founder of their race. It says that in times long past a woman of
matchless beauty resided among the mountains near this place. All the
men admired and paid court to her. She received the tributes of their
devotion, grain, skins, etc., but gave no favors in return. Her virtue
and her determination to remain secluded were equally firm. There came
a drought which threatened the world with famine. In their distress
the people applied to her, and she gave them corn from her stock, and
the supply seemed endless. Her goodness was unbounded. One day as she
was lying asleep a drop of rain fell upon her and produced conception.
A son was the issue, who was the founder of the race that built these
structures.
But Montezuma[5] is the patriarch, or tutelary genius, whom all the
Indians of New Mexico look to as their coming deliverer.
One tradition runs that Montezuma was a poor shepherd who tended sheep
in the mountains. One day an eagle came to keep him company. After a
time the eagle would run before Montezuma, and extend its wings, as if
inviting him to seat himself on its back. When at last Montezuma did so,
the eagle instantly spread its wings and flew away with him to Mexico
where Montezuma founded a great people.
Ever since then the Indians have constantly watched for the second
coming of Montezuma, and thenceforth the eagle was held sacred, and has
become a symbol among them. He is to come, they say, in the morning, at
sunrise, so at that hour people may be seen on the housetops looking
earnestly toward the east, while chanting their morning prayers,
for like the followers of Mahomet, these people chant hymns upon the
housetops. Although beautiful and melodious these chants are described
as being inexpressibly sad and mournful.
[Illustration: CEREUS GIGANTEA.]
In person the people are well formed and noble looking. They are honest
among themselves, hospitable to strangers, and unlike nomads, are wholly
devoted to caring for their crops and flocks. They own many sheep. They
raise corn, wheat, barley and fruit. One pueblo raises corn and fruit,
another is noted for its pottery, while a third is known for its skill
in weaving.
But after all, these Pueblo Indians are only barbarians of a little
higher type than common. Whenever we look closely into their habits
and manners, we are struck with the resemblances existing among the
whole family of native tribes. If we assume them to have known a
higher civilization they have degenerated. If we do not so assume, the
observation of three centuries shows them to have come to a standstill
long, long ago.
* * * * *
PUEBLO CUSTOMS. When the harvest time comes the people abandon their
villages in order to go and live among their fields, the better to watch
over them while the harvest is being gathered in.
[Illustration: PUEBLO IDOLS.]
Grain is threshed by first spreading it out upon a dirt floor made as
hard as possible, and then letting horses tread it out with their hoofs.
It is then winnowed in the wind.
The woman, who is grinding, kneels down before a trough with her stone
placed before her in the manner of a laundress's wash-board. Over this
stone she rubs another as if scrubbing clothes. The primitive corn-mill
is simply a large concave stone into which another stone is made to fit,
so as to crush the grain by pressure of the hand.
The unfermented dough is rolled out thin so that after baking it may be
put up in rolls, like paper. It is then the color of a hornet's nest,
which indeed it resembles. Ovens, for baking, are kept on the housetops.
The processes of spinning and weaving, than which nothing could be more
primitive, are thus described by Lieut. Emory, as he saw it done on the
Gila, in 1846.
"A woman was seated on the ground under one of the cotton
sheds. Her left leg was turned under with the sole of the foot
upward. Between her great toe and the next a spindle, about
eighteen inches long, with a single fly, was put. Ever and
anon she gave it a dexterous twist, and at its end a coarse
cotton thread would be drawn out. This was their spinning
machine. Led on by this primitive display, I asked for their
loom, pointing first to the thread, and then to the blanket
girded about the woman's loins. A fellow who was stretched
out in the dust, sunning himself, rose lazily up, and untied
a bundle which I had supposed to be his bow and arrows. This
little package, with four stakes in the ground, was the loom.
He stretched his cloth and began the process of weaving."
But these self-taught weavers were behind their brethren of the pueblos,
whose loom was of a more improved pattern. One end of the frame of
sticks, on which the warp was stretched, would be fastened to the floor,
and the other to a rafter overhead. The weaver sat before this frame,
rapidly moving the shuttle in her hand to and fro, and so forming the
woof.
[Illustration: HIEROGLYPHICS, GILA VALLEY.]
