Glimpses of Three Coasts
by Helen Hunt Jackson · English · Gutenberg #42009 · 941,862 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Glimpses of Three Coasts
Author: Helen Hunt Jackson
Release date: February 4, 2013 [eBook #42009]
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Language: English
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GLIMPSES OF THREE COASTS.
BY
HELEN JACKSON (H. H.),
AUTHOR OF "RAMONA," "A CENTURY OF DISHONOR," "VERSES," "SONNETS
AND LYRICS," "HETTY'S STRANGE HISTORY," "BITS OF TRAVEL,"
"BITS OF TRAVEL AT HOME," "ZEPH," "MERCY PHILBRICK'S
CHOICE," "BETWEEN WHILES," "BITS OF TALK
ABOUT HOME MATTERS," "BITS OF TALK FOR
YOUNG FOLKS," "NELLY'S SILVER
MINE," "CAT STORIES."
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1886.
_Copyright, 1886_,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
I.
CALIFORNIA AND OREGON.
PAGE
OUTDOOR INDUSTRIES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 3
FATHER JUNIPERO AND HIS WORK. I. II. 30
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MISSION INDIANS IN
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 78
ECHOES IN THE CITY OF THE ANGELS 103
CHANCE DAYS IN OREGON 129
II.
SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND.
A BURNS PILGRIMAGE 153
GLINTS IN AULD REEKIE 175
CHESTER STREETS 196
III.
NORWAY, DENMARK, AND GERMANY.
BERGEN DAYS 221
FOUR DAYS WITH SANNA 245
THE KATRINA SAGA. I. II. 277
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. I. II. III. 322
THE VILLAGE OF OBERAMMERGAU 384
THE PASSION PLAY AT OBERAMMERGAU 402
CALIFORNIA AND OREGON.
GLIMPSES OF THREE COASTS.
I.
CALIFORNIA AND OREGON.
OUTDOOR INDUSTRIES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
Climate is to a country what temperament is to a man,--Fate. The
figure is not so fanciful as it seems; for temperament, broadly
defined, may be said to be that which determines the point of view of
a man's mental and spiritual vision,--in other words, the light in
which he sees things. And the word "climate" is, primarily, simply a
statement of bounds defined according to the obliquity of the sun's
course relative to the horizon,--in other words, the slant of the sun.
The tropics are tropic because the sun shines down too straight.
Vegetation leaps into luxuriance under the nearly vertical ray: but
human activities languish; intellect is supine; only the passions,
human nature's rank weed-growths, thrive. In the temperate zone,
again, the sun strikes the earth too much aslant. Human activities
develop; intellect is keen; the balance of passion and reason is
normally adjusted: but vegetation is slow and restricted. As compared
with the productiveness of the tropics, the best that the temperate
zone can do is scanty.
There are a few spots on the globe where the conditions of the country
override these laws, and do away with these lines of discrimination in
favors. Florida, Italy, the South of France and of Spain, a few
islands, and South California complete the list.
These places are doubly dowered. They have the wealths of the two
zones, without the drawbacks of either. In South California this
results from two causes: first, the presence of a temperate current in
the ocean, near the coast; second, the configuration of the mountain
ranges which intercept and reflect the sun's rays, and shut South
California off from the rest of the continent. It is, as it were,
climatically insulated,--a sort of island on land. It has just enough
of sea to make its atmosphere temperate. Its continental position and
affinities give it a dryness no island could have; and its
climatically insulated position gives it an evenness of temperature
much beyond the continental average.
It has thus a cool summer and a temperate winter,--conditions which
secure the broadest and highest agricultural and horticultural
possibilities. It is the only country in the world where dairies and
orange orchards will thrive together.
It has its own zones of climate; not at all following lines parallel
to the equator, but following the trend of its mountains. The
California mountains are a big and interesting family of geological
children, with great gaps in point of age, the Sierra Nevada being
oldest of all. Time was when the Sierra Nevada fronted directly on the
Pacific, and its rivers dashed down straight into the sea. But that is
ages ago. Since then have been born out of the waters the numerous
coast ranges, all following more or less closely the shore line. These
are supplemented at Point Conception by east and west ranges, which
complete the insulating walls of South, or semi-tropic, California.
The coast ranges are the youngest of the children born; but the ocean
is still pregnant of others. Range after range, far out to sea, they
lie, with their attendant valleys, biding their time, popping their
heads out here and there in the shape of islands.
This colossal furrow system of mountains must have its correlative
system of valleys; hence the great valley divisions of the country.
There may be said to be four groups or kinds of these: the low and
broad valleys, so broad that they are plains; the high mountain
valleys; the rounded plateaus of the Great Basin, as it is called, of
which the Bernardino Mountains are the southern rim; and the river
valleys or cañons,--these last running at angles to the mountain and
shore lines.
When the air in these valleys becomes heated by the sun, it rushes up
the slopes of the Sierra Nevada as up a mighty chimney. To fill the
vacuum thus created, the sea air is drawn in through every break in
the coast ranges as by a blower. In the upper part of the California
coast it sucks in with fury, as through the Golden Gate, piling up and
demolishing high hills of sand every year, and cutting grooves on the
granite fronts of mountains.
The country may be said to have three distinct industrial belts: the
first, along the coast, a narrow one, from one to fifteen miles wide.
In this grow some of the deciduous fruits, corn, pumpkins, and grain.
Dairy and stock interests flourish. The nearness of the sea makes the
air cool, with fogs at night. There are many _ciénagas_, or marshy
regions, where grass is green all the year round, and water is near
the surface everywhere. Citrus fruits do not flourish in this belt,
except in sheltered spots at the higher levels.
The second industrial belt comprises the shorter valleys opening
toward the sea; a belt of country averaging perhaps forty miles in
width. In this belt all grains will grow without irrigation; all
deciduous fruits, including the grape, flourish well without
irrigation; the citrus fruits thrive, but need irrigation.
The third belt lies back of this, farther from the sea; and the land,
without irrigation, is worthless for all purposes except pasturage.
That, in years of average rain-fall, is good.
The soils of South California are chiefly of the cretaceous and
tertiary epochs. The most remarkable thing about them is their great
depth. It is not uncommon, in making wells, to find the soil the same
to a depth of one hundred feet; the same thing is to be observed in
cañons, cuts, and exposed bluffs on the sea-shore. This accounts for
the great fertility of much of the land. Crops are raised year after
year, sometimes for twenty successive years, on the same fields,
without the soil's showing exhaustion; and what are called volunteer
crops, sowing themselves, give good yields for the first, second, and
even third year after the original planting.
To provide for a wholesome variety and succession of seasons, in a
country where both winter and summer were debarred full reign, was a
meteorological problem that might well have puzzled even Nature's
ingenuity. But next to a vacuum, she abhors monotony; and to avoid it,
she has, in California, resorted even to the water-cure,--getting her
requisite alternation of seasons by making one wet and the other dry.
To define the respective limits of these seasons becomes more and more
difficult the longer one stays in California, and the more one studies
rain-fall statistics. Generally speaking, the wet season may be said
to be from the middle of October to the middle of April, corresponding
nearly with the outside limits of the north temperate zone season of
snows. A good description of the two seasons would be--and it is not
so purely humorous and unscientific as it sounds--that the wet season
is the season in which it can rain, but may not; and the dry season is
the season in which it cannot rain, but occasionally does.
Sometimes the rains expected and hoped for in October do not begin
until March, and the whole country is in anxiety; a drought in the wet
season meaning drought for a year, and great losses. There have been
such years in California, and the dread of them is well founded. But
often the rains, coming later than their wont, are so full and steady
that the requisite number of inches fall, and the year's supply is
made good. The average rain-fall in San Diego County is ten inches; in
Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties, fifteen; in Santa
Barbara, twenty. These five counties are all that properly come under
the name of South California, resting the division on natural and
climatic grounds. The political division, if ever made, will be based
on other than natural or climatic reasons, and will include two,
possibly three, more counties.
The pricelessness of water in a land where no rain falls during six
months of the year cannot be appreciated by one who has not lived in
such a country. There is a saying in South California that if a man
buys water he can get his land thrown in. This is only an epigrammatic
putting of the literal fact that the value of much of the land
depends solely upon the water which it holds or controls.
Four systems of irrigation are practised: First, flooding the land.
This is possible only in flat districts, where there are large heads
of water. It is a wasteful method, and is less and less used each
year. The second system is by furrows. By this system a large head of
water is brought upon the land and distributed in small streams in
many narrow furrows. The streams are made as small as will run across
the ground, and are allowed to run only twenty-four hours at a time.
The third system is by basins dug around tree roots. To these basins
water is brought by pipes or ditches; or, in mountain lands, by
flumes. The fourth system is by sub-irrigation. This is the most
expensive system of all, but is thought to economize water. The water
is carried in pipes laid from two to three feet under ground. By
opening valves in these pipes the water is let out and up, but never
comes above the surface.
The appliances of one sort and another belonging to these irrigation
systems add much to the picturesqueness of South California
landscapes. Even the huge, tower-like, round-fanned windmills by which
the water is pumped up are sometimes, spite of their clumsiness, made
effective by gay colors and by vines growing on them. If they had
broad, stretching arms, like the Holland windmills, the whole country
would seem a-flutter.
The history of the industries of South California since the American
occupation is interesting in its record of successions,--successions,
not the result of human interventions and decisions so much as of
climatic fate, which, in epoch after epoch, created different
situations.
The history begins with the cattle interest; hardly an industry,
perhaps, or at any rate an unindustrious one, but belonging in point
of time at the head of the list of the ways and means by which money
has been made in the country. It dates back to the old mission days;
to the two hundred head of cattle which the wise Galvez brought, in
1769, for stocking the three missions projected in Upper California.
From these had grown, in the sixty years of the friars' unhindered
rule, herds, of which it is no exaggeration to say that they covered
thousands of hills and were beyond counting. It is probable that even
the outside estimates of their numbers were short of the truth. The
cattle wealth, the reckless ruin of the secularization period,
survived, and was the leading wealth of the country at the time of its
surrender to the United States. It was most wastefully handled. The
cattle were killed, as they had been in the mission days, simply for
their hides and tallow. Kingdoms full of people might have been fed on
the beef which rotted on the ground every year, and the California
cattle ranch in which either milk or butter could be found was an
exception to the rule.
Into the calm of this half-barbaric life broke the fierce excitement
of the gold discovery in 1849. The swarming hordes of ravenous miners
must be fed; beef meant gold. The cattlemen suddenly found in their
herds a new source of undreamed-of riches. Cattle had been sold as low
as two dollars and a half a head. When the gold fever was at its
highest, there were days and places in which they sold for three
hundred. It is not strange that the rancheros lost their heads, grew
careless and profligate.
Then came the drought of 1864, which killed off cattle by thousands of
thousands. By thousands they were driven over steep places into the
sea to save pasturage, and to save the country from the stench and the
poison of their dying of hunger. In April of that year, fifty thousand
head were sold in Santa Barbara for thirty-seven and a half cents a
head. Many of the rancheros were ruined; they had to mortgage their
lands to live; their stock was gone; they could not farm; values so
sank, that splendid estates were not worth over ten cents an acre.
Then came in a new set of owners. From the north and from the interior
poured in the thriftier sheep men, with big flocks; and for a few
years the wide belt of good pasturage land along the coast was chiefly
a sheep country.
Slowly farmers followed; settling, in the beginning, around town
centres such as Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ventura. Grains and
vegetables were grown for a resource when cattle and sheep should
fail. Cows needed water all the year round; corn only a few months. A
wheat-field might get time to ripen in a year when by reason of a
drought a herd of cattle would die.
Thus the destiny of the country steadily went on toward its
fulfilling, because the inexorable logic of the situation forced
itself into the minds of the population. From grains and vegetables to
fruits was a short and natural step, in the balmy air, under the sunny
sky, and with the traditions and relics of the old friars' opulent
fruit growths lingering all through the land. Each palm, orange-tree,
and vineyard left on the old mission sites was a way-signal to the new
peoples; mute, yet so eloquent, the wonder is that so many years
should have elapsed before the road began to be thronged.
Such, in brief, is the chronicle of the development of South
California's outdoor industries down to the present time; of the
successions through which the country has been making ready to become
what it will surely be, the Garden of the world,--a garden with which
no other country can vie; a garden in which will grow, side by side,
the grape and the pumpkin, the pear and the orange, the olive and the
apple, the strawberry and the lemon, Indian corn and the banana, wheat
and the guava.
The leading position which the fruit interest will ultimately take has
been reached only in Los Angeles County. There the four chief
industries, ranged according to their relative importance, stand as
follows: Fruit, grain, wool, stock, and dairy. This county may be said
to be pre-eminently the garden of the Garden. No other of the five
counties can compete with it. Its fruit harvest is nearly
unintermitted all the year round. The main orange crop ripens from
January to May, though oranges hang on the trees all the year. The
lemon, lime, and citron ripen and hang, like the orange. Apricots,
pears, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, currants, and figs are
plentiful in June; apples, pears, peaches, during July and August.
Late in July grapes begin, and last till January. September is the
best month of all, having grapes, peaches, pomegranates, walnuts,
almonds, and a second crop of figs. From late in August till
Christmas, the vintage does not cease.
The county has a sea-coast line of one hundred miles, and contains
three millions of acres; two thirds mountain and desert, the remaining
million good pasturage and tillable land. What is known as the great
Los Angeles valley has an area of about sixty miles in length by
thirty in width, and contains the three rivers of the county,--the
Los Angeles, the Santa Ana, and the San Gabriel. Every drop of the
water of these rivers and of the numberless little springs and streams
ministering to their system is owned, rated, utilized, and, one might
almost add, wrangled over. The chapters of these water litigations are
many and full; and it behooves every new settler in the county to
inform himself on that question first of all, and thoroughly.
In the Los Angeles valley lie several lesser valleys, fertile and
beautiful; most notable of these, the San Gabriel valley, where was
the site of the old San Gabriel Mission, twelve miles east of the town
of Los Angeles. This valley is now taken up in large ranches, or in
colonies of settlers banded together for mutual help and security in
matter of water rights. This colony feature is daily becoming more and
more an important one in the development of the whole country. Small
individual proprietors cannot usually afford the purchase of
sufficient water to make horticultural enterprises successful or safe.
The incorporated colony, therefore, offers advantages to large numbers
of settlers of a class that could not otherwise get foothold in the
country,--the men of comparatively small means, who expect to work
with their hands and await patiently the slow growth of moderate
fortunes,--a most useful and abiding class, making a solid basis for
prosperity. Some of the best results in South California have already
been attained in colonies of this sort, such as Anaheim, Riverside,
and Pasadena. The method is regarded with increasing favor. It is a
rule of give and take, which works equally well for both country and
settlers.
The South California statistics of fruits, grain, wool, honey, etc.,
read more like fancy than like fact, and are not readily believed by
one unacquainted with the country. The only way to get a real
comprehension and intelligent acceptance of them is to study them on
the ground. By a single visit to a great ranch one is more enlightened
than he would be by committing to memory scores of Equalization Board
Reports. One of the very best, if not the best, for this purpose is
Baldwin's ranch, in the San Gabriel valley. It includes a large part
of the old lands of the San Gabriel Mission, and is a principality in
itself.
There are over a hundred men on its pay-roll, which averages $4,000 a
month. Another $4,000 does not more than meet its running expenses. It
has $6,000 worth of machinery for its grain harvests alone. It has a
dairy of forty cows, Jersey and Durham; one hundred and twenty
work-horses and mules, and fifty thoroughbreds.
It is divided into four distinct estates: the Santa Anita, of 16,000
acres; Puente, 18,000; Merced, 20,000; and the Potrero, 25,000. The
Puente and Merced are sheep ranches, and have 20,000 sheep on them.
The Potrero is rented out to small farmers. The Santa Anita is the
home estate. On it are the homes of the family and of the laborers. It
has fifteen hundred acres of oak grove, four thousand acres in grain,
five hundred in grass for hay, one hundred and fifty in orange
orchards, fifty of almond trees, sixty of walnuts, twenty-five of
pears, fifty of peaches, twenty of lemons, and five hundred in vines;
also small orchards of chestnuts, hazel-nuts, and apricots; and
thousands of acres of good pasturage.
From whatever side one approaches Santa Anita in May, he will drive
through a wild garden,--asters, yellow and white; scarlet pentstemons,
blue larkspur, monk's-hood; lupines, white and blue; gorgeous golden
eschscholtzia, alder, wild lilac, white sage,--all in riotous
flowering.
Entering the ranch by one of the north gates, he will look southward
down gentle slopes of orchards and vineyards far across the valley,
the tints growing softer and softer, and blending more and more with
each mile, till all melt into a blue or purple haze. Driving from
orchard to orchard, down half-mile avenues through orchards skirting
seemingly endless stretches of vineyard, he begins to realize what
comes of planting trees and vines by hundreds and tens of hundreds of
acres, and the Equalization Board Statistics no longer appear to him
even large. It does not seem wonderful that Los Angeles County should
be reported as having sixty-two hundred acres in vines, when here on
one man's ranch are five hundred acres. The last Equalization Board
Report said the county had 256,135 orange and 41,250 lemon trees. It
would hardly have surprised him to be told that there were as many as
that in the Santa Anita groves alone. The effect on the eye of such
huge tracts, planted with a single sort of tree, is to increase
enormously the apparent size of the tract; the mind stumbles on the
very threshold of the attempt to reckon its distances and numbers, and
they become vaster and vaster as they grow vague.
The orange orchard is not the unqualifiedly beautiful spectacle one
dreams it will be; nor, in fact, is it so beautiful as it ought to be,
with its evergreen shining foliage, snowy blossoms, and golden fruit
hanging together and lavishly all the year round. I fancy that if
travellers told truth, ninety-nine out of a hundred would confess to a
grievous disappointment at their first sight of the orange at home. In
South California the trees labor under the great disadvantage of being
surrounded by bare brown earth. How much this dulls their effect one
realizes on finding now and then a neglected grove where grass has
been allowed to grow under the trees, to their ruin as fruit-bearers,
but incomparably heightening their beauty. Another fatal defect in the
orange-tree is its contour. It is too round, too stout for its height;
almost as bad a thing in a tree as in a human being. The uniformity of
this contour of the trees, combined with the regularity of their
setting in evenly spaced rows, gives large orange groves a certain
tiresome quality, which one recognizes with a guilty sense of being
shamefully ungrateful for so much splendor of sheen and color. The
exact spherical shape of the fruit possibly helps on this
tiresomeness. One wonders if oblong bunches of long-pointed and
curving fruit, banana-like, set irregularly among the glossy green
leaves, would not look better; which wonder adds to ingratitude an
impertinence, of which one suddenly repents on seeing such a tree as I
saw in a Los Angeles garden in the winter of 1882,--a tree not over
thirty feet high, with twenty-five hundred golden oranges hanging on
it, among leaves so glossy they glittered in the sun with the glitter
of burnished metal. Never the Hesperides saw a more resplendent sight.
But the orange looks its best plucked and massed; it lends itself then
to every sort and extent of decoration. At a citrus fair in the
Riverside colony in March, 1882, in a building one hundred and fifty
feet long by sixty wide, built of redwood planks, were five long
tables loaded with oranges and lemons; rows, plates, pyramids,
baskets; the bright redwood walls hung with great boughs, full as
when broken from the tree; and each plate and pyramid decorated with
the shining green leaves. The whole place was fairly ablaze, and made
one think of the Arabian Nights' Tales. The acme of success in orange
culture in California is said to have been attained in this Riverside
colony, though it is only six years old, and does not yet number two
thousand souls. There are in its orchards 209,000 orange-trees, of
which 28,000 are in bearing, 20,000 lemon trees, and 8,000 limes.
