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The Edge of the Spanish Empire.
ment now, but we may be permitted, neverthe- less, to pause and admire his courage, as he ventures out into the unknown.
In the month of September he entered the bay of San Diego, and the soil of California bore for the first time the impress of a Euro- pean foot. The record does not inform us who led the way ashore, but it requires no great strain on the imagination to suppose that it was Cabrillo himself.
The Indians at San Diego were friendly, ex- cept that their suspicions seem to have been excited by the attempt to land a hunting party at night, when they fired on the boat and wounded two sailors. At no place in his many landings along the coast does Cabrillo seem to have had much trouble with the natives. After a short stay at San Diego, he sailed north to San Pedro bay, which he named the Bay of Smokes, from the great clouds of smoke that hovered over the mainland ; the Indians of Wil- mington were evidently engaged in one of their great rabbit hunts, in which they burned off the dry grass, to drive in the game. Here he landed to obtain water, and he probably climbed the hills back of where San Pedro now stands, that he might obtain a view of the country inland. If he did so, he was able on a clear day to see the site of Los Angeles. This was over 350 years ago, and more than two centuries were destined to pass before the white men should come down into this valley.
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History of Los Angeles.
Winter was now at hand, and with it came storms and head winds. He visited the islands of the channel, and on one of them met with a fall that broke his arm. The trip further north was made under hard conditions; and after working up the coast as far as San Francisco, though he did not enter the bay, he returned to the island of San Miguel, opposite Santa Bar- bara, where the explorer finally died from the unsuccessful surgery practiced on his broken arm. He was buried in the shifting sand of the harbor afterwards called Cuyler's, in San Mi- guel, and if any sign was left to mark his grave it has long since disappeared.
With his latest breath Cabrillo urged his chief lieutenant, the pilot Ferrelo, to continue the exploration to the north. His wish was respected, and the San Salvador and Victoria under their new commander went up the coast a second time, but as they passed Cape Mendo- cino they were driven back by storms. Ferrelo then returned to Mexico and made his report to the viceroy. This was in 1543.
In 1579 Francis Drake sailed along the coast of California in the famous Golden Hind, then two years out from Plymouth, England.
He had been overhauling the Spanish gal- leons in the West Indies and on the Mexican coast, and had taken so much treasure-so his chaplain says-that he used the silver to ballast his ship. His fleet of five having been re- duced to one, he had no desire to meet with
-
ORIGINAL SPANISH
POSSESSIONS
IN
NORTH AMERICAY
IN THE DAYS OF CABRILLO
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The Edge of the Spanish Empire.
any of the Spanish men-of-war that might be prowling about in Atlantic waters, so he was making his way westward around the globe.
He anchored in the bay north of San Fran- cisco, now called by his name, evidently failing to recognize in the Golden Gate the entrance to a great harbor. As his ship drew only 13 feet, the upper bay would answer to his description of "a fit and convenient harborough." Here he remained 36 days, finding the Indians friendly and the climate pleasant. He named the coun- try New Albion, and claimed it for his queen. Several of the "gentlemen adventurers" of Eng- land visited Lower California, following in the wake of the Golden Hind, but they accom- plished nothing beyond a few successful rob- beries, and the claims set up by Drake were allowed to lapse.
It is not impossible that the visit of Drake and the other Englishmen to this coast may have stimulated Philip II of Spain to plan to tighten his hold on the Californias. In 1596, the viceroy, acting under direct instructions from the monarch, sent Sebastian Viscaino with three ships to go on with the work that Cabrillo had so bravely begun, more than fifty years before. He sailed from Acapulco to La Paz, where he became involved in difficulties with the Indians that caused him to abandon the expedition. The nature and cause of these difficulties is indicated by the fact that when he started again, this time with two vessels in
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History of Los Angeles.
the year 1602, he ordered the death penalty for any soldier that should cause a disturbance among the Indians.
His journey was in a considerable degree a replica of that of Cabrillo. Like the former explorer, he met with stormy weather, and was finally turned back when he had worked his way a little north of Cape Mendocino. He ex- plored the port of Monterey, but placed it on his chart too far north by two degrees. He changed the names of the islands of the chan- nel, from those bestowed by Cabrillo to the ones they now bear, even robbing his prede- cessor of the poor honor that lay in the title Rodriguez (Cabrillo's middle name) on his is- land grave.
