USA > California > The history of Oregon and California & the other territories of the northwest coast of North America > Part 13
USA > Oregon > The history of Oregon and California & the other territories of the northwest coast of North America > Part 13
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Serious grounds of apprehension were also afforded by the pro- ceedings of the Russians on the northernmost coasts of the Pacific. All that was generally known of them was obtained from the maps and accounts of the French geographers, which, though vague and contradictory, yet served to establish the certainty that this am- bitious and enterprising nation had formed colonies and naval stations in the north-easternmost part of Asia, and had found and taken possession of extensive territories beyond the sea bathing those shores ; and these circumstances were sufficient to alarm the Spanish government for the safety of its provinces on the western side of America.
In order to avert the evils thus supposed to be impending, and at the same time to revive the claims of Spain to the exclusive navigation of the Pacific, and to the possession of the vacant terri- tories of America adjoining her settled provinces, as well as to render those provinces more advantageous to and dependent on the mother country, a system was devised at Madrid, about the year 1765, embracing a series of measures which were to be applied as circumstances might dictate or permit. This system, which is supposed to have been elaborated chiefly by Carrasco, the fiscal of
105
SCHEMES OF THE COURT OF SPAIN.
1766.]
the Council of Castile, and Galvez, a high officer of the Council of the Indies, embraced reforms in every part of the administration, particularly in the finances of the American dominions, the shameful abuses in which had been laid open by Ulloa, in his celebrated report * presented to the government in 1747. It was likewise intended that the vacant coasts and islands, adjacent to the settled provinces in the New World, should be examined and occupied by colonies and garrisons sufficient for their protection against the attempts of foreign nations to seize them, or at least to secure to Spain the semblance of a right of sovereignty over them, on the ground of prior discovery and settlement. The deliberations with regard to this system seem to have been conducted with the utmost secrecy by the Spanish government ; and no idea was enter- tained of its objects in 1766, when Galvez, the officer above named, arrived in Mexico as visitadór, t with full powers to carry the new measures into effect in that part of the dominions.
This Galvez was a man of the most violent and tyrannical dis- position. His arbitrary proceedings in financial matters occasioned an insurrection in the province of Puebla, which nothing but the firmness and good sense of the marquis de Croix, then viceroy of Mexico, prevented from becoming general. He then engaged in an expensive war against the Indians in Sonora and Sinaloa, the coun- tries bordering on the eastern side of the Californian Gulf, from which very little either of honor or of profit accrued to Spain ; and a portion of his impetuosity having thus escaped, he turned his attention towards California, where he was charged with an im- portant duty.
The sovereigns of continental Europe and their ministers had long been impatient and jealous of the influence enjoyed, or sup-
* Noticias secretas de America - Secret information respecting the internal adminis- tration of Peru, Quito, Chile, and New Granada, collected by Don Antonio de Ulloa and Don Jorge Juan, who had been sent for that purpose by the Spanish govern- ment in 1740 ; the only work from which it is possible to obtain a true picture of the state of those countries, and of the abuses and corruptions practised in them by the Spanish officials. It was first published at London, in 1826, by some political refugees of that nation, who had obtained possession of the original manuscript.
t " This title is given to persons charged by the court of Madrid to make inquiries as to the state of the colonies. Their visits, in general, produce no other effects than to balance for a time the authorities of the viceroy and the audiencia, [powers almost always at variance,] and to cause an infinite number of memorials, petitions, and plans, to be devised and presented, and some new tax to be imposed. The people of the country look for the arrival of a visitador with the same impatience with which they afterwards desire his departure. "- Humboldt's Essay on Mexico, book ii. chapter vii.
14
106
THE EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS.