The profits of orange culture are slow to begin, but, having once
begun, mount up fast. Orange orchards at San Gabriel have in many
instances netted $500 an acre annually. The following estimate, the
result of sixteen years' experience, is probably a fair one of the
outlay and income of a small orange grove:--
10 acres of land, at $75 per acre $750.00
1000 trees, at $75 per hundred 750.00
Ploughing and harrowing, $2.50 per acre 25.00
Digging holes, planting, 10 cents each 100.00
Irrigating and planting 10.00
Cultivation after irrigation 4.50
3 subsequent irrigations during the year 30.00
3 subsequent cultivations the first year 13.50
---------
Total cost, first year $1,683.00
This estimate of cost of land is based on the price of the best
lands in the San Gabriel valley. Fair lands can be bought in
other sections at lower prices.
Second year.--An annual ploughing in January $25.00
Four irrigations during year 40.00
Six cultivations during year 27.00
Third year 125.00
Fourth year 150.00
Fifth year 200.00
Interest on investment 1,000.00
---------
Total $3,250.00
If first-class, healthy, thrifty budded trees are planted, they
will begin to fruit the second year. The third year, a few
boxes may be marketed. The fourth year, there will be an
average yield of at least 75 oranges to the tree, which will
equal:
75,000, at $10 per thousand net $750.00
The fifth year, 250 per tree, 250,000, at $10 per
thousand 2,500.00
---------
Total $3,250.00
The orchard is now clear gain, allowing $1,000 as interest on
the investment. The increase in the volume of production will
continue, until at the end of the tenth year an average of
1,000 oranges to a tree would not be an extraordinary yield.
To all these formulas of reckoning should be added one with the
algebraic _x_ representing the unknown quantity, and standing for
insect enemies at large. Each kind of fruit has its own, which must be
fought with eternal vigilance. No port, in any country, has more rigid
laws of quarantine than are now enforced in California against these
insect enemies. Grafts, cuttings, fruit, if even suspected, are seized
and compelled to go through as severe disinfecting processes as if
they were Cuban passengers fresh from a yellow fever epidemic.
The orange's worst enemy is a curious insect, the scale-bug. It looks
more like a mildew than like anything alive; is usually black,
sometimes red. Nothing but violent treatment with tobacco will
eradicate it. Worse than the scale-bug, in that he works out of sight
underground, is the gopher. He has gnawed every root of a tree bare
before a tooth-mark on the trunk suggests his presence, and then it is
too late to save the tree. The rabbit also is a pernicious ally in the
barking business; he, however, being shy, soon disappears from settled
localities; but the gopher stands not in fear of man or men. Only
persistent strychnine, on his door-sills and thrust down his winding
stairs, will save the orchard in which he has founded a community.
The almond and the walnut orchards are beautiful features in the
landscape all the year round, no less in the winter, when their
branches are naked, than in the season of their full leaf and bearing.
In fact, the broad spaces of filmy gray made by their acres when
leafless are delicious values in contrast with the solid green of the
orange orchards. The exquisite revelation of tree systems which
stripped boughs give is seen to more perfect advantage against a warm
sky than a cold one, and is heightened in effect standing side by side
with the flowing green pepper-trees and purple eucalyptus.
In the time of blossoms, an almond orchard, seen from a distance, is
like nothing so much as a rosy-white cloud, floated off a sunset and
spread on the earth. Seen nearer, it is a pink snow-storm, arrested
and set on stalks, with an orchestra buzz of bees filling the air.
It is a pity that the almond-tree should not be more repaying; for it
will be a sore loss to the beauty of the country when the orchards are
gone, and this is only a question of time. They are being uprooted and
cast out. The crop is a disappointing one, of uncertain yield, and
troublesome to prepare. The nuts must be five times handled: first
picked, then shucked, then dried, then bleached, and then again dried.
After the first drying, they are dipped by basketfuls into hot water,
then poured into the bleachers,--boxes with perforated bottoms.
Underneath these is a sulphur fire to which the nuts must be exposed
for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then they are again spread in a
drying-house. The final gathering them up to send to market makes
really a sixth handling; and after all is said and done, the nuts are
not very good, being flavorless in comparison with those grown in
Europe.
The walnut orchard is a better investment, and no less a delight to
the eye. While young, the walnut-tree is graceful; when old, it is
stately. It is a sturdy bearer, and if it did not bear at all, would
be worth honorable place and room on large estates, simply for its
avenues of generous shade. It is planted in the seed, and transplanted
at two or three years old, with only twenty-seven trees to an acre.
They begin to bear at ten years, reach full bearing at fifteen, and do
not give sign of failing at fifty.
Most interesting of all South California's outdoor industries is the
grape culture. To speak of grape culture is to enter upon a subject
which needs a volume. Its history, its riches, past and prospective,
its methods, its beautiful panorama of pictures, each by itself is
worth study and exhaustive treatment. Since the days of Eschol, the
vine and the vineyard have been honored in the thoughts and the
imaginations of men; they furnished shapes and designs for the
earliest sacred decorations in the old dispensation, and suggestions
and symbols for divine parables in the new. No age has been without
them, and no country whose sun was warm enough to make them thrive. It
is safe to predict that so long as the visible frame of the earth
endures, "wine to make glad the heart of man" will be made, loved,
celebrated, and sung.
To form some idea of California's future wealth from the grape
culture, it is only necessary to reflect on the extent of her
grape-growing country as compared with that of France. In France,
before the days of the phylloxera, 5,000,000 of people were supported
entirely by the grape industry, and the annual average of the wine
crop was 2,000,000,000 gallons, with a value of $400,000,000. The
annual wine-yield of California is already estimated at about
10,000,000 gallons. Nearly one third of this is made in South
California, chiefly in Los Angeles County, where the grape culture is
steadily on the increase, five millions of new vines having been set
out in the spring of 1882.
The vineyards offer more variety to the eye than the orange orchards.
In winter, when leafless, they are grotesque; their stocky, twisted,
hunchback stems looking like Hindoo idols or deformed imps, no two
alike in a square mile, all weird, fantastic, uncanny. Their first
leafing out does not do away with this; the imps seem simply to have
put up green umbrellas; but presently the leaves widen and lap, hiding
the uncouth trunks, and spreading over all the vineyard a beautiful,
tender green, with lights and shades breaking exquisitely in the
hollows and curves of the great leaves. From this on, through all the
stages of blossoms and seed-setting, till the clusters are so big and
purple that they gleam out everywhere between the leaves,--sometimes
forty-five pounds on a single vine, if the vine is irrigated, twelve
if it is left to itself. Eight tons of grapes off one acre have been
taken in the Baldwin ranch. There were made there, in 1881, 100,000
gallons of wine and 50,000 of brandy. The vintage begins late in
August, and lasts many weeks, some varieties of grapes ripening later
than others. The vineyards are thronged with Mexican and Indian
pickers. The Indians come in bands, and pitch their tents just outside
the vineyard. They are good workers. The wine-cellars and the great
crushing-vats tell the vineyards' story more emphatically even than
the statistical figures. A vat that will hold 1,000 gallons piled full
of grapes, huge wire wheels driving round and round in the spurting,
foaming mass, the juice flying off through trough-like shoots on each
side into seventy great vats; below, breathless men working the
wheels, loads of grapes coming up momently and being poured into the
swirling vat, the whole air reeking with winy flavor. The scene makes
earth seem young again, old mythologies real; and one would not wonder
to see Bacchus and his leopards come bowling up, with shouting Pan
behind.
The cellars are still, dark, and fragrant. Forty-eight great
oval-shaped butts, ten feet in diameter, holding 2,100 gallons each, I
counted in one cellar. The butts are made of Michigan oak, and have a
fine yellow color, which contrasts well with the red stream of the
wine when it is drawn.
Notwithstanding the increase of the grape culture, the price of grapes
is advancing, some estimates making it forty per cent higher than it
was five years ago. It is a quicker and probably a more repaying
industry than orange-growing. It is reckoned that a vineyard in its
fourth year will produce two tons to the acre; in the seventh year,
four; the fourth year it will be profitable, reckoning the cost of the
vineyard at sixty dollars an acre, exclusive of the first cost of the
land. The annual expense of cultivation, picking, and handling is
about twenty-five dollars. The rapid increase of this culture has been
marvellous. In 1848 there were only 200,000 vines in all California;
in 1862 there were 9,500,000; in 1881, 64,000,000, of which at least
34,000,000 are in full bearing.
Such facts and figures are distressing to the advocates of total
abstinence; but they may take heart in the thought that a by no means
insignificant proportion of these grapes will be made into raisins,
canned, or eaten fresh.
The raisin crop was estimated at 160,000 boxes for 1881. Many
grape-growers believe that in raisin-making will ultimately be found
the greatest profit. The Americans are a raisin-eating people. From
Malaga alone are imported annually into the United States about ten
tons of raisins, one half the entire crop of the Malaga raisin
district. This district has an area of only about four hundred square
miles. In California an area of at least twenty thousand square miles
is adapted to the raisin.
A moderate estimate of the entire annual grape crop of California is
119,000 tons. "Allowing 60,000 tons to be used in making wines, 2,000
tons to be sent fresh to the Eastern States, and 5,000 tons to be made
into raisins, there would still remain 52,000 tons to be eaten fresh
or wasted,--more than one hundred pounds for each resident of
California, including children."[1]
The California wines are as yet of inferior quality. A variety of
still wines and three champagnes are made; but even the best are
looked on with distrust and disfavor by connoisseurs, and until they
greatly improve they will not command a ready market in America. At
present it is to be feared that a large proportion of them are sold
under foreign labels.
* * * * *
Prominent among the minor industries is honey-making. From the great
variety of flowers and their spicy flavor, especially from the
aromatic sages, the honey is said to have a unique and delicious
taste, resembling that of the famous honey of Hymettus.
The crop for 1881, in the four southern counties, was estimated at
three millions of pounds; a statistic that must seem surprising to
General Fremont, who, in his report to Congress of explorations on the
Pacific coast in 1844, stated that the honey-bee could not exist west
of the Sierra Nevadas.
The bee ranches are always picturesque; they are usually in cañons or
on wooded foot-hills, and their villages of tiny bright-colored hives
look like gay Lilliputian encampments. It has appeared to me that men
becoming guardians of bees acquire a peculiar calm philosophy, and are
superior to other farmers and outdoor workers. It would not seem
unnatural that the profound respect they are forced to entertain for
insects so small and so wholly at their mercy should give them
enlarged standards in many things; above all, should breed in them a
fine and just humility toward all creatures.
A striking instance of this is to be seen in one of the most beautiful
cañons of the San Gabriel valley, where, living in a three-roomed,
redwood log cabin, with a vine-covered booth in front, is an old man
kings might envy.
He had a soldier's warranty deed for one hundred and sixty acres of
land, and he elected to take his estate at the head of a brook-swept
gorge, four fifths precipice and rock. In the two miles between his
cabin and the mouth of the gorge, the trail and the brook change sides
sixteen times. When the brook is at its best, the trail goes under
altogether, and there is no getting up or down the cañon. Here, with a
village of bees for companions, the old man has lived for a dozen
years. While the bees are off at work, he sits at home and weaves, out
of the gnarled stems and roots of manzanita and laurels, curious
baskets, chairs, and brackets, for which he finds ready market in Los
Angeles. He knows every tree and shrub in the cañon, and has a fancy
for collecting specimens of all the native woods of the region. These
he shapes into paper-cutters, and polishes them till they are like
satin. He came from Ohio forty years ago, and has lived in a score of
States. The only spot he likes as well as this gorge is Don Yana, on
the Rio Grande River, in Mexico. Sometimes he hankers to go there and
sit under the shadow of big oaks, where the land slopes down to the
river; but "the bee business," he says, "is a good business only for a
man who has the gift of continuance;" and "it's no use to try to put
bees with farms: farms want valleys, bees want mountains."
"There are great back-draws to the bee business, the irregularities of
the flowers being chief; some years there's no honey in the flowers at
all. Some explain it on one hypothesis and some on another, and it
lasts them to quarrel over."
His phrases astonish you; also the quiet courtesy of his manner, so at
odds with his backwoodsman's garb. But presently you learn that he
began life as a lawyer, has been a judge in his time; and when, to
show his assortment of paper-cutters, he lifts down the big book they
are kept in, and you see that it is Voltaire's "Philosophical
Dictionary," you understand how his speech has been fashioned. He
keeps a diary of every hive, the genealogy of every swarm.
"No matter what they do,--the least thing,--we note it right down in
the book. That's the only way to learn bees," he says.
On the outside wall of the cabin is fastened an observation hive, with
glass sides. Here he sits, watch in hand, observing and noting; he
times the bees, in and out, and in each one of their operations. He
watches the queen on her bridal tour in the air; once the drone
bridegroom fell dead on his note-book. "I declare I couldn't help
feeling sort of sorry for him," said the old man.
In a shanty behind the house is the great honey-strainer, a marvellous
invention, which would drive bees mad with despair if they could
understand it. Into a wheel, with perforated spokes, is slipped the
comb full of honey, the cells being first opened with a hot knife. By
the swift turning of this wheel, the honey flies out of the comb, and
pours through a cylinder into a can underneath, leaving the comb whole
and uninjured, ready to be put back into the hive for the patient
robbed bees to fill again. The receiving-can will hold fifteen hundred
pounds; two men can fill it in a day; a single comb is so quickly
drained that a bee might leave his hive on his foraging expedition,
and before he could get his little load of honey and return, the comb
could be emptied and put back. It would be vastly interesting to know
what is thought and said in bee-hives about these mysterious emptyings
of combs.
A still more tyrannical circumvention has been devised, to get extra
rations of honey from bees: false combs, wonderful imitations of the
real ones, are made of wax. Apparently the bees know no difference; at
any rate, they fill the counterfeit full of real honey. These
artificial combs, carefully handled, will last ten or twelve years in
continual use.
The highest yield his hives had ever given him was one hundred and
eighty pounds a hive.
"That's a good yield; at that rate, with three or four hundred hives,
I'd do very well," said the old man. "But you're at the mercy of
speculators in honey as well as everything else. I never count on
getting more than four or five cents a pound. They make more than I
do."
The bee has a full year's work in South California: from March to
August inexhaustible forage, and in all the other months plenty to
do,--no month without some blossoms to be found. His time of danger is
when apricots are ripe and lady-bugs fly.
Of apricots, bees will eat till they are either drunk or stuffed to
death; no one knows which. They do not live to get home. Oddly enough,
they cannot pierce the skins themselves, but have to wait till the
lady-bug has made a hole for them. It must have been an accidental
thing in the outset, the first bee's joining a lady-bug at her feast
of apricot. The bee, in his turn, is an irresistible treat to the
bee-bird and lizard, who pounce upon him when he is on the flower; and
to a stealthy moth, who creeps by night into hives and kills hundreds.
"Nobody need think the bee business is all play," was our old
philosopher's last word. "It's just like everything else in life, and
harder than some things."
* * * * *
The sheep industry is, on the whole, decreasing in California. In
1876, the wool crop of the entire State was 28,000 tons; in 1881, only
21,500. This is the result, in part, of fluctuations in the price of
wool, but more of the growing sense of the greater certainty of
increase from agriculture and horticulture.
The cost of keeping a sheep averages only $1.25 a year. Its wool sells
for $1.50, and for each hundred there will be forty-five lambs, worth
seventy-five cents each. But there have been droughts in California
which have killed over one million sheep in a year; there is always,
therefore, the risk of losing in one year the profits of many.
The sheep ranches are usually desolate places: a great stretch of
seemingly bare lands, with a few fenced corrals, blackened and
foul-smelling; the home and out-buildings clustered together in a
hollow or on a hill-side where there is water; the less human the
neighborhood the better.
The loneliness of the life is, of itself, a salient objection to the
industry. Of this the great owners need know nothing; they can live
where they like. But for the small sheepmen, the shepherds, and, above
all, the herders, it is a terrible life,--how terrible is shown by the
frequency of insanity among herders. Sometimes, after only a few
months of the life, a herder goes suddenly mad. After learning this
fact, it is no longer possible to see the picturesque side of the
effective groups one so often comes on suddenly in the wildernesses:
sheep peacefully grazing, and the shepherd lying on the ground
watching them, or the whole flock racing in a solid, fleecy, billowy
scamper up or down a steep hill-side, with the dogs leaping and
barking on all sides at once. One scans the shepherd's face alone,
with pitying fear lest he may be losing his wits.
A shearing at a large sheep ranch is a grand sight. We had the good
fortune to see one at Baldwin's, at La Puente. Three thousand sheep
had been sheared the day before, and they would shear twenty-five
hundred on this day.
A shed sixty feet long by twenty-five wide, sides open; small pens
full of sheep surrounding it on three sides; eighty men bent over at
every possible angle, eighty sheep being tightly held in every
possible position, eighty shears flashing, glancing, clipping; bright
Mexican eyes shining, laughing Mexican voices jesting. At first it
seemed only a confused scene of phantasmagoria. As our eyes became
familiarized, the confusion disentangled itself, and we could note the
splendid forms of the men and their marvellous dexterity in using the
shears. Less than five minutes it took from the time a sheep was
grasped, dragged in, thrown down, seized by the shearer's knees, till
it was set free, clean shorn, and its three-pound fleece tossed on a
table outside. A good shearer shears seventy or eighty sheep in a day;
men of extra dexterity shear a hundred. The Indians are famous for
skill at shearing, and in all their large villages are organized
shearing-bands, with captains, that go from ranch to ranch in the
shearing-season. There were a half-dozen Indians lying on the ground
outside this shearing-shed at Puente, looking on wistfully. The
Mexicans had crowded them out for that day, and they could get no
chance to work.
A pay clerk stood in the centre of the shed with a leathern wallet
full of five-cent pieces. As soon as a man had sheared his sheep, he
ran to the clerk, fleece in hand, threw down the fleece, and received
his five-cent piece. In one corner of the shed was a barrel of beer,
which was retailed at five cents a glass; and far too many of the
five-cent pieces changed hands again the next minute at the beer
barrel. As fast as the fleeces were tossed out from the shed, they
were thrown up to a man standing on the top of the roof. This man
flung them into an enormous bale-sack, swinging wide-mouthed from a
derrick; in the sack stood another man, who jumped on the wool to pack
it down tight.
As soon as the shearers perceived that their pictures were being drawn
by the artist in our party, they were all agog; by twos and threes
they left their work and crowded around the carriage, peering,
commenting, asking to have their portraits taken, quizzing those whose
features they recognized; it was like Italy rather than America. One
tattered fellow, whose shoeless feet were tied up in bits of
gunny-bags, was distressed because his trousers were too short. "Would
the gentleman kindly make them in the drawing a little farther down
his legs? It was an accident they were so short." All were ready to
pose and stand, even in the most difficult attitudes, as long as was
required. Those who had done so asked, like children, if their names
could not be put in the book; so I wrote them all down: "Juan Canero,
Juan Rivera, Felipe Ybara, José Jesus Lopez, and Domingo Garcia." The
space they will fill is a little thing to give; and there is a
satisfaction in the good faith of printing them, though the shearers
will most assuredly never know it.
The faces of the sheep being shorn were piteous; not a struggle, not a
bleat, the whole of their unwillingness and terror being written in
their upturned eyes. "As a sheep before her shearers is dumb" will
always have for me a new significance.
The shepherd in charge of the Puente ranch is an Italian named
Gaetano. The porch of his shanty was wreathed with vines and blossoms,
and opened on a characteristic little garden, half garlic, the other
half pinks and geraniums. As I sat there looking out on the scene, he
told me of a young man who had come from Italy to be herder for him,
and who had gone mad and shot himself.
"Three go crazy last year," he said. "Dey come home, not know noting.
You see, never got company for speak at all."
This young boy grew melancholy almost at once, was filled with
abnormal fears of the coyotes, and begged for a pistol to shoot them
with. "He want my pistol. I not want give. I say, You little sick; you
stay home in house; I send oder man. My wife she go town buy clothes
for baptism one baby got. He get pistol in drawer while she gone."
