USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > The Herald's history of Los Angeles City > Part 5
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History of Los Angeles.
theria and pneumonia, and how much suffering from rheumatism and neuralgia might have been avoided ?
It is not unreasonable to suppose that De Neve, with his extraordinary grasp of detail and his keen insight, comprehended this law of health and sanitation, and planned the loca- tion of Los Angeles in accordance therewith.
The original plaza must not be confounded with the existing park called by that name, al- though the latter grew, in a way, out of the former. The two tracts would touch, if marked out on the map, only at one corner, that is, at the northwest corner of the present plaza. The latter is an almost square piece of land, lying between Main and Los Angeles and Marches- sault and Plaza streets. The ancient plaza be- gan at the southeast corner of Marchessault and Upper Main (or San Fernando, as it has lately been named), near the Church of Our Lady of the Angels; its boundary continued along the east line of Upper Main almost to Bellevue, thence across to the east line of New High street, thence to the north line of Mar- chessault, and thence back to the starting point.
Most of that area, save what is used for streets, is at the present time covered with adobes, and it has been so covered as far as the memory of man runs back. How did the first plaza come to be thus occupied, and by what peculiar chance have we this modern plaza near to the other, and yet not of it?
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The Roster of 1781.
There is no definite record of how this oc- curred, but it is not difficult to trace a prob- able course of events leading up to such a re- sult. When the building lots around the plaza were assigned to the settlers, the land at the southeastern end, which is the tract covered by the modern park, was kept for public build- ings and for a church. Land was so plentiful at that time that few people took the trouble to secure titles, and the boundaries esablished by such deeds as were executed were often of the vaguest character. The early adobe build- ings were not very substantial, and when the first residences of the settlers around the plaza went to pieces the new structures were pushed forward a little into the open space. We know this was true, for complaint was made from time to time that the plaza lines were becom- ing obliterated, and that its land was being seized by the adjoining owners. The warnings issued by the ayuntamiento, o ยท city council, were unheeded, and the gradual hitching for- ward process went on, each one endeavoring to outdo his neighbor, until none of the old plaza was left to tell the tale.
There still remained, however, the space in front of the southeastern side, which had been used for the guard house, the granaries, and the council room. While the house builders did not hesitate to steal the park, they scarcely ventured to push the city out of the land it had in active use. Early in the century the church was located about where it now is, and
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we may suppose that the space directly in front was kept open from a sense of decent religious observance. At all events, when people began to obtain titles from the ayuntamiento-a prac- tice which did not begin until about 1830- that body was careful not to give away the land to the southeast of the square, and out of that has grown the little plaza park of today.
There were eleven families to be provided with building lots about the original plaza, and at the rate of four locations to the side, three sides were occupied, leaving the fourth for pub- lic use, as we have said. We are not told of the exact process by which these sites were as- signed, but as the fields for cultivation were drawn for by lot, it is reasonable to suppose that the same practice was employed in the division of the building sites. This being rather a delicate matter, it was probably at- tended to before Governor De Neve left the pueblo that day in September.
A map has come down to us showing the exact location of most of the settlers. Three are left in doubt, because they had moved out, by request, before the map was made.
Beginning at the western corner (New High and Marchessault), and making a circuit of three sides of the ancient plaza, let us see how the homes of the first families were located, and what sort of people they were that occupied them.
First, at the corner fronting New High street came the home of Pablo Rodriguez, an
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The Roster of 1781.
Indian, twenty-five years of age. His family consisted of an Indian wife and one child. Next adjoining was the home of Jose Vanegas, an Indian, twenty-eight years old, with an Indian wife and one child. He was the first to hold the office of alcalde, or mayor, in the pueblo, being elected to that honor in 1788, and re-elected in 1796.