Pottery was in common use among them as far back as we have any
account of the Pueblo Indians. Jars for carrying and holding water were
always articles of prime necessity, though baskets of wicker-work were
sometimes woven water-tight for the purpose.
* * * * *
PUEBLO GOVERNMENT. Each pueblo is under the control of a head chief,
chosen from among the people themselves. When any public business is to
be transacted, he collects the principal chiefs in the underground cell,
previously mentioned, where the matter that has brought them together
is discussed and settled.
The pueblos also have officers, corresponding with the mayor and
constables[6] of a city, whose business it is to preserve order. In
every pueblo there is also a public crier who shouts from the housetops
such things as it may concern the people at large to know.
In some of the pueblos there is an abandoned Spanish mission church of
unknown antiquity. The one at Acoma has a tower forty feet high with
two bells in it, one of which is lettered "San Pedro, A.D. 1710." The
church at Pecos is a picturesque ruin.
FOOTNOTES
[1] ZUÑI HAVE BEEN STUDIED by Mr. F. H. Cushing, who joined
the tribe for the purpose.
[2] UNDERGROUND CELLS, Spanish _Estufas_, were circular,
without doors or windows, and had a kind of stone table, or
altar, in them. One at Taos was surrounded with a stockade,
and entered through a trap-door.
[3] THE MANDANS SAY that the roots of a grape-vine, having
penetrated into their dark abode, revealed to them the light
of the upper world. By means of this vine, half the tribe
climbed to the surface. Owing to the weight of an old woman
the vine broke, leaving the rest entombed as before.
[4] THE PIMOS live along the Gila, having moved up from
the Gulf Coast within fifty years. They are a pastoral and
agricultural people.
[5] MONTEZUMA of the traditions is not the Montezuma of
Spanish-conquest celebrity.
[6] MAYOR AND CONSTABLE. The first is called an al´cal´de,
the second an al´gua´zil.
LAST DAYS OF CHARLES V. AND PHILIP II.
We have here reached the high-water-mark of Spanish advance into
territory now embraced within the United States. The moment seems well
chosen in which to take a parting look at the two great men of their
age, whose talents and energy had builded an empire so vast that, when
the master-hand was taken away, it tottered to its fall.
LAST DAYS OF CHARLES V. Charles V. is thought to have hastened his death
by the indulgence of so strange a whim, that one is led to doubt the
soundness of his intellect.
He chose, now in his lifetime, to have his own funeral obsequies
performed. For the purpose he laid himself down in his coffin which
the monks then lifted on their shoulders and bore into the church. When
the bearers had set the coffin down in front of the altar, the solemn
service for the dead was chanted, the Emperor himself joining in all
the prayers said for the repose of his soul. In the hush which followed
the last office paid to the illustrious dead, all the attending monks
passed silently out of the church, leaving Charles to pray alone in his
coffin.
"The chamber in the Escurial Palace where Philip II. died is that in
which he passed the three last years of his life, nailed by the gout
to a sofa. Through a narrow casement, his alcove commanded a view of
the high altar of the chapel. In this manner, without rising, without
quitting his bed, he assisted every day at the holy sacrifice of the
mass. His ministers came to work with him in this little chamber, and
they still show the little wooden board which the king made use of when
writing, or signing his name, by placing it upon his knees."
TOMBS OF CHARLES AND PHILIP. "At the right and left of the altar, at
the height of about fifteen feet, are two large parallel niches hollowed
out in the form of a square. The one at the left is the tomb of Charles
V., that at the right of Philip II. At the side of Philip II., who is on
his knees in the attitude of prayer, are the prince, Don Carlos, and the
two queens whom Philip successively espoused, all three also on their
knees in prayer. Underneath, one may read in letters of gold:
PHILIP II., KING OF ALL THE SPAINS,
OF SICILY, AND OF JERUSALEM,
REPOSES IN THIS TOMB, WHICH HE
BUILT FOR HIMSELF WHILE LIVING.
"THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. is also represented on his knees in the act of
prayer. He too is surrounded by a group of kneeling personages who are
identified in the inscription, of which we give only part.
TO CHARLES V., KING OF THE ROMANS,
HIGH AND MIGHTY EMPEROR, KING OF
JERUSALEM, ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA,
HIS SON PHILIP.
"All these statues are of gilt bronze, of a grand style and admirable
effect. Those of the two sovereigns, above all, with their armorial
mantles, are of a severe magnificence."—_Alex. Dumas, the Elder._
SWORD AND GOWN IN CALIFORNIA.