[1767.
posed to be enjoyed, by the Jesuits ; and the governments of Spain and Portugal, though always opposed to each other, were equally mistrustful as to the objects and proceedings of that order in the New World. Suspicions were entertained at Lisbon and at Madrid that those proceedings were not dictated solely by religious or phil- anthropic motives ; but that the Jesuits aspired to the separation and exclusive control of the greater part, if not of the whole, of Southern America : and these suspicions were increased by the successful stand which they made in Paraguay, at the head of the natives, against the division of that province, and the transfer of a portion of its territory to Portugal, agreeably to the treaty concluded between the latter kingdom and Spain, in 1750. This act drew down upon the order the hatred of the subtle and fearless marquis de Pombal, who then ruled Portugal with a rod of steel; from that moment he devoted himself to its destruction, and, his plans having been disposed with care and secrecy, all its members were expelled from the Portuguese dominions, without difficulty, in 1759. In France, the Jesuits were soon after entirely overthrown by the agency of the duke de Choiseul, the minister, and madame de Pom- padour, the mistress of Louis XV. ; and on the 2d of April, 1767, a decree was unexpectedly issued by King Charles III. of Spain, at the instigation of the celebrated count de Aranda, for their im- mediate banishment from the Spanish territories. This decree was executed without delay in every part of the empire. In Mexico, the Jesuits, to the number of several hundreds, were, in July following, arrested and sent off to Europe; and a strong military force was at the same time despatched to California, under the command of Don Gaspar de Portola, who found no difficulty in tearing a few old priests from the arms of their wailing converts.
Thus ended the rule of the Jesuits in California. That their efforts were attended with good cannot be denied ; for those who were the immediate objects of their care, were certainly rendered happier, more comfortable, and more free from vice, than they would otherwise have been. Unfortunately, however, the aborigines of California are among the most indolent and brutish of the human race ; with minds as sterile and unimprovable as the soil of their peninsula. By constant watchfulness, by the judicious administra- tion of rewards as well as punishments, by the removal of all evil examples, and, above all, by studiously practising themselves what they recommended to others, the benevolent, wise, and persevering Jesuits did indeed introduce a certain degree of civilization, or
107
EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS.
1767.]
apparent civilization, among these people; but there is no reason to believe that, by any means as yet employed for the purpose, a single Californian Indian has been rendered a useful, or even an innocuous, member of society.
There was, however, no intention on the part of the Spanish government to abandon California. On the contrary, the peninsula immediately became a province of Mexico, and was provided with military and civil officers dependent on the viceroy of that kingdom; and the missions were confided to the Dominicans, under whose austere rule the majority of the converts relapsed into barbarism. Establishments were also formed by the Spaniards on the western side of California ; and the coasts farther north, which had been neglected for more than a hundred and sixty years, were explored in voyages made for the purpose from Mexico, as will be shown in the succeeding chapter.
108
CHAPTER IV.
1769 TO 1779.
First Establishments on the West Coast of California founded by the Spaniards - Dispute between Spain and Great Britain respecting the Falkland Islands - Exploring Voyages of the Spaniards under Perez, Heceta and Bodega, and Arteaga and Bodega - Discovery of Nootka Sound, Norfolk Sound, and the Mouth of the Columbia River - Importance of these Discoveries.
IMMEDIATELY after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Mexico, the viceroy of Mexico, De Croix, and the visitador, Galvez, directed their attention to the establishment of colonies and garrisons on the western side of California, agreeably to the system adopted for the restauration of the Spanish dominions in the New World.
At that time, little was known, with certainty, of any part of the west coast of America north of the 43d parallel, to which latitude it had been explored by Sebastian Vizcaino, in 1603. The voyage of Juan de Fuca was generally considered as apocryphal, and nothing of an exact nature could be learned from the accounts of the Russian expeditions in that quarter. Upon examining the charts and journals of Vizcaino, descriptions were found of several places surveyed by him, which he strongly recommended as suitable for settlements or naval stations ; and, agreeably to his views, it was determined in Mexico that the first establishments should be formed on the harbors which had received from that navigator the names of Port San Diego and Port Monterey. Accordingly, after much difficulty, a small number of settlers, with some soldiers and Fran- ciscan friars, were assembled at La Paz, on the western shore of the Californian Gulf, which had been selected as the place of rendez- vous ; and thence, in the spring of 1769,* they began their march
* This account of the establishment of the first Spanish colonies on the west coast of California is derived from - the narrative of Miguel Costanso, the engineer of the expedition, which was published at Mexico in 1771, and immediately suppressed by the government ; a copy, however, escaped to England, from which a translation was published at London, in 1790, by A. Dalrymple -and from the biography of Friar Junipero Serra, the principal of the Franciscans who accompanied the expedition, written by Friar Francisco Palou, and published at Mexico in 1787.
