assigned to each pueblo. Neither missions, church nor religious orders owned any land. The missionaries had only the use of the land needed for mission purposes, namely, to prepare the Indians that they might, as individuals, in time take posses- sion of the land they were then holding on commonalty. This purpose once accomplished the missions were to be secularized and made pueblos, the houses of worship naturally going under the control of the church and the missionaries going to seek other fields of usefulness. It was planned from the beginning that each mission and presidio should eventu- ally become a pueblo and that other pueblos should likewise be founded, each having four square leagues of land assigned thereto. The settlement of boundaries was left for the future, when called for by the increase of the number of towns. The missions in their temporary occupation were not restricted as to area. The conversion of most of the presidios and missions into towns was finally effected under a law of 1834. This law, according to the spirit of the Spanish laws, involved the distribution of the mission lands to the ex-neophytes.
The granting of lands to natives or Spaniards in California was per- mitted as early as 1773. Thus we see that a grant was made to Manuel Buitron early in 1775. All grants, however, were forfeited by abandon- ment, failure to cultivate, or non-compliance with the requirements of the law. Such lands could not be alienated at all until full possession had been given. In 1786 Governor Fages was authorized to grant tracts not exceeding three leagues in extent not encroaching on the area of any pueblo, nor causing detriment to any mission or Indian rancheria. The grantees had to build a storehouse on each rancho and to keep at least 2,000 head of live stock. Governor Borica in 1795, for substantial reasons, opposed the granting of ranchos, though recommending that settlers of good character should be allowed to occupy lands near missions to be granted them at a later day if deemed expedient. Several ranchos existed at the time under such temporary permits. Some ranchos occupied by special permits were subsequently taken from the holders because needed by the missions.
On secularization of the missions in 1834 the lands claimed and occu- pied by the missions rapidly passed into private hands. The San Gabriel
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Mission extended from the sea to the San Bernardino Mountains, embrac- ing a million and a half acres. After secularization, settlers petitioned for grants and if there was nothing in the way they obtained them and in this way they were soon taken up and settled upon and then began the golden age of California. It was comparatively short lived, only lasting until the American acquisition by the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on the 2d of February in 1848. This, however, did not end the pastoral era, for it virtually continued until their gradual absorption by the farms and fruit orchards of the present day.
In regard to the Indians under mission rule, the purpose undoubtedly was to in the first place Christianize them and also to make good citizens of them. Spain understood fully that if she was to hold her colonies she had also to occupy and colonize them and about the only way would be to civilize the Indians according to the modern idea of civilization. With an admixture of Spanish blood to hold office and rule the others it would be entirely in accord with what has happened in all of her colonies with the help of the church to guide their spiritual destinies.
The missions had majordomos who were charged with different branches or with a rancho. They were all what were understood to be "gentes de razon," or cultivated men. The mission herders were chiefly Indians and tended stock under the care of majordomos. Women were seldom employed in field work because there were generally enough men. They attended rather to weaving, sewing and household duties. As a daily routine the Indians rose early. After dawn the bell rang for mass, which the padre said while the Indians recited prayers. After the first mass another padre said a second mass after the Indians had gone to work, breakfast being over. All Indians in the rancherias came to the pozolera or pozole pot before dawn to take breakfast of atole made of barley roasted and ground and sifted. The bachelors and spinsters breakfasted after mass, which as residents at the mission they had to attend daily. The neophytes had three meals each dav, breakfast before going to work. dinner at 12 M. and supper after work was done. Their food consisted besides the pinole of beans and maize or wheat cooked together. To the married there was served out every week a ration of grain, maize, wheat or beans and daily one of meat, generally fresh, but sometimes dried.
Then again three times a week each day the mission bells would ring. when, whatever was being done, off went the hat and a prayer was said. The same religious exercises which were held in the morning were repeated in the afternoon.
On Sunday, which was a day of rest, the Indian men presented them- selves at mass, each dressed in a clean blanket, shirt and breechclout. The mass was generally sung, the musicians and singers being neophytes. several of whom understood music well and had excellent voices. Mission padres used to offer Indian girls of eight and ten years to serve in the houses of the wealthy, exacting in return that they should be taught to sew.
The system of corporal punishment established by the padre was adopted by the administrators of missions, the alcades, and commissioners and even by individuals who had Indians in their service. Everyone arro- gated to himself the right to chastise at his own pleasure the Indians in his service.
Each mission was not only self-supporting when once established, but was an instrument for the rapid accumulation of wealth. They possessed within themselves all the elements of success. They guaranteed to their
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converts the most possible of both worlds. They acquired titles to broad and fertile lands and paid their laborers in spiritual wares.