Viscaino transmitted to the king an account of his visit to California, in which he declared that the country was rich and fertile and admir- ably adapted to colonization, and he urged that he be allowed to undertake an expedition for its permanent settlement. The king hesitated to grant the required powers, but finally did so, in 1606. Before the plan could be carried out, however, Viscaino died, and it was abandoned.
Now follows a period of one hundred and sixty years, during which no more white men came to California. In that time the thirteen colonies were planted on the Atlantic coast, waxed strong and were preparing to revolt from the mother country. England passed through the revolutions that cost Charles his
27
The Edge of the Spanish Empire.
head and James his throne. Germany endured the horrid struggle of the thirty-years' war, and witnessed the rise to power of Frederick the Great. France was sinking lower and lower under the rapacious and imbecile line of Bour- bon, and Spain, once the ruler of the seas, was priest-governed and impoverished. There was no more wealth to be wrung from the new world-therefore it was neglected and almost forgotten.
CHAPTER III.
VIA CRUCIS.
HILIP II of Spain, whose rule ex- tended through 40 years of the period of most active exploration and ac- quisition in the western hemisphere, received from the pope the significant title of "His Most Catholic Majesty"; and all his successors on the throne down to the pres- ent have cherished this phrase as part of their official name. It must be admitted that the title has not been misplaced, for no country on the globe has been more rigidly faithful to the church of Rome than Spain. It was the origi- nator of the inquisition; in Spain the church was the largest owner of property, and the priesthood outnumbered all other professions and intelligent occupations combined. It was natural, therefore, that the colonial system of this country should be permeated with the re- ligious idea, and that a large part of the work of organizing the new territory should be turned over to the hierarchy.
This work possessed lively attraction for the young and ardent members of the priest- hood, because the new country was peopled with heathen, whose souls seemed to be crying out for salvation. The order of the Jesuits, founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, threw it-
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PORTRAIT OF FATHER JUNIPERO SERRA Copyrighted by Schumacher
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Via Crucis.
self with boundless enthusiasm into the new missionary fields, and no corner of the earth was too remote, and no tribe of savages too fierce for the Jesuit to enter, bearing the stand- ard of the cross. The conquering soldier came first, it is true, but his act of "taking posses- sion" was little more than a formality. The real work of colonization, of controlling and organizing the Indians and of producing at least a semblance of civilized order, fell to the priest.
The Californias, upper and lower, were at the extreme northwestern edge of the great Spanish empire, and the tide of colonization, which flowed slowly across the new world, reached them last of all. In the first period of conquest great quantities of wealth were drawn from the western continents, and poured into the lap of Spain, and with this increase of fortune came an undermining of the moral, and finally of the material, forces of the country. The energetic and progressive artisan class, from which colonists for a new country would naturally come, had died out in Spain.
One viceroy after another was sent out from the mother country to govern the prov- ince of Mexico, and at times a "visitador gen- eral" was delegated to make a tour of the terri- tory, and transmit a special report to the king. A long line of mediocre monarchs were occu- pying the throne. Efforts at colonization by the government were fitful. The Spanish sol- diers intermarried with the native women of
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History of Los Angeles.
Mexico, and the halfbreeds, or mestizos, in- creased in number. Gradually paganism died out, and the spiritual rule of the church was accepted.
A few colonies had been established by the government in Lower California, but they were too far from the base of supply to con- tinue successfully. Only those established by the church, where the natives were controlled by religious awe, as well as physical force, managed to survive. It was discovered that the Jesuits were most successful in establish- ing permanent locations among the Indians, and in the last years of the seventeenth century the whole of the territory of Lower California was turned over to them to manage as they saw fit. It was not a very promising piece of country-dry and sterile, and peopled with a race of savages quite as degraded as those fur- ther north on the Pacific coast. By this time the Spanish government had become impov- erished, and could afford no funds for the un- dertaking. In the decree of February 5, 1697, whereby the plan of the Jesuits for coloniza- tion was adopted, it was agreed that the royal treasury was not to be called upon to meet any of the expense. This led to the establishment of the famous "Pious Fund," which, within the memory of the present generation, formed the basis of some remarkable international litiga- tion.
