For The General Guardianship Of
These Missions A Garrison, Or Presidio, Was In Each Case Provided.
It Was Responsible Not Only For The Protection Of The Town Thus
Created, But For All The Missions In The District.
The presidio of
San Diego, for example, was in charge of the missions of San Diego,
San Gabriel, San Juan Capistrano, and San Luis Rey.
So, likewise,
there were garrisons with extensive jurisdiction at Santa Barbara,
Monterey, and San Francisco.
The Indians in the immediate vicinity of a mission were attached
thereto by a sort of gentle enslavement. They were provided special
quarters, were carefully looked after by the priests, their religious
education fostered, and their innate laziness conquered by specific
requirements of labor in agriculture, cattle raising, and simple
handicrafts. It was an arrangement which worked well for both parties
concerned. The slavery of the Indians was not unlike the obligation
of children to their parents; they were comfortable, well behaved,
and for the most part contented with the rule of the friars, who,
on their side, began to accumulate considerable wealth from the
well-directed efforts of their charges.
The supposition was that in the course of years the Indians might
become so habituated to thrift and industry as to be released from
supervision and safely left to their own devices. But that happy
consummation had not occurred when, in 1826, Mexico succeeded in
separating herself from the mother country and began her career as an
independent republic, of which California was a part. Nevertheless,
the greed of politicians suddenly wrought the change which was to
have come as the slow development of years. By governmental decree,
the Indians were declared free of obligation to the friars; the latter
were stripped of their temporal powers, their funds seized under the
guise of a loan, and their establishments often subjected to what was
little short of pillage. This state of affairs had scarcely begun at
the time of the author's visit to California; still, as he points out
in Chapter XXI, the decline of the missions had already set in.
The final blow to their power and usefulness came, however, with
the upheaval accompanying the Mexican war and the acquisition of
California by the United States. Although this country returned
all mission buildings to the control of the Church, their reason
for being had vanished; they were sold, or destroyed, or feebly
maintained on funds insufficient to forestall dilapidation.
Fortunately the Franciscan friars had built for beauty as well as for
use; the architecture which they devised in skillful adaptation of
their native Spanish type displayed originality and picturesque charm.
Hence, of late years, Californians have come to feel a worthy pride
in the monuments of the early history of their state, and have taken
steps to preserve such of them as survive. No less than twenty-one
are today the goal of the traveller.
The reader who is interested in pursuing the subject thus outlined
will find its satisfactory treatment in George Wharton James's
_In and out of the old Missions of California,_ a book that combines
agreeable reading with excellent illustrations.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 4 of 324
Words from 1536 to 2056
of 170236
