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.