THE MISSION DOLORES

I have read somewhere in the pages of a veracious author how, five or six years before my day, he had ridden through chaparral from Yerba Buena to the Mission Dolores with the howl of the wolf for accompaniment. Yerba Buena is now San Francisco, and the mission is a part of the city; it is not even a suburb.

In 1855 there were two plank-roads leading from the city to the Mission Dolores; on each of these omnibuses ran every half hour. The plank-road was a straight and narrow way, cut through acres of chaparral-thickets of low evergreen oaks,-and leading over forbidding wastes of sand. To stretch a figure, it was as if the sea-of-sand had been divided in the midst, so that the children of Israel might have passed dry-shod, and the Egyptians pursuing them might have been swallowed up in the billows of sand that flowed over them at intervals.

Somewhere among those treacherous dunes-of them it might indeed be said that “the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like lambs,”-somewhere thereabout was located the once famous but now fabulous Pipesville, the country-seat of my old friend, “Jeems Pipes of Pipesville.” He was longer and better known to the world as Stephen C. Massett, composer of the words and music of that once most popular of songs, “When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming,” as well as many another charming ballad.

Stephen C. Massett, a most delightful companion and a famous diner-out, give a concert of vocal music interspersed with recitations and imitations, in the school-house that stood at the northwest corner of the plaza. This was on Monday evening, June 22, 1849; and it was the first public entertainment, the first regular amusement, ever given in San Francisco. The only piano in the country was engaged for the occasion; the tickets were three dollars each, and the proceeds yielded over five hundred dollars; although it cost sixteen dollars to have the piano used on the occasion moved from one side of the plaza, or Portsmouth Square, to the other. On a copy of the programme which now lies before me I find this line: “N.B.-Front seats reserved for ladies!” History records that there were but four ladies present-probably the only four in the town at the time. Massett died in New York city a few months ago,-a man who had friends in every country under the sun, and, I believe, no enemy.

I remember the Mission Dolores as a detached settlement with a pronounced Spanish flavor. There was one street worth mentioning, and only one. It was lined with low-walled adobe houses, roofed with the red curved tiles which add so much to the adobe houses that otherwise would be far from picturesque. The adobe is a sun-baked brick; it is mud-color; its walls look as if they were moulded of mud. The adobes were the native California habitations. We spoke of them as adobes; although it would probably be as correct, etymologically, to refer to brick houses as bricks.

There were a few ramshackle hotels at the mission; for in the early days it seemed as if everybody either boarded or took in boarders, and many families lived for years in hotels rather than attempt to keep house in the wilds of San Francisco. The mission was about one house deep each side of the main street. You might have turned a corner and found yourself face to face with the cattle in the meadow. As for the goats, they met you at the doorway and followed you down the street like dogs.

At the top of this street stood the mission church and what few mission buildings were left for the use of the Fathers. The church and the grounds were the most interesting features of the place, and it was a favorite resort of the citizens of San Francisco; yet it most likely would not have been were the church the sole attraction. Here, in appropriate enclosures, there were bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and horse-racing. Many duels were fought here, and some of them were so well advertised that they drew almost as well as a cock-fight. Cock-fighting was a special Sunday diversion. Through the mission ran the highway to the pleasant city of San Jose; it ran through a country unsurpassed in beauty and fertility. Above the mission towered the mission peaks, and about it the hillslopes were mantled with myriads of wild flowers, the splendor and variety of which have added to the fame of California.

The mission church was never handsome; but the façade with the old bells hanging in their niches, and the almost naïve simplicity of its architectural adornment, are extremely pleasing. It is a long, narrow, dingy nave one enters. Its walls of adobe do not retain their coats of whitewash for any length of time; in the rainy season they are damp and almost clammy. The floor is of beaten earth; the Stations upon the walls of the rudest description; the narrow windows but dimly light the interior, and rather add to than dispel the gloom that has been gathering there for ages. The high altar is, of course, in striking contrast with all that dark interior: it is over-decorated in the Mexican manner-flowers, feathers, tinsel ornaments, tall candlesticks elaborately gilded; all the statues examples of the primitive art that appealed strongly to the uncultivated eye; and all the adornments gay, gaudy, if not garish. Do you wonder at this? When you enter the old church at the Mission Dolores you should recall its history, and picture in your imagination the people for whom the mission was established.

The Franciscans founded their first mission in California at San Diego in 1769. The Mission Dolores was founded on St. Francis’ Day, 1776. To found a mission was a serious matter; yet one and twenty missions were in the full tide of success before the good work was abandoned. The friars were the first fathers of the land: they did whatever was done for it and for the people who originally inhabited it. They explored the country lying between the coast range and the sea. They set apart large tracts of land for cultivation and for the pasturing of flocks and herds. For a long time Old and New Spain contributed liberally to what was known as the Pious Fund of California. The fund was managed by the Convent of San Fernando and certain trustees in Mexico, and the proceeds transmitted from the city of Mexico to the friars in California.

