USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > The Herald's history of Los Angeles City > Part 6
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On the other hand, it must be recorded to
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History of Los Angeles.
the credit of the mission system that order was established and maintained among a horde of degraded savages scattered along six hundred miles of frontier; that the men were taught agriculture, irrigation, cattle-raising, leather-working, carpentry, milling, building, blacksmithing, the care of horses, and many other useful pursuits; and the women were taught to cook and sew and weave, and were protected through girlhood and decently mar- ried to men of their own race or to the Span- iards; that an industrial community was cre- ated in each mission center, to redeem the land from an otherwise complete worthlessness and sloth; that the padres, almost without excep- tion, led moral lives, setting an example of de- cency and sobriety not only to the Indians, but also to the white settlers; and, lastly, that the whole mission undertaking was founded in the beginning on a conscientious devotion to the teachings of Christ, and was carried on by the fathers with sincere motives, and according to their best judgment.
CHAPTER X.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LOS ANGELES.
HE provisions under which each set- tler received his allotment of a build- ing site and ă piece of farming land was that within three years he should have a good adobe house constructed and the land cleared and that within five years he should have some chickens, a fair crop of corn or wheat growing and a good farm equip- ment. Not until the five years had passed was he to receive anything like a title to his land, and even then he would not be allowed to sell or mortgage, the king being the real owner and the colonist rather in the nature of a lessee.
There is reason to believe that these con- ditions were not entirely complied with by all the colonists ; nevertheless, De Neve's succes- sor, Fages, in 1786, thought best to issue the so-called titles, and he sent Jose Arguello, af- terwards governor of the province, to perform this service. Arguello appointed two witness- es from the guard of soldiers at Los Angeles, one of them being Corporal Vicente Felix, who was an important factor in the city's affairs at this time. Summoning all the settlers to his presence, Arguello presented each one of the nine with: First, a deed to his house lot ; sec- ond, a deed to his farm land; and third, a
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History of Los Angeles.
branding iron, by which he was to distinguish his stock from the others'. These nine settlers were the original eleven, minus De Lara, Mesa and Quintero, expelled for general uselessness, and plus Sinova, the emigrant picked up in California. Twenty-seven documents were thus distributed, for a description of each branding iron went with the implement, all signed by Arguello and his witnesses, and adorned with the "X, his mark," of the settler, for not one of the nine could write. In the case of the house lots, each location was de- scribed with reference to the plaza, showing that a rough survey had been made, and a map was filed with Arguello's report to the gov- ernor of the transaction. The location of the fields is left somewhat vague, the assumption being that each one knew about where his own land was, anyhow.
During the next four years considerable in- crease took place in the population, the new- comers being chiefly soldiers who had served out their time. Some of these were married to Indian wives, but others were attracted to Los Angeles, no doubt, by the fact that a num- ber of girls were growing up in the families there, who would in time be ready for mar- riage. By 1790 the number of households had increased from nine to twenty-eight, with a total population of 139. All of the original set- tlers who had received titles from Arguello re- mained, except one, Rosas, who had departed for San Jose. On the other hand, Los An-
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Eighteenth-Century Los Angeles.
geles had received one emigrant from San Jose, a certain Sebastian Alvitre, who, for nearly twenty years, enjoyed the reputation of being the worst man in the province of Cal- ifornia. Most of the reports from the com- isionado at Los Angeles to the governor, during this period, contain somewhere the in- teresting item of news that Alvitre is in jail again.
Among the names of the twenty new set- tlers there are several that are now common in Los Angeles; such, for example, as Figue- roa, Garcia, Dominguez, Pico, Reyes, Ruiz, Lugo, Sepulveda and Verdugo.
No selection of an alcalde seems to have been made prior to 1788. Corporal Vicente Felix acted as general manager of the colony and arbiter of all disputes up to that time. The settlers found fault with him continually, and on one or two occasions formal complaint was lodged with the governor, but no change was made; on the contrary, Felix was present- ly given the title of "comisionado," and ad- vised by the governor to make it his business to see that the laws were obeyed and good or- der maintained, although the pueblo had by this time an alcalde and two regidores, or councilmen, who were supposed to be the local administrative, judicial and legislative au- thority.
