Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

He was at first unwilling to write it, fearing he should be supposed to be begging for himself rather than for his people. His father was a Mexican; and he has hoped that on that account their family would be exempt from the fate of the village when the colony comes into the valley. But it is not probable that in a country where water is gold, a stream of water such as runs by Victoriano's door will be left long in the possession of any Indian family, whatever may be its relations to rich Mexican proprietors in the neighborhood. Jesus's mother is a tall, superbly formed woman, with a clear skin, hazel nut-brown eyes that thrill one with their limpid brightness, a nose straight and strong, and a mouth like an Egyptian priestess. She is past forty, but she is strikingly handsome still; and one does not wonder at hearing the tragedy of her early youth, when, for years, she believed herself the wife of Jesus's father, lived in his house as a wife, worked as a wife, and bore him his children. Her heart broke when she was sent adrift, a sadder than Hagar, with her half-disowned offspring. Money and lands did not heal the wound. Her face is dark with the sting of it to-day. When I asked her to sell me the lace-trimmed pillow-case and sheet from her bed, her cheeks flushed at first, and she looked away haughtily before replying. But, after a moment, she consented. They needed the money. She knows well that days of trouble are in store for them.

Since the writing of this paper news has come that the long-expected blow has fallen on this Indian village. The colony scheme has been completed; the valley has been divided up; the land on which the village of Saboba stands is now the property of a San Bernardino merchant. Any day he chooses, he can eject these Indians as the Temecula and the San Pasqual bands were ejected, and with far more show of legal right.

In the vicinity of the San Juan Capistrano Mission are living a few families of Indians, some of them the former neophytes of the mission. An old woman there, named Carmen, is a splendid specimen of the best longevity which her race and the California air can produce. We found her in bed, where she spends most of her time,—not lying, but sitting cross-legged, looking brisk and energetic, and always busy making lace. Nobody makes finer lace than hers. Yet she laughed when we asked if she could see to do such fine work without spectacles.

"Where could I get spectacles?" she said, her eyes twinkling. Then she stretched out her hand for the spectacles of our old Mexican friend who had asked her this question for us; took them, turned them over curiously, tried to look through them, shook her head, and handed them back to him with a shrug and a smile. She was twenty years older than he; but her strong, young eyes could not see through his glasses. He recollected her well, fifty years before, an active, handsome woman, taking care of the sacristy, washing the priests' laces, mending vestments, and filling various offices of trust in the mission. A sailor from a French vessel lying in the harbor wished to marry her; but the friars would not give their consent, because the man was a drunkard and dishonest. Carmen was well disposed to him, and much flattered by his love-making. He used to write letters to her, which she brought to this Mexican boy to read. It was a droll sight to see her face, as he, now white-haired and looking fully as old as she, reminded her of that time and of those letters, tapping her jocosely on her cheek, and saying some things I am sure he did not quite literally translate to us. She fairly colored, buried her face in her hands for a second, then laughed till she shook, and answered in voluble Spanish, of which also I suspect we did not get a full translation. She was the happiest Indian we saw; indeed, the only one who seemed really gay of heart or even content.

A few rods from the old mission church of San Gabriel, in a hut made of bundles of the tule reeds lashed to sycamore poles, as the San Gabriel Indians made them a hundred years ago, live two old Indian women, Laura and Benjamina. Laura is one hundred and two years old, Benjamina one hundred and seventeen. The record of their baptisms is still to be seen in the church books, so there can be no dispute as to their age. It seems not at all incredible, however. If I had been told that Benjamina was a three-thousand-year-old Nile mummy, resuscitated by some mysterious process, I should not have demurred much at the tale. The first time I saw them, the two were crouching over a fire on the ground, under a sort of booth porch, in front of their hovel. Laura was making a feint of grinding acorn-meal in a stone bowl; Benjamina was raking the ashes, with her claw-like old fingers, for hot coals to start the fire afresh; her skin was like an elephant's, shrivelled, black, hanging in folds and welts on her neck and breast and bony arms; it was not like anything human; her shrunken eyes, bright as beads, peered out from under thickets of coarse grizzled gray hair. Laura wore a white cloth band around her head, tied on with a strip of scarlet flannel; above that, a tattered black shawl, which gave her the look of an aged imp. Old baskets, old pots, old pans, old stone mortars and pestles, broken tiles and bricks, rags, straw, boxes, legless chairs,—in short, all conceivable rubbish,—were strewn about or piled up in the place, making the weirdest of backgrounds for the aged crones' figures. Inside the hut were two bedsteads and a few boxes, baskets, and nets; and drying grapes and peppers hung on the walls. A few feet away was another hut, only a trifle better than this; four generations were living in the two. Benjamina's step-daughter, aged eighty, was a fine creature. With a white band straight around her forehead close to the eyebrows and a gay plaid handkerchief thrown on above it, falling squarely each side of her face, she looked like an old Bedouin sheik.

Our Mexican friend remembered Laura as she was fifty years ago. She was then, even at fifty-two, celebrated as one of the swiftest runners and best ball-players in all the San Gabriel games. She was a singer, too, in the choir. Coaxing her up on her feet, patting her shoulders, entreating and caressing her as one would a child, he succeeded in persuading her to chant for us the Lord's Prayer and part of the litanies, as she had been wont to do it in the old days. It was a grotesque and incredible sight. The more she stirred and sang and lifted her arms, the less alive she looked. We asked the step-daughter if they were happy and wished to live. Laughing, she repeated the question to them. "Oh, yes, we wish to live forever," they replied. They were greatly terrified, the daughter said, when the railway cars first ran through San Gabriel. They thought it was the devil bringing fire to burn up the world. Their chief solace is tobacco. To beg it, Benjamina will creep about in the village by the hour, bent double over her staff, tottering at every step. They sit for the most part silent, motionless, on the ground; their knees drawn up, their hands clasped over them, their heads sunk on their breasts. In my drives in the San Gabriel valley I often saw them sitting thus, as if they were dead. The sight had an indescribable fascination. It seemed that to be able to penetrate into the recesses of their thoughts would be to lay hold upon secrets as old as the earth.