California is the name[1] given in an old Spanish romance to a fabulous
island of the sea lying out toward the Indies.
After a time, the Spaniards found out that what they had supposed to be
a large island[2] was really a peninsula, so the name presently spread
to the mainland.
Cabrillo[3] sailed yet higher up, and others higher still, till the
work of tracing the coast as far as Cape Mendocino[4] itself was
completed.
[Illustration: CALIFORNIA COAST.]
Spanish power in the New World received now and here its first serious
check, though possibly little was thought of it at the time, in Europe.
Like David before Goliath, little England confronted the bully of Europe
where least expected, with menace to her great and growing empire of
the West.
The greatest seaman of his age, Francis Drake, whose name was the terror
of Spaniards everywhere, had passed the Straits of Magellan with one
little vessel, into the Great South Sea, which Balboa discovered and
claimed for Spain. Stopping at no odds, one day fighting and the next
plundering, Drake kept his undaunted way a thousand leagues up the
coast. His ship being already full-freighted with the plunder of the
ports at which she had called, Drake thought to shorten the way back to
England by sailing through the North-east Passage,[5] so outwitting
the Spaniards who were keeping vigilant watch against his return
southward,—for his men were but a handful against a world of foes, and
his ship too precious to be risked in fight. So Drake sailed on into
the north. He sailed as far as the Oregon coast, when the weather grew
so cold that his men, who were come from tropic heats, began to murmur.
Drake was therefore forced to put his ship about and steer south again,
along the coast, looking for a harbor as he went, to refit his ship in.
Finding this harbor[6] in 38°, the Golden Hind dropped anchor there on
the 17th of June, 1579, showing a flag which had never before been seen
in that part of the world.
Drake lay quietly at anchor in this port for five weeks. During all
this time the natives came in troops to the shore, drawn thither to see
the strange bearded white men who spoke in an unknown tongue, and kept
the loud thunder hid away in their ship. It is even said that the king
of that country took the crown off his own head, and put it on Francis
Drake's in token of submission. All this and much else is fully and
quaintly set forth in the narrative of Master Fletcher, who was Drake's
chaplain on board the Golden Hind.
Before leaving this friendly port, Drake took formal possession of the
country by setting up a post, to which a plate of brass was fixed, with
Queen Elizabeth's name engraved on it.
The white cliffs of the coast that rose about him, would seem to have
recalled to Drake's mind those of Old England, for he gave the name
of New Albion to all this great land he had merely coasted. We should
not forget that Elizabeth herself afterwards said of such acts that
"discovery is of little worth without actual possession."
[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.]
Having planted this thorn in the side of the Spanish Empire of the
West, Drake merrily sailed away for England by way of the Cape of Good
Hope.[7]
Spain complained. Elizabeth listened with impatience. When the Spanish
ambassador insisted on his master's sole right to navigate the western
ocean, the Queen lost her temper. She roundly told Mendoza that "the
sea and air are common to all men." Yet the claim itself shows what
mighty hold Spain had on the other powers. In eight years the question
was fought out in the English Channel with all Europe for spectators.
Spain was so sure of victory, that the popular feeling even got into
the nursery rhymes of the day. A child is supposed to be saying,
"My brother Don John
To England is gone,
To kill the Drake,
And the queen to take,
And the heretics all to destroy."[7]
[Illustration: DRAKE SAILS AWAY.]
Drake had perhaps done as much as any man to bring about the issue. He
was there in the thick of the fight.[8]
So the spell of Spanish invincibility was broken at last. Spain was no
longer mistress of the seas.
Next on her brilliant roll of navigators, comes Juan de Fuca, who (1592)
discovered the straits that now bear his name. Spain still wanting a
harbor in which the Manila galleons could refit when homeward bound,
Sebastian Vizcaino (1602-1603), sometimes called "the Biscayner,"
entered the haven of San Diego, and that of Monterey,[9] which he then
named, as he also did the one lying within Point Reyes, called by him
Port San Francisco.[10] Exploration of this coast then ceased for a
century and a half.
The real advance into California (1768), like all other Spanish
movements on this continent, originated in a half-monkish, half-military
plan for the conquest, conversion and civilization of the country.