Jose Vanegas, one of the original settlers, was the first alcalde, Jose Sinova the second, and Mariano Verdugo the third. The list from
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1790 to 1800 runs as follows : Francisco
Reyes, Jose Vanegas (re-elected), Manuel Arellano, Guillermo Soto, Francisco Serrano and Joaquin Higuera. Through all these ad- ministrations Felix continued to hold author- ity, as the real representative of the governor, and the court of last appeal. Theoretically, the pueblo was entitled to local self-govern- ment, but practically it was under military control-that is, as far as it was controlled at all.
The records of the pueblo during this epoch are decidedly meager. In 1790 the fact is noted in the reports that the colonists of Los Angeles grew a larger crop of grain than any of the missions except San Gabriel. The amount is given as 4500 bushels, which does not seem large when it is divided by the num- ber of heads of families-say 150 bushels to the settler. Most of this was corn. In 1796 it was nearly twice as large. By 1800 the crop had increased so far beyond local needs that a proposition was made by the pueblo to sup- ply 3400 bushels of wheat annually for the market at San Blas at a price of $1.66 per bushel. This is especially significant in view of the fact that De Neve had advocated the founding of the pueblo because wheat was being imported from San Blas to supply the soldiers in California. In 1797 there was a drought, and only 2700 bushels were grown. About this time the governor sent down word that land must be assigned to every head of
ADOBE CONSTRUCTION
Photo by Putnam & Valentine
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Eighteenth-Century Los Angeles.
a family in Los Angeles, and that each one must be required to do his share of the culti- vation. Fences were ordered constructed, so that cattle would not get into the grain, and each settler was compelled to subscribe three bushels a year to make up a fund for the city's improvement.
Horses and cattle increased with consid- erable rapidity. In 1790 there were 3000, and in 1800, 12,500. Sheep numbered 1700. A provision in the original regulations of the pueblo as drawn up by De Neve forbade the ownership of more than fifty cattle by any one person. This was for the purpose of prevent- ing monopoly. It seems to have suffered the usual fate of legislation of that order, and was never observed. It had developed by this time that a man might have an abundance of cattle and yet be poor. In the annals of San Gabriel mission, in the year 1795, it is recorded that a man who was known to be the owner of 1000 horses came over from the pueblo to beg for a piece of cloth to make a shirt, as there was none to be had in Los Angeles. In an official price list published by Governor Fages we find the value of an ox or cow put at $5; of a sheep, $I to $2; of a chicken, 25 cents; of a mule, $14 to $20, and of a well broken horse at $9. An attempt was made during Fages' time to arbitrarily fix the price of wheat at $I a bushel. The value of horned cattle could hardly have been so great at this time as it was a quarter of a century later,
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History of Los Angeles.
when the Yankee traders began to frequent the coast to buy up hides and tallow.
During the decade from 1790 to 1800 the population of Los Angeles increased from thirty to seventy families, from 140 people to 315. By this time it had become the custom to send the superannuated and invalided sol- diers from the various presidios to Los An- geles to end their days in its mild climate. In the census of 1790 there is a division of citi- zens by age, and out of eighty adults nine were over 90 years old, which is an extraordinary percentage. This same census gives the divi- sion of nationality as follows: Spanish, 72; Indians, 7; mulattoes, 22; mestizos, 30. The increase in the number of Spanish (which probably includes those of Spanish descent born in America) shows the large part now played by the army in the colonization ; for the soldiers detailed in California up to this time were largely brought over from Spain, where- as the colonists from Mexico were, as we have seen, of mixed descent.
Los Angeles at the end of the eighteenth century consisted of about thirty small adobe houses, twelve of which were clustered around an open square, and the remainder huddled in the vicinity, without much system as to loca- tion. The houses were near together, not be- cause land was scarce or valuable, but for so- ciability and for mutual protection against thieving Indians. Most of the new houses were to the southwest of the plaza, where are
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Eighteenth-Century Los Angeles.
now Buena Vista and Castelar streets. To the north and east lay the lower land, and the space reserved for the public buildings. These latter consisted of a town house, where all the public business was transacted; a public gran- ary, a jail, and the barrack, where the small detachment of the army that was assigned to Los Angeles : Vicente Felix, the comisionado, and his three or four men, had their head- quarters.
The houses were one-story affairs, fre- quently containing but one room. The roofs were constructed of poles, thatched with tules, and at first plastered with mud; later brea was discovered in the fields to the west of the town and used for roofing material, as it is to this day. As the rafters had but little slope, considerable rain must have found its way into the houses in wet weather. Glass was un- known, the small windows closing with a shut- ter, if at all. The few pieces of furniture were crudely constructed of poles and strips of raw- hide.
No attempt was made to keep the yards about the houses in decent sanitary condition, much less to make them beautiful. There were no flowers nor shade trees, except here and there a sycamore, that may have escaped the searchers for firewood, or a few wild blos- soms in the springtime. Cattle were slaugh- tered for food right in the house yards, and the remains of the carcasses thrown about. The sole scavengers were dogs and chickens and
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History of Los Angeles.
the birds provided by nature for that purpose. In the summer time the roads and paths about the houses were deep in dust, which every passing horseman stirred up for the wind to drive through open windows and doors.
There does not appear to have been any planting of fruit trees until near the end of the century, when Governor Borica sent word to the authorities that orchards and vineyards should be set out and protected from cattle by fences and walls. The irrigating ditch was frequently neglected, until there was danger at one time that everything would dry up and die; so the governor ordered extensive and permanent repairs to be made. A great deal of the hard labor of the farms and households was done by Indians, who had been half civil- ized and half educated at the mission of San Gabriel, and who found life at the pueblo easier and more entertaining. Some of these worked the farms on shares, which gave the settlers plenty of time to attend cock fights and play the guitar.
The padres who came over from San Gabriel to take charge of the religious wel- fare of the citizens complained bitterly of the idle and worthless lives led by most of their parishioners. There was no school in Los An- geles, nor any attempt at instruction of the young. In 1784 an ex-soldier named Vargas opened a school in San Jose, and a few years later he was summoned to San Diego by a raise in salary-$250 a year was the improved
Photo by Pierce
MAKING TORTILLAS
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Eighteenth-Century Los Angeles
figure-but Los Angeles did not put in a bid. A mail was carried to and from Mexico once a month, covering a distance of 3000 miles over the Camino Real or King's Highway, but as almost none of the settlers could read or write postal facilities were little used. There was a good deal of disorder of a mild type- drunkenness, quarreling and occasional fights -but murder seems not to have been frequent. The soldiers acted as policemen, and a guard was maintained night and day.
Foreign vessels were not allowed to visit the coast, and there was very little trade or commerce of any kind. Such as there was remained largely in the hands of the padres at San Gabriel, and was carried on through the port of San Pedro, where some years later a warehouse was constructed for the use of the mission.
This description seems to be carrying us back into the Middle Ages, and yet it was only one hundred years ago, in the administrations of Washington and of John Adams, the time of Pitt and Burke, and of Napoleon and Goethe.
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE SPANISH PROVINCE.
ELIPE DE NEVE was too valuable a man to be allowed to remain long in charge of so remote and unimport- ant a province as California, and with- in a year from the founding of Los Angeles, in 1782, he was transferred to a higher position. He presently succeeded De Croix as commandant general of the "Internal Prov- inces," an office independent of and very nearly equal to that of the viceroy of Mexico. Un- fortunately, he died a few months after reach- ing this coveted honor. As the founder of Los Angeles city, and the first independent gov- ernor of California, he would be entitled to a prominent place in the locality's history, what- ever his attainments; but the fact that he was a man of exceptional brilliancy and force, whose judicial powers and administrative skill were recognized at an early age by his gov- ernment, will cause us, more than a century later, to revere his memory and to regret the untimely death that ended his career.
In the same year, 1784, died the other great man of this epoch and region-Father Juni- pero Serra. He had reached the age of 67, having labored zealously in California since 1768, during which time he had established and thoroughly organized the mission system
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In the Spanish Province.
of the province. He had many of the qualities of the soldier, the statesman, and the industrial leader, as well as those of the evangelist. When the smaller men-Rivera, De Barri and Fages-obstructed his path he brushed then aside; but in De Neve he had to contend with an individuality as powerful as his own. In spite of the guarded language with which De Neve, in his state papers, handles all matters relating to the missions, and in spite of the calm dignity of his demeanor towards the padres, it is evident that he was entirely con- scious of the churchman's disposition to en- croach on the confines of the civil authority, and his eye was ever on Serra as their leader.