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SPANISH COLONIES IN NEW CALIFORNIA.
1769.]
through the peninsula towards San Diego, the nearest of the places selected for the first establishments, in two parties, commanded respectively by Gaspar de Portola, the governor of the newly-formed province, and Fernando de Rivera, a captain in the army. Each party carried a drove of cattle; the materials and supplies for the colonies being sent in three vessels directly to San Diego.
The first party of emigrants under Rivera, after a long and painful march, reached San Diego on the 14th of May, 1769, and found there two of the vessels, which, after disastrous voyages and the loss of many of their crews by scurvy, had arrived a few days previous. The other body, under Portola, marched by a still more difficult route, and did not join their companions on the Pacific shore until nearly two months later. A spot having been chosen for the settlement near the entrance of the Bay of San Diego, a portion of the men were employed in erecting the necessary buildings ; with the remainder Portola set off for Monterey, where he was anxious also to establish a colony immediately, leaving directions that the third vessel, which was expected from Mexico, should be ordered to proceed with her cargo to that place. This expedition, however, was not successful ; for the Spaniards, march- ing along the eastern side of the range of mountains which border the coast northward of San Diego, passed by Monterey, and found themselves, at the end of October, on the shore of a great bay, which they supposed to be the same called Port San Francisco in the accounts of the old navigators. When they discovered the place of which they were in search, the cold weather had begun ; and, the vessel not appearing, with the supplies, as expected, they were obliged to retrace their steps to San Diego. Of this third vessel nothing was ever heard after her departure from the Gulf of California.
In the mean time, the people left at San Diego had experienced great difficulties from the hostility of the natives, by whom they were several times attacked ; and, after the return of the governor's party, they were all in danger of perishing from want of food : so that they unanimously agreed to abandon the country and return to Mexico, unless they should be relieved, before St. Joseph's day, the 10th of March, 1770, by the return of one of the vessels, which . had been sent for supplies. On that day, one of the vessels did arrive, and, the supplies being found sufficient, Portola again set off for Monterey, where a settlement was effected. During the same year, other parties of emigrants came from Mexico, and new
110
DISPUTE ABOUT THE FALKLAND ISLANDS.
[1770.
establishments were formed on the coast between San Diego and Monterey ; and, as the means of subsistence soon became abundant by the multiplication of their cattle, independently of the fruits of their labor in agriculture, the Spanish colonies in Upper California were, before 1775, in a condition to resist the dangers to which they were likely to be exposed.
Another measure, undertaken by the Spanish government about this time; in prosecution of its plans for securing the unsettled coasts and islands of America from occupation by foreign powers, brought Spain into collision, and nearly into war, with Great Britain.
Soon after the peace of 1763, colonies were formed by the French and the British on the barren, storm-vexed group of the Falk- land, Islands, in the South Atlantic Ocean, near the entrance of Magellan's Strait. The French colonists were soon withdrawn by their government, at the instance of the Spanish king, though not until after an angry discussion : the British ministers, on the other hand, treated with contempt the remonstrances addressed to them from Madrid, on the subject of their settlement. At length, in June, 1770, the British colonists were expelled from Port Egmont, the place which they occupied, by a squadron and troops sent for the purpose from Buenos Ayres by Don Francisco Bucareli, the gov- ernor of that province. This event created great excitement in England, and both nations prepared for war ; but the dispute was compromised through the mediation of France. A declaration was presented on the part of Spain, to the effect - that the Catholic king disavowed the act of the governor of Buenos Ayres, and promised to restore the settlers to Port Egmont; but that these concessions were not to be considered as prejudicing his prior right of sovereign- ty over the islands : and the British minister gave in return an accept- ance of the disavowal and promise of restoration, without noticing the Spanish reservation of right .* Agreeably to this promise, the British colonists were replaced at Port Egmont in 1771; but they were withdrawn by order of their. government in 1774, on the plea of the expensiveness and inutility of the establishment, but, as is
* The documents relative to this dispute may be found at length in the London Annual Register, and in the Gentleman's Magazine, for 1770. See, also, -the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi .- the Anecdotes of the Life of Lord Chatham, chap. xxxix. - Thoughts on the Falkland Islands, by Dr. Samuel Johnson, &c. The author of this History may also be permitted to refer to - a Memoir, Historical and Political, on the Falkland Islands - written by himself, and published in the New York Merchant's Magazine for February, 1842, containing full accounts of all the circumstances connected with this famous dispute.
