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010 - Chapter 10 · Famous Missions of California

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  Speaker 1: Chapter ten of The Famous Missions of California. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Matthew Reice, Cordova, Illinois. The Famous Missions of
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  Speaker 1: California by William Henry Hudson. Chapter ten, such in briefest outline,
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  Speaker 1: is the story of the planting of the twenty one
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  Speaker 1: missions of Alta, California. This story, as we have seen,
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  Speaker 1: brings us down to the year eighteen twenty three. But
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  Speaker 1: by this time, as we follow the chronicles, our attention
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  Speaker 1: has already begun to be diverted from the forces which
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  Speaker 1: still made for growth and success, to those which ere
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  Speaker 1: long were to co operate for the complete undoing of
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  Speaker 1: the mission system and the ruin of all its work.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps it was in the nature of things, if one
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  Speaker 1: may venture here to employ a phrase too often used
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  Speaker 1: out of mere idleness or ignorance, that the under taking,
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  Speaker 1: which year by year had been carried forward with so
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  Speaker 1: much energy and success, should after a while come to
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  Speaker 1: a standstill. And the commonest observation of life will suffice
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  Speaker 1: to remind us that when progress ceases, retrogression is almost
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  Speaker 1: certain to set in. The immense zeal and unflagging enthusiasm
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  Speaker 1: of Junipero Serra and his immediate followers could not be
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  Speaker 1: transmitted by any right or formula to the men upon
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  Speaker 1: whose shoulders their responsibilities came presently To rest men. They were,
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  Speaker 1: of course, of widely varying characters and capabilities, some unfortunately
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  Speaker 1: altogether unworthy, both morally and mentally, of their high calling. Many,
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  Speaker 1: on the contrary, genuine embodiments of the great principles of
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  Speaker 1: their order, humane, benevolent, faithful in the discharge of daily duty,
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  Speaker 1: patient alike in labor and trial, and careful administrators of
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  Speaker 1: the practical affairs which lay within their charge, but without injustice.
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  Speaker 1: It may be said of them that for the most
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  Speaker 1: part they possessed little of the tremendous personal force of
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  Speaker 1: their predecessors, and a generous endowment of such personal force
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  Speaker 1: was as needful now as it ever had been. Not,
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  Speaker 1: unless we wish to emulate Southea's learned friend, who wrote
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  Speaker 1: whole volumes of hypothetical history in the subjunctive mood, it
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  Speaker 1: is hardly necessary for present purposes to discuss the internal
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  Speaker 1: changes which had the missions been left to themselves, might
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  Speaker 1: in the long run have brought about their decay. For
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  Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, the missions were not left
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  Speaker 1: to themselves. The closing chapter of their history, to which
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  Speaker 1: we have now to turn, is mainly concerned not with
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  Speaker 1: their spiritual management, or with their success or failure in
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  Speaker 1: the work they had been given to do, but with
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  Speaker 1: the general movement of political events and the upheavals which
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  Speaker 1: preceded the final conquest of California by the United States.
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  Speaker 1: In considering the attitude of the civil authorities toward the
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  Speaker 1: mission system and their dealings with it, we must remember
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  Speaker 1: that the Spanish government had from the first anticipated the
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  Speaker 1: gradual transformation of the missions into pueblos and parishes, and
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  Speaker 1: with this the substitution of the regular clergy for the
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  Speaker 1: Franciscan padres. This was part of the general plan of colonization,
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  Speaker 1: of which the mission settlements were regarded as forming only
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  Speaker 1: the beginning. Their work was to bring the heathen into
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  Speaker 1: the fold of the Church, to subdue them to the
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  Speaker 1: conditions of civilization, to instruct them in the arts of peace,
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  Speaker 1: and thus to prepare them for citizenship. And this done,
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  Speaker 1: it was proposed that they should be straightway removed from
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  Speaker 1: the charge of the fathers and placed under civil jurisdiction.