The leaders in the movement were two priests named Kino and Salvatierra. They
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Via Crucis.
went about Spain enthusiastically describing this beautiful land, where thousands of heathen waited to be led into the church. Contribu- tions to the fund began to flow in, the first one being $10,000 from the congregation of a church where Salvatierra had preached, and the second, $20,000, from an individual Span- iard. A wealthy nobleman and his wife made wills, leaving their entire fortune to the fund, and others followed their example. The money was well invested, and only the income was used-after the expense of establishment was defrayed. It was not long before some of the missions began to be self-supporting.
Salvatierra and Kino confined thefr work to Lower California, where they founded a com- plete system of missions, numbering finally sixteen in all. One of their fellow-laborers, the Padre Ugarte, seems to have possessed a ver- itable genius for what might be called the worldly portion of the work, teaching the In- dians all the trades-even to that of ship-build- ing-and accomplishing marvelous results with pitifully poor material. By the middle of the eighteenth century the scheme of organization had run its course to practical completion ; that is, the Indians of the peninsula were largely under the control of the missions; a full com- plement of buildings, both for religious and temporal purposes had been erected at each lo- cation, and the church was pre-eminent over the whole system of government. There were a few rebellions, but on the whole the
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History of Los Angeles.
Indians were tractable, and were a few steps nearer civilization.
These matters have a direct bearing on the history of Alta California in two ways: First, in the fact that the "Pious Fund" raised by the Jesuits was used to defray the expenses of the work in Alta California, and, second, in the fact that the Franciscans, when they came to found missions in this state, had immediately before them, as a model, the institutions al- ready existing in the lower peninsula.
About this time the feeling against the Jesu- its, which had been slowly spreading through- out Christendom, culminated in their expulsion from several Catholic countries, as they had already been driven out of Protestant states. In 1759 Carlos III, the ablest of all the kings of Spain, came to the throne. During his reign of twenty-nine years that country made the first genuine progress it had accomplished since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. He gathered about him wise advisers, and among these were several that believed the govern- ment to be too much under the influence of the priests. The Jesuit played the same part in the religious system that the party boss does in our politics, and the wave of reform reached him first of all. In 1767 an order was promulgated expelling the Jesuits from Spain and all her colonies. All temporalities held in their name were ordered to be seized for tlie crown. How- ever justifiable this decree may have been with reference to the Jesuits of the mother country,
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Via Crucis.
it was certainly a harsh and cruel act as applied to the padres who had labored faithfully for over half a century on the arid soil of Lower California, and who, as they left the missions, where they had grown old in the service, were followed by crowds of weeping Indians.
The American religious outposts were to be placed in the hands of the two orders that were, next to the Jesuits, most active in missionary work-the Franciscans and Dominicans. It was at first proposed that the Lower California missions should be divided equally between the two orders, but later-at the suggestion of Father Junipero Serra-it was decided that, to avoid all possibility of friction, the Dominicans should be placed in charge of the Lower Cali- fornia institutions, while the Fransicans should be allowed the honor of beginning the work in the new territory.
The order of St. Francis was one of the old- est and most popular of the many priestly fra- ternities. It was founded in 1209 by an Italian monk, a preacher of extraordinary fervency and persuasiveness, who was subsequently can- onized as St. Francis of Assisi. Its adherents were sworn to poverty and extreme simplicity of life. The dress was originally a coarse gray serge robe, tied with a hempen rope. Later on some portions of the order changed from gray to brown. The foundation principles were hu- mility, voluntary mendicancy and abhorrence of controversy. The members desired to be known as peacemakers, and their influence was
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History of Los Angeles.
generally for harmony and for the existing or- der in temporal affairs. In this respect they differed materially from the Jesuits, who, as we have seen, had achieved an unenviable reputa- tion in Europe for intrigue and mischief-mak- ing.
