“Your committee cannot dwell with too much warmth upon the magnificent propositions contained in the memorial of Gen. Vallejo. They breathe throughout the spirit of an enlarged mind, and a sincere public benefactor, for which he deserves the thanks of this body, and the gratitude of California. Such a proposition looks more like the legacy of a prince to his people, than the free donation of a private planter to a great state.”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE MISSION ESTABLISHMENTS IN CALIFORNIA.—THEIR ORIGIN, OBJECTS, LOCALITIES, LANDS, REVENUES, OVERTHROW.
The missions of California are the most prominent features in her history. They were established to propagate the Roman faith, and extend the domain of the Spanish crown. They contemplated the conversion of the untutored natives, and a permanent possession of the soil. They were an extension of the same system which, half a century previous, had achieved such signal triumphs on the peninsula and through the northern provinces of Mexico. The founders were men of unwearied zeal and heroic action; their enterprise, fortitude, and unshaken purpose might rouse all the slumbering strings of the religious minstrel.
In Alta California these missions formed a religious cordon the entire extent of the coast. They were reared at intervals of twelve or fourteen leagues in all the great fertile valleys opening on the sea. The first was founded in 1769; others followed fast, and before the close of the century the whole twenty were in effective operation. Each establishment contained within itself the elements of its strength, the sources of its aggrandizement. It embraced a massive church, garnished with costly plate; dwellings, storehouses, and workshops, suited to the wants of a growing colony; broad lands, encircling meadows, forests, streams, orchards, and cultured fields, with cattle, sheep, and horses, grazing on a “thousand hills,” and game in every glade; and above all, a faith that could scoop up whole tribes of savages, dazzling them with the symbols of religion, and impressing them with the conviction that submission to the padres was obedience to God.
These vast establishments absorbed the lands, capital, and business of the country; shut out emigration, suppressed enterprise, and moulded every interest into an implement of ecclesiastical sway. In 1833, the supreme government of Mexico issued a decree which converted them into civil institutions, subject to the control of the state. The consequence was, the padres lost their power, and with that departed the enterprise and wealth of their establishments. The civil administrators plundered them of their stock, the governors granted to favorites sections of their lands, till, with few exceptions, only the huge buildings remain. Their localities will serve as important guides to emigrants in quest of lands adapted to pasturage and agriculture, and their statistics will show, to some extent, the productive forces of the soil. These have been gathered, with some pains, from the archives of each mission, and are grouped for the first time in these pages. They are like the missions themselves—skeletons. California, though seemingly young, is piled with the wrecks of the past; around the stately ruin flits the shade of the padre; his warm welcome to streaming guests still lingers in the hall; and the loud mirth of the festive crowds still echoes in the darkened arches. But all these good olden times are passed—their glorious realities are gone—like the sound and sunlit splendors of the wave dashed and broken on the remorseless rock.
MISSION OF DOLLORES.
This mission is situated on the south side of the bay of San Francisco, two miles from the town. Its lands were forty leagues in circumference. Its stock, in 1825, consisted of 76,000 head of cattle, 950 tame horses, 2000 breeding-mares, 84 stud of choice breed, 820 mules, 79,000 sheep, 2000 hogs, 456 yoke of working-oxen, 18,000 bushels of wheat and barley, $35,000 in merchandise, and $25,000 in specie. It was secularized in 1834 by order of Gen. Figueroa, and soon became a wreck. The walls of the huge church only remain. Little did the good padre who reared them dream of the great town that was to rise in their shadows!
MISSION OF SANTA CLARA.
This mission is situated in the bosom of the great valley that bears its name, six miles from the embarcadero which strands the upper bend of the great bay of San Francisco. Around it lie the richest lands in California—once its own domain. In 1823 it branded, as the increase of one year, 22,400 calves. It owned 74,280 head of full-grown cattle, 407 yoke of working-oxen, 82,540 sheep, 1890 trained horses, 4235 mares, 725 mules, 1000 hogs, and $120,000 in goods. The church is a gigantic pile, and was once adorned with ornaments of massive silver. The property was secularized in 1834 by order of Gen. Figueroa, when the frolicking citizens of the Pueblo de San José began to revel on its ruins. It has still a fine vineyard, where the grape reels and the pear mellows.