Part 5 (1/2)
Wherever you find in California a warm, sunny valley leading from the ocean back to the purple mountains, with a clear stream in its midst, and filled in summer with blue haze, around it steep slopes on which grapes may grow, you have found a mission valley, and these grapes are mission grapes. Somewhere in it you will see a cl.u.s.ter of large, wide-spreading pepper-trees, with delicate light-green foliage, or a grove of gnarled olives, looking like stunted willows, or, perhaps, a cl.u.s.ter of old pear-trees, or sometimes a tall palm. Near these you will find the ruins of old houses of adobe, wherein once dwelt the Indian neophytes. These houses are cl.u.s.tered around the walls, now almost in ruins, of the mission itself, which had its chapel, refectory, and baptistry, and in all its details it resembled closely a parish church of Italy of Spain.
The mission was usually laid out in the form of a hollow square, inclosed by a wall of adobe, twelve feet high, the whole inclosure being two or three hundred feet square. In the center of this square was a chapel, also of adobe; for the sun of California is kind to California's children, and a house of dried mud will withstand the scanty rains of a century. Some of these old chapels are still used, but the roofs of most of them have long since fallen in, and the ornaments have been removed to decorate some other building. The mission churches were built like mimic cathedrals, cathedrals of mud instead of marble, and, like their great models, each had its altar, with candles and crucifix, its vessels of holy water, and on the walls the inevitable paintings of heaven and purgatory. Their most charming feature was the arched cloister, a feature which has been retained and beautified in the architecture of Leland Stanford Jr. University, at Palo Alto.
Each church, too, had its little chime of bells, some of which were partly of gold or silver, as well as of bra.s.s. During the early enthusiasm, when the mission bells were cast, old heirlooms from Spain, rings, vases, and ancestral goblets from which had been ”drunk the red wine of Tarragon,” were thrown into the molten metal. And when these consecrated bells chimed out the Angelas at the sunset hour, with the sound of their voices all evil spirits were driven away, and no harm could come to man or beast or growing grain.
”Bells of the past, whose long-forgotten music Still fills the wide expanse, Tingeing the sober twilight of the present With color of romance;
I hear you call, and see the sun descending On rock and wave and sand, As down the coast the mission voices blending, Girdle the heathen land.
”Within the circle of your incantation No blight nor mildew falls, Nor fierce unrest nor sordid low ambition Pa.s.ses those airy walls.
Borne on the swell of your long waves receding I touch the farther past.
I see the dying glow of Spanish glory, The sunset dream and last.
”Your voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still, And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending, The sun sinks from the hill.” [4]
Around the church were built storehouses, workshops, granaries, barracks for the soldiers,--in short, everything necessary for comfort and security. Each mission was at once fortress, refuge, church, and town. The little town grew in time more and more to resemble its fellows in old Spain. Bull-fights and other festivals were held in the _plaza_, or public square, in front of the _presidio_, or governor's house, and the long, low, whitewashed _hacienda_, or tavern.
About the mission arose a great farm. Vines and olives were planted, and often long avenues of shade-trees. The level lands were sown to barley and oats; great herds of cattle and horses roamed over the hills. The sale of wine, and especially of hides, brought in each year an increasing revenue. The poor, struggling missions became rich. The commanders kept up a dignity worthy of the representatives of the Spanish king, though often they had little enough to command. It is said that one of them, wis.h.i.+ng to fire a salute in honor of some foreign vessel, first sent on board to borrow powder. In the words of Bret Harte, with the _comandante_ the days ”slipped by in a delicious monotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The regularly recurring feasts and saint's days, the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the rare transport s.h.i.+p, and rarer foreign vessels, were the mere details of his patriarchal life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly no failure. Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the wants of the _presidio_ and mission. Isolated from the family of nations, the wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last earthquake; the struggle that emanc.i.p.ated their sister colonies on the other side of the continent had to them no suggestiveness. It was that glorious Indian summer of California history, that bland, indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviving spring of American conquest.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua--Interior of Chapel.]
The Indians were usually gathered about the mission by force or by persuasion. Being baptized with holy water, they were taught to build houses, raise grain, and take care of cattle. In place of their savage rites, they learned to count their beads and say their prayers. They learned also to work, and were pious and generally contented. But these California Indians, at the best, were far inferior to those of the East. ”When attached to the mission,” Mr. Soule says, ”they were an industrious, contented, and numerous cla.s.s, though, indeed, in intelligence and manly spirit they were little better than the beasts, after all.”
The Jesuit Father, Venegas, remarks, discouragingly: ”It is not easy for Europeans who were never out of their own country to conceive an adequate idea of these people. Even in the least frequented quarters of the globe there is not a nation so stupid, of such contracted ideas, and weak, both in body and in mind, as the unhappy Californians. Their characteristics are stupidity and insensibility, want of knowledge and reflection, inconstancy, impetuosity, and blindness of appet.i.te, excessive sloth, abhorrence of all fatigue of every kind, however trifling or brutal,--in fine, a most wretched want of everything which const.i.tutes the real man and makes him rational, inventive, tractable, and useful to himself and others.” All of which goes to show that climate is not everything, and that contact with other minds and other people, with the sifting that rigorous conditions enforce, may outweigh all the advantages of the fairest climate. The highest development comes with the fewest barriers to migration, to compet.i.tion, and to the spread of ideas.
The destruction of the missions and the advent of our Anglo-Saxon freedom has been for the Indian and his kind only loss and wrong. He has become an alien and tramp, with his half-brother, the despised Greaser.
The mission fathers left no place for idleness on the part of their converts, or ”neophytes”; nor did they make much provision for the development of the individual. The Indians were to work, and to work hard and steadily, for the glory of the church and the prosperity of the nation. In return they were insured from all harm in this world and in the world to come. The rule of the Padre was often severe, sometimes cruel, but not demoralizing, and the Indians reached a higher grade of industry and civilization than the same race has attained otherwise before or since.
Believing that the use of the rod was necessary to the Indians'
salvation, the Padres were in no danger of sparing it, and thus spoiling their children. The good Father Serra would as ”soon have doubted his right to breathe as his right to flog the Indian converts”; and meek and quiet though these converts usually were, there were not wanting times when they turned about in sullen resistance. The annals of some of the missions show a series of events that may well have discouraged the most enthusiastic of missionaries. The unconverted Indians, or ”gentiles,” of Southern California were heathens indeed, and they made repeated attacks upon the missions by day, or stole their stock or burned their houses by night. Volleys of arrows not unfrequently greeted the priests on their return from morning ma.s.s.
In San Diego, faith in the power of gunpowder to hurt long preceded any belief in the power of the cross to save. For a whole year after the mission was founded, not a convert was made. The sole San Diego Indian in Father Serra's service was a hired interpreter, who did not have a particle of reverence for his employer's work. ”In all these missionary annals of the Northwest,” says Bancroft, ”there is no other instance where paganism remained so long stubborn as in San Diego.”
And the converts made at such cost of threats and promises were always ready to backslide. It was hard to convert any unless they subjugated all. The influence of the many outside would often stampede the few within the fold.
In one of the numerous uprisings at San Diego the Fathers were victorious over the Indians; the warriors were flogged, and thus converted, and their four chiefs were condemned to death. The sentence of death, according to Bancroft, read as follows:
”Deeming it useful to the service of G.o.d, the king, and the public good, I sentence them to a violent death by musket shots, on the 11th of April, at 9 A.M., the troops to be present at the execution, under arms; and also all the Christian rancherias subject to the San Diego Mission, that they may be warned to act righteously.”
To the priests who were to a.s.sist at the last sacrament, the following grim directions was given: