USA > California > The Spanish Pioneers And The California Missions > Part 16
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Despite Pizarro's manly arguments, Almagro would not give up his plans. He insisted that he should be given Cuzco, the chief city, pretending that it was south of Pizarro's territory. It was really within the limits granted Pizarro by the Crown, but that would have made no difference with him. At last a truce was made until a commission could measure and determine where Pizarro's southern boundary lay. Meantime Almagro was bound by a solemn oath to keep his hands off. But he was not a man to regard his oath or his honor ; and on the dark and stormy night of April 8, 1537, he seized Cuzco, killed the
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guards, and made Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro prisoners. Just then Alonso de Alvarado was com- ing with a force to the relief of Cuzco; but being betrayed by one of his own officers, he was captured with all his men by Almagro.
At this critical juncture, Pizarro was strengthened by the arrival of his old supporter, the licentiate Espinosa, with two hundred and fifty men, and a shipload of arms and provisions from his great cousin Cortez. He started for Cuzco, but at the overpow- ering news of Almagro's wanton treachery, retreated to Lima and fortified his little capital. He was clearly anxious to avert bloodshed ; and instead of marching with an army to punish the traitor, he sent an embassy, including Espinosa, to try to bring Almagro to decency and reason. But the vulgar soldier was impervious to such arguments. He not only refused to give up stolen Cuzco, but coolly announced his determination to seize Lima also. Espinosa suddenly and conveniently died in Alma- gro's camp, and Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro would have been put to death but for the efforts of Diego de Alvarado (a brother of the hero of the Noche Triste), who saved Almagro from add- ing this cruelty to his shame. Almagro marched down to the coast to found a port, leaving Gonzalo under a strong guard in Cuzco, and taking Hernando with him as a prisoner. While he was building his town, which he named after himself, Gonzalo Pizarro and Alonso de Alvarado made their escape from Cuzco and reached Lima in safety.
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Francisco Pizarro still tried to keep from blows with the man who, though now a traitor, had been once his comrade. At last an interview was ar- ranged, and the two leaders met at Mala. Almagro greeted hypocritically the man he had betrayed ; but Pizarro was of different fibre. He did not wish to be enemies with former friends; but as little could he be friend again to such a person. He met Almagro's lying welcome with dignified cool- ness. It was agreed that the whole dispute should be left to the arbitration of Fray Francisco de Boba- dilla, and that both parties should abide by his de- cision. The arbitrator finally decided that a vessel should be sent to Santiago to measure southward from there, and determine Pizarro's exact southern boundary. Meantime Almagro was to give up Cuzco and release Hernando Pizarro. To this perfectly just arrangement the usurper refused to agree, and again violated every principle of honor. Hernando Pizarro was in imminent danger of being murdered ; and Francisco, bound to save his brother at any cost, bought him free by giving up Cuzco.
At last, worn past endurance by the continued treachery of Almagro, Pizarro sent him warning that the truce was at an end, and marched on Cuzco. Almagro made every effort to defend his stolen prize, but was outgeneralled at every step. He was shattered by a shameful sickness, the penalty of his base life, and had to intrust the campaign to his lieutenant Orgonez. On the 26th of April, 1538, the loyal Spaniards, under Hernando and Gonzalo
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Pizarro, Alonso de Alvarado, and Pedro de Valdivia, met Almagro's forces at Las Salinas. Hernando had Mass said, aroused his men by recounting the conduct of Almagro, and led the charge upon the rebels. A terrible struggle ensued; but at last Orgoñez was slain, and then his followers were soon routed. The victors captured Cuzco and made the arch-traitor prisoner. He was tried and convicted of treason, - for in being traitor to Pizarro, he had also been a traitor to Spain, - and was sentenced to death. The man who could be so physically brave in some circumstances was a coward at the last. He begged like a craven to be spared ; but his doom was just, and Hernando Pizarro refused to reverse the sentence. Francisco Pizarro had started for Cuzco; but before he arrived Almagro was executed, and one of the basest treacheries in history was avenged. Pizarro was shocked at the news of the execution ; but he could not feel other- wise than that justice had been done. Like the man he was, he had Diego de Almagro, the traitor's illegitimate son, taken to his own house, and cared for as his own child.