Next to the house of Vanegas a narrow street cut across at right angles to the plaza front, and then came Jose Moreno, a mulatto, twenty-two years of age, his wife a mulattress. This couple had no children. The fourth lo- cation on that side was taken by Felix or An- tonio Villavicencio, a Spaniard, aged thirty, with an Indian wife and one child. Around the north corner was an L-shaped lot, oc- cupied originally by one of the expelled set- tlers. Next came two lots across from and facing the public side, which were taken by the two other banished families. The exact order of these three is not known, but they are described as follows : Jose de Lara, a Spaniard, fifty years of age, with an Indian wife and three children; Antonio Mesa, a negro, thirty-eight years of age, with a mulat- tress wife and five children. At the east cor- ner was another L-shaped lot, taken by Basilio Rosas, an Indian, sixty-eight years old, mar- ried to a mulattress with six offspring.
Coming now to the front that corresponds to Upper Main street, we have first Alejandro Rosas, an Indian, nineteen years of age, whose
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wife is described as a "Coyote Indian"-which does not sound very promising-with no child- ren. Next came a vacant lot, the .. a narrow street, and then the home of Antonio Navarro, a mestizo, i. e., Spanish-Indian halfbreed, whose wife was a mulattress with three child- ren. Lastly, coming back to the side of the public land, we have the residence of Manuel Camero, a mulatto, aged thirty years, with a mulattress wife and no children. He was elected regidor, or councilman, in 1789.
Cataloguing this extraordinary collection of adults by nationality or color, we have: two Spaniards, one mestizo, two negroes, eight mulattoes and nine Indians. The children are even more mixed, as follows: Spanish-Indian, four ; Spanish-negro, five; negro-Indian, eight ; Spanish-negro-Indian, three; Indian two. Thus the only people of unmixed Caucassian race in the whole company were two Spanish men, on the purity of whose blood frequent aspersions were cast; and the only members of the coming generation with regular an- cestry were the two Indian children.
There was one more member of this inter- esting party, a certain Antonio Miranda, who fell out by the wayside, at Loreto, and who probably never came to California. This is in one way regrettable, for we may believe, from the title bestowed upon him in the original catalogue, that he out-freaked all the rest. He is recorded in the list as a "Chino," which does not signify that he was a Chinaman, as
1
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The Roster of 1781.
many writers have erroneously stated, but that he was a mysterious tangle of all kinds of available ancestry-"compounded of many simples," as Jacques says of his melancholy- and that his hair was curly. He had no wife extant, so the data is not at hand on which to form even a rough estimate as to what his one child was like. However, it suffices for us to note the facts that Miranda was not a China- man, and that he was not of the Los Angeles party. A very fair ethnological composite was achieved, without the assistance of a "Chino."
No information has reached us concerning the trades or lines of business of the various settlers, save that Navarro was a tailor. If Rivera obeyed orders in making his selection there was a blacksmith in the colony, and also a carpenter and a mason, but we do not know which members of the party filled these roles, nor, indeed, are we entirely sure they were filled. Little else is known of these early set- tlers beyond the few facts set down above. If there are any descendants of them now living in California, they are not known as such. The Los Angeles directory of 1901 fails to show anybody by the name of Vanegas, or Villavicencio, or Rosas, or Navarro, or Ca- mero, and only one Mesa. The names Rod- riguez and Moreno, which are common every- where in Spanish America, occur respectively five and twenty-six times in the directory.
In the letters of the padres, these early set- tlers are generally referred to in terms of pity
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History of Los Angeles.
and contempt. It was originally intended by De Neve that they should enjoy a form of self- government by choosing their own mayor and councilmen (alcalde and regidores), but no election was held during the first seven years, the town being under the guidance of a petty military official, who came afterwards to be called a "comisionado." Evidently the founder of Los Angeles and his successors in the governorship felt that people of such a sort could not be trusted to look after their own affairs.
Work began with the building of houses around the plaza. The regulations required that within five years each settler must be pro- vided with a substantial residence built of adobe; but the first houses were made of light stakes driven into the ground, with poles stretched across for the framework, the whole thatched with tules and plastered with mud, much after the fashion of the Indian "wicky- ups." " These were a sufficient protection against the rains of the first season, and before the wet months came again a number of adobe dwellings had been finished.