111
SETTLEMENT OF THE DISPUTE.
1771.]
generally believed, in consequence of a secret engagement to that effect, concluded between the parties * at the time of the settlement
* That the British government did secretly engage-to abandon the Falkland Islands entirely, soon after the restitution of Port Egmont should have been formally effected- was asserted at the time openly in parliament, and without reply from the ministers, as well as by many individuals in Great Britain whose opinions are entitled to credit. It was admitted by Dr. Johnson, in an edition of his Thoughts, &c., published sub- sequent to the evacuation ; and it has been stated as true by every historian, British and foreign, who has described the affair. It was, indeed, regarded as an established fact, and was unquestioned until the 8th of January, 1834, when Lord Palmerston, the British 'secretary for foreign affairs, in answer to a protest on the part of the gov- ernment of Buenos Ayres against the recent occupation of the Falkland Islands by Great Britain, formally denied it, and produced a number of extracts from corre- spondence between British ministers and their own agents, which he considered as affording " conclusive evidence that no such secret understanding could have existed," as it is not mentioned in those extracts. The papers cited by Lord Palmerston, and the arguments which he draws from them, are, however, insufficient to change the general preexisting belief on the subject ; for in none of them should we expect to find any allusion to the engagement in question. There is no apparent reason for which the ministers should have informed any of the persons addressed in tliese letters of their promise to evacuate the islands; while, on the other hand, it was clearly important for them to suppress all proof of their having made such an engage- ment, which the whole British people would have considered dishonoring. It is no novelty in diplomacy, that an ambassador should be kept in ignorance of matters settled or discussed between his own ministers of state and those of the government to which he is accredited; and the very negotiation by which this dispute was ter- minated, was carried on through the agency of the secretary of the French embassy at London, while the ambassador himself knew nothing about it.
Equally inefficient to produce conviction is the assertion of Lord Palmerston in the same letter, " that the reservation (with regard to the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands) contained in the Spanish declaration cannot be admitted to possess any sub- stantial weight, inasmuch as no notice whatever is taken of it in the British counter declaration." In the first place, no counter declaration was made on the occasion : the British minister presented, in return for the Spanish ambassador's declaration, a paper containing not a word of contradiction, and which is, as it was styled when submitted to parliament, an acceptance. These two documents - the only ones which are as yet known to have passed on the conclusion of the dispute -cannot be sepa- rated in reasoning on their contents, but must be taken together, as forming one con vention, admitted by both parties. It will not be pretended that the Spanish ambas- sador delivered his declaration, without full knowledge of the answer which was to be made to it ; and the silence of the British minister on the subject of the reser- vation amounts, at least, to an acknowledgment that the fact of the restitution of Port Egmont was not regarded as a surrender by Spain of her claim of sovereignty over the Falkland group, which was to remain such as it had been before the dispute. That this view must have been taken by the British government is likewise strongly corroborated by the circumstance that the Spaniards continued to occupy Soledad (another place in the Falkland Islands, where the French had made their settlement) for more than forty years after this arrangement, without any complaint or objection on the part of Great Britain, though they had been formally ordered to quit it before the dispute occurred.
It will be shown, in the fifteenth chapter of this History, that the British govern- ment, in 1827, took a different view of reservations of right, when they were in favor of Great Britain.