Hernando Pizarro now returned to Spain. There he was accused of cruelties ; and the Spanish gov- ernment, prompter than any other in punishing offences of the sort, threw him into prison. For twenty years the gray-haired prisoner lived behind the bars of Medina del Campo ; and when he came out his days of work were over, though he lived to be a hundred years old.
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The state of affairs in Peru, though improved by the death of Almagro and the crushing of his wicked rebellion, was still far from secure. Manco was developing what has since come to be regarded as the characteristic Indian tactics. He had learned that the original fashion of rushing upon a foe in mass, fairly to smother him under a crush of bodies, would not work against discipline. So he took to the tactics of harassment and ambuscade, - the policy of killing from behind, which our Apaches learned in the same way. He was always hanging about the Spaniards, like a wolf about the flock, waiting to pounce upon them whenever they were off their guard, or when a few were separated from the main body. It is the most telling mode of warfare, and the hardest to combat. Many of the Spaniards fell victims ; in a single swoop he cut off and massacred thirty of them. It was useless to pursue him, - the mountains gave him an impreg- nable retreat. As the only deliverance from this harassment, Pizarro adopted a new policy. In the most dangerous districts he founded military posts ; and around these secure places towns grew rapidly, and the people were able to hold their own. Emi- grants were coming to the country, and Peru was developing a civilized nation out of them and the uplifted natives. Pizarro imported all sorts of Euro- pean seeds, and farming became a new and civilized industry.
Besides this development of the new little nation, Pizarro was spreading the limits of exploration and
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conquest. He sent out brave Pedro de Valdivia, - that remarkable man who conquered Chile, and made there a history which would be found full of thrilling interest, were there room to recount it here. He sent out, too, his brother Gonzalo as governor of Quito, in 1540. That expedition was one of the most astounding and characteristic feats of Spanish exploration in the Americas ; and I wish space per- mitted the full story of it to enter here. For nearly two years the knightly leader and his little band suffered superhuman hardships. They froze to death in the snows of the Andes, and died of heat in the desert plains, and fell in the forest swamps of the upper Amazon. An earthquake swallowed an Indian town of hundreds of houses before their eyes. Their way through the tropic forests had to be hewn step by step. They built a little brigantine with incredible toil, - Gonzalo working as hard as any, - and descended the Napo to the Amazon. Francisco de Orellana and fifty men could not rejoin their companions, and floated down the Amazon to the sea, whence the survivors got to Spain. Gonzalo at last had to struggle back to Quito, -a journey of almost matchless horror. Of the three hundred gallant men who had marched forth so blithely in 1540 (not including Orellana's fifty), there were but eighty tattered skeletons who staggered into Quito in June, 1542. This may give some faint idea of what they had been through.
Meanwhile an irreparable calamity had befallen the young nation, and robbed it at one dastardly blow of
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one of its most heroic figures. The baser followers who had shared the treachery of Almagro had been pardoned, and well-treated; but their natures were unchanged, and they continued to plot against the wise and generous man who had "made " them all. Even Diego de Almagro, whom Pizarro had reared tenderly as a son, joined the conspirators. The ringleader was one Juan de Herrada. On Sunday, June 26, 1541, the band of assassins suddenly forced their way into Pizarro's house. The unarmed guests fled for help ; and the faithful servants who resisted were butchered. Pizarro, his half-brother Martinez de Alcántara, and a tried officer named Francisco de Chaves had to bear the brunt alone. Taken all by surprise as they were, Pizarro and Alcántara tried to hurry on their armor, while Chaves was ordered to secure the door. But the mistaken soldier half opened it to parley with the villains, and they ran him through, and kicked his corpse down the stair- case. Alcántara sprang to the door and fought he- roically, undaunted by the wounds that grew thicker on him. Pizarro, hurling aside the armor there was no time to don, flung a cloak over his left arm for a shield, and with the right grasping the good sword that had flashed in so many a desperate fray he sprang like a lion upon the wolfish gang. He was an old man now; and years of such hardship and exposure as few men living nowadays ever dreamed of had told on him. But the great heart was not old, and he fought with superhuman valor and superhuman strength. His swift sword struck
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down the two foremost, and for a moment the trai- tors were staggered. But Alcántara had fallen ; and taking turns to wear out the old hero, the cowards pressed him hard. For several minutes the unequal fight went on in that narrow passage, slippery with blood, - one gray-haired man with flashing eyes against a score of desperadoes. At last Herrada seized Narvaez, a comrade, in his arms, and behind this living shield rushed against Pizarro. Pizarro ran Narvaez through and through; but at the same instant one of the crowding butchers stabbed him in the throat. The conqueror of Peru reeled and fell; and the conspirators plunged their swords in his body. But even then the iron will kept the body to the last thought of a great heart ; and call- ing upon his Redeemer, Pizarro drew a cross with bloody finger upon the floor, bent and kissed the sacred symbol, and was dead.