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  Speaker 1: No decisive step towards the accomplishment of this design was, however,
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  Speaker 1: taken for many years, and meanwhile the fathers jealously resisted
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  Speaker 1: every effort of the government to interfere with their prerogatives,
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  Speaker 1: at length, with little comprehension of the nature of the
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  Speaker 1: materials out of which citizens were thus to be manufactured,
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  Speaker 1: and with quite as little realization of the fact that
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  Speaker 1: the paternal methods of education adopted by the padres were
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  Speaker 1: calculated not to train their neophytes to self government, but
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  Speaker 1: to keep them in a state of perpetual tutelage. The
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  Speaker 1: Spanish Cortes decreed that all missions, which had then been
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  Speaker 1: in existence ten years, should at once be turned over
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  Speaker 1: to bishops, and the Indians attached to them made subject
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  Speaker 1: to civil authority. Though promulgated in eighteen thirteen, this decree
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  Speaker 1: was not published in California till eighteen twenty, and even
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  Speaker 1: then was practically a dead letter. Two years later, California
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  Speaker 1: became a province of the Mexican Empire, and in due
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  Speaker 1: course the new government turned its attention to the missions
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty three, ordering their complete secularization. The atrocious
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  Speaker 1: mishandling by both Spain and Mexico of the funds by
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  Speaker 1: which they had been kept up, and the large demands
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  Speaker 1: made later upon them for provisions and money, had by
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  Speaker 1: this time made serious inroads upon their resources, notwithstanding which
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  Speaker 1: they had faithfully persisted in their work. The new law
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  Speaker 1: now dealt them a crushing blow. Ten years of great
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  Speaker 1: confusion followed, and then an effort was made to save
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  Speaker 1: them from the complete ruin by which they were threatened,
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  Speaker 1: by a proclamation ordering that the more important of them,
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  Speaker 1: twelve in number, should be restored to the Padres. Nothing
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  Speaker 1: came of this, however, the collapse continued, and in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: forty six the sale of the mission buildings was decreed
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  Speaker 1: by the Departmental Assembly. When in the August of that
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  Speaker 1: year the American flag was unfurled at Monterey, everything connected
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  Speaker 1: with the missions, their lands, their priests, their neophytes, their
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  Speaker 1: management was in a state of seemingly hopeless chaos. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: General Kearney issued a declaration to the effect that the
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  Speaker 1: missions and their property should remain under the charge of
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  Speaker 1: the Catholic Priests until the titles to the lands should
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  Speaker 1: be decided by proper authority. But of whatever temporary service
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  Speaker 1: this measure may have been, it was, of course altogether
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  Speaker 1: powerless to wreathe fresh life into a system already in
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  Speaker 1: the last stages of decay. The mission buildings were crumbling
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  Speaker 1: into ruins, Their lands were neglected, their converts, for the
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  Speaker 1: most part dead or scattered. The rule of the padres
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  Speaker 1: was over. The Spanish missions in Alto California were things
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  Speaker 1: of the past. In these late days of a civilization
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  Speaker 1: so different in all its essential elements from that which
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  Speaker 1: the Franciscans labored so strenuously to establish on the Pacific coast.
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  Speaker 1: We may think of the Fathers as we will, and
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  Speaker 1: pass what judgment we see fit upon their work. But
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  Speaker 1: be that what it may our hearts cannot fail to
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  Speaker 1: be touched and stirred by the pitiful story of those
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  Speaker 1: true servants of God, who, in the hour of ultimate disaster,
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  Speaker 1: firmly refused to be separated from their flocks. Among the
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  Speaker 1: ruins of San Luis Obispo in eighteen forty two, Demafrus
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  Speaker 1: found the oldest Spanish priests then left in California, who,
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  Speaker 1: after sixty years of unremitting toil, was then reduce used
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  Speaker 1: to such abject poverty that he was forced to sleep
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  Speaker 1: on a hide, drink from a horn, and feed upon
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  Speaker 1: strips of meat dried in the sun. Yet this faithful
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  Speaker 1: creature still continued to share the little he possessed with
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  Speaker 1: the children of the few Indians who lingered in the
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  Speaker 1: huts about the deserted church. And when efforts were made
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  Speaker 1: to induce him to seek some other spot where he
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  Speaker 1: might find refuge and rest, his answer was that he
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  Speaker 1: meant to die at his post. The same writer has
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  Speaker 1: recorded an even more tragic case from the Annals of
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  Speaker 1: La Soledad. Long after the settlement there had been abandoned,
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  Speaker 1: and when the buildings were falling to pieces, an old priest,
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  Speaker 1: father Saria, still remained to minister to the bodily and
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  Speaker 1: physical wants of a handful of wretched natives who yet
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  Speaker 1: haunted the neighborhood, and whom he absolutely refused to forsake.
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  Speaker 1: One Sunday morning in August eighteen thirty three, after his habit,
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  Speaker 1: he gathered his neophytes together in what was once the
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  Speaker 1: church and began, according to his custom, the celebration of
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  Speaker 1: the Mass. But age, suffering, and privation had by this
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  Speaker 1: time told fatally upon him. Hardly had he commenced the service.
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  Speaker 1: When his strength gave way, he stumbled upon the crumbling
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  Speaker 1: altar and died literally of starvation, in the arms of
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  Speaker 1: those to whom for thirty years he had given freely
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  Speaker 1: whatever he had to give. Surely, these simple records of
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  Speaker 1: Christ's like devotion will live in the tender remembrance of
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  Speaker 1: all who revere the faith that, linked with whatever creed,
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  Speaker 1: manifests itself in good works, the love that spends itself
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  Speaker 1: in service, the quiet heroism that endures to the end
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  Speaker 1: end of chapter ten. Recording by matthew Reys, Cordova, Illinois,