Enough was known of its soil and climate to show how far both exceeded
the sterile steppes of New Mexico, where Spanish advance had already
reached its farthest limit, and like a stream that meets an obstacle
in its path, was turned into another channel. For where plants grow and
rivers flow, God has fixed the abodes of men.
This movement began[11] from the missions of Lower California. It was
designed to extend the system by which Spain had first conquered, and
since ruled, Mexico into the unoccupied and little-known province of
Alta, or Upper, California. The viceroy was to furnish soldiers, the
president-prelate of the Franciscan order, missionaries.
Thus coast batteries and forts were to be built for the defence of the
best harbors, as well as to sustain the missions themselves, so forming
a line of military strength along the coast sufficient to repel assault
by sea or land, while the mountains behind them would be a barrier
between the missions and the wild tribes who lived in the great valleys
beyond. One arm was to seize upon and firmly hold the country in its
grasp, while the other should gradually bring it into subjection to
the Catholic faith. Then, with clerical rule once established, civil
order was to come in. Therefore the first essential thing was to build
a fort, and the second a church. In this way it was proposed to make
rallying-points for civilization of these missions,[12] although the
plan founded an oligarchy and nothing else.
[Illustration: OLD MAP, SHOWING DRAKE'S PORT.]
The Spaniards did not mean to till the soil themselves, but to make
the Indians do it for them. Setting this scheme at work, a Franciscan
mission was begun at San Diego in July, 1769. The next year another was
established at Monterey. From these missions explorers presently made
their way out to the valley of the San Joaquin, and even as far north as
the great bay of San Francisco (1772), which took to itself, a little
later, the name of the old Port San Francisco, with which it must not
be confounded.
[Illustration: CARMEL MISSION CHURCH.]
In 1776 the Mission of San Francisco was founded. Monterey being the
chief settlement, the governor's official residence was fixed there;
and now, so late as the period of American Independence, we have the
machinery for civilization in California fairly set in motion.
The plan which the founders had proposed to themselves also included
the building-up of pueblos, which should be located in suitable places
outside the missions, though actually meant for their support, and
therefore in a sense dependencies of them. But these pueblos were to be
inhabited by Spanish colonists only. One was thus begun (1777) at San
José, and a second (1781) at Los Angeles. Here then are plants of two
distinct types in the growth of the country,—native vassals and foreign
freemen.
As, one by one, missions were created, the native Californians were told
they must come and live in them, and submit themselves to the fostering
care of the fathers, who would teach them how to live as the whites did,
and make known to them the blessings of Christianity, so that their
children might exceed their fathers in knowledge, and as they were a
docile, submissive and indolent people, they mostly obeyed the order
unresistingly, and were set to work building houses, tilling the soil,
or tending flocks or herds belonging to the missions, into which it was
the aim of the fathers to draw all the wealth of the country.
These pious fathers, however, thought more of converting the Indian
than of making a man of him. It is true they baptized and gave him a
Christian name, but they held him in servitude all the same. The system
looked to keeping him a dependant rather than rousing his ambitions,
or showing him how he might better his condition. For instance, the
Indian could hold no land in his own right. His labor went to enrich
the mission, not himself. He was fed and clothed from the mission. He
was a mere atom of society, a vassal of the Church, and was so treated.
Men and women were put in the stocks or whipped at the pleasure of their
masters, just the same as in slave plantations. If an Indian ran away,
he was pursued and brought back by the military. The missionaries found
him free, but took away his liberty. In short, spite of all the romance
thrown round him, and though his condition was somewhat better than it
had been in times past, yet when all is said, the mission Indian was
hardly more than a serf. Still the work of the missions so prospered
that by the end of the century there were eighteen of them with 13,500
converts. But at this time there were 110 more than 1,800 whites in the
country, or only one hundred to a mission.
[Illustration: SPANISH MAP OF 1787, SHOWING MISSIONS, PRESIDIOS, AND
ROUTES.]
Such, briefly, were the Spanish missions of California, which undertook
a noble work, not nobly done, which kept the word of promise to the ear
and broke it to the hope.
If we look at the commercial policy of the province, and it is what we
should most naturally turn to next, we shall find almost no business
transacted with the outside world. Once a year the Manila galleon came
to Monterey and took away the furs that had been collected there.