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SPANISH COLONIES IN NEW CALIFORNIA.
[1774.
of the dispute. Bucareli, the governor of Buenos Ayres, whose acts had been disavowed by his sovereign, was raised to the high and lucrative post of viceroy of Mexico.
The issue of this dispute between Great Britain and Spain, served to impress upon the government of the latter power still more strongly, the conviction of the necessity of occupying the vacant coasts and islands of America adjoining its settled provinces. Efforts for this purpose were accordingly made, not only on the coasts of California, but also on those of Texas, of the Mosquito country, and of Patagonia, and were continued, at great 'expense, though with little effect, until 1779, when they were abandoned, in consequence of the wars excited by the revolution which ended in the independence of the United States.
The efforts of the Spanish government were, however, specially directed towards the west coasts of North America; and, in order to give them efficiency, a particular branch of the administration of Mexico was created, under the title of the Marine Department of San Blas, which was charged with the superintendence and ad- vancement of the establishments in that quarter. The port of San Blas, in Mexico, at the entrance of the Californian Gulf, was made the centre of the operations for these purposes: arsenals, ship- yards, and warehouses, were erected there; all expeditions for the coasts farther north were made from it, and all orders relative to them passed through the chief of the department, who resided at that port.
In this manner, before 1779, eight establishments were formed, by the Spaniards, on the Pacific coast of America, between the Californian peninsula and Cape Mendocino; the southernmost of which was San Diego, near the 32d degree of latitude, and the northernmost, San Francisco, on the great bay of the same name, near the 38th. These establishments were, in their character, almost exclusively military and missionary ; being intended solely for the occupation of the country, which it was proposed to effect, as far as possible, by the conversion of the aborigines to the Catholic religion, and to the forms and customs of civilized life.
The military arrangements were all on the most miserable scale. The forts, some of them dignified with the name of castles, were of mud; the artillery were a few old pieces, of various sizes, generally ineffective, and the garrisons were all slender : the men were badly armed, badly clothed, and seldom or never exercised, though they were well fed, as the country was covered with cattle,
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SPANISH COLONIES IN NEW CALIFORNIA.
1774.]
the descendants of the herds brought thither by the Spaniards in 1770; and the ground yielded, with little cultivation, as much Indian corn, beans, and red pepper, as could be consumed. The missions were, for the most part, in the vicinity of the military stations, and, like those of the Jesuits, they each contained a church, generally well built, with some ruder edifices, for the accommoda- tion of the priests and their converts, and for store and work- houses. The public farms were worked by the natives, under the direction of the missionaries or soldiers, and merely produced the food required in the establishments, and, in some places, a little wine. Towns were afterwards formed, some of which were endowed with the privileges of a corporation ; but none of them attained a large size.
The missionaries were, as already stated, of the Franciscan order, the members of which are incapacitated, by their vows, from holding any property as individuals. They were, for the most part, plain, uneducated men - taken from the lower classes of society, and knowing no books but their breviaries, and the biographies of their saints - who devoted themselves conscientiously and heroically to the task of reclaiming and guiding the barbarous natives of that remote region - without any expectation of acquiring wealth or honors - unsupported by the ambition and pride of order which animated the Jesuits - and uncheered by those social pleasures and consolations which our Protestant apostles derive from their fam- ilies, wherever they may be placed. To their virtuous conduct and self-denial all the enlightened travellers * who have visited their missions bear unqualified testimony.
These missionaries soon succeeded in reducing a large number of the natives of California to a certain degree of conformity with the customs of social life. The neophytes were obtained, gener- ally when young, from their parents, by persuasion, or by purchase, or, in some cases, by force, and were never suffered to return to their savage friends, if it could be prevented. They were all, at first, treated as children ; the nature and hours of their labors, their studies, their meals, and their recreations, being prescribed by their superintendents ; and they were punished when negligent or re- fractory, though not with severity. After remaining ten years in this state of pupilage, they might obtain their liberty, and have ground allotted to them ; but comparatively few availed themselves
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