The next undertaking was a communal one -the construction of a ditch to supply the pueblo with water for irrigation and for do- mestic use. A small dam was run out into the river at about the point where the Buena Vista street bridge now stands. and the water was carried over the line of the modern city zanja-the "zanja madre"-to the fields, which
THE RODRIGUEZ PALMS
Photo by Maude
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The Roster of 1781.
lay along lower Alameda street, occupying the ground where the lumber yards and China- town now are. Here a planting was made of wheat, maize and vegetables, and a palisade was constructed to keep off the cattle and the thieving Indians. This palisade was presently replaced by an adobe wall, which enclosed the houses and some of the fields.
During the first few years, those of the colonists who desired to attend church on Sun- day were compelled to travel all the way to San Gabriel; but in 1784 a chapel was con- structed near the corner of Buena Vista street and Bellevue avenue. Other public structures completed in the first years were the town house, the guard house, and the granary.
Before the city was six months old it was discovered that Rivera had made a sad mistake in some of the settlers he had selected; and Jose de Lara, the Spaniard, and the two ne- groes, Antonio Mesa and Luis Quintero, were formally expelled on the ground that they "were useless to the pueblo and to them- selves." They went out, taking with them their families, and the number was thus re- duced by sixteen. Some years later Navarro, the tailor, was expelled for the same reason. He took up his abode in San Francisco, but a descendant of his was living in Los Angeles in 1840.
In 1785 Jose Francisco Sinova, who had resided in California several years, applied for admission to the pueblo, and was taken in on
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History of Los Angeles.
the same terms as the original settlers. By this time two of the sons of Basilio Rosas had grown up to citizenship, and Juan Jose Do- minguez, a Spaniard, had joined the little col- ony. The latter was given a special land grant by Governor Fages, De Neve's succes- sor, including what was afterwards known as the San Pedro, or Dominguez rancho, which has descended through his brother, Sergeant Cristobal Dominguez, to the heirs of that fam- ily at the present time. He is, therefore, the first tangible link between the ancient city and the modern.
CHAPTER IX.
THE MISSION SYSTEM.
T THE time of the founding of Los Angeles, in the year 1781, there were eight mission establishments in Cali- fornia. Within the next four years three more were added, making eleven in all that came into existence under the supervision of Father Junipero Serra. San Buenaventura was founded in 1782. Santa Barbara and Purisima (near Lompoc in Santa Barbara county) were not founded until after the death of Serra, which took place in 1784, but as most of the details of their establish- ment had been planned by him, it is right that they should be included in the list of the eleven missions of Junipero Serra. The period cov- ered by this work was about sixteen years.
In the three decades that followed ten more missions were founded, making twenty-one in all. No one of these was farther than a day's journey from the coast. They covered a
stretch of seven hundred miles, averaging about an easy day's journey from one another. Through the first half century of California's existence these institutions occupy the center of the historical stage, the other elements- civil, military, communal or individual-serv- ing rather as accessories than as independent
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History of Los Angeles.
actors. To obtain, therefore, a correct per- spective for the little pueblo of Los Angeles, whose founding we have just described, it will be necessary to examine into the unique social-religious system that was above and around it.
Although this system was in full operation from San Diego to San Francisco less than a lifetime ago, with its long chain of prosperous institutions involving directly and indirectly about fifty thousand human beings, no rem- nants of it now remain, save the half-crumbled ruins of the buildings. These being, for the most part, constructed not of stone or of brick, as are the churches of Europe, but of half- baked clay, their ultimate complete destruc- tion is only a matter of a few years' time, un- less individual or government enterprise inter- venes to protect them. A local organization of Southern California, the "Landmarks Club," has checked the ruin of San Juan Capistrano and San Fernando, and is now devoting its en- ergies to San Luis Rey. Such of the buildings as are in proper condition and are suitably located are used for parochial institutions by the Roman Catholic church. Santa Barbara and San Gabriel are examples of establish- ments that have been in almost continuous use for church purposes since their founda- tion.