They found him lying dead with his catechism in one hand and the
pistol in the other. As Gaetano finished the story, a great flock of
two thousand shorn sheep were suddenly let out from one of the
corrals. With a great burst of bleating they dashed off, the colly
running after them. Gaetano seized his whistle and blew a sharp call
on it. The dog halted, looked back, uncertain for a second; one more
whistle, and he bounded on.
"He know," said Gaetano. "He take dem two tousand all right. I like
better dat dog as ten men."
* * * * *
On the list of South California's outdoor industries, grain stands
high, and will always continue to do so. Wheat takes the lead; but
oats, barley, and corn are of importance. Barley is always a staple,
and averages twenty bushels to the acre.
Oats average from thirty to forty bushels an acre, and there are
records of yields of considerably over a hundred bushels.
Corn will average forty bushels an acre. On the Los Angeles River it
has grown stalks seventeen feet high and seven inches round.
The average yield of wheat is from twenty to twenty-five bushels an
acre, about thirty-three per cent more than in the States on the
Atlantic slope.
In grains, as in so many other things, Los Angeles County is far in
advance of the other counties. In 1879 there were in the county 31,500
acres in wheat; in 1881, not less than 100,000; and the value of the
wheat crop, for 1882 was reckoned $1,020,000.
The great San Fernando valley, formerly the property of the San
Fernando Mission, is the chief wheat-producing section of the county.
The larger part of this valley is in two great ranches. One of them
was bought a few years ago for $275,000; and $75,000 paid down, the
remainder to be paid in instalments. The next year was a dry year;
crops failed. The purchaser offered the ranch back again to the
original owners, with his $75,000 thrown in, if they would release him
from his bargain. They refused. The next winter rains came, the wheat
crop was large, prices were high, and the ranch actually paid off the
entire debt of $200,000 still owing on the purchase.
From such figures as these, it is easy to see how the California
farmer can afford to look with equanimity on occasional droughts.
Experience has shown that he can lose crops two years out of five, and
yet make a fair average profit for the five years.
The most beautiful ranch in California is said to be the one about
twelve miles west of Santa Barbara, belonging to Elwood Cooper. Its
owner speaks of it humorously as a little "pocket ranch." In
comparison with the great ranches whose acres are counted by tens of
thousands, it is small, being only two thousand acres in extent; but
in any other part of the world except California, it would be thought
a wild jest to speak of an estate of two thousand acres as a small
one.
Ten years ago this ranch was a bare, desolate sheep ranch,--not a tree
on it, excepting the oaks and sycamores in the cañons. To-day it has
twelve hundred acres under high cultivation; and driving from field to
field, orchard to orchard, one drives, if he sees the whole of the
ranch, over eleven miles of good made road. There are three hundred
acres in wheat, one hundred and seventy in barley; thirty-five hundred
walnut trees, twelve thousand almond, five thousand olive, two
thousand fig and domestic fruit trees, and one hundred and fifty
thousand eucalyptus trees, representing twenty-four varieties; one
thousand grape-vines; a few orange, lemon, and lime trees. There are
on the ranch one hundred head of cattle, fifty horses, and fifteen
hundred sheep.
These are mere bald figures, wonderful enough as statistics of what
may be done in ten years' time on South California soil, but totally
inadequate even to suggest the beauty of the place.
The first relief to the monotony of the arrow-straight road which it
pleased an impatient, inartistic man to make westward from Santa
Barbara, is the sight of high, dark walls of eucalyptus trees on
either side of the road. A shaded avenue, three quarters of a mile
long, of these represents the frontages of Mr. Cooper's estate.
Turning to the right, through a break in this wall, is a road, with
dense eucalyptus woods on the left and an almond orchard on the right.
It winds and turns, past knolls of walnut grove, long lines of olive
orchard, and right-angled walls of eucalyptus trees shutting in
wheat-fields. By curves and bends and sharp turns, all the time with
new views, and new colors from changes of crop, with exquisite
glimpses of the sea shot through here and there, it finally, at the
end of a mile, reaches the brink of an oak-canopied cañon. In the
mouth of this cañon stands the house, fronting south on a sunny meadow
and garden space, walled in on three sides by eucalyptus trees.
To describe the oak kingdom of this cañon would be to begin far back
of all known kingdoms of the country. The branches are a network of
rafters upholding roof canopies of boughs and leaves so solid that the
sun's rays pierce them only brokenly, making on the ground a dancing
carpet of brown and gold flecks even in winter, and in summer a shade
lighted only by starry glints.
Farther up the cañon are sycamores, no less stately than the oaks,
their limbs gnarled and twisted as if they had won their places by
splendid wrestle.
These oak-and-sycamore-filled cañons are the most beautiful of the
South California cañons; though the soft, chaparral-walled cañons
would, in some lights, press them hard for supremacy of place. Nobody
will ever, by pencil or brush or pen, fairly render the beauty of the
mysterious, undefined, undefinable chaparral. Matted, tangled,
twisted, piled, tufted,--everything is chaparral. All botany may be
exhausted in describing it in one place, and it will not avail you in
another. But in all places, and made up of whatever hundreds of shrubs
it may be, it is the most exquisite carpet surface that Nature has to
show for mountain fronts or cañon sides. Not a color that it does not
take; not a bloom that it cannot rival; a bank of cloud cannot be
softer, or a bed of flowers more varied of hue. Some day, between 1900
and 2000, when South California is at leisure and has native artists,
she will have an artist of cañons, whose life and love and work will
be spent in picturing them,--the royal oak canopies; the herculean
sycamores; the chameleon, velvety chaparral; and the wild,
throe-built, water-quarried rock gorges, with their myriad ferns and
flowers.
At the head of Mr. Cooper's cañon are broken and jutting sandstone
walls, over three hundred feet high, draped with mosses and ferns and
all manner of vines. I saw the dainty thalictrum, with its clover-like
leaves, standing in thickets there, fresh and green, its blossoms
nearly out on the first day of February. Looking down from these
heights over the whole of the ranch, one sees for the first time the
completeness of its beauty. The eucalyptus belts have been planted in
every instance solely with a view to utility,--either as wind-breaks
to keep off known special wind-currents from orchard or grain-field,
or to make use of gorge sides too steep for other cultivation. Yet,
had they been planted with sole reference to landscape effects, they
could not better have fallen into place. Even out to the very ocean
edge the groves run, their purples and greens melting into the purples
and greens of the sea when it is dark and when it is sunny
blue,--making harmonious lines of color, leading up from it to the
soft grays of the olive and the bright greens of the walnut orchards
and wheat-fields. When the almond trees are in bloom, the eucalyptus
belts are perhaps most superb of all, with their dark spears and
plumes waving above and around the white and rosy acres.
The leading industry of this ranch is to be the making of olive oil.
Already its oil is known and sought; and to taste it is a revelation
to palates accustomed to the compounds of rancid cocoanut and
cotton-seed with which the markets are full. The olive industry will
no doubt ultimately be one of the great industries of the whole
country: vast tracts of land which are not suitable or do not command
water enough for orange, grape, or grain culture, affording ample
support to the thrifty and unexacting olive. The hill-slopes around
San Diego, and along the coast line for forty or fifty miles up, will
no doubt one day be as thickly planted with olives as is the
Mediterranean shore. Italy's olive crop is worth thirty million
dollars annually, and California has as much land suited to the olive
as Italy has.
The tree is propagated from cuttings, begins to bear the fourth year,
and is in full bearing by the tenth or twelfth. One hundred and ten
can be planted to an acre. Their endurance is enormous. Some of the
orchards planted by the friars at the missions over a hundred years
ago are still bearing, spite of scores of years of neglect; and there
are records of trees in Nice having borne for several centuries.
The process of oil-making is an interesting spectacle, under Mr.
Cooper's oak trees. The olives are first dried in trays with slat
bottoms, tiers upon tiers of these being piled in a kiln over a
furnace fire. Then they are ground between stone rollers, worked by
huge wheels, turned by horse-power. The oil, thus pressed out, is
poured into huge butts or tanks. Here it has to stand and settle three
or four months. There are faucets at different levels in these butts,
so as to draw off different layers of oil. After it has settled
sufficiently, it is filtered through six layers of cotton batting,
then through one of French paper, before it is bottled. It is then of
a delicate straw color, with a slight greenish tint,--not at all of
the golden yellow of the ordinary market article. That golden yellow
and the thickening in cold are sure proofs of the presence of
cotton-seed in oil,--the pure oil remaining limpid in a cold which
will turn the adulterated oils white and thick. It is estimated that
an acre of olives in full bearing will pay fifteen hundred dollars a
year if pickled, and two thousand dollars a year made into oil.
In observing the industries of South California and studying their
history, one never escapes from an undercurrent of wonder that there
should be any industries or industry there. No winter to be prepared
for; no fixed time at which anything must be done or not done at all;
the air sunny, balmy, dreamy, seductive, making the mere being alive
in it a pleasure; all sorts of fruits and grains growing a-riot, and
taking care of themselves,--it is easy to understand the character,
or, to speak more accurately, the lack of character, of the old
Mexican and Spanish Californians.
There was a charm in it, however. Simply out of sunshine, there had
distilled in them an Orientalism as fine in its way as that made in
the East by generations of prophets, crusaders, and poets.
With no more curiosity than was embodied in "Who knows?"--with no
thought or purpose for a future more defined than "Some other time;
not to-day,"--without greeds, and with the unlimited generosities of
children,--no wonder that to them the restless, inquisitive,
insatiable, close-reckoning Yankee seemed the most intolerable of all
conquerors to whom they could surrender. One can fancy them
shuddering, even in heaven, as they look down to-day on his colonies,
his railroads, his crops,--their whole land humming and buzzing with
his industries.
One questions also whether, as the generations move on, the atmosphere
of life in the sunny empire they lost will not revert more and more to
their type, and be less and less of the type they so disliked. Unto
the third and fourth generation, perhaps, pulses may keep up the
tireless Yankee beat; but sooner or later there is certain to come a
slacking, a toning down, and a readjusting of standards and habits by
a scale in which money and work will not be the highest values. This
is "as sure as that the sun shines," for it is the sun that will bring
it about.
FATHER JUNIPERO AND HIS WORK.
A SKETCH OF THE FOUNDATION, PROSPERITY, AND RUIN OF THE FRANCISCAN
MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA.
I.
During the years when Saint Francis went up and down the streets of
Assisi, carrying in his delicate unused hands the stones for
rebuilding St. Damiano, he is said to have been continually singing
psalms, breaking forth into ejaculations of gratitude; his face
beaming as that of one who saw visions of unspeakable delight. How
much of the spirit or instinct of prophecy there might have been in
his exultant joy, only he himself knew; but it would have been strange
if there had not been vouchsafed to him at least a partial revelation
of the splendid results which must of necessity follow the carrying
out, in the world, of the divine impulses which had blazed up in his
soul like a fire. As Columbus, from the trend of imperfectly known
shores and tides, from the mysterious indications of vague untracked
winds, could deduce the glorious certainty of hitherto undreamed
continents of westward land, so might the ardent spiritual discoverer
see with inextinguishable faith the hitherto undreamed heights which
must be surely reached and won by the path he pointed out. It is
certain that very early in his career he had the purpose of founding
an order whose members, being unselfish in life, should be fit heralds
of God and mighty helpers of men. The absoluteness of self-renunciation
which he inculcated and demanded startled even the thirteenth
century's standard of religious devotion. Cardinals and pope alike
doubted its being within the pale of human possibility; and it was not
until after much entreaty that the Church gave its sanction to the
"Seraphic Saint's" band of "Fratri Minores," and the organized work
of the Franciscan Order began. This was in 1208. From then till now,
the Franciscans have been, in the literal sense of the word,
benefactors of men. Other of the orders in the Catholic Church have
won more distinction, in the way of learning, political power,
marvellous suffering of penances and deprivation; but the record of
the Franciscans is in the main a record of lives and work, like the
life and work of their founder; of whom a Protestant biographer has
written: "So far as can be made out, he thought little of himself,
even of his own soul to be saved, all his life. The trouble had been
on his mind how sufficiently to work for God and to help men."
Under the head of helping men, come all enterprises of discovery,
development, and civilization which the earth has known; and in many
more of these than the world generally suspects, has been an influence
dating back to the saint of Assisi. America most pre-eminently stands
his debtor. Of the three to whom belongs the glory of its discovery,
one, Juan Perez de Marchena, was a Franciscan friar; the other two,
Queen Isabella and Columbus, were members of Saint Francis's Third
Order; and of all the splendid promise and wondrous development on the
California coast to-day, Franciscan friars were the first founders.
In the Franciscan College at Santa Barbara is a daguerreotype, taken
from an old portrait which was painted more than a hundred years ago,
at the College of San Fernando, in Mexico. The face is one, once seen,
never to be forgotten; full of spirituality and tenderness and
unutterable pathos; the mouth and chin so delicately sensitive that
one marvels how such a soul could have been capable of heroic
endurance of hardship; the forehead and eyes strong, and radiant with
quenchless purpose, but filled with that solemn, yearning, almost
superhuman sadness, which has in all time been the sign and seal on
the faces of men born to die for the sake of their fellows. It is the
face of Father Junipero Serra, the first founder of Franciscan
missions in South California. Studying the lineaments of this
countenance, one recalls the earliest authentic portrait of Saint
Francis,--the one painted by Pisano, which hangs in the sacristy of
the Assisi church. There seems a notable likeness between the two
faces: the small and delicate features, the broad forehead, and the
expression of great gentleness are the same in both. But the saint had
a joyousness which his illustrious follower never knew. The gayety of
the troubadour melodies which Francis sung all through his youth never
left his soul: but Serra's first and only songs were the solemn chants
of the Church; his first lessons were received in a convent; his
earliest desire and hope was to become a priest.
Serra was born of lowly people in the island of Majorca, and while he
was yet a little child sang as chorister in the convent of San
Bernardino. He was but sixteen when he entered the Franciscan Order,
and before he was eighteen he had taken the final vows. This was in
the year 1730. His baptismal name, Michael Joseph, he laid aside on
becoming a monk, and took the name of Junipero, after that quaintest
and drollest of all Saint Francis's first companions; him of whom the
saint said jocosely, "Would that I had a whole forest of such
Junipers!"
Studying in the Majorca Convent at the same time with Serra, were
three other young monks, beloved and intimate companions of
his,--Palon, Verger, and Crespí. The friendship thus early begun never
waned; and the hearty and loving co-operation of the four had much to
do with the success of the great enterprises in which afterward they
jointly labored, and to which, even in their student days, they looked
forward with passionate longing. New Spain was, from the beginning,
the goal of their most ardent wishes. All their conversations turned
on this theme. Long years of delay and monastic routine did not dampen
the ardor of the four friends. Again and again they petitioned to be
sent as missionaries to the New World, and again and again were
disappointed. At last, in 1749, there assembled in Cadiz a great body
of missionaries, destined chiefly for Mexico; and Serra and Palon
received permission to join the band. Arriving at Cadiz, and finding
two vacancies still left in the party, they pleaded warmly that Crespí
and Verger be allowed to go also. At the very last moment this
permission was given, and the four friends joyfully set sail in the
same ship.
It is impossible at this distance of time to get any complete
realization of the halo of exalted sentiment and rapture which then
invested undertakings of this kind. From the highest to the lowest,
the oldest to the youngest, it reached. Every art was lent to its
service, every channel of expression stamped with its sign. Even on
the rude atlases and charts of the day were pictures of monks
embarking in ships of discovery; the Virgin herself looking on from
the sky, with the motto above, "Matre Dei montravit via;" and on the
ships' sails, "Unus non sufficit orbis."
In the memoir of Father Junipero, written by his friend Palon, are
many interesting details of his voyage to Vera Cruz. It lasted
ninety-nine days: provisions fell short; starvation threatened;
terrific storms nearly wrecked the ship; but through all, Father
Junipero's courage never failed. He said, "remembering the end for
which they had come," he felt no fear. He performed mass each morning,
and with psalms and exhortations cheered the sinking spirits of all on
board.
For nineteen years after their arrival in Mexico, Father Junipero and
his three friends were kept at work there, under the control of the
College of San Fernando, in founding missions and preaching. On the
suppression of the Jesuit Order, in 1767, and its consequent expulsion
from all the Spanish dominions, it was decided to send a band of
Franciscans to California, to take charge of the Jesuit missions
there. These were all in Lower California, no attempt at settlement
having been yet made in Upper California.
Once more the friends, glad and exultant, joined a missionary band
bound to new wildernesses. They were but three now, Verger remaining
behind in the College of San Fernando. The band numbered sixteen.
Serra was put in charge of it, and was appointed president of all the
California missions. His biographer says he received this appointment
"unable to speak a single word for tears." It was not strange, on the
realization of a hope so long deferred. He was now fifty-six years
old; and from boyhood his longing had been to labor among the Indians
on the western shores of the New World.
It was now the purpose of the Spanish Government to proceed as soon as
possible to the colonization of Upper California. The passion of the
Church allied itself gladly with the purpose of the State; and the
State itself had among its statesmen and soldiers many men who were
hardly less fervid in religion than were those sworn exclusively to
the Church's service. Such an one was Joseph de Galvez, who held the
office of Visitor-General and Commander, representing the person of
the King, and inspecting the working of the Government in every
province of the Spanish Empire. Upon him rested the responsibility of
the practical organization of the first expedition into Upper
California. It was he who ordered the carrying of all sorts of seeds
of vegetables, grains, and flowers; everything that would grow in Old
Spain he ordered to be planted in New. He ordered that two hundred
head of cattle should be taken from the northernmost of the Lower
California missions, and carried to the new posts. It was he also, as
full of interest for chapel as for farm, who selected and packed with
his own hands sacred ornaments and vessels for church ceremonies. A
curious letter of his to Palon is extant, in which he says laughingly
that he is a better sacristan than Father Junipero, having packed the
holy vessels and ornaments quicker and better than he. There are also
extant some of his original instructions to military and naval
commanders which show his religious ardor and wisdom. He declares that
the first object of the expedition is "to establish the Catholic
religion among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure
darkness of paganism, to extend the dominion of the King our Lord, and
to protect this peninsula from the ambitious views of foreign
nations."
With no clearer knowledge than could be derived from scant records of
Viscayno's voyage in 1602, he selected the two best and most salient
points of the California coast, San Diego and Monterey, and ordered
the founding of a mission at each. He also ordered the selection of a
point midway between these two, for another mission to be called Buena
Ventura. His activity, generosity, and enthusiasm were inexhaustible.
He seems to have had humor as well; for when discussing the names of
the missions to be founded, Father Junipero said to him, "But is there
to be no mission for our Father St. Francis?" he replied, "If St.
Francis wants a mission, let him show us his post, and we will put one
there for him!"
The records of this first expedition into California are full of
interest. It was divided into two parts, one to go by sea, and one by
land; the sea party in two ships, and the land party in two divisions.
Every possible precaution and provision was thought of by the wise
Galvez; but neither precaution nor provision could make the journey
other than a terrible one. Father Junipero, with his characteristic
ardor, insisted on accompanying one of the land parties, although he
was suffering severely from an inflamed leg, the result of an injury
he had received twenty years before in journeying on foot from Vera
Cruz to the city of Mexico. Galvez tried in vain to detain him; he
said he would rather die on the road than not go, but that he should
not die, for the Lord would carry him through. However, on the second
day out, his pain became so great that he could neither sit, stand,
nor sleep. Portalá, the military commander of the party, implored him
to be carried in a litter; but this he could not brook. Calling one of
the muleteers to him, he said,--
"Son, do you not know some remedy for this sore on my leg?"
"Father," replied the muleteer, "what remedy can I know? I have only
cured beasts."
"Then consider me a beast," answered Serra; "consider this sore on my
leg a sore back, and give me the same treatment you would apply to a
beast."
