[Illustration: MISSION SAN LUIS REY, PARTLY RESTORED.]

[Illustration: MISSION SAN LUIS REY.
Showing monastery recently built behind the old Mission arches.]




The
Old Franciscan Missions
of California

BY

GEORGE WHARTON JAMES

Author of "In and Around the Grand Canyon," "Heroes of
California," "Through Ramona's Country," Etc.

_With Illustrations from Photographs_

1913




Dedication

To those good men and women, of all creeds and of no creed, whose lives
have shown forth the glories of beautiful, helpful, unselfish,
sympathetic humanity:

To those whose love and life are larger than all creeds and who discern
the manifestation of God in all men:

To those who are urging forward the day when profession will give place
to endeavor, and, in the real life of a genuine brotherhood of man, and
true recognition of the All-Fatherhood of God, all men, in spite of
their diversities, shall unite in their worship and thus form the real
Catholic Church:

Especially to these, and to all who appreciate nobleness in others I
lovingly dedicate these pages, devoted to a recital of the life and work
of godly and unselfish men.



Foreword

The story of the Old Missions of California is perennially new. The
interest in the ancient and dilapidated buildings and their history
increases with each year. To-day a thousand visit them where ten saw
them twenty years ago, and twenty years hence, hundreds of thousands
will stand in their sacred precincts, and unconsciously absorb beautiful
and unselfish lessons of life as they hear some part of their history
recited. It is well that this is so. A materially inclined nation needs
to save every unselfish element in its history to prevent its going to
utter destruction. It is essential to our spiritual development that we
learn that

"Not on the vulgar mass
Called 'work,' must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice."

It is of incalculably greater benefit to the race that the Mission
Fathers lived and had their fling of divine audacity for the good of the
helpless aborigines than that any score one might name of the
"successful captains of industry" lived to make their unwieldy and
topheavy piles of gold. With all their faults and failures, all their
ideas of theology and education,--which we, in our assumed superiority,
call crude and old-fashioned,--all their rude notions of sociology, all
their errors and mistakes, the work of the Franciscan Fathers was
glorified by unselfish aim, high motive and constant and persistent
endeavor to bring their heathen wards into a knowledge of saving grace.
It was a brave and heroic endeavor. It is easy enough to find fault, to
criticize, to carp, but it is not so easy to _do_. These men _did_! They
had a glorious purpose which they faithfully pursued. They aimed high
and achieved nobly. The following pages recite both their aims and their
achievements, and neither can be understood without a thrilling of the
pulses, a quickening of the heart's beats, and a stimulating of the
soul's ambitions.

This volume pretends to nothing new in the way of historical research or
scholarship. It is merely an honest and simple attempt to meet a real
and popular demand for an unpretentious work that shall give the
ordinary tourist and reader enough of the history of the Missions to
make a visit to them of added interest, and to link their history with
that of the other Missions founded elsewhere in the country during the
same or prior epochs of Mission activity.

If it leads others to a greater reverence for these outward and visible
signs of the many and beautiful graces that their lives developed in the
hearts of the Franciscan Fathers--their founders and builders--and gives
the information needed, its purpose will be more than fulfilled.

In most of its pages it is a mere condensation of the author's _In and
Out of the Old Missions of California,_ to which book the reader who
desires further and more detailed information is respectfully referred.

[Illustration: Signature: George Wharton James]

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, April, 1913.



Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

II. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE MISSIONS OF LOWER CALIFORNIA (MEXICO) AND
ALTA CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

