Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California

by Caroline C. Leighton

September 6, 1876.

I have found two beautiful places to visit,—the old Spanish graveyard of the Mission Dolores, and Lone Mountain Cemetery. They have long, deep grass, and bright, exquisite flowers. On the waste tracks about the cemetery, I can still find the fragrant little yerba buena (good herb), from which the Spanish Fathers named the spot where San Francisco now stands, in the primitive times, long before gold was discovered. The cross on the summit of Lone Mountain, erected by the Franciscan friars, is quite impressive from its height and size. It is seen from all parts of the city.

The Mission Dolores (Mission of our Lady of Sorrow) is south of the city, sheltered from the wind, with a clear stream flowing near. The fathers displayed their customary shrewdness in the selection of this situation. The bleak sandhills to the north they left for the future city, and settled themselves in this pleasant valley. The pioneer missionary of Northern California—Father Junipero Serra, that rigorous old Spaniard who used to beat his breast with stones—established himself here, with his Franciscan monks, in the fall of 1776. His old church is still standing,—an adobe building, with earthen floor, the walls and ceiling covered with rude paintings of saints and angels.

The Presidio of San Francisco was established in the spring preceding, by a colony sent out by the Viceroy of Mexico, accompanied by a military command. Father Pedro Font came with the expedition. He was a scientific man, and recorded his observations of the country and the people. Just before starting, a mass was sung for their happy journey, to the Most Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe, whom they chose for their patroness, together with the Archangel Michael and their Father Saint Francis.

When they reached the vicinity of the Gila River, the governors of several of the rancherias came out to meet them, with the alcalde, and a body of Pimas Indians, mounted on horses, who presented them with the scalps of several Apaches they had slain the day before. At the next stopping-place along the river, they were met by about a thousand Indians, who were very hospitable, and made a great shed of green boughs for them, in which to pass the night.

Father Pedro observed that the country must formerly have been inhabited by a different race, as the ground was strewn with fragments of painted earthenware, which the Pimas did not understand making. He saw also the ruins of an ancient building, with walls four and six feet thick. On the east and west sides were round openings, through which, according to the Indian traditions, the prince who lived there used to salute the rising and setting sun.

The company travelled on, singing masses, and resting by the way, until they reached what Father Pedro called "a miracle of Nature, the port of ports" (San Francisco Bay). He ascended a table-land, that ended in a steep white rock, to admire what he calls the "delicious view,"—including the bay and its islands, and the ocean, with the Farallons in the distance, of which he made a sketch. He mentioned Angel Island, which still bears that name. The commandant planted a cross on the steep white rock, as the symbol of possession, and also at Point Reyes (Point of Kings), and selected the table-land for the site of the Presidio. Father Font explored the country about the bay, and made some surveys. He noticed some Indians with launches made of tules (bulrushes), in which they navigated the streams.

It would have been fortunate for the Indians if all the priests sent among them had been of as gentle a spirit as Father Pedro. He says, in his account of this expedition, that they received him everywhere with demonstrations of joy, with dancing and singing. But, some years after, we hear that the soldiers were sent out from the Presidio to lasso the Indians. They were brought in like wild beasts, immediately baptized, and their Christianization commenced. Kotzebue, one of the early Russian explorers, says that in his time (1824) he saw them at Santa Clara driven into the church like a flock of sheep, by an old ragged Spaniard, armed with a stick. Some of the more humane priests complained bitterly of this violent method of converting the heathen, and insisted that all the Indians who had been brought in by force should be restored "to their gentile condition."

In the old Mission of Santa Barbara, we saw some of the frightful pictures considered so very effective in converting them. One special painting, representing in most vivid colors the torments of hell, was said of itself alone to have led to hosts of conversions; but a picture of paradise, in the same church, which was very subdued in its treatment and coloring, had failed to produce any effect.

The services of the Indians belonged for life to the missions to which they were attached. They were taught many useful things. They watered and kept the gardens and fields of grain, and tended the immense herds of cattle that roamed over the hills. Traders came to the coast to buy hides and tallow from the ranches and the missions, and the product of their fields. For seventy years, these old monks, supported by Spain, were the rulers of California. Spain's foreign and colonial troubles, however, led her to appropriate to other purposes the "Pious Fund" by which the missions were maintained. Jealousy of their growing power, and revolutions in Mexico, hastened their downfall. The discovery of gold in 1848 introduced the element which was to prove their final destruction.