Thus adjured, the muleteer took courage, and saying, "I will do it,
Father, to please you," he proceeded to mix herbs in hot tallow, with
which he anointed the wound, and so reduced the inflammation that
Father Junipero slept all night, rose early, said matins and mass, and
resumed his journey in comparative comfort. He bore this painful wound
to the end of his life; and it was characteristic of the man as well
as of the abnormal standards of the age, that he not only sought no
measures for a radical cure of the diseased member, but, obstinately
accepting the suffering as a cross, allowed the trouble to be
aggravated in every way, by going without shoes or stockings and by
taking long journeys on foot.
A diary kept by Father Crespí on his toilsome march from Velicatá to
San Diego is full of quaint and curious entries, monotonous in its
religious reiterations, but touching in its simplicity and
unconscious testimony to his own single-heartedness and patience. The
nearest approach to a complaint he makes is to say that "nothing
abounds except stones and thorns." When they journey for days with no
water except scanty rations from the precious casks they are carrying,
he always piously trusts water will be found on the morrow; and when
they come to great tracts of impenetrable cactus thickets, through
which they are obliged to hew a pathway with axes, as through a
forest, and are drenched to the skin in cold rains, and deserted by
the Christian Indians whom they had brought from Lower California as
guides, he mentions the facts without a murmur, and has even for the
deserters only a benediction: "May God guard the misguided ones!" A
far more serious grievance to him is that toward the end of the
journey he could no longer celebrate full mass because the wafers had
given out. Sometimes the party found themselves hemmed in by
mountains, and were forced to halt for days while scouts went ahead to
find a pass. More than once, hoping that at last they had found a
direct and easy route, they struck down to the sea-shore, only to
discover themselves soon confronted by impassable spurs of the Coast
Range, and forced to toil back again up into the labyrinths of mesas
and cactus plains. It was Holy Thursday, the 24th of March, when they
set out, and it was not until the 13th of May that they reached the
high ground from which they had their first view of the bay of San
Diego, and saw the masts of the ships lying at anchor there,--"which
sight was a great joy and consolation to us all," says the diary.
They named this halting-place "Espiritu Santo." It must have been on,
or very near, the ridge where now runs the boundary line between the
United States and Mexico, as laid down by the treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo. It is a grand promontory, ten miles southeast of San Diego,
thrusting out to sea; bare of trees, but matted thick with the dewy
ice-plant, and in early spring carpeted with flowers. An ugly monument
of stone stands there, bearing the names of the American and Mexican
commissioners who established this boundary line in October, 1849. It
would seem much more fitting to have there a monument bearing the
names of the heroic men--friars and soldiers of Spain--who on that
spot, on May 14, 1769, sang the first Easter hymn heard on California
shores.
It was a sore grief for Father Crespí that the commandant of the party
would not wait here for him to say a mass of thanksgiving; but with
the port in sight, impatience could not be restrained, and the little
band pushed on. As soon as the San Diego camp was seen, the soldiers
discharged a salute of fire-arms, which was answered instantly from
shore and ship. Great joy filled every heart. The friars who had come
by sea ran to meet and embrace their brothers. The gladness was
dampened only by the sad condition of the ships' crews, many of whom
were dead or dying. They had been four months, with their poor charts
and poorer ships, making their way from La Paz up to San Diego; and in
consequence of insufficient and unwholesome food, the scurvy had
broken out among them. It was a melancholy beginning for the new
enterprise. When, six weeks later, the second land party with Father
Junipero arrived, eager to proceed to the establishing of the mission,
they found that their first duty was to the sick and dying of their
own people. In fifteen days twenty-nine of the sailors and soldiers
died. The Indians, who at first had been gentle and friendly, grew
each day more insolent and thievish, even tearing off the clothes of
the sick lying helpless in the tents or tule huts on the beach. At
last, on the 16th of July, a cross was set up facing the port, and in
a rude booth of branches and reeds, mass was celebrated and the grand
hymn of "Veni Creator" was sung, the pilgrims "supplying the want of
an organ by discharging fire-arms," says the old record, and with only
the "smoke of muskets for incense." Thus was founded the Mission of
San Diego; and thus was laid the corner-stone of the civilization of
California on July 16, 1769.
Two days before this the indefatigable Crespí had set off with another
overland party, Portalá at its head, to find Monterey. On this
journey, also, Father Crespí kept a diary,--little suspecting,
probably, with how much interest it would be studied a century later.
It was not strange that with only a compass and seventeenth-century
charts to guide them along the zigzagging labyrinths of bays,
headlands, and sand-hills which make the California shore, they
toiled to no purpose seeking the Monterey harbor. It is pitiful to
read the record of the days when they were close upon it, setting up a
cross on one of its hills, and yet could not see it; even querying, so
bewildered and lost were they, if it might not have been filled up
with sands since Viscayno's time. Forty leagues north of it they went,
and discovered the present bay of San Francisco, which they at once
recognized by Viscayno's description; and recalling the speech of
Galvez in regard to Saint Francis pointing out a port if he wanted a
mission of his own name, the pious fathers thought it not unlikely
that the saint himself had hidden Monterey from their sight, and led
them to his own harbor. Month after month passed, and still they were
wandering. They were footsore, weary, hungry, but not disheartened.
Friendly Indians everywhere greeted them kindly, gave them nuts, and
shell-fish, and bread made from acorn flour. At one time seventeen of
the party were too ill to travel. Twice they halted and held council
on the question of abandoning the search. Some were ready to continue
as long as the provisions held out, then to eat their mules, and go
back on foot. Fathers Crespí and Gomez volunteered to be left behind
alone.
At last, on the 11th of November, it was decided to return by the
route by which they had come. On the 20th, finding that their flour
had been stolen by the soldiers, they divided the remainder into equal
parts, giving to each person enough to last him two days. On Christmas
Day they had a present of nuts from friendly Indians, and on New
Year's Day they had the luck to kill a bear and three cubs, which gave
them a feast for which they offered most devout thanksgivings. For the
rest, they lived chiefly on mussels, with now and then a wild goose.
On the 24th of January they came out on the table-lands above San
Diego, six months and ten days from the time of their departure.
Firing a salute, they were answered instantly by shots from the camp,
and saw an eager crowd running to meet them, great anxiety having been
felt at their long absence.
It is worth while, in studying the history of these Franciscan
missions, to dwell on the details of the hardships endured in the
beginning by their founders. Only narrow-minded bigotry can fail to
see in them proofs of a spiritual enthusiasm and exaltation of
self-sacrifice which are rarely paralleled in the world's history. And
to do justice to the results accomplished, it is necessary to
understand thoroughly the conditions at the outset of the undertaking.
The weary, returned party found their comrades in sorry plight. The
scurvy had spread, and many more had died. Father Junipero himself had
been dangerously ill with it; provisions were running low; the Indians
were only half friendly, and were not to be trusted out of sight. The
supply-ships looked for from Mexico had not arrived.
A situation more helpless, unprotected, discouraging, could not be
conceived than that of this little, suffering band, separated by
leagues of desert and leagues of ocean from all possible succor. At
last an examination showed that there were only provisions sufficient
left to subsist the party long enough to make the journey back to
Velicatá. It seemed madness to remain longer; and Governor Portalá,
spite of Father Junipero's entreaties, gave orders to prepare for the
abandonment of the missions. He fixed the 20th of March as the last
day he would wait for the arrival of the ship. This was Saint Joseph's
Day. On the morning of it Father Junipero, who had been praying night
and day for weeks, celebrated to Saint Joseph a high mass, with
special supplications for relief. Before noon a sail was seen on the
horizon. One does not need to believe in saints and saints'
interpositions to feel a thrill at this coincidence, and in fancying
the effect the sudden vision of the relief-ship must have produced on
the minds of devout men who had been starving. The ship appeared for a
few moments, then disappeared; doubtless there were some who scoffed
at it as a mere apparition. But Portalá believed, and waited; and,
four days later, in the ship came!--the "San Antonio," bringing
bountiful stores of all that was needed.
Courage and cheer now filled the very air. No time was lost in
organizing expeditions to go once more in search of the mysteriously
hidden Monterey. In less than three weeks two parties had set
off,--one by sea in the "San Antonio." With this went Father Junipero,
still feeble from illness. Father Crespí, undaunted by his former six
months of wandering, joined the land party, reaching the Point of
Pines, on Monterey Harbor, seven days before the ship arrived. As soon
as she came in sight, bonfires were lighted on the rocks, and the ship
answered by firing cannon. It was a great rejoicing. The next day,
June 1st, the officers of the two parties met, and exchanged
congratulations; and on the third they took formal possession of the
place: first, in the name of the Church, by religious ceremonies;
secondly, in the name of the King of Spain, unfurling the royal
standard, and planting it in the ground, side by side with the cross.
To one familiar with the beauty of the Monterey shore in June, the
picture of this scene is vivid. The sand-dunes were ablaze with color;
lupines in high, waving masses, white and yellow; and great mats of
the glittering ice-plant, with myriads of rose-colored umbels, lying
flat on the white sand. Many rods inland, the air was sweet with their
fragrance, borne by the strong sea-wind. On long cliffs of broken,
tempest-piled rocks stood ranks upon ranks of grand old
cypress-trees,--gnarled, bent, twisted, defiant, full of both pathos
and triumph in their loneliness, in this the only spot on earth to
which they are native.
The booth of boughs in which the mass was performed was built under a
large oak, on the same spot where Viscayno had landed and his
Carmelite monks had said mass one hundred and sixty-seven years
before. The ceremonies closed with a ringing Te Deum,--sailors,
soldiers, monks, alike jubilant.
When the news of the founding of this second mission reached the city
of Mexico, there was a furore of excitement. The bells of the city
were rung; people ran up and down the streets telling each other; and
the viceroy held at his palace a grand reception, to which went all
persons of note, eager to congratulate him and Galvez. Printed
proclamations, giving full accounts, were circulated, not only in
Mexico but throughout Spain. No province so remote, no home so lowly,
as to fail to hear the good news. It was indeed good news to both
State and Church. The fact of the occupation of the new country was
accomplished; the scheme for the conversion and salvation of the
savage race was fairly inaugurated; Monterey and San Diego being
assured, ultimate possession of the whole of the coast line between
would follow. Little these gladdened people in Spain and Mexico
realized, however, the cost of the triumph over which they rejoiced,
or the true condition of the men who had won it.
The history of the next fifteen years is a history of struggle,
hardship, and heroic achievement. The indefatigable Serra was the
mainspring and support of it all. There seemed no limit to his
endurance, no bound to his desires; nothing daunted his courage or
chilled his faith. When, in the sixth year after the founding of the
San Diego Mission, it was attacked by hostile Indians, one of the
fathers being most cruelly murdered, and the buildings burned to the
ground, Father Junipero exclaimed, "Thank God! The seed of the Gospel
is now watered by the blood of a martyr; that mission is henceforth
established;" and in a few months he was on the spot, with money and
materials, ready for rebuilding; pressing sailors, neophytes,
soldiers, into the service; working with his own hands, also, spite of
the fears and protestations of all, and only desisting on positive
orders from the military commander. He journeyed, frequently on foot,
back and forth through the country, founding a new mission whenever,
by his urgent letters to the College of San Fernando and to the
Mexican viceroys, he had gathered together men and money enough to do
so. In 1772, when perplexities seemed inextricably thickened and
supplies had fallen so short that starvation threatened the missions,
he took ship to San Blas. With no companion except one Indian boy, he
toiled on foot from San Blas to Guadalajara, two hundred and forty
miles. Here they both fell ill of fever, and sank so low that they
were supposed to be dying, and the Holy Viaticum was administered to
them. But they recovered, and while only partly convalescent, pushed
on again, reaching the city of Mexico in February, 1773. Hard-hearted
indeed must the Mexican viceroy have been to refuse to heed the
prayers of an aged man who had given such proofs as this of his
earnestness and devotion. The difficulties were cleared up, money and
supplies obtained, and Father Junipero returned to his post with a
joyful heart. Before leaving, he kissed the feet of the friars in the
college, and asked their blessing, saying that they would never behold
him more.
Father Junipero's most insatiable passion was for baptizing Indians;
the saving of one soul thus from death filled him with unspeakable
joy. His biographer illustrates this by the narrative of the first
infant baptism attempted at the San Diego Mission. The Indians had
been prevailed upon to bring an infant to receive the consecration.
Everything was ready: Father Junipero had raised his hand to sprinkle
the child's face; suddenly heathen terror got the better of the
parents, and in the twinkling of an eye they snatched their babe and
ran. Tears rolled down Father Junipero's cheeks: he declared that only
some unworthiness in himself could have led to such a disaster; and to
the day of his death he could never tell the story without tears,
thinking it must be owing to his sins that the soul of that particular
child had been lost.
When he preached he was carried out of himself by the fervor of his
desire to impress his hearers. Baring his breast, he would beat it
violently with a stone, or burn the flesh with a lighted torch, to
enhance the effect of his descriptions of the tortures of hell. There
is in his memoir a curious engraving, showing him lifted high above a
motley group of listeners, holding in his hands the blazing torch and
the stone.
In the same book is an outline map of California as he knew it. It is
of the coast line from San Diego to San Francisco, and the only
objects marked on it are the missions and dotted lines showing the
roads leading from one to another. All the rest is a blank.
There were nine of these missions, founded by Serra, before his death
in 1784. They were founded in the following order: San Diego, July 16,
1769; San Carlos de Monterey, June 3, 1770; San Antonio de Padua, July
14, 1771; San Gabriel, Sept. 8, 1771; San Luis Obispo, Sept. 1, 1772;
San Francisco (Dolores), Oct. 9, 1776; San Juan Capistrano, Nov. 1,
1776; Santa Clara, Jan. 18, 1777; San Buena Ventura, March 31, 1782.
The transports into which Father Junipero was thrown by the beginning
of a new mission are graphically told by the companion who went with
him to establish the mission of San Antonio. With his little train of
soldiers, and mules laden with a few weeks' supplies, he wandered off
into the unexplored wilderness sixty miles south of Monterey, looking
eagerly for river valleys promising fertility. As soon as the
beautiful oak-shaded plain, with its river swift and full even in
July, caught his eye, he ordered a halt, seized the bells, tied them
to an oak bough, and fell to ringing them with might and main, crying
aloud: "Hear, hear, O ye Gentiles! Come to the Holy Church! Come to
the faith of Jesus Christ!" Not a human creature was in sight, save
his own band; and his companion remonstrated with him. "Let me alone,"
cried Father Junipero. "Let me unburden my heart, which could wish
that this bell should be heard by all the world, or at least by all
the Gentiles in these mountains;" and he rang on till the echoes
answered, and one astonished Indian appeared,--the first instance in
which a native had been present at the foundation of a mission. Not
long afterward came a very aged Indian woman named Agreda, begging to
be baptized, saying that she had seen a vision in the skies of a man
clad like the friars, and that her father had repeated to her in her
youth the same words they now spoke.
The history of this San Antonio Mission justified Father Junipero's
selection. The site proved one of the richest and most repaying,
including, finally, seven large farms with a chapel on each, and being
famous for the best wheat grown, and the best flour made in the
country. The curious mill in which the flour was ground is still to be
seen,--a most interesting ruin. It was run by water brought in a
stone-walled ditch for many miles, and driven through a funnel-shaped
flume so as to strike the side of a large water-wheel, revolving
horizontally on a shaft. The building of this aqueduct and the placing
of the wheel were the work of an Indian named Nolberto, who took the
idea from the balance-wheel of a watch, and did all the work with his
own hands. The walls are broken now; and the sands have so blown in
and piled around the entrance, that the old wheel seems buried in a
cellar; linnets have builded nests in the dusky corners, and are so
seldom disturbed that their bright eyes gaze with placid unconcern at
curious intruders.
Many interesting incidents are recorded in connection with the
establishment of these first missions. At San Gabriel the Indians
gathered in great force, and were about to attack the little band of
ten soldiers and two friars preparing to plant their cross; but on
the unfurling of a banner with a life-size picture of the Virgin
painted on it, they flung away their bows and arrows, came running
toward the banner with gestures of reverence and delight, and threw
their beads and other ornaments on the ground before it, as at the
feet of a suddenly recognized queen.
The San Gabriel Indians seem to have been a superior race. They spoke
a soft, musical language, now nearly lost. Their name for God
signified "Giver of Life." They had no belief in a devil or in hell,
and persisted always in regarding them as concerning only white men.
Robbery was unknown among them, murder was punished by death, and
marriage between those near of kin was not allowed. They had names for
the points of the compass, and knew the North Star, calling it Runi.
They had games at which they decked themselves with flower garlands,
which wreathed their heads and hung down to their feet. They had
certain usages of politeness, such as that a child, bringing water to
an elder, must not taste it on the way; and that to pass between two
who were speaking was an offence. They had song contests, often
lasting many days, and sometimes handed down to the next generation.
To a people of such customs as these, the symbols, shows, and
ceremonies of the Catholic Church must needs have seemed especially
beautiful and winning.
The records of the founding of these missions are similar in details,
but are full of interest to one in sympathy either with their
spiritual or their historical significance. The routine was the same
in all cases. A cross was set up; a booth of branches was built; the
ground and the booth were consecrated by holy water, and christened by
the name of a saint; a mass was performed; the neighboring Indians, if
there were any, were roused and summoned by the ringing of bells swung
on limbs of trees; presents of cloth and trinkets were given them to
inspire them with trust, and thus a mission was founded. Two monks
(never, at first, more) were appointed to take charge of this cross
and booth, and to win, baptize, convert, and teach all the Indians to
be reached in the region. They had for guard and help a few soldiers,
and sometimes a few already partly civilized and Christianized
Indians; several head of cattle, some tools and seeds, and holy
vessels for the church service, completed their store of weapons,
spiritual and secular, offensive and defensive, with which to conquer
the wilderness and its savages. There needs no work of the imagination
to help this picture. Taken in its sternest realism, it is vivid and
thrilling; contrasting the wretched poverty of these single-handed
beginnings with the final splendor and riches attained, the result
seems wellnigh miraculous.
From the rough booth of boughs and reeds of 1770 to the pillars,
arched corridors, and domes of the stately stone churches of a
half-century later, is a change only a degree less wonderful than the
change in the Indian, from the naked savage with his one stone tool,
grinding acorn-meal in a rock bowl, to the industrious tiller of soil,
weaver of cloth, worker in metals, and singer of sacred hymns. The
steps of this change were slow at first. In 1772, at the end of five
years' work, five missions had been founded, and four hundred and
ninety-one Indians baptized. There were then, in these five missions,
but nineteen friars and sixty soldiers. In 1786, La Perouse, a French
naval commander, who voyaged along the California coast, leaves it on
record that there were but two hundred and eighty-two soldiers, and
about one hundred officers and friars, all told, in both Upper and
Lower California, from Cape Saint Lucas to San Francisco, a line of
eight hundred leagues. At this time there were five thousand one
hundred and forty-three Indians, in the missions of Upper California
alone. In the year 1800 there were, at the mission of San Diego,
fifteen hundred and twenty-one Indians; and the San Diego garrison,
three miles away from the mission, numbered only one hundred and
sixty-seven souls,--officers, soldiers, servants, women, and children.
Such figures as these seem sufficient refutation of the idea sometimes
advanced, that the Indians were converted by force and held in
subjection by terror. There is still preserved, in the archives of the
Franciscan College at Santa Barbara, a letter written by Father
Junipero to the Viceroy of Mexico, in 1776, imploring him to send a
force of eighty soldiers to be divided among seven missions. He
patiently explains that the friars, stationed by twos, at new
missions, from sixty to a hundred miles distant from each other,
cannot be expected to feel safe without a reasonable military
protection; and he asks pertinently what defence could be made, "in
case the enemy should tempt the Gentiles to attack us." That there was
so little active hostility on the part of the savage tribes, that they
looked so kindly as they did to the ways and restraints of the new
life, is the strongest possible proof that the methods of the friars
in dealing with them must have been both wise and humane.
