The old Missions of California are
landmarks that remind us of Father Serra and his band
of faithful workers. There were twenty-one of
their beautiful churches, and though some are ruined
and neglected, others like the Mission Dolores of
San Francisco and the Santa Barbara and Monterey buildings
are still in excellent condition. From San Diego
to San Francisco these Missions were located, about
thirty miles apart, and so well were the sites chosen
that the finest cities of the state have grown round
the old churches.
Father Junípero Serra was the
president and leader of the Franciscan missionaries
and the founder of the Missions. He had been brought
up in Spain, and had dreamed from his boyhood of going
to the New World, as the Spanish called America, to
tell the savages how to be Christians. He began
his work as a missionary in Mexico and there labored
faithfully among the Indians for nearly twenty years.
But as his greatest wish was to preach to those in
unknown places he was glad to be chosen to explore
Alta or Upper California.
Marching by land from Loreto, a Mission
of Lower California, Father Serra, with Governor Portola
and his soldiers, reached San Diego in 1769.
Here he planted the first Mission on California ground.
The church was a rude arbor of boughs, and the bells
were hung in an oak tree. Father Serra rang the
bells himself, and called loudly to the wondering
Indians to come to the Holy Church and hear about Christ.
But the natives were suspicious and not ready to listen
to the good man’s teachings, and several times
they attacked the newcomers. Finally, after six
years, they burnt the church and killed one of the
missionaries. But later on there was peace, and
the priests, or Padres as they were called, taught
the Indians to raise corn and wheat, and to plant
olive orchards and fig trees, and grapes for wine.
They built a new church and round it the huts, or
cabins, of the Indians, the storehouses, and the Padre’s
dwelling. In the early morning the bells called
every member of the Mission family to a church service.
After a breakfast of corn and beans they spent the
morning in outdoor work or in building. At noon
either mutton or beef was served with corn and beans,
and at two o’clock work began again, to last
till evening service. A supper of corn-meal mush
was the Indians’ favorite meal. They had
many holidays, when their amusements were dancing,
bull-fighting, or cock-fighting.
San Diego, called the Mother Mission,
because it is the oldest church, is now also most
in ruins. But its friends hope to put new foundations
under the old walls, and to recap firm ones with cement,
and preserve this monument of early California history.
After Father Serra had started the
San Diego settlement he set sail for Monterey.
Landing at Monterey Bay, he built an altar under a
large oak tree, hung the Mission bells upon the boughs,
and held the usual services. The Spanish soldiers
fired off their guns in honor of the day and put up
a great cross. The Indians had never heard the
sound of guns and were so frightened that they ran
away to the mountains. The second Mission was
built on the Carmel River, a little distance from
the site of the first altar. This was called San
Carlos of Monterey, and the settlement was the capital
of Alta California for many years. It was also
the Mission that Father Serra loved the best, and after
every trip to other and newer settlements he returned
to San Carlos as his home. This Monterey Mission
is well preserved, and books, carved church furniture,
and embroidered robes used in the old services are
still shown.
At both San Diego and Monterey a presidio,
or fort, was built for the soldiers. These forts
had one or two cannon brought from Spain, and had
around them high walls, or stockades, to protect, if
it should be necessary, the Mission people from the
Indians. The cannon were fired on holidays, or
to frighten troublesome Indians.
All the Mission buildings were of
brown clay made into large bricks about a foot and
a half long and broad, and three or four inches thick.
These bricks, dried in the sun, were called adobes,
and were plastered together and made smooth by a mortar
of the same clay. Then the walls were coated
outside and inside with a lime stucco and whitewashed.
The roof timbers were covered with hollow red tiles,
each like the half of a sewer pipe, and these were
laid to overlap each other so that they kept the rain
out. The floors were of earth beaten hard, and
the windows had bars or latticework, but no glass.
The large church was snowy white within and without
and had pictures brought from Spain and much carved
furniture, such as chairs, benches, and the pulpit
made by the Indians. One or two round-topped towers
and five or six belfries, each holding a large bell,
were on the church roof, and a great iron cross at
the very top.
Night and morning the Mission bells
rang to call the Indians to mass or service, and chimes
or tunes were rung on holidays or for weddings.
These Mission bells were brought from Spain, and it
was thought a blessing rested on the ship which carried
them, and that shipwreck could not come to such a
vessel. We read of one captain joyfully receiving
the Mission bells to take to San Diego. When nearing
the coast his vessel struck a rock, yet passed on
in safety because, as he said, no harm could happen
with the bells on board. On his journeys every
missionary carried a bell with him for the new church
he was to build. Father Serra’s first act
on reaching a stopping-place was to hang the bell
in a tree and ring it to gather the Indians and people
for service.