It would appear that if it were possible under any circumstances for Christianity and civilization to benefit the Indians of America, such fruits could not fail to appear among the missions of California. That the purest motives sometimes actuated the missionaries in devoting their lives to this work there is no question; that their treatment of the natives was upon he whole kind and judicious all travelers bear testimony and their success outwardly was great. Thousands were brought into the fold, taught morality, industry and the arts of peace. Their condition was greatly benefitted and with the exception of the wilder spirits within whose breasts the longing for their ancient liberty still burned, they were con- tented and happy. But it was all the same to the doomed red man.
The missions broken up and despoiled, no longer afforded shelter to its children save a few of more solid character who had managed to secure a portion of the community lands and retain them. The rest had been dispersed to seek refuge among settlers, or out in the wilderness, leaving the establishments which had been built up with so much labor and devotion to be carried away by plunderers, or to decay under the unavailing efforts of half a dozen remaining friars.
After the missions had been stripped of their live stock, the adminis- trators and others petitioned for lands which they stocked with neat cattle, sheep and horses from the missions.
Soon after Alvarada became governor in 1836 he began to lend cattle to his friends and favorites, few if any of which were ever repaid. None of the loans were of less than 100 head, some even exceeded 1,000.
The system of despoliation which began with the conquerors was con- tinued around the circle of missionary enterprise, until the cause was left where it was commenced, with the difference only of a few million of Indians having disappeared in the meantime. But the end was not yet ; for as the government was robbed by the administrators, so were the Californians robbed by the incoming Yankees. What power shall next appear to wrest these lands from us we cannot tell-it depends on how we, their successors, may conduct ourselves, for the law cannot be evaded ? "Whatsoever thou sowest, that shalt thou also reap," and "With the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again." The Spaniard sowed-today he is reaping as he sowed.
Indian lands in actual use and occupation could not be granted to Spaniards under the colonial laws of Spain. Mission lands were the property of or held for the benefit of the Indians.
With few inhabitants and a vast extent of country, land was of little value and could be occupied as fancy dictated, the stock raiser extending his range beyond original limits whenever the communal tract around the pueblo became too narrow for a rising ambition. Cattle formed a ready resource with which to obtain from flitting trading vessels such comforts and luxuries as growing taste suggested. The annual rodeo constituted the stock-taking period when additions to the herd were counted and branded, old marks inspected and stragglers from adjoining ranges restored to claimants. The occasion became a rural festival from the necessary congregation of neighbors for mutual aid and supervision of interests. Wives and sisters lent their charms to the meeting, and anima- tion to the scene by inspiring the horsemen to more dashing feats, either in rounding up the herds or during the sports that formed the appropriate finale to the event.
These were the equestrian days of California. The saddle was the second and lifelong cradle of the race. Riding began in early childhood.
Vol. 1-22
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Little was thought of long horseback journeys and camping under the open sky with the saddle for a pillow and the saddle blanket for a cover. Even the women preferred riding to driving in the clumsy, springless carretas with frames of rawhide and sections of logs for wheels. Wagon roads did not exist.
The Californian ever aspired to gallantry; with a graceful figure, when mounted he was well favored. Latin peoples are more demonstra- tive in their manners than Anglo-Saxons, more picturesque in their polite- ness. The common people are more cordial and the better bred young men more gallant. With only a lasso for a weapon, he ranked not as a soldier, but was not the less venturesome and dashing in facing wild herds, in bearding the grizzly bear, in mounting and taming the wild horse. Frank and good natured, polite and ever punctilious, he proved a good friend and admirable host until checked somewhat in certain directions by the rebuff and deception on the part of blunt and grasping foreigners. Spoiled partly by bountiful nature, he yielded his best efforts to profitless pursuits, heedless of the morrow. Moved by impulses which soon evaporated his energy was both unsustained and misdirected and he fell an easy prey to unscrupulous schemers. He lived for the enjoyment of the hour in reverie or sport, rejoicing in bull fighting and bear-bating, eager for the chase as for the fandango and sustaining the flagging excitement with gambling, winning or losing with an imperturability little in accord with his otherwise more able nature; yet he gambled for excite- ment, while the foreigner who freely gave vent to his feelings in round oaths or ejaculations, was impelled mainly by avarice.