During the first six years there was but one serious outbreak,--that
at San Diego. No retaliation was shown toward the Indians for this; on
the contrary, the orders of both friars and military commanders were
that they should be treated with even greater kindness than before;
and in less than two years the mission buildings were rebuilt, under a
guard of only a half-score of soldiers with hundreds of Indians
looking on, and many helping cheerfully in the work. The San Carlos
Mission at Monterey was Father Junipero's own charge. There he spent
all his time, when not called away by his duties as president of the
missions. There he died, and there he was buried. There, also, his
beloved friend and brother, Father Crespí, labored by his side for
thirteen years. Crespí was a sanguine, joyous man, sometimes called El
Beato, from his happy temperament. No doubt his gayety made Serra's
sunshine in many a dark day; and grief at his death did much to break
down the splendid old man's courage and strength. Only a few months
before it occurred, they had gone together for a short visit to their
comrade, Father Palon, at the San Francisco Mission. When they took
leave of him, Crespí said, "Farewell forever; you will see me no more."
This was late in the autumn of 1781, and on New Year's Day, 1782, he
died, aged sixty years, and having spent half of those years in
laboring for the Indians. Serra lived only two years longer, and is
said never to have been afterwards the same as before. For many years
he had been a great sufferer from an affection of the heart,--aggravated,
if not induced, by his fierce beatings of his breast with a stone
while he was preaching. But physical pain seemed to make no impression
on his mind. If it did not incapacitate him for action, he held it of
no account. Only the year before his death, being then seventy years
old, and very lame, he had journeyed on foot from San Diego to
Monterey, visiting every mission and turning aside into all the Indian
settlements on the way. At this time there were on the Santa Barbara
coast alone, within a space of eighty miles, twenty-one villages of
Indians, roughly estimated as containing between twenty and thirty
thousand souls. He is said to have gone weeping from village to
village because he could do nothing for them.
He reached San Carlos in January, 1784, and never again went away. The
story of his last hours and death is in the old church records of
Monterey, written there by the hand of the sorrowing Palon, the second
day after he had closed his friend's eyes. It is a quaint and touching
narrative.
Up to the day before his death, his indomitable will upholding the
failing strength of his dying body, Father Junipero had read in the
church the canonical offices of each day, a service requiring an hour
and a half of time. The evening before his death he walked alone to
the church to receive the last sacrament. The church was crowded to
overflowing with Indians and whites, many crying aloud in
uncontrollable grief.
Father Junipero knelt before the altar with great fervor of manner,
while Father Palon, with tears rolling down his cheeks, read the
services for the dying, gave him absolution, and administered the Holy
Viaticum. Then rose from choked and tremulous voices the strains of
the grand hymn "Tantum Ergo,"--
"Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui,
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui;
Præstet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.
"Genitori genitoque
Laus et jubilatio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio;
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio."
A startled thrill ran through the church as Father Junipero's own
voice, "high and strong as ever," says the record, joined in the
hymn. One by one the voices of his people broke down, stifled by sobs,
until at last the dying man's voice, almost alone, finished the hymn.
After this he gave thanks, and returning to his cell-like room spent
the whole of the night in listening to penitential psalms and
litanies, and giving thanks to God; all the time kneeling or sitting
on the ground supported by the loving and faithful Palon. In the
morning, early, he asked for the plenary indulgence, for which he
again knelt, and confessed again. At noon the chaplain and the captain
of the bark "St. Joseph," then lying in port at Monterey, came to
visit him. He welcomed them, and cordially embracing the chaplain,
said, "You have come just in time to cast the earth upon my body."
After they took their leave, he asked Palon to read to him again the
Recommendations of the Soul. At its conclusion he responded earnestly,
in as clear voice as in health, adding, "Thank God, I am now without
fear." Then with a firm step he walked to the kitchen, saying that he
would like a cup of broth. As soon as he had taken the broth, he
exclaimed, "I feel better now; I will rest;" and lying down he closed
his eyes, and without another word or sign of struggle or pain ceased
to breathe, entering indeed into a rest of which his last word had
been solemnly prophetic.
Ever since morning the grief-stricken people had been waiting and
listening for the tolling death-bell to announce that all was over. At
its first note they came in crowds, breathless, weeping, and
lamenting. It was with great difficulty that the soldiers could keep
them from tearing Father Junipero's habit piecemeal from his body, so
ardent was their desire to possess some relic of him. The corpse was
laid at once in a coffin which he himself had ordered made many weeks
before. The vessels in port fired a salute of one hundred and one
guns, answered by the same from the guns of the presidio at
Monterey,--an honor given to no one below the rank of general. But the
hundred gun salutes were a paltry honor in comparison with the tears
of the Indian congregation. Soldiers kept watch around his coffin
night and day till the burial; but they could not hold back the
throngs of the poor creatures who pressed to touch the hand of the
father they had so much loved, and to bear away something, if only a
thread, of the garments he had worn.
His ardent and impassioned nature and his untiring labors had won
their deepest affection and confidence. It was his habit when at San
Carlos to spend all his time with them, working by their side in the
fields, making adobe, digging, tilling, doing, in short, all that he
required of them. Day after day he thus labored, only desisting at the
hours for performing offices in the church. Whenever an Indian came to
address him, he made the sign of the cross on his forehead, and spoke
to him some words of spiritual injunction or benediction. The
arbitrariness--or, as some of his enemies called it, haughty
self-will--which brought Serra at times into conflict with the
military authorities when their purposes or views clashed with his
own, never came to the surface in his spiritual functions, or in his
relation with the Indian converts. He loved them, and yearned over
them as brands to be snatched from the burning. He had baptized over
one thousand of them with his own hands; his whole life he spent for
them, and was ready at any moment to lay it down if that would have
benefited them more. Absolute single-heartedness like this is never
misunderstood by, and never antagonizes equally single-hearted people,
either high or low. But to be absolutely single-hearted in a moral
purpose is almost inevitably to be doggedly one-ideaed in regard to
practical methods; and the single-hearted, one-ideaed man, with a
great moral purpose, is sure to be often at swords' points with
average men of selfish interests and mixed notions. This is the
explanation of the fact that the later years of Serra's life were
marred by occasional collisions with the military authorities in the
country. No doubt the impetuosity of his nature made him sometimes hot
in resentment and indiscreet of speech. But in spite of these
failings, he yet remains the foremost, grandest figure in the
missions' history. If his successors in their administration had been
equal to him in spirituality, enthusiasm, and intellect, the mission
establishments would never have been so utterly overthrown and ruined.
Father Junipero sleeps on the spot where he labored and died. His
grave is under the ruins of the beautiful stone church of his
mission,--the church which he saw only in ardent and longing fancy.
It was perhaps the most beautiful, though not the grandest of the
mission churches; and its ruins have to-day a charm far exceeding all
the others. The fine yellow tint of the stone, the grand and unique
contour of the arches, the beautiful star-shaped window in the front,
the simple yet effective lines of carving on pilaster and pillar and
doorway, the symmetrical Moorish tower and dome, the worn steps
leading up to the belfry,--all make a picture whose beauty, apart from
hallowing associations, is enough to hold one spell-bound. Reverent
Nature has rebuilt with grass and blossoms even the crumbling
window-sills, across which the wind blows free from the blue ocean
just beyond; and on the day we saw the place, golden wheat, fresh
reaped, was piled in loose mounds on the south slope below the
church's southern wall. It reminded me of the tales I had heard from
many aged men and women of a beautiful custom the Indians had of
scattering their choicest grains on the ground at the friars' feet, as
a token of homage.
The roof of the church long ago fell in; its doors have stood open for
years; and the fierce sea-gales have been sweeping in, piling sands
until a great part of the floor is covered with solid earth on which
every summer grasses and weeds grow high enough to be cut by sickles.
Of the thousands of acres which the Mission Indians once cultivated in
the San Carlos valley, only nine were finally decreed by the United
States Government to belong to the church. These were so carelessly
surveyed that no avenue of approach was left open to the mission
buildings, and a part of the land had to be sold to buy a right of way
to the church. The remnant left makes a little farm, by the rental of
which a man can be hired to take charge of the whole place, and keep
it, if possible, from further desecration and ruin. The present keeper
is a devout Portuguese, whose broken English becomes eloquent as he
speaks of the old friars whose graves he guards.
"Dem work for civilize," he said, "not work for money. Dey work to
religion."
In clearing away the earth at the altar end of the church, in the
winter of 1882, this man came upon stone slabs evidently covering
graves. On opening one of these graves, it was found to hold three
coffins. From the minute description, in the old records, of Father
Junipero's place of burial, Father Carenova, the priest now in charge
of the Monterey parish, became convinced that one of these coffins
must be his. On the opposite side of the church is another grave,
where are buried two of the earliest governors of California.
It is a disgrace to both the Catholic Church and the State of
California that this grand old ruin, with its sacred sepulchres,
should be left to crumble away. If nothing is done to protect and save
it, one short hundred years more will see it a shapeless, wind-swept
mound of sand. It is not in our power to confer honor or bring
dishonor on the illustrious dead. We ourselves, alone, are dishonored
when we fail in reverence to them. The grave of Junipero Serra may be
buried centuries deep, and its very place forgotten; yet his name will
not perish, nor his fame suffer. But for the men of the country whose
civilization he founded, and of the Church whose faith he so
glorified, to permit his burial-place to sink into oblivion, is a
shame indeed!
II.
If the little grief-stricken band of monks who stood weeping around
Junipero Serra's grave in 1784 could have foreseen the events of the
next thirty years, their weeping would have been turned into exultant
joy; but not the most daring enthusiast among them could have dreamed
of the harvest of power destined to be raised from the seed thus sown
in weakness.
Almost with his dying breath Father Junipero had promised to use "all
his influence with God" in behalf of the missions. In the course of
the next four months after his death more converts were baptized than
in the whole three years previous; and it became at once the common
belief that his soul had passed directly into heaven, and that this
great wave of conversions was the result of his prayers. Prosperity
continued steadily to increase. Mission after mission was successfully
founded, until, in 1804, the occupation of the sea-coast line from San
Francisco to San Diego was complete, there being nineteen mission
establishments only an easy day's journey apart from each other.
The ten new missions were founded in the following order: Santa
Barbara, Dec. 4, 1786; La Purissima, Dec. 8, 1787; Santa Cruz, Sept.
25, 1791; Soledad, Oct. 9, 1791; San José, June 11, 1797; San Juan
Bautista, June 24, 1797; San Miguel, July 25, 1797; San Fernando Rey,
Sept. 8, 1797; San Luis Rey de Francia, June 18, 1798; Santa Inez,
Sept. 7, 1804.
Beginnings had also been made on a projected second line, to be from
thirty to fifty miles back from the sea; and this inland chain of
settlements and development promised to be in no way inferior to the
first. The wealth of the mission establishments had grown to an almost
incredible degree. In several of them massive stone churches had been
built, of an architecture at once so simple and harmonious that, even
in ruins, it is to-day the grandest in America; and it will remain, so
long as arch, pillar, or dome of it shall stand, a noble and touching
monument of the patient Indian workers who built, and of the devoted
friars who designed, its majestic and graceful proportions.
In all of the missions were buildings on a large scale, providing for
hundreds of occupants, for all the necessary trades and manufactures,
and many of the ornamental arts of civilized life. Enormous tracts of
land were under high cultivation; the grains and cool fruits of the
temperate zone flourishing, in the marvellous California air, side by
side with the palm, olive, grape, fig, orange, and pomegranate. From
the two hundred head of cattle sent by the wise Galvez, had grown
herds past numbering; and to these had been added vast flocks of sheep
and herds of horses. In these nineteen missions were gathered over
twenty thousand Indians, leading regular and industrious lives, and
conforming to the usages of the Catholic religion.
A description of the San Luis Rey Mission, written by De Mofras, an
_attaché_ of the French Legation in Mexico in 1842, gives a clear
idea of the form, and some of the methods, of the mission
establishments:--
"The building is a quadrilateral, four hundred and fifty feet
square; the church occupies one of its wings; the façade is
ornamented with a gallery. The building is two stories in
height. The interior is formed by a court ornamented with
fountains, and decorated with trees. Upon the gallery which
runs around it open the dormitories of the monks, of the
majors-domo, and of travellers, small workshops, schoolrooms,
and storerooms. The hospitals are situated in the most quiet
parts of the mission, where also the schools are kept. The
young Indian girls dwell in halls called monasteries, and are
called nuns. Placed under the care of Indian matrons, who are
worthy of confidence, they learn to make cloth of wool, cotton,
and flax, and do not leave the monastery until they are old
enough to be married. The Indian children mingle in schools
with those of the white colonists. A certain number chosen
among the pupils who display the most intelligence learn music,
chanting, the violin, flute, horn, violoncello, or other
instruments. Those who distinguish themselves in the
carpenters' shops, at the forge, or in agricultural labors are
appointed alcaldes, or overseers, and charged with the
directions of the laborers."
Surrounding these buildings, or arranged in regular streets upon one
side of them, were the homes of the Indian families. These were built
of adobe, or of reeds, after the native fashion. The daily routine of
the Indians' life was simple and uniform. They were divided into
squads of laborers. At sunrise the Angelus bell called them to mass.
After the mass they breakfasted, and then dispersed to their various
labors. At eleven they were again summoned together for dinner, after
which they rested until two, when they went again to work, and worked
until the evening Angelus, just before sunset. After prayers and
supper they were in the habit of dancing and playing games until
bedtime. Their food was good. They had meat at noon, accompanied by
_posale_, a sort of succotash made of corn, beans, and wheat, boiled
together. Their breakfast and supper were usually of porridge made
from different grains, called _atole_ and _pinole_.
The men wore linen shirts, pantaloons, and blankets. The overseers and
best workmen had suits of cloth like the Spaniards. The women
received every year two chemises, one gown, and a blanket. De Mofras
says:--
"When the hides, tallow, grain, wine, and oil were sold at good
prices to ships from abroad, the monks distributed
handkerchiefs, wearing apparel, tobacco, and trinkets among the
Indians, and devoted the surplus to the embellishment of the
churches, the purchase of musical instruments, pictures, church
ornaments, etc.; still they were careful to keep a part of the
harvest in the granaries to provide for years of scarcity."
The rule of the friars was in the main a kindly one. The vice of
drunkenness was severely punished by flogging. Quarrelling between
husbands and wives was also dealt with summarily, the offending
parties being chained together by the leg till they were glad to
promise to keep peace. New converts and recruits were secured in many
ways: sometimes by sending out parties of those already attached to
the new mode of life, and letting them set forth to the savages the
advantages and comforts of the Christian way; sometimes by luring
strangers in with gifts; sometimes, it is said, by capturing them by
main force; but of this there is only scanty evidence, and it is not
probable that it was often practised. It has also been said that cruel
and severe methods were used to compel the Indians to work; that they
were driven under the lash by their overseers, and goaded with lances
by the soldiers. No doubt there were individual instances of cruelty;
seeds of it being indigenous in human nature, such absolute control of
hundreds of human beings could not exist without some abuses of the
power. But that the Indians were, on the whole, well treated and cared
for, the fact that so many thousands of them chose to remain in the
missions is proof. With open wilderness on all sides, and with
thousands of savage friends and relatives close at hand, nothing but
their own free will could have kept such numbers of them loyal and
contented. Forbes, in his history of California, written in 1832,
says:--
"The best and most unequivocal proof of the good conduct of the
fathers is to be found in the unbounded affection and devotion
invariably shown toward them by their Indian subjects. They
venerate them not merely as friends and fathers, but with a
degree of devotion approaching to adoration."
The picture of life in one of these missions during their period of
prosperity is unique and attractive. The whole place was a hive of
industry: trades plying indoors and outdoors; tillers, herders,
vintagers by hundreds, going to and fro; children in schools; women
spinning; bands of young men practising on musical instruments; music,
the scores of which, in many instances, they had themselves written
out; at evening, all sorts of games of running, leaping, dancing, and
ball-throwing, and the picturesque ceremonies of a religion which has
always been wise in availing itself of beautiful agencies in color,
form, and harmony.
At every mission were walled gardens with waving palms, sparkling
fountains, groves of olive trees, broad vineyards, and orchards of all
manner of fruits; over all, the sunny, delicious, winterless
California sky.
More than mortal, indeed, must the Franciscans have been, to have been
able, under these conditions, to preserve intact the fervor and spirit
of self-abnegation and deprivation inculcated by the rules of their
order. There is a half-comic pathos in the records of occasional
efforts made by one and another of the presidents to check the growing
disposition toward ease on the part of the friars. At one time several
of them were found to be carrying silver watches. The watches were
taken away, and sent to Guadalajara to be sold, the money to be paid
into the Church treasury. At another time an order was issued,
forbidding the wearing of shoes and stockings in place of sandals, and
the occupying of too large and comfortable rooms. And one zealous
president, finding that the friars occasionally rode in the carts
belonging to their missions, had all the carts burned, to compel the
fathers to go about on foot.
The friars were forced, by the very facts of their situation, into the
exercise of a constant and abounding hospitality; and this of itself
inevitably brought about large departures from the ascetic _régime_ of
living originally preached and practised. Most royally did they
discharge the obligations of this hospitality. Travellers' rooms were
kept always ready in every mission; and there were even set apart
fruit orchards called "travellers' orchards." A man might ride from
San Diego to Monterey by easy day's journeys, spending each night as
guest in a mission establishment. As soon as he rode up, an Indian
page would appear to take his horse; another to show him to one of the
travellers' rooms. He was served with the best of food and wine as
long as he liked to stay, and when he left he might, if he wished,
take from the mission herd a fresh horse to carry him on his journey.
All the California voyagers and travellers of the time speak in
glowing terms of this generous and cordial entertaining by the friars.
It was, undoubtedly, part of their policy as representatives of the
State, but it was no less a part of their duty as Franciscans.
Some of the highest tributes which have been paid to them, both as men
and as administrators of affairs, have come from strangers who, thus
sojourning under their roofs, had the best opportunity of knowing
their lives. Says Forbes:--
"Their conduct has been marked by a degree of benevolence,
humanity, and moderation probably unexampled in any other
situation.... I have never heard that they have not acted with
the most perfect fidelity, or that they ever betrayed a trust,
or acted with inhumanity."
This testimony is of the more weight that it comes from a man not in
sympathy with either the religious or the secular system on which the
friars' labors were based.
The tales still told by old people of festal occasions at the missions
sound like tales of the Old World rather than of the New. There was a
strange difference, fifty years ago, between the atmosphere of life on
the east and west sides of the American continent: on the Atlantic
shore, the descendants of the Puritans, weighed down by serious
purpose, half grudging the time for their one staid yearly
Thanksgiving, and driving the Indians farther and farther into the
wilderness every year, fighting and killing them; on the sunny Pacific
shore, the merry people of Mexican and Spanish blood, troubling
themselves about nothing, dancing away whole days and nights like
children, while their priests were gathering the Indians by thousands
into communities, and feeding and teaching them.
The most beautiful woman known in California a half-century ago[2]
still lives in Santa Barbara, white-haired, bright-eyed,
eloquent-tongued to-day. At the time of her marriage, her husband
being a brother of the Superior of the Santa Barbara mission, her
wedding banquet was spread on tables running the whole length of the
outer corridor of the mission. For three days and three nights the
feasting and dancing were kept up, and the whole town was bid. On the
day after her wedding came the christening or blessing of the right
tower of the church. She and her husband, having been chosen godfather
and godmother to the tower, walked in solemn procession around it,
carrying lighted candles in their hands, preceded by the friar, who
sprinkled it with holy water and burned incense. In the four long
streets of Indians' houses, then running eastward from the mission,
booths of green boughs, decorated with flowers, were set up in front
of all the doors. Companies of Indians from other missions came as
guests, dancing and singing as they approached. Their Indian hosts
went out to meet them, also singing, and pouring out seeds on the
ground for them to walk on. These were descendants of the Indians who,
when Viscayno anchored off Santa Barbara in 1602, came out in canoes,
bringing their king, and rowed three times around Viscayno's ship,
chanting a chorus of welcome. Then the king, going on board the ship,
walked three times around the deck, chanting the same song. He then
gave to the Spaniards gifts of all the simple foods he had, and
implored them to land, promising that if they would come and be their
brothers, he would give to each man ten wives.
