Spain was, however, not yet prepared to cut loose entirely from her religious traditions, and she sent Franciscans to take the place of the banished Jesuits. The vessel that landed the latter at San Blas returned to California with twelve Franciscans, at the head of whom was Father Junipero Serra, an experienced Indian missionary. After placing priests at the vacated missions, Father Serra went on to found others, San Ferdinand, San Bonaventura, and San Diego being established in 1769, that at Monterey in 1770—at the news of which foundations all the bells in the city of Mexico were rung—San Gabriel the same year, St. Anthony of Padua in 1771, San Luis Obispo in 1772, San Juan Capistrano in 1774, San Francisco in 1776, Santa Clara in 1777. In this interval many more of the sons of St. Francis came to join in the labors of their brethren, or to replace those who were worn out with toil. At Monterey, in 1771, when the feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated with a pomp such as the wilderness had never before seen, twelve priests joined in the sacred procession. The Dominicans, moreover, applied for a share in the work of the missions, and in 1774 were assigned to all those stations formerly served by the Jesuits, the Franciscans retaining only those that had been founded by themselves, except San Ferdinand, which was also given to the Dominicans. As the missions thus transferred were chiefly in Old California (the peninsula), their history does not enter within the scope of this narrative.
In 1775, the mission at San Diego was attacked by a large force of pagan Indians, led on by two apostates of their own race. Father Louis Jayme, one of the two priests stationed here, was awakened by the flames, and, supposing the fire to be accidental, came to the door with his usual salutation, “Love God, my children.” He was immediately seized, dragged off, pierced with arrows, and hacked to death by blows with swords made of hardened wood. The other father happily escaped. When Father Serra heard what had occurred, he exclaimed, “Thank God, that field is watered,” rebuilt the mission, after some opposition from the civil authorities, and went on with his labors in founding others. Father Crespi, the principal assistant of Father Serra, died in 1782, after a missionary career of thirty years, of which fourteen had been spent in California. Father Serra himself expired two years after. Although seventy-one years of age at the time of his death, his zeal was undiminished and his faculties were unimpaired. Under his administration, as Prefect Apostolic of California, ten new missions had been established, and ten thousand Indians baptized. Yet death found him busy with plans of still other foundations.
By a Papal Bull of June 16th, 1774, the power of administering confirmation was granted to the prefect apostolic. This privilege was of course shared by Father Serra’s successors in the same office. The first of these was Father Palou, under whom the following new missions were founded: Santa Barbara in 1786, La Purisima Concepcion, near San Luis Obispo, in 1787, Santa Cruz near Branciforte, and Nuestra Señora de Soledad, near Monterey, in 1791. Father Palou then returned to Mexico, where he became superior of the convent of San Fernando. He was succeeded as prefect by Father Lazven, who remained in office until his death in 1803. In the interval, Father Lazven founded three great missions, San José, San Miguel, and San Fernando, all in the year 1797. San Luis, Rey de Francia, was founded in the following year. St. Louis of France was thus honored in this remote wilderness at a time when the nation over which he had ruled rejected alike his faith, his institutions, and his family. The celebrated Father Peyri, whose portrait is given in Mr. Shea’s History of the Missions, superintended the foundation of this greatest of the Californian reductions. In front of the church, which is ninety feet in length, of stone, and rises at one end in a beautiful tower and dome (says Mr. Shea), “extends a colonnade not without architectural beauty, and nearly five hundred feet long, while in depth it is almost of equal proportions.” Three thousand five hundred Indian converts were soon gathered together, occupying twenty ranches around this abode of peace and plenty.
Father Mariano Payeras succeeded Father Lazven as prefect, and founded the mission of Santa Inez in 1804. At this time Spain became unable, amid the distractions which arose from the French Revolution—for which she herself had assisted in preparing the way by the share she took in the persecution of the Jesuits—to extend the aid which new foundations required, and, therefore, none were made. The missions already in existence were not affected to any great extent by the difficulties of the mother country, for they were self-supporting. In 1817, however, it became possible to found the mission of San Rafael, and this proved to be the last foundation under Spanish auspices. Others were projected, but the power of Spain in the western world was already tottering to its fall. In 1821, Iturbide’s short-lived empire replaced the authority of the Spanish crown in Mexico, and two years after, Santa Anna’s successful revolt changed the empire into a republic. Father Sanchez was now prefect, and in 1823 established the mission of San Francisco Solano, the first and last erected under Mexican rule.