The Franciscan order grew with great ra- pidity from its founding, and by the end of the thirteenth century had over 200,000 members. At the time the order was placed in charge of Alta California it had over 8000 colleges and convents scattered about the world. Their headquarters on this continent lay at the col- lege of San Fernando, in the City of Mexico. Here a great majority of the padres that were sent to California for service in the missions received their education, and to this institution were referred all difficulties and all matters of serious importance regarding the missions.
Junipero Serra has appropriately been called the "Eighteenth Century St. Francis." There is little doubt that had his career fallen five hundred years earlier his supreme devotion of purpose and his heroic efforts to advance the cause of the church which have been rewarded by canonization. He was born in the island of Majorca in 1713. His parents were laboring people, but he was given an education that fit- ted him for the priesthood ; and because of his exceptional abilities a professorship of theology was bestowed upon him. From his early boy- hood he had yearned to undertake the career of a missionary ; and when, in 1749, word came
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Via Crucis.
from the College of San Fernando that recruits were wanted to work among the savages and half-breeds of Mexico he enthusiastically vol- unteered for the service. His friend Palou ac- companied him, and the two were fellow-work- ers and intimates through all the California campaign.
1271364
When Serra's ship arrived at Vera Cruz there were no pack animals to convey the re- cruits to the City of Mexico, so he set out on foot, unwilling, in his fiery zeal, to wait for proper means of conveyance. During this trip overland he contracted an ulcer in his leg that tormented him through the remainder of his life, but which he endured with the fortitude of a martyr. During the first nine years after his advent to Mexico he served at the lonely mission of Sierra Gordo, where he gathered a large congregation, and where he built a spler .- did church structure. Without doubt, his ex- perience with the Indians at this place, both in spiritual and in worldly affairs, was of great service to him in his subsequent labors in Cali- fornia.
The priests of the college of San Fernando noted the success that Brother Junipero had achieved at Sierra Gordo, and determined to try him in a new field. He was summoned to the City of Mexico and put over a congregation which was made up not of untutored Indians, but of the wealthiest and most refined people of the district. Crowds flocked to hear him, and
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History of Los Angeles.
his zealous preaching is said to have brought many to repentance.
In 1768, when the order to expel the Jesuits from the' missions of Mexico was carried into effect, Junipero Serra was appointed presi- dent of the California district. This included Upper and Lower California, although as yet no establishment had been located north of the peninsula.
Whether it was the report on the expulsion of the Jesuits from this region, or the news that the Russians were working down the Pa- cific coast from the north that aroused the king, or whether it was merely the outgrowth of his natural energy and desire to promote the wel- fare of his country, is not known, but about this time Carlos III issued instructions to Mar- quez de Croix, the viceroy of Mexico, and to Jose de Galvez, the visitador general, or inspec- tor, to undertake the colonization of Upper California, the government to act in conjunc- tion with the priestly orders. Galvez, who was entrusted with powers second only to those of the king himself, went over to Loreto in Lower California, to direct the expeditions to the new country, and Father Junipero Serra repaired to the same spot. They were both men of tireless energy, and both possessed the same consis- tency of purpose; therefore they worked well together. They had at their disposal three ves- sels, the San Carlos, the San Antonio and the San Jose, all appropriately named for the pious
1
MISSION OF SAN DIEGO
37
Via Crucis.
work they were about to undertake. There were available, besides the ships, a couple of hundred soldiers, a score of artisans and a few priests. Supplies were to be obtained from the missions in Lower California. It was decided that there should be four expeditions-two by land and two by sea-each independent of the others, and that all should meet at the port described by Cabrillo and Viscaino, which we know now as San Diego. These preparations were made near the close of the year 1768.
CHAPTER IV.
HOW GOVERNOR PORTOLA CAME TO LOS ANGELES.
HE unpleasant task of expelling the Jesuits from the chain of missions they had established in Lower California was committed to Capt. Gaspar dé Por- tola, who landed at Cape San Lucas
with a small detachment of soldiers in October of 1767, to begin the work. He was made governor of both the Cal- ifornias, and in the expedition that was presently begun for the occupation of the northern territory, he represented both the military and the civil features of the governi- ment, subject, of course, to the orders of the visitador general, Jose de Galvez.