With the increase of success, wealth, and power on the part of the
missions came increasing complexities in their relation to the
military settlements in the country. The original Spanish plan of
colonization was threefold,--religious, military, and civil. Its first
two steps were a mission and a presidio, or garrison,--the presidio to
be the guard of the mission; later was to come the pueblo,[3] or
town. From indefiniteness in the understanding of property rights, and
rights of authority, as vested under these three heads, there very
soon arose confusion, which led to collisions,--collisions which have
not yet ceased, and never will, so long as there remains a land-title
in California to be quarrelled over. The law records of the State are
brimful of briefs, counter-briefs, opinions, and counter-opinions
regarding property issues, all turning on definitions which nobody has
now clear right to make, of old pueblo and presidio titles and bounds.
In the beginning there were no grants of land; everything was done by
royal decree. In the form of taking possession of the new lands, the
Church, by right of sacred honor, came first, the religious ceremony
always preceding the military. Not till the cross was set up, and the
ground consecrated and taken possession of, in the name of God, for
the Church's purposes, did any military commander ever think of
planting the royal standard, symbolizing the king's possession. In the
early days the relations between the military and the ecclesiastical
representatives of the king were comparatively simple: the soldiers
were sent avowedly and specifically to protect the friars; moreover,
in those earlier days, soldiers and friars were alike devout, and, no
doubt, had the mission interests more equally at heart than they did
later. But each year's increase of numbers in the garrisons, and of
numbers and power in the missions, increased the possibilities of
clashing, until finally the relations between the two underwent a
singular reversal; and the friars, if disposed to be satirical, might
well have said that, however bad a rule might be which would not work
both ways, a rule which did was not of necessity a good one, it being
now the duty of the missions to support the presidios; the military
governors being authorized to draw upon the friars not only for
supplies, but for contributions of money and for levies of
laborers.[4]
On the other hand, no lands could be set off or assigned for colonists
without consent of the friars, and there were many other curious and
entangling cross-purpose powers distributed between friars and
military governors quite sufficient to make it next to impossible for
things to go smoothly.
The mission affairs, so far as their own internal interests were
concerned, were administered with admirable simplicity and system. The
friars in charge of the missions were responsible directly to the
president, or prefect, of the missions. He, in turn, was responsible
to the president, or guardian, of the Franciscan College in San
Fernando, in Mexico. One responsible officer, called procurador, was
kept in the city of Mexico to buy supplies for the missions from
stipends due, and from the drafts given to the friars by the presidio
commanders for goods furnished to the presidios. There was also a
syndic, or general agent, at San Bias, who attended to the shipping
and forwarding of supplies. It was a happy combination of the minimum
of functionaries with the maximum of responsibility.
The income supporting the missions was derived from two sources, the
first of which was a fund, called the "Pious Fund," originally
belonging to the Jesuit order, but on the suppression of that order,
in 1868, taken possession of by the Spanish Government in trust for
the Church. This fund, begun early in the eighteenth century, was made
up of estates, mines, manufactories, and flocks,--all gifts of rich
Catholics to the Society of Jesus. It yielded an income of fifty
thousand dollars a year, the whole of which belonged to the Church,
and was to be used in paying stipends to the friars (to the Dominicans
in Lower as well as to the Franciscans in Upper California), and in
the purchasing of articles needed in the missions. The missions'
second source of income was from the sales of their own products:
first to the presidios,--these sales paid for by drafts on the Spanish
or Mexican Government; second, to trading ships, coming more and more
each year to the California coast.
As soon as revolutionary troubles began to agitate Spain and Mexico,
the income of the missions from abroad began to fall off. The Pious
Fund was too big a sum to be honestly administered by any government
hard pressed for money. Spain began to filch from it early, to pay the
bills of her wars with Portugal and England; and Mexico, as soon as
she had the chance, followed Spain's example vigorously, selling whole
estates and pocketing their price, farming the fund out for the
benefit of the State treasury, and, finally, in Santa Anna's time,
selling the whole outright to two banking-houses. During these
troublous times the friars not only failed frequently to receive their
regular stipends allotted from the interest of this Pious Fund, but
their agent was unable to collect the money due them for the supplies
furnished to the presidios. The sums of which they were thus robbed by
two governments--that, being ostensibly of the Catholic faith, should
surely have held the Church's property sacred--mounted up in a few
years to such enormous figures that restitution would have been
practically impossible, and, except for their own internal sources of
revenue, the missions must have come to bankruptcy and ruin.
However, the elements which were to bring about this ruin were already
at work,--were, indeed, inherent in the very system on which they had
been founded. The Spanish Government was impatient to see carried out,
and to reap the benefit of, the pueblo feature of its colonization
plan. With a singular lack of realization of the time needed to make
citizens out of savages, it had set ten years as the period at the
expiration of which the Indian communities attached to the missions
were to be formed into pueblos,--the missions to be secularized, that
is, turned into curacies, the pueblo being the parish. This was, no
doubt, the wise and proper ultimate scheme,--the only one, in fact,
which provided either for the entire civilization of the Indian or the
successful colonization of the country. But five times ten years would
have been little enough to allow for getting such a scheme fairly
under way, and another five times ten years for the finishing and
rounding of the work. It is strange how sure civilized peoples are,
when planning and legislating for savages, to forget that it has
always taken centuries to graft on or evolve out of savagery anything
like civilization.
Aiming towards this completing of their colonization plan, the
Spanish Government had very early founded the pueblos of Los Angeles
and San José. A second class of pueblos, called, in the legal phrase
of California's later days, "Presidial Pueblos," had originated in the
settlement of the presidios, and gradually grown up around them. There
were four of these,--San Diego, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and San
Francisco.
It is easy to see how, as these settlements increased, of persons more
or less unconnected with the missions, there must have grown up
discontent at the Church's occupation and control of so large a
proportion of the country. Ready for alliance with this discontent was
the constant jealousy on the part of the military authorities, whose
measures were often--and, no doubt, often rightly--opposed by the
friars. These fomenting causes of disquiet reacted on the impatience
and greed in Spain; all together slowly, steadily working against the
missions, until, in 1813, the Spanish Cortes passed an act decreeing
their secularization. This was set forth in sounding phrase as an act
purely for the benefit of the Indians, that they might become citizens
of towns. But it was, to say the least of it, as much for Spain as for
the Indians, since, by its provisions, one half of the mission lands
were to be sold for the payment of Spain's national debt. This act, so
manifestly premature, remained a dead letter; but it alarmed the
friars, and with reason. It was the tocsin of their doom, of the
downfall of their establishments, and the ruin of their work.
Affairs grew more and more unsettled. Spanish viceroys and Mexican
insurgents took turns at ruling in Mexico, and the representatives of
each took turns at ruling in California. The waves of every Mexican
revolution broke on the California shore. The College of San Fernando,
in Mexico, also shared in the general confusion, and many of its
members returned to Spain.
From 1817 to 1820 great requisitions were made by the Government upon
the missions. They responded generously. They gave not only food, but
money. They submitted to a tax, _per capita_, on all their thousands
of Indians, to pay the expenses of a deputy to sit in the Mexican
Congress. They allowed troops to be quartered in the mission
buildings. At the end of the year 1820 the outstanding drafts on the
Government, in favor of the missions, amounted to four hundred
thousand dollars.
It is impossible, in studying the records of this time, not to feel
that the friars were, in the main, disposed to work in good faith for
the best interests of the State. That they opposed the secularization
project is true; but it is unjust to assume that their motives in so
doing were purely selfish. Most certainly, the results of the carrying
out of that project were such as to prove all that they claimed of its
untimeliness. It is easy saying, as their enemies do, that they would
never have advocated it, and were not training the Indians with a view
to it: but the first assertion is an assumption, and nothing more; and
the refutation of the second lies in the fact that even in that short
time they had made the savages into "masons, carpenters, plasterers,
soap-makers, tanners, shoe-makers, blacksmiths, millers, bakers,
cooks, brick-makers, carters and cart-makers, weavers and spinners,
saddlers, ship hands, agriculturists, herdsmen, vintagers;--in a word,
they filled all the laborious occupations known to civilized
society."[5] Moreover, in many of the missions, plots of land had
already been given to individual neophytes who seemed to have
intelligence and energy enough to begin an independent life for
themselves. But it is idle speculating now as to what would or would
not have been done under conditions which never existed.
So long as Spain refused to recognize Mexico's independence, the
majority of the friars, as was natural, remained loyal to the Spanish
Government, and yielded with reluctance and under protest, in every
instance, to Mexico's control. For some years President Sarria was
under arrest for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the
Mexican republic. Nevertheless, it not being convenient to remove him
and fill his place, he performed all his functions as president of the
missions through that time. Many other friars refused to take the
oath, and left the country in consequence. During three years the
secularization project was continually agitated, and at intervals
measures initiatory to it were decreed and sometimes acted upon.
The shifting governors of unfortunate California legislated for or
against the mission interests according to the exigencies of their
needs or the warmness or lukewarmness of their religious faith.
An act of one year, declaring the Indians liberated, and ordering the
friars to turn over the mission properties to administrators, would be
followed a few years later by an act restoring the power of the
friars, and giving back to them all that remained to be rescued of the
mission properties and converts. All was anarchy and confusion. During
the fifty-five years that California was under Spanish rule she had
but nine governors. During the twenty-four that she was under Mexican
misrule she had thirteen. It would be interesting to know what the
Indian populations thought, as they watched these quarrellings and
intrigues among the Christians who were held up to them as patterns
for imitation.
In a curious pamphlet left by one of the old friars, Father Boscana,
is told a droll story of the logical inferences some of them drew from
the political situations among their supposed betters. It was a band
of San Diego Indians. When they heard that the Spanish viceroy in the
city of Mexico had been killed, and a Mexican made emperor in his
place, they forthwith made a great feast, burned up their chief, and
elected a new one in his stead. To the stringent reproofs of the
horrified friars they made answer: "Have you not done the same in
Mexico? You say your king was not good, and you killed him. Well, our
captain was not good, and we burned him. If the new one turns out bad,
we will burn him too,"--a memorable instance of the superiority of
example to precept.
At last, in 1834, the final blow fell on the missions. The Governor of
California, in compliance with instructions received from Mexico,
issued an authoritative edict for their secularization. It was a long
document, and had many significant provisions in it. It said that the
Indians were now to be "emancipated." But the 16th article said that
they "should be obliged to join in such labors of community as are
indispensable, in the opinion of the political chief, in the
cultivation of the vineyards, gardens, and fields, which for the
present remain unapportioned." This was a curious sort of
emancipation; and it is not surprising to read, in the political
records of the time, such paragraphs as this: "Out of one hundred and
sixty Indian families at San Diego, to whom emancipation was offered
by Governor Figueroa, only ten could be induced to accept it." The
friars were to hand over all records and inventories to stewards or
administrators appointed. Boards of magistrates were also appointed
for each village. One half of the movable property was to be divided
among the "emancipated persons," and to each head of a family was to
be given four hundred square yards of land. Everything else--lands,
movable properties, property of all classes--was to be put into the
hands of the administrator, to be held subject to the Federal
Government. Out of these properties the administrators were to provide
properly for the support of the father or fathers left in charge of
the church, the church properties, and the souls of the "emancipated
persons." A more complete and ingenious subversion of the previously
existing state of things could not have been devised; and it is hard
to conceive how any student of the history of the period can see, in
its shaping and sudden enforcing, anything except bold and
unprincipled greed hiding itself under specious cloaks of right. Says
Dwinelle, in his "Colonial History:"--
"Beneath these specious pretexts was undoubtedly a perfect
understanding between the Government of Mexico and the leading
men in California, that in such a condition of things the
Supreme Government might absorb the Pious Fund, under the
pretence that it was no longer necessary for missionary
purposes, and thus had reverted to the State as a quasi
escheat, while the co-actors in California should appropriate
the local wealth of the missions by the rapid and sure process
of administering their temporalities."
Of the manner in which the project was executed, Dwinelle goes on to
say:--
"These laws, whose ostensible purpose was to convert the
missionary establishments into Indian pueblos, their churches
into parish churches, and to elevate the Christianized Indians
to the rank of citizens, were after all executed in such a
manner that the so-called secularization of the missions
resulted in their plunder and complete ruin, and in the
demoralization and dispersion of the Christianized Indians."
It is only just to remember, however, that these laws and measures
were set in force in a time of revolution, when even the best measures
and laws could have small chance of being fairly executed, and that a
government which is driven, as Mexico was, to recruiting its colonial
forces by batches of selected prison convicts, is entitled to pity, if
not charity, in our estimates of its conduct. Of course, the position
of administrator of a mission became at once a political reward and a
chance for big gains, and simply, therefore, a source and centre of
bribery and corruption.
Between the governors--who now regarded the mission establishments as
State property, taking their cattle or grain as freely as they would
any other revenue, and sending orders to a mission for tallow as they
would draw checks on the treasury--and the administrators, who equally
regarded them as easy places for the filling of pockets, the wealth of
the missions disappeared as dew melts in the sun. Through all this the
Indians were the victims. They were, under the administrators,
compelled to work far harder than before; they were ill-fed and
ill-treated; they were hired out in gangs to work in towns or on
farms, under masters who regarded them simply as beasts of burden;
their rights to the plots of land which had been set off for them
were, almost without exception, ignored. A more pitiable sight has not
often been seen on earth than the spectacle of this great body of
helpless, dependent creatures, suddenly deprived of their teachers and
protectors, thrown on their own resources, and at the mercy of
rapacious and unscrupulous communities, in time of revolution. The
best comment on their sufferings is to be found in the statistics of
the mission establishments after a few years of the administrators'
reign.
In 1834 there were, according to the lowest estimates, from fifteen to
twenty thousand Indians in the missions. De Mofras's statistics give
the number as 30,620. In 1840 there were left, all told, but six
thousand. In many of the missions there were less than one hundred.
According to De Mofras, the cattle, sheep, horses, and mules, in 1834,
numbered 808,000; in 1842, but 6,320. Other estimates put the figures
for 1834 considerably lower. It is not easy to determine which are
true; but the most moderate estimates of all tell the story with
sufficient emphasis. There is also verbal testimony on these points
still to be heard in California, if one has patience and interest
enough in the subject to listen to it. There are still living,
wandering about, half blind, half starved, in the neighborhood of the
mission sites, old Indians who recollect the mission times in the
height of their glory. Their faces kindle with a sad flicker of
recollected happiness, as they tell of the days when they had all they
wanted to eat, and the _padres_ were so good and kind: "Bueno tiempo!
Bueno tiempo," they say, with a hopeless sigh and shake of the head.
Under the new _régime_ the friars suffered hardly less than the
Indians. Some fled the country, unable to bear the humiliations and
hardships of their positions under the control of the administrators
or majors-domo, and dependent on their caprice for shelter and even
for food. Among this number was Father Antonio Peyri, who had been for
over thirty years in charge of the splendid mission of San Luis Rey.
In 1800, two years after its founding, this mission had 369 Indians.
In 1827 it had 2,686; it owned over twenty thousand head of cattle,
and nearly twenty thousand sheep. It controlled over two hundred
thousand acres of land, and there were raised in its fields in one
year three thousand bushels of wheat, six thousand of barley, and ten
thousand of corn. No other mission had so fine a church. It was one
hundred and sixty feet long, fifty wide, and sixty high, with walls
four feet thick. A tower at one side held a belfry for eight bells.
The corridor on the opposite side had two hundred and fifty-six
arches. Its gold and silver ornaments are said to have been superb.
When Father Peyri made up his mind to leave the country, he slipped
off by night to San Diego, hoping to escape without the Indians'
knowledge. But, missing him in the morning, and knowing only too well
what it meant, five hundred of them mounted their ponies in hot haste,
and galloped all the way to San Diego, forty-five miles, to bring him
back by force. They arrived just as the ship, with Father Peyri on
board, was weighing anchor. Standing on the deck, with outstretched
arms he blessed them, amid their tears and loud cries. Some flung
themselves into the water and swam after the ship. Four reached it,
and clinging to its sides, so implored to be taken that the father
consented, and carried them with him to Rome, where one of them became
a priest.
There were other touching instances in which the fathers refused to be
separated from their Indian converts, and remained till the last by
their side, sharing all their miseries and deprivations. De Mofras, in
his visit to the country in 1842, found, at the mission of San Luis
Obispo, Father Azagonais, a very old man, living in a hut, like the
Indians, sleeping on a rawhide on the bare ground, with no
drinking-vessel but an ox-horn, and no food but some dried meat
hanging in the sun. The little he had he shared with the few Indians
who still lingered there. Benevolent persons had offered him asylum;
but he refused, saying that he would die at his post. At the San
Antonio mission De Mofras found another aged friar, Father Gutierrez,
living in great misery. The administrator of this mission was a man
who had been formerly a menial servant in the establishment; he had
refused to provide Father Gutierrez with the commonest necessaries,
and had put him on an allowance of food barely sufficient to keep him
alive.
At Soledad was a still more pitiful case. Father Sarria, who had
labored there for thirty years, refused to leave the spot, even after
the mission was so ruined that it was not worth any administrator's
while to keep it. He and the handful of Indians who remained loyal to
their faith and to him lived on there, growing poorer and poorer each
day; he sharing his every morsel of food with them, and starving
himself, till, one Sunday morning, saying mass at the crumbling altar,
he fainted, fell forward, and died in their arms, of starvation. This
was in 1838. Only eight years before, this Soledad mission had owned
thirty-six thousand cattle, seventy thousand sheep, three hundred yoke
of working oxen, more horses than any other mission, and had an
aqueduct, fifteen miles long, supplying water enough to irrigate
twenty thousand acres of land.
For ten years after the passage of the Secularization Act, affairs
went steadily on from bad to worse with the missions. Each governor
had his own plans and devices for making the most out of them, renting
them, dividing them into parcels for the use of colonists,
establishing pueblos on them, making them subject to laws of
bankruptcy, and finally selling them. The departmental assemblies
sometimes indorsed and sometimes annulled the acts of the governors.
In 1842 Governor Micheltorena proclaimed that the twelve southern
missions should be restored to the Church, and that the Government
would not make another grant of land without the consent of the
friars. This led to a revolution, or rather an ebullition, and
Micheltorena was sent out of the country. To him succeeded Pio Pico,
who remained in power till the occupation of California by the United
States forces in 1846. During the reign of Pio Pico, the ruin of the
mission establishments was completed. They were at first sold or
rented in batches to the highest bidders. There was first a
preliminary farce of proclamation to the Indians to return and take
possession of the missions if they did not want them sold. These
proclamations were posted up in the pueblos for months before the
sales. In 1844 the Indians of Dolores, Soledad, San Miguel, La
Purissima, and San Rafael[6] were thus summoned to come back to their
missions,--a curious bit of half conscience-stricken, half politic
recognition of the Indians' ownership of the lands, the act of the
Departmental Assembly saying that if they (the Indians) did not return
before such a date, the Government would declare said missions to be
"without owners," and dispose of them accordingly. There must have
been much bitter speech in those days when news of these proclamations
reached the wilds where the mission Indians had taken refuge.