Echandia, the governor sent out by the Mexican authorities, arrived in California in 1824. Then began the robbery and destruction of the missions, the first step in which was the substitution of government agents in the temporal rule of the missions for that of the fathers, who had always exercised this authority to the great advantage of the Indians, and without drawing thence any profit for themselves, since they were both by habit of life and by religious vow poor men. Father Peyri was driven from his mission of San Luis Rey which he had founded more than thirty years before, and had directed ever since with admirable skill; nor could the tears and entreaties of his neophytes move the stony-hearted governor to retain him. At this populous mission, many of the Indians had been taught the trades, and were blacksmiths, carpenters, and mechanics in various departments; they also owned sixty thousand head of cattle, and raised thirteen thousand bushels of grain yearly. At San Luis Obispo, Father Martinez had in like manner formed his flock to industry; they wove and dyed ordinary cloth and fine cotton fabrics, and could have always maintained a state of prosperity and happiness had their possessions and their beloved director been left to them, but the former were wrecked, and the latter was brutally expelled.
Five other fathers were driven from their missions, and a regular system of robbery commenced: ranch after ranch was taken, cattle were swept off, and the minds of the Indians were endeavored to be poisoned against the missionaries by Echandia, through wilful representations, so that in one case they attempted to take the life of a priest. Other missionaries, after having spent thirty or forty years in civilizing the Indians, and raising them to a state of comfort and plenty, found themselves obliged, by the ill-treatment they suffered, to leave the country. The prefect, Father Sanchez, was the special object of this persecution on the part of Echandia, and died of grief in 1831, consoled only by the momentary peace which reigned at the time under Echandia’s successor, Don Manuel Victoria, who during the few months he was in office restored the missions so far as he was able; but after his removal the pillage progressed as before.
Father Francisco Garcia Diego was appointed prefect in 1832, and arrived in California in January of the following year, taking up his residence at Santa Clara. The number of missionaries was now so reduced that Father Garcia found it necessary to take with him ten fathers to recruit their ranks. The new prefect did what he could to ward off the ruin which threatened the missions, but they were doomed, and the decree of secularization passed by the Mexican Congress in 1834 and enforced in 1837 only completed their destruction. Thus, this wretched republic, which is and always has been unable amidst the contentions of its rival chiefs, with their ever recurring pronunciamentos, to preserve domestic peace, and which has suffered the great public works erected in Mexico by the crown to fall into decay, carried spiritual and temporal ruin to the fair regions which had been consecrated to religion and peace, to industry and innocence, and overthrew the noblest monuments which the zeal and the faith of Spain had bequeathed to her colonies.
Father Garcia’s heart was wrung with anguish at the spectacle of desolation which surrounded him, and to which, with all his efforts, he was able to interpose only a feeble barrier. He repaired to Mexico to intercede with the government in behalf of his oppressed and helpless people. Through his influence the law of secularization was repealed, and an act passed restoring the property of the missions. But the reparation came too late; the plunderers were in full possession of their ill-gotten property, and no power could wrest it from them. Meanwhile, a severe illness at the capital, and the affairs of his order in Zacatecas, retained him in Mexico, where, in 1840, he received notice of his appointment to the bishopric of the Californias. He was consecrated in the same year, but was unable to take possession of his diocese until December, 1841.
On arriving at San Diego, he found the mission and the church in ruins. At San Gabriel, where extensive vineyards had been in full bearing, and to protect which the father was in negotiation with an American house for iron fences, even the vines were pulled up. This mission had loaded ships with its products, which were despatched regularly to San Blas and Lima. Amid its ruins, a traveller (Duflot de Mofras) describes in 1842 seeing the missionary Father Estenega seated in a field before a large table, with his sleeves rolled up kneading clay and teaching his Indians to make bricks. San Luis Obispo was in the same condition, and Father Abella, the oldest missionary in the country, whom La Perouse had seen here in 1787, still survived in 1842. His only bed was a hide, his only food dried beef, and he divided among his poor and plundered Indians the alms he received. At San José, Father Gonzalez, prefect of the northern missions, subsisted on the scanty rations furnished him by the officials. La Soledad, from having been an earthly paradise, was now a wilderness of ruin and desolation. Its missionary, Father Serra, of whom an American says “it was a happiness indeed to have known him,” had died of hunger and wretchedness in 1838 on the spot where thousands had enjoyed his hospitality. He expired in the arms of the Indians whom he had spent thirty years in instructing and protecting, falling at the foot of the altar just as he had begun Mass. At San Francisco Solano, everything had been destroyed, and the materials of the mission-house and chapel sacrilegiously used in building the palace of Don Mariano Vallejo. Santa Barbara still possessed its missions, the residence of the devoted prefect of the southern missions, Father Narcisso Duran, and at San Fernando, Santa Clara, and Santa Inez (where Bishop Garcia afterwards erected a seminary) the missionaries had succeeded in saving much. Everywhere else, ruin and desolation had overtaken the missions.
The Indian population of the missions was reduced from 30,650 to 4,450, their cattle dwindled from 424,000 to 28,000, and their other stock in proportion, for they had owned 62,500 horses and 321,500 sheep besides. They had raised annually 122,500 bushels of wheat and corn.