San Antonio, a very successful Mission,
was the third one established, and it was in a beautiful
little valley of the Santa Lucia Mountains. Every
kind of fruit grew in its orchards, and the Indians
there were very happy and contented, and in large
workshops made cloth, saddles, and other things.
San Gabriel, not far from Los Angeles and sometimes
called the finest church of all, was the next to be
built. This was the richest of the Missions and
had great stores of wool, wheat, and fruit, which
the hard-working Indians earned and gave to the church.
The Indians, indeed, were almost slaves, and worked
all their lives for the Padres without rest or
pay. At San Gabriel the first California flour-mill
worked by a stream of water turning the wheel, was
put up. Some of the old palms and olive trees
are still growing there.
San Juan Capistrano, founded in 1776,
was one of the best-known Missions, for it had a seaport
of its own at San Juan. Vessels came to its port
for the hides and tallow of thousands of cattle herded
round the Mission. The first fine church of this
Mission was destroyed by an earthquake, and many people
were killed by its falling roof. It was rebuilt,
however, and still shows its fine front, and long corridors
or porches round a hollow square where a garden and
fountain used to be.
Old records tell us that Father Serra
felt that there should be a church named in honor
of Francis, who was the founder and patron saint of
the Franciscan brotherhood of monks to which these
missionaries belonged. When Father Serra spoke
of this to Galvez, that priest replied, “If
our good Saint Francis wants a Mission, let him show
us that fine harbor up above Monterey and we will
build him one there.” Several explorers
had failed to find this port about which Indians had
spoken to the Spanish. At last Ortega discovered
it, and Father Palou, in 1776, consecrated the Mission
of San Francisco. Near the spot was a small lake
called the “Laguna de los Dolores,” and
from this the church was at last known as the Mission
Dolores. But the great city bears the Spanish
name of Saint Francis, or San Francisco. A fort
was erected where the present Presidio stands, and
later a battery of cannon was placed at Black Point.
It is told that the Indians were very quarrelsome
here and fought so among themselves that the Padres
could get no church built for a year. In that
part of San Francisco called the Mission, the old
building with its odd roof and three of the ancient
bells is a very interesting place to visit. There
are pictures, and other relics of the past to see,
and in the graveyard many of San Francisco’s
early settlers were buried. This was the sixth
Mission of Alta California.
The Santa Barbara Mission, where Franciscan
fathers still live, has a fine church with double
towers and a long row of two-story adobe buildings
enclosing a hollow square where a beautiful garden
is kept. One of the brotherhood, wearing a long
brown robe just as Father Serra did, takes visitors
into the church, and also shows them the garden and
a large carved stone fountain. This church is
built of sandstone with two large towers and a chime
of six bells, and was finished in 1820.
The Santa Ynez Mission was much damaged
by the heavy earthquake that in 1812 ruined other
Missions. Here the Indians raised large crops
of wheat and herded many cattle. Over a thousand
Indians, it is said, attacked this church in 1822,
but the priest in charge frightened them away by firing
guns. This warlike conduct so displeased the Padres,
who wished the natives ruled by kindness, that the
poor priest was sent away from the Mission.
One of the early Missions was San
Luis Obispo, where services are still held.
It was specially noted for a fine blue cloth woven
by the Indians from the wool of the Mission flocks
of sheep. The Indians there also wove blankets,
and cloth from cotton raised upon their own lands.
San Juan Bautista, or St. John the
Baptist, north of Monterey, had a splendid chime of
nine bells said to have been brought from Peru and
to have very rich, mellow tones. San Miguel had
a bell hung up on a platform in front of the church,
and now at Santa Ysabel, sixty miles from San Diego,
where the Mission itself is only a heap of adobe ruins,
two bells hang on a rude framework of logs. The
Indian bell-ringer rings them by a rope fastened to
each clapper. The bells were cast in Spain and
much silver jewellery and household plate were melted
with the bell-metal. Near them the Diegueno Indians
worship in a rude arbor of green boughs with their
priest, Father Antonio, who has worked for thirty
years among the tribe. They live on a rancheria
near by and are making adobe bricks, hoping soon to
build a church like the old Mission long since crumbled
away.
The last of the Missions was built
in 1823 at Sonoma, and proved very active in church
work, some fifteen hundred Indians having been there
baptized.
Father Junípero Serra died at
more than seventy years of age, at San Carlos.
During all his life in America he endured great hardships
and suffering to bring the gospel to the heathen as
he had dreamed of doing in his boyish days. A
monument to his memory has been erected at Monterey
by Mrs. Stanford, but the Missions he founded are his
best and most lasting remembrances.