One of the most beautiful appanages of the San Luis Rey Mission, in the time of its prosperity, was the Pala valley. It lies about twenty-five miles east of San Luis, among broken spurs of the Coast Range, watered by the San Luis River, and also by its own little stream, the Pala Creek. It was always a favorite home of the Indians; and at the time of the secularization, over a thousand of them used to gather at the weekly mass in its chapel. Now, on the occasional visits of the San Juan Capistrano priest, to hold service there, the dilapidated little church is not half filled, and the numbers are growing smaller each year. The buildings are all in decay; the stone steps leading to the belfry have crumbled; the walls of the little graveyard are broken in many places, the paling and the graves are thrown down. On the day we were there, a memorial service for the dead was going on in the chapel; a great square altar was draped with black, decorated with silver lace and ghastly funereal emblems; candles were burning; a row of kneeling black-shawled women were holding lighted candies in their hands; two old Indians were chanting a Latin Mass from a tattered missal bound in rawhide; the whole place was full of chilly gloom, in sharp contrast to the bright valley outside, with its sunlight and silence. This mass was for the soul of an old Indian woman named Margarita, sister of Manuelito, a somewhat famous chief of several bands of the San Luiseños. Her home was at the Potrero,—a mountain meadow, or pasture, as the word signifies,—about ten miles from Pala, high up the mountain-side, and reached by an almost impassable road. This farm—or "saeter" it would be called in Norway,—was given to Margarita by the friars; and by some exceptional good fortune she had a title which, it is said, can be maintained by her heirs. In 1871, in a revolt of some of Manuelito's bands, Margarita was hung up by her wrists till she was near dying, but was cut down at the last minute and saved.

One of her daughters speaks a little English; and finding that we had visited Pala solely on account of our interest in the Indians, she asked us to come up to the Potrero and pass the night. She said timidly that they had plenty of beds, and would do all that they knew how to do to make us comfortable. One might be in many a dear-priced hotel less comfortably lodged and served than we were by these hospitable Indians in their mud house, floored with earth. In my bedroom were three beds, all neatly made, with lace-trimmed sheets and pillow-cases and patchwork coverlids. One small square window with a wooden shutter was the only aperture for air, and there was no furniture except one chair and a half-dozen trunks. The Indians, like the Norwegian peasants, keep their clothes and various properties all neatly packed away in boxes or trunks. As I fell asleep, I wondered if in the morning I should see Indian heads on the pillows opposite me; the whole place was swarming with men, women, and babies, and it seemed impossible for them to spare so many beds; but, no, when I waked, there were the beds still undisturbed; a soft-eyed Indian girl was on her knees rummaging in one of the trunks; seeing me awake, she murmured a few words in Indian, which conveyed her apology as well as if I had understood them. From the very bottom of the trunk she drew out a gilt-edged china mug, darted out of the room, and came back bringing it filled with fresh water. As she set it in the chair, in which she had already put a tin pan of water and a clean coarse towel, she smiled, and made a sign that it was for my teeth. There was a thoughtfulness and delicacy in the attention which lifted it far beyond the level of its literal value. The gilt-edged mug was her most precious possession; and, in remembering water for the teeth, she had provided me with the last superfluity in the way of white man's comfort of which she could think.

The food which they gave us was a surprise; it was far better than we had found the night before in the house of an Austrian colonel's son, at Pala. Chicken, deliciously cooked, with rice and chile; soda-biscuits delicately made; good milk and butter, all laid in orderly fashion, with a clean table-cloth, and clean, white stone china. When I said to our hostess that I regretted very much that they had given up their beds in my room, that they ought not to have done it, she answered me with a wave of her hand that "it was nothing; they hoped I had slept well; that they had plenty of other beds." The hospitable lie did not deceive me, for by examination I had convinced myself that the greater part of the family must have slept on the bare earth in the kitchen. They would not have taken pay for our lodging, except that they had just been forced to give so much for the mass for Margarita's soul, and it had been hard for them to raise the money. Twelve dollars the priest had charged for the mass; and in addition they had to pay for the candles, silver lace, black cloth, etc., nearly as much more. They had earnestly desired to have the mass said at the Potrero, but the priest would not come up there for less than twenty dollars, and that, Antonia said, with a sigh, they could not possibly pay. We left at six o'clock in the morning; Margarita's husband, the "capitan," riding off with us to see us safe on our way. When we had passed the worst gullies and boulders, he whirled his horse, lifted his ragged old sombrero with the grace of a cavalier, smiled, wished us good-day and good luck, and was out of sight in a second, his little wild pony galloping up the rough trail as if it were as smooth as a race-course.

Between the Potrero and Pala are two Indian villages, the Rincon and Pauma. The Rincon is at the head of the valley, snugged up against the mountains, as its name signifies, in a "corner." Here were fences, irrigating ditches, fields of barley, wheat, hay, and peas; a little herd of horses and cows grazing, and several flocks of sheep. The men were all away sheep-shearing; the women were at work in the fields, some hoeing, some clearing out the irrigating ditches, and all the old women plaiting baskets. These Rincon Indians, we were told, had refused a school offered them by the Government; they said they would accept nothing at the hands of the Government until it gave them a title to their lands.