Its patron, St. Raphael, “is considered the guardian angel of humanity. He was the herald who bore to the shepherds the ‘good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people’, and is especially the protector of the young, the pilgrim and the traveler.” The “herald of great joy” seems peculiarly fitting as the protector of a place where nature has done so much for the “joy of living.”
The mission of San Rafael Arcángel (St. Raphael the Archangel), founded in 1817, has now disappeared, not a vestige remaining of it.
A spur of the Coast Range in Southern California bears the name of the San Rafael Mountains.
BENICIA
Benicia (a surname), is the name of a town in Solano County, on the north side of Carquínez Strait, twenty-eight miles northeast of San Francisco. Its story may best be told in the words of General Sherman, in the following quotation from his Memoirs: “We found a solitary adobe house, occupied by Mr. Hastings and his family, embracing Dr. Semple, the proprietor of the ferry. The ferry was a ship’s boat, with a lateen sail, which could carry six or eight horses. It took us several days to cross over, and during that time we got well acquainted with the doctor, who was quite a character. He was about seven feet high. Foreseeing, as he thought, a great city on the bay somewhere, he selected Carquínez Straits as its location, and obtained from General Vallejo title to a league of land, on condition of building a city to bear the name of General Vallejo’s wife, Francisca Benicia. Accordingly, the city was first called Francisca. At this time, where San Francisco now is was known as Yerba Buena; now some of the chief men of that place, knowing the importance of a name, saw their danger, and so changed the name to San Francisco. Dr. Semple was so outraged at their changing the name to one so nearly like his town that he, in turn, changed his town’s name to the other name of Mrs. Vallejo, and Benicia it has been to this day.”
LAS PULGAS RANCHO
Las Pulgas Rancho (the fleas ranch), is near Redwood City. The story of this place, with its unpleasantly suggestive name, although of little importance in itself, is told here for the light it throws upon the manners and customs of the original dwellers in the land. Father Engelhardt, in his History of the California Missions, describes their way of living thus: “Their habitations were primitive, in summer often but a shady spot, or mere shelter of brush. Their winter quarters consisted of a flimsy structure of poles fixed in the ground, and drawn together at the top, at a height of ten or twelve feet. The poles were interwoven with small twigs, and the structure then covered with tules, or tufts of dried grass. In some places these dwellings were conical in shape, in others oblong, and their size ranged according to the number of people. At a distance they resembled large bee-hives, or small hay-stacks. On one side there was an opening for a door, at the top another for smoke. Here the family, including relatives and friends, huddled around the fire, without privacy, beds or other furniture. A few baskets, a stone mortar or two, weapons, some scanty rags of clothing, food obtained from the hunt, or seeds, were kept here. All refuse food and bones were left where they were dropped, giving the earth floor the appearance of a dog-kennel. Fleas and other vermin abounded in this mass of filth, which soon became too offensive even for savages, and they adopted the very simple method of setting fire to the hut and erecting another.”
After reading this description, we are not surprised when Father Crespi tells us that, having arrived at a deserted Indian village, and some of the soldiers having rashly taken refuge in the huts for the night, they soon rushed out with cries of “las pulgas! las pulgas!” (the fleas! the fleas!). He goes on to say, “for this reason, the soldiers called it the Ranchería de las Pulgas” (the village of the fleas), a name borne by the ranch to this day.
La Perouse, in his Voyage Autour du Monde, says the padres were never able to change this form of architecture common to the two Californias. The Indians said they liked open air, and that it was convenient, when the fleas became too numerous, to burn the house and construct a new one, an argument not without merit.