Sunday morning was spent, where possible, in devotion, with senses quickened to loftier feelings by the solemnity of the place, the illuminated splendor of the altar, the beauty of the chant, the awe-inspiring ritual. This duty was quite irksome, however, involving as it did so great a restraint. After service amends were made, the remainder of the day being passed in active games or social entertainments. The load of sins being removed by penance or confession, the soul was ready to take on a fresh load of iniquity to be as easily removed another day. And when. in winter time the sun hurried the day along and night slackened its pace, then lovers met. The old-fashioned rule in Spain was that a kiss was equivalent to betrothal; but there were many kisses for every betrothal and many betrothals for every marriage, and sometimes a marriage with- out a priest. The guitar and violin were in constant use. the players being always ready for dance and song, the simple music being usually marked by a plaintive strain. The singing was frequently improvised, especially in honor of guests or in sarcastic play upon man or events.
Lazy some of them might be and were; day after day, at morning and at night, lazily they told their rosary, lazily they attended mass and lazily they ate and slept. They were as sleepy and indolent and amorous as if they fed exclusively on mandrakes. But the languor of ennui was not common with them. They could do nothing easily and not tire of it. Theirs was that abnormality wherein rest was the natural condition.
Supremest happiness was theirs; the happiness that knows no want, that harbors no unattainable longing, no desires that might not be gratified, the happiness of ignorance, of absence of pain. Nor might it truthfully be said of them that theirs was only a negative happiness. Was it not happiness to breathe the intoxicating air, to revel in health and plenty, to bask in the sunshine and fatten on luscious fruits, to enjoy all of God's best gifts uncursed in their Eden to possess their souls in peace? And of the doings of the outer world, of past ages, of progress-these are not happiness, does not knowledge bring with it vastly more of pain than
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pleasure? Yet sadness they were not wholly free from ; a shade of melan- choly is characteristic of their features. But what of that? Does not the serenest joy often spring from quiet hearts and sad thoughts find expression in sweetest song?
The empirical law of human nature which asserts that youth is impetuous and old age cautious, finds in the Hispano-Californians an exception, the young men were impetuous and the old men scarcely less so.
Though bursting with conditions favorable to wealth there was com- paratively little wealth in the land. Gold lay scattered in the streams and imbedded in the crevices of the Sierra foothills and the valleys were fat with grain producing soil-yet there lacked the applied labor that should turn these resources into tangible riches. Some, nevertheless, acquired what might be called wealth in those days, though not by voluntarily saving part of their earnings, but because they could not spend their accumulations. They did not love money. Why save and accumulate when they had all that they could desire and no appearance or probability of the proverbial rainy day? Everybody had enough to eat, drink and wear, then why take thought for the morrow?
Life with them was unlike anything known in civilized society or any- where else for that matter. There were no extremes of heat and cold to be encountered, then why worry? The original curse-upon the ground, upon the woman, and upon the man, that in the sweat of his face he should eat bread-seemed to be removed in this special instance, and here again was the Garden of Eden. Idleness seemed not to bring the train of evils that are supposed to be its usual concomitant. For the Spaniard, the Indian was there to perform all menial and disagreeable labors. There were no books, even if the Californian could read, which but few of them were able to do. Schools there were not for lack of encouragement, lack of school books and of competent teachers, some were sent away to be educated. The daily newspaper was unknown and news of the outside world but rarely filtered in. California was a world by itself and for itself. Isolated from the rest of the world, by what at that time seemed insurmountable barriers ; deserts almost impassable, hostile savages by land and dangerous seas to navigate, at times months from everywhere, what cared he for the outside world? But the law of compensation of the ultimate balance of things, was at work. The law of evolution, how- ever slowly it may have worked in the past, was now actively at work, and what the Californian dreaded, by intuition, came to pass. While he was dreaming his life away in his hapless, happy-go-lucky way, the seeds of dissolution of his own thoughtless system were slowly being quickened and the very emptiness of the daily life was being filled by a gradual falling away from the loftier virtues that must be maintained if we are not gradually going to sink to the hapless condition of the semi-nomad.
Other and more patent conditions were arising that could not fail ultimately to overtake and overwhelm the Californian unless he was able to overcome the condition of inertia that his care-free life was rapidly drifting him into.
Away up in the north in the Columbia River Basin some hardy pioneer colonists were finding their way across the plains to found homes and cultivate the soil without the assistance of servile labor. The Pacific Coast even as far north as that was found to be unrivalled in that respect and a desire to escape from rigorous conditions of the eastern climate east of the Rocky Mountains was spreading there. Wanderers and restless souls were finding their way to California both by land and water, who
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were charmed by the ideal conditions of both soil and climate and were not loth to write to their friends of these conditions.
Dana in his "Two Years Before the Mast" and others were disseminat- ing information in regard to conditions in California. Improvements in navigation and in the sailing qualities of sailing vessels by which Califor- nia could be reached in much quicker time were all closing in on California, and being a kingdom, as it were, by itself, so far as Spain or Mexico were concerned, and being part of the continent lying contiguous to the United States, it could be only a question of time, and a very short time, until it was merged into the United States. The discovery of gold alone could not fail to wrench California from the slender hold Mexico had upon it. The Bear flag which was raised in California about the time of the treaty of peace resulting from the war with Mexico showed the trend of events that if California was not to be a part of the United States she would set up in business as an empire for herself.