At last, in March, 1846, an act of the Departmental Assembly made the
missions liable to the laws of bankruptcy, and authorized the governor
to sell them to private persons. As by this time all the missions that
had any pretence of existence left had been run hopelessly into debt,
proceedings in regard to them were much simplified by this act. In the
same year the President of Mexico issued an order to Governor Pico to
use all means within his power to raise money to defend the country
against the United States; and under color of this double
authorization the governor forthwith proceeded to sell missions right
and left. He sold them at illegal private sales; he sold them for
insignificant sums, and for sums not paid at all; whether he was, to
use the words of a well-known legal brief in one of the celebrated
California land cases, "wilfully ignorant or grossly corrupt," there
is no knowing, and it made no difference in the result.
One of the last acts of the Departmental Assembly, before the
surrender of the country, was to declare all Governor Pico's sales of
mission property null and void. And one of Governor Pico's last acts
was, as soon as he had made up his mind to run away out of the
country, to write to some of his special friends and ask them if there
were anything else they would like to have him give them before his
departure.
On the 7th of July, 1846, the American flag was raised in Monterey,
and formal possession of California was taken by the United States.
The proclamation of Admiral Sloat on this memorable occasion included
these words: "All persons holding title to real estate, or in quiet
possession of lands under color of right, shall have those titles and
rights guaranteed to them." "Color of right" is a legal phrase,
embodying a moral idea, an obligation of equity. If the United States
Government had kept this guarantee, there would be living in
comfortable homesteads in California to-day many hundreds of people
that are now homeless and beggared,--Mexicans as well as Indians.
The army officers in charge of different posts in California, in these
first days of the United States' occupation of the country, were
perplexed and embarrassed by nothing so much as by the confusion
existing in regard to the mission properties and lands. Everywhere men
turned up with bills of sale from Governor Pico. At the San Diego
mission the ostensible owner, one Estudillo by name, confessed frankly
that he "did not think it right to dispose of the Indians' property in
that way; but as everybody was buying missions, he thought he might as
well have one."
In many of the missions, squatters, without show or semblance of
title, were found; these the officers turned out. Finally, General
Kearney, to save the trouble of cutting any more Gordian knots,
declared that all titles of missions and mission lands must be held
in abeyance till the United States Government should pronounce on
them.
For several years the question remained unsettled, and the mission
properties were held by those who had them in possession at the time
of the surrender. But in 1856 the United States Land Commission gave,
in reply to a claim and petition from the Catholic Bishop of
California, a decision which, considered with reference to the
situation of the mission properties at the time of the United States'
possession, was perhaps as near to being equitable as the
circumstances would admit. But, considered with reference to the
status of the mission establishments under the Spanish rule, to their
original extent, the scope of the work, and the magnificent success of
their experiment up to the time of the revolutions, it seems a sadly
inadequate return of property once rightfully held. Still, it was not
the province of the United States to repair the injustices or make
good the thefts of Spain and Mexico; and any attempt to clear up the
tangle of confiscations, debts, frauds, and robberies in California,
for the last quarter of a century before the surrender, would have
been bootless work.
The Land Commissioner's decision was based on the old Spanish law
which divided church property into two classes, sacred and
ecclesiastical, and held it to be inalienable, except in case of
necessity, and then only according to provisions of canon law; in the
legal term, it was said to be "out of commerce." The sacred property
was that which had been in a formal manner consecrated to God,--church
buildings, sacred vessels, vestments, etc. Ecclesiastical property was
land held by the Church, and appropriated to the maintenance of divine
worship, or the support of the ministry; buildings occupied by the
priests, or necessary for their convenience; gardens, etc. Following a
similar division, the property of the mission establishments was held
by the Land Commission to be of two sorts,--mission property and
church property: the mission property, embracing the great tracts of
land formerly cultivated for the community's purpose, it was decided,
must be considered as government property; the church property,
including, with the church buildings, houses of priests, etc., such
smaller portions of land as were devoted to the immediate needs of the
ministry, it was decided must still rightfully go to the Church. How
many acres of the old gardens, orchards, vineyards, of the missions
could properly be claimed by the Church under this head, was of course
a question; and it seems to have been decided on very different bases
in different missions, as some received much more than others. But all
the church buildings, priests' houses, and some acres of land, more or
less, with each, were pronounced by this decision to have been "before
the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo solemnly dedicated to the use of the
Church, and therefore withdrawn from commerce;" "such an interest is
protected by the provisions of the treaty, and must be held inviolate
under our laws." Thus were returned at last, into the inalienable
possession of the Catholic Church, all that were left of the old
mission churches, and some fragments of the mission lands. Many of
them are still in operation as curacies; others are in ruins; of some
not a trace is left,--not even a stone.
At San Diego the walls of the old church are still standing, unroofed,
and crumbling daily. It was used as a cavalry barracks during the war
of 1846, and has been a sheepfold since. Opposite it is an olive
orchard, of superb hoary trees still in bearing; a cactus wall twenty
feet high, and a cluster of date palms, are all that remain of the
friars' garden.
At San Juan Capistrano, the next mission to the north, some parts of
the buildings are still habitable. Service is held regularly in one of
the small chapels. The priest lives there, and ekes out his little
income by renting some of the mouldering rooms. The church is a
splendid ruin. It was of stone, a hundred and fifty feet long by a
hundred in width, with walls five feet thick, a dome eighty feet high,
and a fine belfry of arches in which four bells rang. It was thrown
down by an earthquake in 1812, on the day of the Feast of the
Immaculate Conception. Morning mass was going on, and the church was
thronged; thirty persons were killed, and many more injured.
The little hamlet of San Juan Capistrano lies in harbor, as it were,
looking out on its glimpse of sea, between two low spurs of broken and
rolling hills, which in June are covered with shining yellow and blue
and green, iridescent as a peacock's neck. It is worth going across
the continent to come into the village at sunset of a June day. The
peace, silence, and beauty of the spot are brooded over and dominated
by the grand gray ruin, lifting the whole scene into an ineffable
harmony. Wandering in room after room, court after court, through
corridors with red-tiled roofs and hundreds of broad Roman arches,
over fallen pillars, and through carved doorways, whose untrodden
thresholds have sunk out of sight in summer grasses, one asks himself
if he be indeed in America. On the interior walls are still to be seen
spaces of brilliant fresco-work, in Byzantine patterns of superb red,
pale green, gray and blue; and the corridors are paved with tiles,
large and square. It was our good fortune to have with us, in San Juan
Capistrano, a white-haired Mexican, who in his boyhood had spent a
year in the mission. He remembered as if it were yesterday its
bustling life of fifty years ago, when the arched corridor ran
unbroken around the great courtyard, three hundred feet square, and
was often filled with Indians, friars, officers, and gay Mexican
ladies looking on at a bull-fight in the centre. He remembered the
splendid library, filled from ceiling to floor with books, extending
one whole side of the square: in a corner, where had been the room in
which he used to see sixty Indian women weaving at looms, we stood
ankle-deep in furzy weeds and grass. He showed us the doorway, now
closed up, which led into the friars' parlor. To this door, every
Sunday, after mass, came the Indians, in long processions, to get
their weekly gifts. Each one received something,--a handkerchief,
dress, trinket, or money. While their gifts were being distributed, a
band of ten or twelve performers, all Indians, played lively airs on
brass and stringed instruments. In a little baptistery, dusky with
cobweb and mould, we found huddled a group of wooden statues of
saints, which once stood in niches in the church; on their heads were
faded and brittle wreaths, left from the last occasion on which they
had done duty. One had lost an eye; another a hand. The gilding and
covering of their robes were dimmed and defaced. But they had a
dignity which nothing could destroy. The contours were singularly
expressive and fine, and the rendering of the drapery was indeed
wonderful,--flowing robes and gathered and lifted mantles, all carved
in solid wood.
There are statues of this sort to be seen in several of the old
mission churches. They were all carved by the Indians, many of whom
showed great talent in that direction. There is also in the office of
the justice--or alcalde, as he is still called--of San Juan
Capistrano, a carved chair of noticeably bold and graceful design made
by Indian workmen. A few tatters of heavy crimson brocade hang on it
still, relics of the time when it formed part of a gorgeous
paraphernalia and service.
Even finer than the ruins of San Juan Capistrano are those of the
church at San Luis Rey. It has a perfectly proportioned dome over the
chancel, and beautiful groined arches on either hand and over the
altar. Four broad pilasters on each side of the church are frescoed in
a curious mixing of blues, light and dark, with reds and black, which
have faded and blended into a delicious tone. A Byzantine pulpit
hanging high on the wall, and three old wooden statues in niches, are
the only decorations left. Piles of dirt and rubbish fill the space in
front of the altar, and grass and weeds are growing in the corners;
great flocks of wild doves live in the roof, and have made the whole
place unclean and foul-aired. An old Mexican, eighty years old, a
former servant of the mission, has the ruin in charge, and keeps the
doors locked still, as if there were treasure to guard. The old man is
called "alcalde" by the village people, and seems pleased to be so
addressed. His face is like wrinkled parchment, and he walks bent into
a parenthesis, but his eyes are bright and young. As he totters along,
literally holding his rags together, discoursing warmly of the
splendors he recollects, he seems indeed a ghost from the old times.
The most desolate ruin of all is that of the La Purissima Mission. It
is in the Lompoc valley, two days' easy journey north of Santa
Barbara. Nothing is left there but one long, low adobe building, with
a few arches of the corridor; the doors stand open, the roof is
falling in: it has been so often used as a stable and sheepfold, that
even the grasses are killed around it. The painted pulpit hangs half
falling on the wall, its stairs are gone, and its sounding-board is
slanting awry. Inside the broken altar-rail is a pile of stones,
earth, and rubbish, thrown up by seekers after buried treasures; in
the farther corner another pile and hole, the home of a badger;
mud-swallows' nests are thick on the cornice, and cobwebbed rags of
the old canvas ceiling hang fluttering overhead. The only trace of the
ancient cultivation is a pear-orchard a few rods off, which must have
been a splendid sight in its day; it is at least two hundred yards
square, with a double row of trees all around, so placed as to leave
between them a walk fifty or sixty feet wide. Bits of broken aqueduct
here and there, and a large, round stone tank overgrown by grass,
showed where the life of the orchard used to flow in, it has been many
years slowly dying of thirst. Many of the trees are gone, and those
that remain stretch out gaunt and shrivelled boughs, which, though
still bearing fruit, look like arms tossing in vain reproach and
entreaty; a few pinched little blossoms seemed to heighten rather than
lessen their melancholy look.
At San Juan Bautista there lingers more of the atmosphere of the olden
time than is to be found in any other place in California. The mission
church is well preserved; its grounds are enclosed and cared for; in
its garden are still blooming roses and vines, in the shelter of
palms, and with the old stone sun-dial to tell time. In the sacristy
are oak chests, full of gorgeous vestments of brocades, with silver
and gold laces. On one of these robes is an interesting relic. A lost
or worn-out silken tassel had been replaced by the patient Indian
workers with one of fine-shredded rawhide; the shreds wound with
silver wire, and twisted into tiny rosettes and loops, closely
imitating the silver device. The church fronts south, on a little
green locust walled plaza,--the sleepiest, sunniest, dreamiest place
in the world. To the east the land falls off abruptly, so that the
paling on that side of the plaza is outlined against the sky, and its
little locked gate looks as if it would open into the heavens. The
mission buildings used to surround this plaza; after the friars' day
came rich men living there; and a charming inn is kept now in one of
their old adobe houses. On the east side of the church is a succession
of three terraces leading down to a valley. On the upper one is the
old graveyard, in which it is said there are sleeping four thousand
Indians.
In 1825 there were spoken at this mission thirteen different Indian
dialects.
Just behind the church is an orphan girls' school, kept by the Sisters
of the Sacred Heart. At six o'clock every morning the bells of the
church ring for mass as they used to ring when over a thousand Indians
flocked at the summons. To-day, at the sound, there comes a procession
of little girls and young maidens, the black-robed sisters walking
before them with crossed hands and placid faces. One or two Mexican
women, with shawls over their heads, steal across the faint paths of
the plaza, and enter the church.
I shall always recollect the morning when I went, too. The silence of
the plaza was in itself a memorial service, with locust blossoms
swinging incense. It was barely dawn in the church. As the shrill yet
sweet childish voices lifted up the strains of the Kyrie Eleison, I
seemed to see the face of Father Junipero in the dim lighted chancel,
and the benediction was as solemn as if he himself had spoken it. Why
the little town of San Juan Bautista continues to exist is a marvel.
It is shut out and cut off from everything; only two or three hundred
souls are left in it; its streets are grass-grown; half its houses are
empty. But it has a charm of sun, valley, hill, and seaward off-look
unsurpassed in all California. Lingering out a peaceful century there
are many old men and women, whose memories are like magic glasses,
reproducing the pictures of the past. One such we found: a Mexican
woman eighty-five years old, portly, jolly, keen-tongued, keen-eyed;
the widow of one of the soldiers of the old mission guard. She had had
twelve children; she had never been ill a week in her life; she is now
the village nurse, and almost doctor. Sixty years back she remembered.
"The Indians used to be in San Juan Bautista like sheep," she said,
"by the thousand and thousand." They were always good, and the padres
were always kind. Fifty oxen were killed for food every eight days,
and everybody had all he wanted to eat. There was much more water then
than now, plenty of rain, and the streams always full. "I don't know
whether you or we were bad, that it has been taken away by God," she
said, with a quick glance, half humorous, half antagonistic.
The Santa Barbara Mission is still in the charge of Franciscans, the
only one remaining in their possession. It is now called a college for
apostolic missionary work, and there are living within its walls eight
members of the order. One of them is very old,--a friar of the ancient
_régime_; his benevolent face is well known throughout the country,
and there are in many a town and remote hamlet men and women who wait
always for his coming before they will make confession. He is like St.
Francis's first followers: the obligations of poverty and charity
still hold to him the literal fulness of the original bond. He gives
away garment after garment, leaving himself without protection against
cold; and the brothers are forced to lock up and hide from him all
provisions, or he would leave the house bare of food. He often kneels
from midnight to dawn on the stone floor of the church, praying and
chanting psalms; and when a terrible epidemic of small-pox broke out
some years ago, he labored day and night, nursing the worst victims of
it, shriving them, and burying them with his own hands. He is past
eighty, and has not much longer to stay. He has outlived many things
beside his own prime: the day of the sort of faith and work to which
his spirit is attuned has passed by forever.
The mission buildings stand on high ground, three miles from the
beach, west of the town and above it, looking to the sea. In the
morning the sun's first rays flash full on its front, and at evening
they linger late on its western wall. It is an inalienable benediction
to the place. The longer one stays there the more he is aware of the
influence on his soul, as well as of the importance in the landscape
of the benign and stately edifice.
On the corridor of the inner court hangs a bell which is rung for the
hours of the daily offices and secular duties. It is also struck
whenever a friar dies, to announce that all is over. It is the duty of
the brother who has watched the last breath of the dying one to go
immediately and strike this bell. Its sad note has echoed many times
through the corridors. One of the brothers said, last year,--
"The first time I rang that bell to announce a death, there were
fifteen of us left. Now there are only eight."
The sentence itself fell on my ear like the note of a passing-bell. It
seems a not unfitting last word to this slight and fragmentary sketch
of the labors of the Franciscan Order in California.
Still more fitting, however, are the words of a historian, who, living
in California and thoroughly knowing its history from first to last,
has borne the following eloquent testimony to the friars and their
work:--
"The results of the mission scheme of Christianization and
colonization were such as to justify the plans of the wise
statesman who devised it, and to gladden the hearts of the
pious men who devoted their lives to its execution.
"At the end of sixty years the missionaries of Upper California
found themselves in the possession of twenty-one prosperous
missions, planted on a line of about seven hundred miles,
running from San Diego north to the latitude of Sonoma. More
than thirty thousand Indian converts were lodged in the mission
buildings, receiving religious culture, assisting at divine
worship, and cheerfully performing their easy tasks.... If we
ask where are now the thirty thousand Christianized Indians who
once enjoyed the beneficence and created the wealth of the
twenty-one Catholic missions of California, and then
contemplate the most wretched of all want of systems which has
surrounded them under our own government, we shall not withhold
our admiration from those good and devoted men who, with such
wisdom, sagacity, and self-sacrifice, reared these wonderful
institutions in the wilderness of California. They at least
would have preserved these Indian races if they had been left
to pursue unmolested their work of pious beneficence."[7]
NOTE.--The author desires to express her acknowledgments to H.
H. Bancroft, of San Francisco, who kindly put at her disposal
all the resources of his invaluable library; also to the
Superior of the Franciscan College in Santa Barbara, for the
loan of important books and manuscripts and the photograph of
Father Junipero.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MISSION INDIANS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
The old laws of the kingdom of the Indies are interesting reading,
especially those portions of them relating to Indians. A certain fine
and chivalrous quality of honor toward the helpless and tenderness
toward the dependent runs all through their quaint and cumbrous
paragraphs.
It is not until one studies these laws in connection with the history
of the confusions and revolutions of the secularization period, and of
the American conquest of California, that it becomes possible to
understand how the California Mission Indians could have been left so
absolutely unprotected, as they were, in the matter of ownership of
the lands they had cultivated for sixty years.
"We command," said the Spanish king, "that the sale, grant, and
composition of lands be executed with such attention that the Indians
be left in possession of the full amount of lands belonging to them,
either singly or in communities, together with their rivers and
waters; and the lands which they shall have drained or otherwise
improved, whereby they may by their own industry have rendered them
fertile, are reserved, in the first place, and can in no case be sold
or aliened. And the judges who have been sent thither shall specify
what Indians they may have found on the land, and what lands they
shall have left in possession of each of the elders of tribes,
caciques, governors, or communities."
Grazing estates for cattle are ordered to be located "apart from the
fields and villages of the Indians." The king's command is that no
such estates shall be granted "in any parts or place where any damage
can accrue to the Indians." Every grant of land must be made "without
prejudice to the Indians;" and "such as may have been granted to their
prejudice and injury" must be "restored to whomever they by right
shall belong."
"In order to avoid the inconveniences and damages resulting from the
sale or gift to Spaniards of tracts of land to the prejudice of
Indians, upon the suspicious testimony of witnesses," the king orders
that all sales and gifts are to be made before the attorneys of the
royal audiencias, and "always with an eye to the benefit of the
Indians;" and "the king's solicitors are to be protectors of the
Indians and plead for them." "After distributing to the Indians what
they may justly want to cultivate, sow, and raise cattle, confirming
to them what they now hold, and granting what they may want besides,
all the remaining land may be reserved to us," says the old decree,
"clear of any incumbrance, for the purpose of being given as rewards,
or disposed of according to our pleasure."
In those day's everything in New Spain was thus ordered by royal
decrees. Nobody had grants of land in the sense in which we use the
word. When the friars wished to reward an industrious and capable
Indian, and test his capacity to take care of himself and family, by
giving him a little farm of his own, all they had to do, or did, was
to mark off the portion of land, put the Indian on it and tell him it
was his. There would appear to have been little more formality than
this in the establishing of the Indian pueblos which were formed in
the beginning of the secularization period. Governor Figueroa, in an
address in 1834, speaks of three of these, San Juan Capistrano, San
Dieguito, and Las Flores, says that they are flourishing, and that the
comparison between the condition of these Indians and that of the
Spanish townsmen in the same region is altogether in favor of the
Indians.
On Nov. 16, 1835, eighty-one "desafiliados"--as the ex-neophytes of
missions were called--of the San Luis Rey Mission settled themselves
in the San Pasqual valley, which was an appanage of that mission.
These Indian communities appear to have had no documents to show their
right, either as communities or individuals, to the land on which they
had settled. At any rate, they had nothing which amounted to a
protection, or stood in the way of settlers who coveted their lands.
It is years since the last trace of the pueblos Las Flores and San
Dieguito disappeared; and the San Pasqual valley is entirely taken up
by white settlers, chiefly on pre-emption claims. San Juan Capistrano
is the only one of the four where are to be found any Indians' homes.