Spain's policy shut out all other nations from her colonies, and to
the same extent shut the colonies in. So foreign vessels were forbid to
enter her ports at all. To this fact we owe the meagre and unfrequent
reports of what was going on in the country, nor was it till 1786 that
the world learned something of its true condition and worth.
[Illustration: MAP FROM ARCANO DEL MARE, 1647]
In that year a French discovery ship put into Monterey. Her commander
was La Peyrouse,[13] whom Louis XVI. had sent to the Pacific to look
into the fur trade of the north-west coast, and who, after touching
there, had come down the coast to refit in a Spanish port. La Peyrouse
used the six weeks of his stay in Monterey to such purpose that we owe
to him the first and only intelligent view of California had up to this
time.
As a matter of course, communication with the neighbor provinces was
mostly carried on by sea. There was a little trade with San Blas, and
so with Old Mexico, but it was long before the way was opened to New
Mexico by crossing the Colorado desert. One of the fathers, in 1776,
set out from San Gabriel for the Colorado River, passing safely over
the route now followed by the Southern Pacific Railway. Afterwards, a
little trade sprung up between the provinces, but the way was long and
the road beset with dangers.
The first American vessel to enter a California port was the ship Otter
of Boston, in 1796. She was an armed trader, carrying a pass signed by
Washington, of whom it was doubtful if the Californians had even so much
as heard, though they admitted the Otter to trade with them.
The Spaniards had found the natives singularly free from the vices of
civilization, but intermingling of the two races soon led to mingling
of blood, and subsequent growth of an intermediate class half Spanish
and half Indian, so combining certain traits of both without the native
vigor of either.
FOOTNOTES
[1] CALIFORNIA THE NAME, as applied to the peninsula, first
appears in Preciados' diary of Ulloa's voyage.
[2] CALIFORNIA AN ISLAND on English maps so late as 1709 (H.
Moll, "Present State of the World").
[3] CABRILLO'S VOYAGE is reprinted in the Report of the
Wheeler Exploring Expedition.
[4] CAPE MENDOCINO. Bancroft ("The Pacific States") thinks
the name was given in honor of the viceroy Mendoza.
[5] NORTH-EAST PASSAGE here, or North-west Passage from the
Atlantic side, was a thing firmly believed in by the sailors
of all nations.
[6] DRAKE'S HARBOR is not satisfactorily identified.
Authorities differ. Some, like Admiral Burney, believe the
present port of San Francisco to have been Drake's anchorage;
others, like Bancroft, maintain this to be wholly improbable,
and think Old Port San Francisco, under Point Reyes, was the
place. See Fletcher's account, "The World Encompassed," or
Bancroft's Monumental History.
[7] DRAKE'S VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD. A chair made from his
ship was presented to the University of Oxford.
[8] THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA of Philip II., 1588.
[9] MONTEREY, literally King's Mountain.
[10] PUNTA DE LOS REYES, or Kings' Point.
[11] BEGAN FROM LA PAZ.
[12] MISSIONS were founded with funds given by benevolent
persons, at the solicitation of the monks. A royal grant was
sometimes the foundation. They were invariably named in honor
of a saint. The buildings usually formed a square, enclosed
by a high wall, one end being occupied by the church, while
the apartments of the friars, granaries, storehouses, etc.,
occupied the remaining sides.
[13] LA PEYROUSE, an officer of the French navy who had
gallantly fought in our war for independence. He lost his life
among the islands of the New Hebrides, on one of which his
ship was thrown, not a soul surviving to tell the tale.
II.
THE FRENCH.
PRELUDE.
After the discovery of America by Columbus, the French were among the
first to turn their attention to this side of the Atlantic, not so much
to make conquests in the spirit of universal dominion, as the Spaniards
were doing, as to seek new outlets or new sources of supply for their
commerce and fisheries.
Spain, as we have seen, forced other nations to follow her lead at a
respectful distance. With one foot planted in Europe and the other in
America, she bestrode the Atlantic as the colossus of the age.
But the newly awakened spirit of discovery would not down at the bidding
of prince or pontiff, let him be never so great or so powerful. Once
aroused it was sure to find ways by which some part of the benefits to
accrue to mankind from this grand discovery should not be monopolized
by a single nation. We might even say that all the nations of Europe
instinctively felt this to be their opportunity,—the opportunity of the
human race.