The Making of the Great West (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Adams Drake
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.
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.
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