An incident that took place in 1779 with reference to Serra's exercise of the power of confirmation illustrates so admirably the char- acter of these two men, and shows so plainly the attitude they held towards each other, that it is well worth relating. The adminis- tering of the rite of confirmation, i. e., the ac- ceptance of converts into the church, was lim- ited, both by ecclesiastical and civil law to the bishops. Although ranking as president of the California system of missions, Father Junipero was not a bishop, but he obtained by special arrangement through the college of San Fer- nando, Mexico, and the viceroy, the authority to confirm; and he proceeded to exercise it upon great numbers of Indians. It may have been that De Neve questioned the wisdom of receiving these ignorant savages into church
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History of Los Angeles.
membership, or it may have been that he re- garded this as a usurpation of power on the part of Serra, which it was his duty to inquire into; at all events, finding no record anywhere of the granting of such a privilege, he wrote a courteous letter to Serra, asking him the source of his authority. Serene in the con- sciousness that he was well within the law, and actuated, perhaps, by a very human wish to humiliate the governor, Serra paid no at- tention to the summons and continued with the ceremony of confirmation. Thereupon De Neve issued an order suspending all future confirma- tions, and in a letter entirely free from animus or personal feeling, he reported to De Croix, the commandant general of the provinces, what he had done. De Croix learning, in the meantime, either from the viceroy or from the College of San Fernando, that Serra had in his possession the documents showing his right to confirm, wrote to the ecclesiastic, and in- structed him to deliver them to De Neve, and put an end to the controversy. But Serra had taken occasion to send the documents down to the College of San Fernando. Why? Our admiration for this conqueror of the wilder- ness is so great that we hesitate to accuse him of a trivial or ignoble act, yet his conduct through this whole affair is exactly that of a man seeking by every small device to put a conspicuous humiliation upon a rival in power. If that was his purpose he certainly failed, be- cause De Neve was too great as a man, and
V. R. DEL V. P. F. JUNIPERO SERRA
hyo de la S."Pros. de VP.S. Fran" de la Inta de Mallorca DiyExe"de Sheet"Comis del S."DC. Mi Ap"Col" de S.FForti Mex Fund" y Presid. de las Miff"de la Calif Septentri Wurio yves forma de sant' en la Mise de S'Carlos del Pu"del M."Morve Rey a 2 8 dectg" de 04 de edad de bo.a. Int. 4 d'habi gafado la mit, dass nda en docenz' de 'Hision. Apost"
(Frontispiece from the "Vida," of Padre Francisco Palou)
VENERABLE PADRE JUNIPERO SERRA
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In the Spanish Province.
too dignified as a ruler to notice the effort. In due course of time the papers were re- turned and submitted to the governor ; where- upon he withdrew his order, acting both then and thereafter with even, unruffled courtesy toward Serra and the other priests.
De Neve's successor was Pedro Fages, a frank, good-hearted soldier, of no great intel- lectual attainments, but conscientious in the discharge of his duty. He served from 1782 to 1790. It will be remembered that Fages ac- companied the first expedition sent out by Galvez to colonize California, and that he suc- ceeded Portola as military ruler of the upper province. His removal from that position was caused through the influence of Serra, and it was scarcely necessary for De Neve to warn him, as he did in a formal state document, that the civil authority must be protected from the encroachment of the priests. He was, how- ever, by no means so well qualified to hold his own in controversy with the padres as was De Neve, a fact which is well illustrated in the circumstances that attended the founding of Santa Barbara and Purisima missions. .
These establishments had been planned by Serra, and would have been founded before the close of De Neve's term but for the dis- agreement between the governor and the pad- res regarding them. De Neve's estimate of the mission system shows in his desire to establish pueblos and permanent fortified camps, and in his determined efforts at civil colonization.
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History of Los Angeles.