So lived and so died the man who began life as the swineherd of Truxillo, and who ended it the conqueror of Peru. He was the greatest of the Pioneers ; a man who from meaner beginnings rose higher than any ; a man much slandered and ma- ligned by the prejudiced ; but nevertheless a man whom history will place in one of her highest niches, - a hero whom every lover of heroism will one day delight to honor.
Such was the conquest of Peru. Of the romantic history which followed in Peru I cannot tell here, - of the lamentable fall of brave Gonzalo Pizarro ;
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of the remarkable Pedro de la Gasca ; of the great Mendoza's vice-royal promotion; nor of a hundred other chapters of fascinating history. I have wished only to give the reader some idea of what a Spanish conquest really was, in superlative heroism and hardship. Pizarro's was the greatest conquest ; but there were many others which were not inferior in heroism and suffering, but only in genius ; and the story of Peru was very much the story of two thirds of the Western Hemisphere.
IV. THE CALIFORNIA MISSIONS AND WHAT THEY DID TO THE UNITED STATES
THE CALIFORNIA MISSIONS.
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I.
THE CALIFORNIA MISSIONS AND WHAT THEY DID TO THE UNITED STATES.
I F the Franciscan Missions had not homesteaded California for Spain, in 1769-did it ever occur to you what would have happened?
Miracles might be, indeed; but humanly speaking, we should have no California at all! It, with Wash- ington and Oregon, would be part of British Colum- bia, and probably called "New Albion," as Drake named it in 1579-and the Russians still called it in 1830. Spain had discovered the California pen- insula through Cortez, who named it in 1534; and our present state was discovered in 1540 and 1542 by Alarcon and Cabrillo. But it was only when European powers evidenced designs upon the Pacific Coast that Spain took steps to colonize our Califor- nia and hold it for its own. It did this in a fashion characteristic of its last moves of colonization - by a small band of Franciscan missionaries and a hand- ful of Spanish soldiers. The inconsiderable military occupation had no distinguished features; but the twenty-one Mission establishments, strung five hun- dred miles up and down the coast-each Mission not "just a church " but an outpost of civilization
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in the wilderness, an industrial training school for as many as 2,800 Indians at a time at each - these set a record of Faith and Heroism and Romance never excelled, perhaps, even in the more mediaeval days of Spain's first American colonizations, and certainly unrivaled on any other historic page.
Seventy-five years later, the United States had twenty million people, and Missouri was the extreme westerly state, when prophetic Tom Benton, its first U. S. Senator, sent his son-in-law, John C. Frémont, the Pathfinder, to take California for us, and "un- roll our halting half-way map full to the Further Sea." I cannot enter the controversies about Fre- mont-the most maligned of Americans. It is enough here to note that he was sent to get Cali- fornia for the United States, and got it. Nor have his critics subtracted from-nor added to -the transcontinental map he gave the Union. Every state between Missouri and California has come into the Union since-and because of -that action. Spain had lost California to Mexico after the "In- dependencia " of 1811; but though under Mexican rule, it was still Spanish. I hardly need remind you that Benton would not have sent Fremont to take California from Great Britain-which was even then moving to absorb it. Nor would Commodore Sloat have raised the American Flag at Monterey, and taken possession of California for the United States, July 7, 1846, if it had been a British pos- session.
In political history, that is part of what the Fran-
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MISSION SAN FERNANDO Two hundred and forty foot cloister of the Monastery. Whole mission saved from ruin by the Landmarks Club.