The discovery of gold almost simultaneously with the admission of California as a territory of the United States produced conditions that in a few short years brought California into the world of active life. It also in a very abrupt manner put an end to the golden age and brought in the gold age-the age of industrial expansion-from the happy pastoral life with its abundance of the necessaries of life when there was no poverty and no extreme wealth to the present era in which the wealth of the soil is changing the condition of the people to happy owners of homes of their own with possession and use of all the luxuries of the earth.
Gone are those happy hours when plenty bloomed and care and wealth alike were unknown ; gone are the light labors and healthful sports without which Eden would be no paradise ; and in their place we have the screech- ing of steam, electricity, the telephone, the telegraph, the flying machine, the bustle of trade, the cumbrons activities of opulence and hearts heavily freighted with care. Will California ever have another golden age?
CHAPTER VI
THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION
The fabric of missionary colonization and civilization that Spain had been centuries in building went down almost like Jonah's gourd, in a night. The vast grants of land that were given almost for the asking were (during the latter days of Spanish occupation, for although Cali- fornia was under the political domination of Mexico, it was more Spanish than Mexican owing to its isolation and was a community within itself) in a lesser degree passing into the hands of the Anglo-Saxon, who had a better conception of the value of land and climate than the native Cali- fornian. The Californian did not realize, he could not under the circum- stances, that he had the finest soil and climate on earth, which, combined with water, fruits and similar productions under Anglo-Saxon industry and management would be unrivalled on the face of the globe.
The Eastern man who had been brought up under more adverse conditions of climate could when he had a chance place a truer value on what we have in California .than the native-born, who had no standard of comparison and no opportunity, for lack of education, by which he might inform himself of conditions in foreign lands. And so he was helpless and about as much of a child of nature as was the unsophisticated aborigine whom he supplanted. By long association with the native Indian or in consequence of such favorable natural conditions the Cali- fornian had come to develop some of the characteristics of the non- progressive native race. Does this peculiarity belong to the soil and climate or was it one of the characteristics of the Spaniard himself ? Perhaps the better way would be to assume that it arose mainly from conditions surrounding the Spaniard himself-the pastoral condition which was a necessity of the situation. As a certainty, so far, it does not pertain to Californians, for they are if anything ahead of the times in everything pertaining to industrial life and in many things have made a greater success than those who for generations have been engaged in similar pursuits elsewhere. Environment and education-practical experi- ence have made the Californian of today the man he is. Coming from a soil and climate that for half of the year kept him in enforced idleness and the other half hurrying him to provide against that climatic idleness. It seemed too good to be true that his crops of some kind or other would be growing all the year round under the stimulating influence of sunshine and water and his labors would be so unremitting that he would welcome a rainy day so that he would have a little respite from his labors after the many rainless months of the long dry summer of Southern California.
The discovery of gold in the central and upper part of California in what was deemed by the imaginations of the older of the settled portions of not only the United States but of the progressive minds of the whole world, in unlimited quantities, for the picking up, by bringing so many people from afar brought California to the attention of the world in a way that nothing else could have done and put her years in advance of what she otherwise would have been. Gold had also been found in Southern California previously, but not so abundant as in the upper part of the state, extending as far south as Cape San Lucas, in the extreme end of the peninsula of Lower California, but this did not excite the
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cupidity of the missionaries and early settlers as did the discovery of modern times. Mexico and Peru were rich in the precious metals and the missions everywhere had them in profusion enough to dazzle the senses of their converts. There are not lacking tales of hidden treasures buried to prevent spoliation by the influx of grasping invaders and tres- passers on the sacred domains of the church.
The rate of progress after the occupation by the United States in Southern California was comparatively slow as compared with Northern California. The gold discoveries and the absence of fruit there make a large call for the fruits of Southern California, mainly grapes, and enriched owners of vineyards. Naturally Southern California being nearer Mexico, was more thickly populated than the upper part of the state and by virtue of that was able to profit by the demands of the gold miners, but only incidentally is this narrative concerned with the greater movement, on account of the gold discovery in Northern Cali- fornia. Enough, however, had been shown by the missions, in cultivation of the soil, to prove that Southern California was highly favored in soil, climate and water and that the Pacific Coast in the same latitudes carried conditions similar to those of the west coast of Europe and that what a latitude was in a measure unfavorable to settlement on the eastern coast was very favorable for settlement on our western Pacific Coast.
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