The mission church was situated, as a rule, in the centre of the mission lands, or reservations. The latter comprised several thousand acres of land. With the money furnished by the Pious Fund of California the church was erected, and surrounded by the various buildings occupied by the Fathers, the retainers, and the employees who had been trained to agriculture and the simple branches of mechanics. The presbytery, or the rectory, was the chief guest-house in the land. There were no hotels in the California of that day, but the traveller, the prospector, the speculator, was ever welcome at the mission board; and it was a bountiful board until the rapacity of the Federal Government laid it waste. Alexander Forbes, in his “History of Upper and Lower California” (London, 1839), states that the population of Upper California in 1831 was a little over 23,000; of these 18,683 were Indians. It was for the conversion of these Indians that the missions were first established; for the bettering of their condition-mental, moral and physical-that they were trained in the useful and industrial arts. That they labored not in vain is evident. In less than fifty years from the day of its foundation the Mission of San Francisco Dolores-that is in 1825-is said to have possessed 76,000 head of cattle; 950 tame horses; 2,000 breeding mares; 84 stud of choice breed; 820 mules; 79,000 sheep; 2,000 hogs; 456 yoke of working oxen; 18,000 bushels of wheat and barley; besides $35,000 in merchandise and $25,000 in specie.

That was, indeed, the golden age of the California missions; everybody was prosperous and proportionately happy. In 1826 the Mission of Soledad owned more than 36,000 head of cattle, and a larger number of horses and mares than any other mission in the country. These animals increased so rapidly that they were given away in order to preserve the pasturage for cattle and sheep. In 1822 the Spanish power in Mexico was overthrown; in 1824 a republican constitution was established. California, not then having a population sufficient to admit it as one of the Federal States, was made a territory, and as such had a representative in the Mexican Congress; but he was not allowed a vote on any question, though he sat in the assembly and shared in the debates.

In 1826 the Federal Government began to meddle with the affairs of the friars. The Indians “who had good characters, and were considered able to maintain themselves, from having been taught the art of agriculture or some trade,” were manumitted; portions of land were allotted to them, and the whole country was divided into parishes, under the superintendence of curates. The zealous missionaries were no longer to receive a salary-four hundred dollars a year had formerly been paid them out of the national exchequer for developing the resources of the State. Everybody and everything was now supposed to be self-sustaining, and was left to take care of itself. It was a dream-and a bad one!

Within one year the Indians went to the dogs. They were cheated out of their small possessions and were driven to beggary or plunder. The Fathers were implored to take charge again of their helpless flock. Meanwhile the Pious Fund of California had run dry, as its revenues had been diverted into alien channels. The good friars resumed their offices. Once more the missions were prosperous, but for a time only. It was the beginning of the end. Year after year acts were passed in the Mexican Congress so hampering the friars in their labors that they were at last crippled and helpless. The year 1840 was specially disastrous; and in 1845 the Franciscans the pioneer settlers and civilizers of California, were completely denuded of both power and property.

In that year a number of the missions were sold by public auction. The Indian converts, formerly attached to some of the missions, but now demoralized and wandering idly and miserably over the country, were ordered to return within a month to the few remaining missions, or those also would be sold. The Indians, having had enough of legislation and knowing the white man pretty well by this time, no doubt having had enough of him, returned not, and their missions were disposed of. Then the remaining missions were rented and the remnants divided into three parts: one kindly bestowed upon the missionaries, who were the founders and rightful owners of the missions; one upon the converted Indians, who seem to have vanished into thin air; one, the last, was supposed to be converted into a new Pious Fund of California for the further education and evangelization of the masses-whoever they might be. The general government had long been in financial distress, and had often borrowed-to put it mildly-from the friars in their more prosperous days. In 1831 the Mexican Congress owed the missions of California $450,000 of borrowed money; and in 1845 it left those missionaries absolutely penniless.

Let me not harp longer upon this theme, but end with a quotation from the pages of a non-Catholic historian. Referring to the Franciscans and their mission work on the Pacific coast, Josiah Joyce, assistant professor of philosophy in Harvard College, says:

“No one can question their motives, nor may one doubt that their intentions were not only formally pious but truly humane. For the more fatal diseases that so-called civilization introduced among the Indians, only the soldiers and colonists of the presidios and pueblos were to blame; and the Fathers, well knowing the evil results of a mixed population, did their best to prevent these consequences, but in vain; since the neighborhood of a presidio was often necessary for the safety of a mission, and the introduction of a white colonist was an important part of the intentions of the home government. But, after all, upon this whole toil of the missions, considered in itself, one looks back with regret, as upon one of the most devout and praiseworthy of mortal efforts; and, in view of its avowed intentions, one of the most complete and fruitless of human failures. The missions have meant, for modern American California, little more than a memory, which now indeed is lighted up by poetical legends of many sorts. But the chief significance of the missions is simply that they first began the colonization of California.”

The old mission church as I knew it four and forty years ago is still standing and still an object of pious interest. The first families of the faithful lie under its eaves in their long and peaceful sleep, happily unmindful of the great changes that have come over the spirit of all our dreams. The old adobes have returned to dust, even as the hands of those who fashioned them more than a century ago. Very modern houses have crowded upon the old church and churchyard, and they seem to have become the merest shadows of their former selves; while the roof-tree of the new church soars into space, and its wide walls-out of all proportion with the Dolores of departed days-are but emblematic of the new spirit of the age.