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ciscan Missions of California mean to us -that the whole West is ours. Except for them, we should have no Pacific Coast, but a boundary with Eng- land along the Rockies as we have now along the Great Lakes. There would be no Los Angeles, nor San Francisco, nor San Diego-and almost cer- tainly no American state west of Kansas. This is something of a debt, in terms intelligible to even the most comptometer mind, and of infinite suggestion and horizon to those with imagination and vision.
But this fundamental historic fact is not all. Hav- ing unaware saved to destiny for our American Union the Golden State and the other Pacific and Rocky Mountain states, these same venerable Fran- ciscan Missions - venerable though a century and a half younger than the equally noble Missions of New Mexico, and 250 years newer than some of the other Spanish-American missions-have become within the last third of a century the most serious economic factor in the Far West. The greatest asset of California is its romance-and in that romance, the old Missions are overwhelmingly pre- ponderant. The romance of Gold in California three quarters of a century ago, revolutionized the money markets of the world within five years. Up to 1848, the whole United States in all its history had produced less than twenty-five millions in gold and silver put together. Within six years, Cali- fornia alone yielded more than eleven times as much in gold. It was also California that was the mother of the other gold-bearing states - which were de-
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veloped by men turning back after their schooling in California to exploit new fields. It was this sud- den geyser of gold from California which gave the United States the first "sound money " it ever knew. But for California gold, the Civil War could not have been fought until at least a generation later -by which time, perhaps, we might have profited by the intelligent example of Brazil, and freed our slaves without a Civil War at all!
It was this fortuitous find of the unheroic Mar- shall in Captain Sutter's mill race that precipitated such an avalanche of migration of such a class of men as never before nor since in human history fared so far for any goal. The Gold Rush of the Argonauts was the most Homeric Era that our land and blood have ever known. But where are its bones today? Of the million visitors a year to Cali- fornia, less than two per cent visit the "diggings " immortalized by Mark Twain and Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller, the broken altars of the Yellow God. But eighty per cent visit at least some of the old Franciscan Missions! Many times as many travel- ers every year make pilgrimage to the one Mission of Santa Barbara as to all the mines and mother Iodes that gave California its name of Golden State. On "Candle Day" at San Fernando Mission, the President of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce (then enrolling some four thousand of the foremost business men of that metropolis) said emphatically to an audience of seven thousand Americans of every class and creed: "We business men had been
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slow to understand; but we now fully realize that the old Missions are our greatest asset; worth more in dollars and cents to Southern California than our oranges, or oil- even our climate!"
Romance is the chief riches of any people- though we begin to understand it only as romance fades from the world, even as we see what our childhood was only when we are no longer children. For romance is the Spirit of Youth in the world. The farthest-seeing men-of-affairs (the only sort that will last, in this age of intense competition) have come to realize that the most enduring and the most valuable things in the world are things you cannot buy, nor sell, nor weigh, nor see.
The very name "America" had never been heard on earth until a Dutch map-maker coined it in 1507. Ever since, that word has been the world's fairy story of adventure and freedom. Only three years later, in 1510, the name California was born-to become also a word for the world to conjure with.
Perhaps no other geographic name has had so many ridiculous and far-fetched guesses made as to its derivation as that of California. But it is abso- lutely simple, and historically sure.
In 1510, Ordoñez de Montalvo, a Spanish writer of sensational fiction, wrote a "shocker" entitled " Sergas de Esplándian"-the Exploits of Esplan- dian. In this wild romance the author created a mythical island "near, and to the right of, the ter-
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restrial paradise," and named it, inventing the name out of whole cloth, " California." It was ruled by Queen Calafia; and her subjects were Amazons, with griffins for lapdogs. The island and its name, the queen, the Amazons and the griffins were equally figments of the author's brain. In that age when Spain was afire with the wonder of the New World -only eighteen years after Columbus found it - this romance was read wherever Spanish was spoken. With the exception of Pizarro, the leaders in the conquest of America were educated men - mostly university men. Cortez had read this ro- mance, and twenty-four years after its publication he named a new country after it.