He seems to have regarded this industrial de- velopment among the Indians, with its hierarchical foundation, with suspicion and dis- trust, and although he manifested no hostility toward the establishments that already existed he was loth to assist in the upbuilding of new ones. He offered no objection to San Buena- ventura, which was part of the original plan devised before his administration, but his in- fluence was felt through the commandant gen- eral and the viceroy in the arrangements for the other two missions of the channel-Santa Barbara and Purisima. The regulations drawn up for the founding and management of these two institutions provided that the natives were not to be brought in from their villages by force, nor were they to be kept at the mission, except for a limited term and a few at a time. This was, in effect, an interdiction on the whole industrial scheme-which the Francis- cans would not tolerate, their contention being, as we have seen in a previous chapter, that un- less they could control the daily life of the In- dians it was impossible to civilize them. De Neve agreed to provide plenty of soldiers to shield the fathers from harm, and he expressed some well-bred doubts as to the efficacy of a conversion that could be achieved only through material means. In the end, there was a deadlock, which is possibly what De Neve anticipated and desired. The padres re- fused to serve at the new establishments, and
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In the Spanish Province.
the governor maintained his position, in spite of their refusal.
But when Fages was governor, and after the death of De Neve, the question was re- opened, and by some means the padres car- ried the day. In 1786 the two new missions were founded, and their plan of operation was exactly like that of the other establishments. The issue was never raised again, and all of the ten remaining missions followed the orig- inal plan.
The successor of Fages, on the latter's res- ignation in 1790, was Jose Antonio Romeu, who served as governor only two years, dur- ing most of which he was an invalid. During his administration two more missions were es- tablished, making thirteen in all. The new establishments were Santa Cruz and Soledad, the latter situated about thirty-five miles south of Monterey. On his death, and after a short interregnum, came Diego de Borica, who held the office until the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was a prudent, politic man, fa- mous for his wit and comradeship, but indus- trious and capable. His attitude toward the padres and the mission system, while not par- taking of the far-sighted doubts of De Neve, was no less independent and firm. He was also an advocate of the pueblo plan of coloniza- tion, and the Villa of Branciforte was founded near Santa Cruz mission during his adminis- tration.
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History of Los Angeles.
On the death of Serra, Fermin Francisco Lasuen succeeded to the presidency of the mis- sions. Point Fermin at San Pedro was named in his honor, a fact that should set at rest the question of its spelling, which has been vari- ously written by map-makers and govern- ment engineers as Fermin, Firmin and Firmen. After the death of Serra, mission development was allowed to flag somewhat during the ad- ministration of Fages and Romeu, but shortly after Borica came into office it was taken up with new vigor. In 1797 three missions were founded, San Jose, San Juan Bautista and San Miguel. The following year two more were added, San Fernando, near Los Angeles, and San Luis Rey in the San Diego district. This made a total of eighteen. All of these institutions were in a fairly prosperous condi- tion, averaging about six hundred and fifty In- dians and three thousand cattle to each estab- lishment. At the end of Borica's term the mis- sions were producing an aggregate of 75,000 bushels of grain, of which about three-fifths was wheat. There was much complaint at this time of the ill treatment of the Indians by the padres, which, in some cases, was clearly substantiated, and the necessary reform followed.
In his effort to found the new pueblo of Branciforte-named in honor of the viceroy then administering the government of Mexico -Borica was confronted by the same difficulty
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In the Spanish Province.
that beset De Neve, and his enterprise met with even a poorer degree of success than his predecessor's. It was one thing to draft ex- tensive regulations for the governing of a pueblo, but quite another to find the people to occupy it. We do not know that Borica ever paid a visit to Los Angeles, but he certainly inspected San Jose, which was only a short distance from the capital at Monterey; and he was probably not much impressed with the outlook there, for he announced his purpose to build adobe houses for the settlers at Bran- ciforte before they were asked to emigrate thither, lest they should follow the example of the colonists at the other pueblos and live in miserable tule-thatched huts. The mother country being involved in a war at this time he was obliged to devote all his energies to the coast defense, and the projected architectural greatness of Branciforte failed to come to pass. A few settlers were secured from Mexico, of about the same type as those of San Jose and Los Angeles, but the new pueblo presently be- came a refuge for transported convicts and other birds of the same feather, and in the end achieved the worst reputation of all the settlements of early California.
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