Unfortunately many of the missions were located in districts that are now too sparsely settled to support them as churches,
THE QUADRANGLE OF MISSION OF SAN BUENA VENTURA
Photo by Pierce
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The Mission System.
and these have gone into utter ruin. San An- tonio de Padua, for example, which, not more than ten years ago was a handsome, sub- stantial structure, having been preserved for church use up to that time, is now nothing but a stretch of ragged clay wall, which the rain and sun and wind will, in a few years more, completely obliterate.
Of the human elements that entered into the system, the remnants are even fewer. The original Spanish Franciscans are gone-a few German Franciscans have taken their places. The Roman church is here-as it is every- where -- but it holds now only a share of the population, where in the mission days it held all except the few roving Indians of the foot- hills. But the thirty thousand savage con- verts, the neophytes that gathered around the missions and served the fathers both as congregation for their spiritual ministrations and as toilers in the industrial development of the country-they have disappeared entirely as a class and almost utterly at a race. In the prosperous days of San Gabriel it embraced within the system of its industrial operations nearly two thousand Indians, and now not more than half a dozen Indian families can be found in that vicinity. Not only has the mis- sion system itself departed, but the elements that entered into it seem to have been de- stroyed, root and branch.
Institutions that are planned for perma- nency and pass away usually rank as failures,
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History of Los Angeles.
but the Franciscan missions of California were not as utterly valueless as the wreck of them would indicate. Their projectors had a certain purpose in view, viz., the Christianiz- ing and civilizing of the Indians-a worthy purpose, it must be conceded ; and if they man- aged to accomplish it, or if they came as near to success as others engaged in the same work elsewhere, then the mission system is not to be hastily condemned as a failure, notwith- standing the fact that it exists no longer, and its materials have fallen into decay.
The question of the value of the missions, and the wisdom and justice of their treatment of the Indians, has given rise to a great amount of controversy, with a variety of resultant opinions. The phrase "to civilize the savages" is easily written and glibly uttered, but when its full meaning is considered it will be found to contain one of the greatest of human prob- lems. It is of about the same order as the squaring of the circle, or the achievement of perpetual motion. The frontier proverb that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" puts into rough and brutal form the experience of the English-speaking peoples that about the only way to civilize savages is to put an end to their existence. This may be done by the swift and simple process of slaughter, or by the slower and more complex plan of driving them from their lands into inevitable starva- tion. If neither of these plans is available, there still remain the white man's deadly
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The Mission System.
vices. Now to make a fair judgment of the system employed by the padres with the Cali- fornia Indians-a judgment which with most of us will labor under the unsympathy of an alien blood and a different religious belief- it might be well to use as a basis of compari- son our own treatment of the Indians during
a similar period of our development. Where are the Indian tribes that formerly held the land east of the Mississippi? Are they civil- ized or are they obliterated? Or, if the matter be brought nearer home, will the comparison be more favorable if we inquire into our meth- ods with the Mission Indians, after California became part of the union? It is a heart-break- ing story that has been told only too well by Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson in "Ramona" and "A Century of Dishonor." Plainly these com- parisons are out of the question .. But while the Anglo-Saxon will plead guilty to his own failure to civilize the savages, and will even admit that he and they cannot live in the same neighborhood without the latter coming to destruction, yet he does not hesitate to pass judgment on the efforts of others. The Ameri- can historians that have handled the mission question have generally condemned the system employed by the padres with the Indians, al- though certainly no one of them would claim that the Anglo-Saxon has ever done the work any better.