Vicente Blasco Ibañez, the great Spanish novelist, best known in this country by his " Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," published in 1925 in Valencia, Spain, a little novel "La Reina Calafia"; a mere thread of a story on which to hang a full outline of this grotesquely wild romance of more than four hundred years ago. It is not more grotesque than some of the derivations attempted for " California " by the unprepared -like Calida Fornax, Latin Hot Furnace!
In 1534, Hernando Cortez, the brilliant conqueror of Mexico, discovered our peninsula and gave it the romantic name California. While our state was the last to be settled by the Spaniard, he gave it, as always, the indelible imprint of chivalry and ro- mance.
Alarcon, in 1540, coming up the Colorado River,
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was the first European to touch our present state. In 1542, Cabrillo explored this coast to far north of the present San Francisco. In 1602, Vizcaino ex- plored the coast again. No other state of the Union has so long a story; no other land in all the New World has had three such eras of high romance, not counting at all the first explorations -the Mission Period from 1769 to 1834; the Pastoral Period of the great haciendas from 1800 to 1870; the Argo- naut Period of the Gold Rush, 1848 to 1860. Any one of these three epochs is packed fuller of ro- mance than any other state of ours (except New Mexico) ever knew. The vast modern migration to Southern California from 1886 onward, was chiefly inspired by the glamour of these romantic eras. Not in itself picturesque nor romantic, it is of present interest to the economist. But it will be weighed by history according as its values, and pre- serves the relics and traditions of that romance which is its richest heritage.
The old Missions of California have far more captured the imagination of the world than the older Jesuit Missions in Texas, or that precious Jesuit gem of architecture in Arizona, San Xavier, and the far older and architecturally rather more notable Franciscan Missions of New Mexico; partly because California has been more in the limelight, is visited by incomparably greater numbers of sight-seers, is far more densely populated, has railroads and other commercial agencies active in advertising it - ad-
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vertising the Missions as its most fascinating fea- ture.
But I fancy that the great difference lies in the thing that counts more in all history and all the world - namely, it is a Personality. Carlisle saw deep when he said: "The history of the world is the story of its great men." The story of the Fran- ciscan Missions of California, which gave the United States its continental scope, is the story of Junipero (Hoo-nee-pe-ro) Serra. And so I prefer to tell it -though in his case, far more than in that of other great heroes of history, the average public can and does understand, if not the actual cause for which he stood, at least the most tangible results of his labor. His spiritual, educational and civic con- quest of California was unique as a "persist " of the mediaeval ardor. He was an anachronism, of the coinage of his own patron, Francis of Assisi, most beloved of saints, into the end of the eighteenth cen- tury - even past our American Revolution.
There is a shallow fashion to lament " The Failure of the California Missions"-their short span of but seventy years, the dispersal of their Indian neophytes, the robbery of their lands, the disappear- ance of their authority !
The Missions did not fail - any more than Greece failed; which died as a political power, but lives dominant in the ideals of mankind forever!
Plymouth Rock was a state of mind. So were the California Missions. But the continental span be- tween them is no measure whatever of the vital
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difference. Nor the century and a half of time between their two beginnings.
.
The Puritans have done more to colorate the na- tional thought than any other group of citizens; their hard-headed determination and their relent- less virtue made them the least lovable, but the most ineluctable people of our history. They never produced, in all the Puritan era, a nobly great man, never an apostle, never a leader, never a world figure. Daniel Webster? A lion, yes-born 160 years after Plymouth Rock, and not entirely a Puritan. But they did produce a code of ethics which in spite of its unlivability was technically correct, and indisputable to their neighbors; and they have put it over successive generations in an everwidening geography-until the time comes when all extremes overreach themselves.
As the Puritan hardness relaxes, the Franciscan gentleness spreads. The Missions of California are already making almost as deep an impression on American life as did the Puritans; and the im- pression is deepening faster, and will last longer. It is more in tune with our day, for it is gentler, more human, more tolerant, more unselfish. I do not belittle the Puritan. His crabbed stock has been the backbone of our nation. It is in my own spinal marrow. But Plymouth Rock was as purely selfish a venture as history records. It was for the Pil- grims only. The Indians (who kept them from starving the first hard years) they crowded away and killed off. Quakers they hanged or banished,
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