Portola was a good-hearted and popular man, not without considerable natural shrewd- ness, and he performed his duty toward the Jesuits with gentleness and sympathy. There was no resistance on their part, and no out- breaks among the Indians. The treasure, which it was supposed the padres had laid away, failed to come to light, and Portola re- ported to Galvez that it was quite impossible that the simple agricultural pursuits of the missions should have yielded any great wealth. Nevertheless, he assured Serra that these es-
How Governor Portola Came to Los Angeles. 39
tablishments were fairly well stocked with cat- tle and provisions, and that enough could easily be spared to supply the expedition to the north. Serra himself, in the year 1768, made a tour through the missions of the penin- sula, of which he was now president, and in- spected their stock of ecclesiastical parapher- nalia, on which he proceeded to levy for the new institutions that he was planning to found.
Captain Rivera y Moncada, who subse- quently filled an important function in the founding of the pueblo of Los Angeles, was appointed chief of the commissary department of the expedition, and was sent out to make a round of the missions, for the purpose of col- lecting cattle and stores, and was ordered to work toward the north, that he might be ready early in 1769 for the general movement into new territory. He had been the local com- mander for several years at Loreto, and was well posted on the geography and the climatic conditions of the country. He was therefore a most valuable man in the work, all the other leaders being strange to the region.
The headquarters of the undertaking were at La Paz and Loreto. Here through the last six months of 1768, Galvez, Serra and Portola toiled and planned, until by the first of the fol- lowing year everything was ready. In Janu- ary of 1769-the year in which the history of California begins-the San Carlos put to sea, loaded with stores and carrying sixty-two peo-
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History of Los Angeles.
ple. Of these twenty-five were soldiers in com- mand of Lieutenant Pedro Fages, who later held the office of governor of California, and the remainder were, for the most part, sailors and artisans.
In February the second expedition by sea started-the San Antonio, which, although it set sail a month later than the San Carlos, ar- rived at San Diego three weeks before its pre- decessor. Galvez's instructions to the com- manders were that they should keep out to sea until they sighted the islands of the channel, and should then work down the coast to the bay of San Diego. It is difficult to realize that the San Antonio, which made the best time of the two, consumed sixty days in doing a dis- tance that would now seem to call for less than a week of sailing. In the case of the San Car- los, however, the delay is easily explained in the one dreadful word-scurvy. This disease, which was at that time a common visitor on shipboard and in prisons and camps, was due to impure water, monotonous fare, uncleanli- ness and bad sanitation. It has very nearly passed out of existence among civilized people in these days, and it is not easy to appreciate what a terror it once had for all who followed the sea. The water casks on the San Carlos were leaky, and the springs of Cedros island, where the vessel stopped to replenish, yield- ed water that proved unwholesome. By the time San Diego was reached the disease had taken possession of the crew.
C Mendocino
Santa Rosa
SACRAMENTO
Sonoma
San Rafael SANFRANCISCO @
aSan Jose Mission
Santa Clara o San Jose \City
San Juan Bautista o
Monterey Carmelo
Soledad o SanAntonia
San Miguel
LAKE TULARE
o Bakersfield
o SanLuis Obispo Purísima o Santa Ines
· Santa Barbara
o San Buenaventura
San Fernandoo
LOSANGELES o San Bernardino oSan Gabriel
Santa Monica San Pedro
a SanJuanCapistrano
CALIFORNIA
SanLuis Rey o Pala
San Diego Mission San Diego
San Pablo of
YUMa
SHOWING LOCATION OF ALL THE MISSIONS
How Governor Portola Came to Los Angeles. 41
The first of the land expeditions was un- der the command of Rivera, who had collected a quantity of horses, cows, mules and general supplies from the Lower California missions. He set out for the north in March of 1769, and arrived at San Diego in the middle of May. By this time the people from the ships had constructed a camp and hospital on shore, and the crew of the San Antonio were taking care of the crew of the San Carlos, all of whom were now afflicted with the scurvy. About sixty deaths occurred, to the great demoralization of the whole company.
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