The process by which the mission system came into existence was a logical one. A
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couple of priests, accompanied by a small squad of soldiers go into a strange country, peopled only by savages, but having great agri- cultural and industrial possibilities. Of these possibilities the priests are thoroughly cogni- . zant, by reason of the resemblance between the climate of the new country and that of their own. The demands of religion must be con- sidered first, and for that purpose a church building is to be constructed. Who will do the work? The soldiers will not; the priests alone cannot, and there are none others save the savages. The padres offer the natives little gifts of cloth and beads, and when their good will is established ask for their assistance in the work of erecting the church. This is frequently offered without the asking. Next comes the planting of crops for the support of the padres and of such of the natives as have worked faithfully at the building, for the Indian in his native state is always close to starvation. The cattle which the padres have brought with them must be cared for, so a few of the Indians are taught to ride horses and to serve as vaqueros. In the meantime the work of baptism and instruction in the rites of the church goes on, a little slowly at first, but more rapidly as the Indians learn that no harm comes of it. A series of buildings are con- structed, not only for church work and the use of the priests, but also to harbor the Christian Indians, the neophytes, as they are called, who, having lost caste among their own
MISSION OF SAN LUIS REY
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The Mission System.
people for doing the manual labor of the white man, must be cared for by the padres and kept from backsliding into savagery. In this way the industrial system is gradually built up, each undertaking laid upon its predecessor with inevitable logic and seeming necessity.
It is to be doubted whether any form of civ- ilization could have been worked out among these savages that did not rest upon some sort of an industrial base. Had the padres con- fined themselves, as De Croix and other civil governors advised, to the purely spiritual side of the work, and had the savages been allowed to continue in their indolence and degrada- tion, the religious instruction must have fallen on ears that would not hear. The Indians would inevitably have become involved in con- flict with the soldiers, from whom the padres with difficulty protected them, even under the mission regime ; the savages would have grown fiercer and more crafty, and in the end would have proved a barrier to the advance of civili- zation, instead of assisting its progress. The doctrine that the Evil One is always at hand to find work enough for the idle, applies as well to the savages as to the civilized man. The fathers understood this ; there was plenty of work to be done, and they could see no reason why the Indian should not do his share.
In the minds of these simple, earnest sol- diers of the church a law was a law, and was to be obeyed. Both religion and worldly wisdom required that the Indian should be controlled
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and made to work; and the padres did not al- low any idle question of sentiment to interfere with this policy. If discipline was necessary they were prepared to administer it. They found the savages to be very like children, and the only form of discipline then in vogue for the child was the rod. If the Indian would not work he was starved and flogged. If he ran away he was pursued and brought back. His condition was not exactly that of a slave, as is sometimes charged. He was not sold from hand to hand, nor separated from his fam- ily, nor denied a considerable degree of lib- erty, if he did not abuse it by bad behavior ; neither was he treated with wanton cruelty, nor put to death, except for some capital crime. His condition was rather that of an appren- tice bound to service for an indefinite period of years, and subject to the forms of discipline that were practiced upon apprentices all over the world at that time. He had stated hours of labor, usually not exceeding seven in the day, to which must be added three hours for religious exercises. His food and clothing were coarse and none too plentiful, but such as they were they improved upon the nakedness and semi-starvation of savagery. The condi- tions of life for the mission Indian varied, of course, greatly with the personal characteris- tics of the padres in charge of the establish- ment. Some of the superiors were hard and even cruel, and others kind and gentle. Some were successful in maintaining order without
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The Mission System.
much punishment, and others believed in the lash for all offenses. At worst, the Indian's lot was somewhat better than slavery; at best it was happy though not very agreeable.
It happens that on the question of the pad- res' treatment of the Indians we have plenty of other testimony than that of the priests themselves. The civil and military authorities were ready at all times to criticise the methods of the padres, and the reports filed with the viceroy and the commandant general by the governors show that affairs at the missions were subjected to a close scrutiny. It was hardly to be expected that any system of dis- cipline could be maintained over tens of thousands of ignorant savages without afford- ing occasional instances of harsh treatment or injustice.
The mission system may be properly charged with the mistake of over-discipline, which brought two bad results; the one of oc- casional cruelty to the Indians and the other- more serious in the long run-of failing to make the natives independent and self-sup- porting. It remains to be proved, however, whether any form of policy would have accom- plished the latter object. The charge that there was great mortality among the Indians under this system is true, but a large death rate is to be expected whenever savages are required to change from out-of-door freedom and nakedness to the civilized form of life.
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