If those who had banded themselves together and had been set off into
pueblos had no recognizable or defensible title, how much more
helpless and defenceless were individuals, or small communities
without any such semblance of pueblo organization!
Most of the original Mexican grants included tracts of land on which
Indians were living, sometimes large villages of them. In many of
these grants, in accordance with the old Spanish law or custom, was
incorporated a clause protecting the Indians. They were to be left
undisturbed in their homes: the portion of the grant occupied by them
did not belong to the grantee in any such sense as to entitle him to
eject them. The land on which they were living, and the land they were
cultivating at the time of the grant, belonged to them as long as they
pleased to occupy it. In many of the grants the boundaries of the
Indians' reserved portion of the property were carefully marked off;
and the instances were rare in which Mexican grantees disturbed or in
any way interfered with Indians living on their estates. There was no
reason why they should. There was plenty of land and to spare, and it
was simply a convenience and an advantage to have the skilled and
docile Indian laborer on the ground.
But when the easy-going, generous, improvident Mexican needed or
desired to sell his grant, and the sharp American was on hand to buy
it, then was brought to light the helplessness of the Indians'
position. What cared the sharp American for that sentimental clause,
"without injury to the Indians"? Not a farthing. Why should he? His
government, before him, had decided that all the lands belonging to
the old missions, excepting the small portions technically held as
church property, and therefore "out of commerce," were government
lands. None of the Indians living on those lands at the time of the
American possession were held to have any right--not even "color of
right"--to them. That they and their ancestors had been cultivating
them for three quarters of a century made no difference. Americans
wishing to pre-empt claims on any of these so-called government lands
did not regard the presence on them of Indian families or communities
as any more of a barrier than the presence of so many coyotes or
foxes. They would not hesitate to certify to the land office that such
lands were "unoccupied." Still less, then, need the purchaser of
tracts covered by old Mexican grants hold himself bound to regard the
poor cumberers of the ground, who, having no legal right whatever, had
been all their years living on the tolerance of a silly, good-hearted
Mexican proprietor. The American wanted every rod of his land, every
drop of water on it; his schemes were boundless; his greed insatiable;
he had no use for Indians. His plan did not embrace them, and could
not enlarge itself to take them in. They must go. This is, in brief,
the summing up of the way in which has come about the present pitiable
state of the California Mission Indians.
In 1852 a report in regard to these Indians was made to the Interior
Department by the Hon. B. D. Wilson, of Los Angeles. It is an
admirable paper, clear and exhaustive. Mr. Wilson was an old
Californian, had known the Indians well, and had been eyewitness to
much of the cruelty and injustice done them. He says:--
"In the fall of the missions, accomplished by private cupidity
and political ambition, philanthropy laments the failure of one
of the grandest experiments ever made for the elevation of this
unfortunate race."
He estimates that there were at that time in the counties of Tulare,
Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego over fifteen thousand
Indians who had been connected with the missions in those counties.
They were classified as the Tulareños, Cahuillas, San Luiseños, and
Diegueños, the latter two being practically one nation, speaking one
language, and being more generally Christianized than the others. They
furnished, Mr. Wilson says, "the majority of the laborers, mechanics,
and servants of San Diego and Los Angeles counties." They all spoke
the Spanish language, and a not inconsiderable number could read and
write it. They had built all the houses in the country, had taught the
whites how to make brick, mud mortar, how to use asphalt on roofs;
they understood irrigation, were good herders, reapers, etc. They were
paid only half the wages paid to whites; and being immoderate
gamblers, often gambled away on Saturday night and Sunday all they had
earned in the week. At that time in Los Angeles nearly every other
house in town was a grog-shop for Indians. In the San Pasqual valley
there were twenty white vagabonds, all rum-sellers, squatted at one
time around the Indian pueblo. The Los Angeles ayuntamiento had passed
an edict declaring that "all Indians without masters"--significant
phrase!--must live outside the town limits; also, that all Indians who
could not show papers from the alcalde of the pueblo in which they
lived, should be treated as "horse thieves and enemies."
On Sunday nights the squares and streets of Los Angeles were often to
be seen full of Indians lying about helpless in every stage of
intoxication. They were picked up by scores, unconscious, carried to
jail, locked up, and early Monday morning hired out to the highest
bidders at the jail gates. Horrible outrages were committed on Indian
women and children. In some instances the Indians armed to avenge
these, and were themselves killed.
These are a few out of hundreds of similar items to be gathered from
the newspaper records of the time. Conditions such as these could have
but one outcome. Twenty years later, when another special report on
the condition of the California Mission Indians was asked for by the
Government, not over five thousand Indians remained to be reported on.
Vice and cruelty had reaped large harvests each year. Many of the rich
valleys, which at the time of Mr. Wilson's report had been under
cultivation by Indians, were now filled by white settlers, the Indians
all gone, no one could tell where. In some instances whole villages of
them had been driven off at once by fraudulently procured and
fraudulently enforced claims. One of the most heart-rending of these
cases was that of the Temecula Indians.
The Temecula valley lies in the northeast corner of San Diego County.
It is watered by two streams and has a good soil. The Southern
California Railroad now crosses it. It was an appanage of the San Luis
Rey Mission, and the two hundred Indians who were living there were
the children and grandchildren of San Luis Rey neophytes. The greater
part of the valley was under cultivation. They had cattle, horses,
sheep. In 1865 a "special agent" of the United States Government held
a grand Indian convention there. Eighteen villages were represented,
and the numbers of inhabitants, stock, vineyards, orchards, were
reported. The Indians were greatly elated at this evidence of the
Government's good intentions toward them. They set up a tall
liberty-pole, and bringing forth a United States flag, which they had
kept carefully hidden away ever since the beginning of the civil war,
they flung it out to the winds in token of their loyalty. "It is
astonishing," says one of the San Diego newspapers of the day, "that
these Indians have behaved so well, considering the pernicious
teachings they have had from the secessionists in our midst."
There was already anxiety in the minds of the Temecula Indians as to
their title to their lands. All that was in existence to show that
they had any, was the protecting clause in an old Mexican grant. To be
sure, the man was still alive who had assisted in marking off the
boundaries of their part of this original Temecula grant; but his
testimony could establish nothing beyond the letter of the clause as
it stood. They earnestly implored the agent to lay the case before the
Interior Department. Whether he did or not I do not know, but this is
the sequel: On April 15, 1869, an action was brought in the District
Court, in San Francisco, by five men, against "Andrew Johnson,
Thaddeus Stevens, Horace Greeley, and one thousand Indians, and other
parties whose names are unknown." It was "a bill to quit title," an
"action to recover possession of certain real estate bounded thus and
thus." It included the Temecula valley. It was based on grants made by
Governor Micheltorena in 1844. The defendants cited were to appear in
court within twenty days.
The Indians appealed to the Catholic bishop to help them. He wrote to
one of the judges an imploring letter, saying, "Can you not do
something to save these poor Indians from being driven out?" But the
scheme had been too skilfully plotted. There was no way--or, at any
rate, no way was found--of protecting the Indians. The day came when a
sheriff, bringing a posse of men and a warrant which could not be legally
resisted, arrived to eject the Indian families from their house and drive
them out of the valley. The Indians' first impulse was as determined
as it could have been if they had been white, to resist the outrage.
But on being reasoned with by friends, who sadly and with shame
explained to them that by thus resisting, they would simply make it
the duty of the sheriff to eject them by force, and, if necessary,
shoot down any who opposed the executing of his warrant, they
submitted. But they refused to lift hand to the moving. They sat down,
men and women, on the ground, and looked on, some wailing and weeping,
some dogged and silent, while the sheriff and his men took out of the
neat little adobe houses their small stores of furniture, clothes, and
food, and piled them on wagons to be carried--where?--anywhere the
exiles chose, so long as they did not chance to choose a piece of any
white man's land.
A Mexican woman is now living in that Temecula valley who told me the
story of this moving. The facts I had learned before from records of
one sort and another. But standing on the spot, looking at the ruins
of the little adobe houses, and the walled graveyard full of graves,
and hearing this woman tell how she kept her doors and windows shut,
and could not bear to look out while the deed was being done, I
realized forcibly how different a thing is history seen from history
written and read.
It took three days to move them. Procession after procession, with
cries and tears, walked slowly behind the wagons carrying their
household goods. They took the tule roofs off the little houses, and
carried them along. They could be used again. Some of these Indians,
wishing to stay as near as possible to their old home, settled in a
small valley, only three miles and a half away to the south. It was a
dreary, hot little valley, bare, with low, rocky buttes cropping out
on either side, and with scanty growths of bushes; there was not a
drop of water in it. Here the exiles went to work again; built their
huts of reeds and straw; set up a booth of boughs for the priest, when
he came, to say mass in; and a rude wooden cross to consecrate their
new graveyard on a stony hill-side. They put their huts on barren
knolls here and there, where nothing could grow. On the tillable land
they planted wheat or barley or orchards,--some patches not ten feet
square, the largest not over three or four acres. They hollowed out
the base of one of the rocky buttes, sunk a well there, and found
water.
I think none of us who saw this little refugee village will ever
forget it. The whole place was a series of pictures; and knowing its
history, we found in each low roof and paling the dignity of heroic
achievement. Near many of the huts stood great round baskets woven of
twigs, reaching half-way up to the eaves and looking like huge
birds'-nests. These were their granaries, holding acorns and wheat.
Women with red pottery jars on their heads and on their backs were
going to and from the well; old men were creeping about, bent over,
carrying loads of fagots that would have seemed heavy for a donkey;
aged women sitting on the ground were diligently plaiting baskets, too
busy or too old to give more than a passing look at us. A group of
women was at work washing wool in great stone bowls, probably hundreds
of years old. The interiors of some of the houses were exquisitely
neat and orderly, with touching attempts at adornment,--pretty baskets
and shelves hanging on the walls, and over the beds canopies of bright
calico. On some of the beds, the sheets and pillow-cases were trimmed
with wide hand-wrought lace, made by the Indian women themselves. This
is one of their arts which date back to the mission days. Some of the
lace is beautiful and fine, and of patterns like the old church laces.
It was pitiful to see the poor creatures in almost every one of the
hovels bringing out a yard or two of their lace to sell; and there was
hardly a house which had not the lace-maker's frame hanging on the
wall, with an unfinished piece of lace stretched in it. The making of
this lace requires much time and patience. It is done by first drawing
out all the lengthwise threads of a piece of fine linen or cotton;
then the threads which are left are sewed over and over into an
endless variety of intricate patterns. Sometimes the whole design is
done in solid button-hole stitch, or solid figures are filled in on an
open network made of the threads. The baskets were finely woven, of
good shapes, and excellent decorative patterns in brown and black on
yellow or white.
Every face, except those of the very young, was sad beyond
description. They were stamped indelibly by generations of suffering,
immovable distrust also underlying the sorrow. It was hard to make
them smile. To all our expressions of good-will and interest they
seemed indifferent, and received in silence the money we paid them for
baskets and lace.
The word "Temecula" is an Indian word, signifying "grief" or
"mourning." It seems to have had a strangely prophetic fitness for the
valley to which it was given.
While I am writing these lines, the news comes that, by an executive
order of the President, the little valley in which these Indians took
refuge has been set apart for them as a reservation. No doubt they
know how much executive orders creating Indian reservations are worth.
There have been several such made and revoked in California within
their memories. The San Pasqual valley was at one time set apart by
executive order as a reservation for Indians. This was in 1870. There
were then living in the valley between two and three hundred Indians;
some of them had been members of the original pueblo established there
in 1835.
The comments of the California newspapers on this executive order are
amusing, or would be if they did not record such tragedy. It was
followed by an outburst of virtuous indignation all along the coast.
One paper said:
"The iniquity of this scheme is made manifest when we state the
fact that the Indians of that part of the State are Mission
Indians who are settled in villages and engaged in farming like
the white settlers.... It would be gross injustice to the
Indians themselves as well as to the white settlers in San
Pasqual.... These Indians are as fixed in their habitations as
the whites, and have fruit-trees, buildings, and other valuable
improvements to make them contented and comfortable. Until
within the past two or three years they raised more fruit than
the white settlers of the southern counties. There is belonging
to an Indian family there a fig-tree that is the largest in the
State, covering a space sixty paces in diameter.... A
remonstrance signed by over five hundred citizens and indorsed
by every office-holder in the county has gone on to Washington
against this swindle.... This act on the part of the Government
is no better than highway robbery, and the persons engaged in
it are too base to be called men. There is not a person in
either of these valleys that will not be ruined pecuniarily if
these orders are enforced."
Looking through files of newspapers of that time, I found only one
that had the moral courage to uphold the measure. That paper said,--
"Most of the inhabitants are now Indians who desire to be
protected in their ancient possessions; and the Government is
about to give them that protection, after a long delay."
One editor, having nearly exhausted the resources of invective and
false statement, actually had the hardihood to say that Indians could
not be induced to live on this reservation because "there are no
acorn-bearing trees there, and the acorns furnish their principal
food."
The congressmen and their clients were successful. The order was
revoked. In less than four years the San Pasqual Indians are heard
from again. A justice of the peace in the San Pasqual valley writes to
the district attorney to know if anything can be done to protect these
Indians.
"Last year," he says, "the heart of this rancheria (village) was filed
on and pre-empted. The settlers are beginning to plough up the land.
The Los Angeles Land Office has informed the Indians that, not being
citizens, they cannot retain any claim. It seems very hard," says the
judge, "aside from the danger of difficulties likely to arise from
it."
About this time a bill introduced in Congress to provide homes for the
Mission Indians on the reservation plan was reported unfavorably upon
by a Senate committee, on the ground that all the Mission Indians were
really American citizens. The year following, the chief of the Pala
Indians, being brought to the county clerk's office to register as a
voter, was refused on the ground that, being an Indian, he was not a
citizen. In 1850 a small band of Indians living in San Diego County
were taxed to the amount of six hundred dollars, which they paid, the
sheriff said, "without a murmur." The next year they refused. The
sheriff wrote to the district attorney, who replied that the tax must
be paid. The Indians said they had no money. They had only bows,
arrows, wigwams, and a few cattle. Finally, they were compelled to
drive in enough of their cattle to pay the tax. One of the San Diego
newspapers spoke of the transaction as "a small business to undertake
to collect taxes from a parcel of naked Indians."
The year before these events happened a special agent, John G. Ames,
had been sent out by the Government to investigate and report upon the
condition of the Mission Indians. He had assured them "of the sincere
desire of the Government to secure their rights and promote their
interests, and of its intention to do whatever might be found
practicable in this direction." He told them he had been "sent out by
the Government to hear their story, to examine carefully into their
condition, and to recommend such measures as seemed under the
circumstances most desirable."
Mr. Ames found in the San Pasqual valley a white man who had just
built for himself a good house, and claimed to have pre-empted the
greater part of the Indians' village. He "had actually paid the price
of the land to the register of the land office of the district, and
was daily expecting the patent from Washington. He owned that it was
hard to wrest from these well-disposed and industrious creatures the
homes they had built up. 'But,' said he, 'if I had not done it,
somebody else would; for all agree that the Indian has no right to
public lands.'"
This sketch of the history of the San Pasqual and Temecula bands of
Indians is a fair showing of what, with little variation, has been the
fate of the Mission Indians all through Southern California. The
combination of cruelty and unprincipled greed on the part of the
American settlers, with culpable ignorance, indifference, and neglect
on the part of the Government at Washington has resulted in an
aggregate of monstrous injustice, which no one can fully realize
without studying the facts on the ground. In the winter of 1882 I
visited this San Pasqual valley. I drove over from San Diego with the
Catholic priest, who goes there three or four Sundays in a year, to
hold service in a little adobe chapel built by the Indians in the days
of their prosperity. This beautiful valley is from one to three miles
wide, and perhaps twelve long. It is walled by high-rolling,
soft-contoured hills, which are now one continuous wheat-field. There
are, in sight of the chapel, a dozen or so adobe houses, many of which
were built by the Indians; in all of them except one are now living
the robber whites, who have driven the Indians out; only one Indian
still remains in the valley. He earns a meagre living for himself and
family by doing day's work for the farmers who have taken his land.
The rest of the Indians are hidden away in the cañons and rifts of the
near hills,--wherever they can find a bit of ground to keep a horse or
two and raise a little grain. They have sought the most inaccessible
spots, reached often by miles of difficult trail. They have fled into
secret lairs like hunted wild beasts. The Catholic priest of San Diego
is much beloved by them. He has been their friend for many years. When
he goes to hold service, they gather from their various hiding-places
and refuges; sometimes, on a special _fête_ day, over two hundred
come. But on the day I was there, the priest being a young man who was
a stranger to them, only a few were present. It was a pitiful sight.
The dilapidated adobe building, empty and comfortless; the ragged
poverty-stricken creatures, kneeling on the bare ground,--a few
Mexicans, with some gaudiness of attire, setting off the Indians'
poverty still more. In front of the chapel, on a rough cross-beam
supported by two forked posts, set awry in the ground, swung a bell
bearing the date of 1770. It was one of the bells of the old San Diego
Mission. Standing bareheaded, the priest rang it long and loud: he
rang it several times before the leisurely groups that were plainly to
be seen in doorways or on roadsides bestirred themselves to make any
haste to come. After the service I had a long talk, through an
interpreter, with an aged Indian, the oldest now living in the county.
He is said to be considerably over a hundred, and his looks
corroborate the statement. He is almost blind, and has snow-white
hair, and a strange voice, a kind of shrill whisper. He says he
recollects the rebuilding of the San Diego Mission; though he was a
very little boy then, he helped to carry the mud mortar. This was one
hundred and three years ago. Instances of much greater longevity than
this, however, are not uncommon among the California Indians. I asked
if he had a good time in the mission. "Yes, yes," he said, turning his
sightless eyes up to the sky; "much good time," "plenty to eat,"
"_atole_," "_pozzole_," "meat;" now, "no meat;" "all the time to beg,
beg;" "all the time hungry." His wife, who is older than he, is still
living, though "her hair is not so white." She was ill, and was with
relatives far away in the mountains; he lifted his hand and pointed in
the direction of the place. "Much sick, much sick; she will never walk
any more," he said, with deep feeling in his voice.
During the afternoon the Indians were continually coming and going at
the shop connected with the inn where we had stopped, some four miles
from the valley. The keeper of the shop and inn said he always trusted
them. They were "good pay." "Give them their time and they'll always
pay; and if they die their relations will pay the last cent." Some of
them he would "trust any time as high as twenty dollars." When I asked
him how they earned their money, he seemed to have no very distinct
idea. Some of them had a little stock; they might now and then sell a
horse or a cow, he said; they hired as laborers whenever they could
get a chance, working at sheep-shearing in the spring and autumn, and
at grape-picking in the vintage season. A few of them had a little
wheat to sell; sometimes they paid him in wheat. There were not nearly
so many of them, however, as there had been when he first opened his
shop; not half so many, he thought. Where had they gone? He shrugged
his shoulders. "Who knows?" he said.
The most wretched of all the Mission Indians now, however, are not
these who have been thus driven into hill fastnesses and waterless
valleys to wrest a living where white men would starve. There is in
their fate the climax of misery, but not of degradation. The latter
cannot be reached in the wilderness. It takes the neighborhood of the
white man to accomplish it. On the outskirts of the town of San Diego
are to be seen, here and there, huddled groups of what, at a distance,
might be taken for piles of refuse and brush, old blankets, old
patches of sail-cloth, old calico, dead pine boughs, and sticks all
heaped together in shapeless mounds; hollow, one perceives on coming
nearer them, and high enough for human beings to creep under. These
are the homes of Indians. I have seen the poorest huts of the most
poverty-stricken wilds in Italy, Bavaria, Norway, and New Mexico; but
never have I seen anything, in shape of shelter for human creatures,
so loathsome as the kennels in which some of the San Diego Indians are
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