III. THE MISSIONS FOUNDED BY PADRE JUNIPERO SERRA

IV. THE MISSIONS FOUNDED BY PADRE FERMIN FRANCISCO LASUEN

V. THE FOUNDING OF SANTA INÉS, SAN RAFAEL AND SAN FRANCISCO SOLANO

VI. THE INDIANS AT THE COMING OF THE PADRES

VII. THE INDIANS UNDER THE PADRES

VIII. THE SECULARIZATION OF THE MISSIONS

IX. SAN DIEGO DE ALCALÁ

X. SAN CARLOS BORROMEO

XI. THE PRESIDIO CHURCH AT MONTEREY

XII. SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

XIII. SAN GABRIEL, ARCÁNGEL

XIV. SAN LUIS OBISPO DE TOLOSA

XV. SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS

XVI. SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

XVII. SANTA CLARA DE ASIS

XVIII. SAN BUENAVENTURA

XIX. SANTA BARBARA

XX. LA PURÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN

XXI. SANTA CRUZ

XXII. LA SOLEDAD

XXIII. SAN JOSÉ DE GUADALUPE

XXIV. SAN JUAN BAUTISTA

XXV. SAN MIGUEL, ARCNGEL

XXVI. SAN FERNANDO, REY DE ESPAGNA

XXVII. SAN Luis, REY DE FRANCIA

XXVIII. SANTA INÉS

XXIX. SAN RAFAEL, ARCÁNGEL

XXX. SAN FRANCISCO SOLANO

XXXI. THE MISSION CHAPELS OR ASISTENCIAS

XXXII. THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MISSION INDIANS

XXXIII. MISSION ARCHITECTURE

XXXIV. THE GLEN WOOD MISSION INN

XXXV. THE INTERIOR DECORATIONS OF THE MISSIONS

XXXVI. HOW TO REACH THE MISSIONS



List of Illustrations

MISSION SAN Luis KEY......_Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE

JUNIPERO SERRA

MAP OF THE COAST OF CALIFORNIA

SERRA MEMORIAL CROSS, MONTEREY, CALIF

SERRA CROSS ON MT. RUBIDOUX, RIVERSIDE, CALIF

SERRA STATUE ERECTED BY MRS. LELAND STANFORD, AT MONTEREY

STATUE TO JUNIPERO SERRA, THE GIFT OF JAMES D PHELAN, IN GOLDEN GATE
PARK, SAN FRANCISCO

EASTER SUNRISE SERVICE UNDER SERRA CROSS, MT. RUBIDOUX

MEMORIAL TABLET AND GRAVES OF PADRES SERRA, CRESPI AND LASUEN, IN
MISSION SAN CARLOS BORROMEO

MISSION SAN CARLOS AND BAY OF MONTEREY

JUNIPERO OAK, SAN CARLOS PRESIDIO MISSION

STATUE OF SAN LUIS REY, AT PALA MISSION CHAPEL

FACHADA OF THE RUINED MISSION OF SAN DIEGO

OLD MISSION OF SAN DIEGO AND SISTERS' SCHOOL FOR INDIAN CHILDREN

MAIN ENTRANCE ARCH AT MISSION SAN DIEGO

THE TOWER AT MISSION SAN CARLOS BORROMEO

PRESIDIO CHURCH AND PRIEST'S RESIDENCE, MONTEREY, CALIF

MISSION SAN CARLOS

MISSION SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

PRESIDIO CHURCH, MONTEREY

RUINS OF MISSION SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

DUTTON HOTEL, JOLON

RUINED CORRIDORS AT SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

INTERIOR OF MISSION SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

REAR OF CHURCH, MISSION SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

RUINS OF THE ARCHES, MISSION SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

MISSION SAN GABRIEL, ARCÁNGEL

MISSION SAN GABRIEL, ARCÁNGEL

SAN LUIS OBISPO BEFORE RESTORATION

RUINED MISSION OF SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

THE RESTORED MISSION OF SAN LUIS OBISPO

FACHADA OF MISSION SAN FRANCISCO

RUINS OF MISSION SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

ARCHED CLOISTERS AND CORRIDORS AT SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

CAMPANILE AND RUINS OF MISSION SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

ENTRANCE TO SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO CHAPEL

INNER COURT AND RUINED ARCHES, MISSION SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

BELLS OF MISSION SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

ONE OF THE DOORS, SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

IN THE AMBULATORY AT SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO

MISSION SANTA CLARA IN 1849

CHURCH OF SANTA CLARA ON THE SITE OF OLD MISSION OF SANTA CLARA

SIDE ENTRANCE AT SAN BUENAVENTURA

FACHADA OF MISSION SAN BUENAVENTURA

STATUE OF SAN BUENAVENTURA

RAWHIDE FASTENING OF MISSION BELL, AND WORM-EATEN BEAM

MISSION SANTA BARBARA

MISSION SANTA BARBARA FROM THE HILLSIDE

INTERIOR OF MISSION SANTA BARBARA

DOOR INTO CEMETERY, SANTA BARBARA

MISSION BELL AT SANTA BARBARA

THE SACRISTY WALL, GARDEN AND TOWERS, MISSION SANTA BARBARA

FACHADA OF MISSION LA PURÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN

RUINS OF MISSION LA PURÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN

MISSION SANTA CRUZ

RUINED WALLS OF MISSION LA SOLEDAD

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE WALLS OF MISSION LA SOLEDAD

MISSION SAN JOSÉ, SOON AFTER THE DECREE OF SECULARIZATION

FIGURE OF CHRIST, SAN JOSÉ ORPHANAGE

RUINED WALLS AND NEW BELL TOWER, MISSION SAN JUAN BAUTISTA

FACHADA OF MISSION SAN JUAN BAUTISTA

MISSION SAN JUAN BAUTISTA, FROM THE PLAZA

THE ARCHED CORRIDOR, MISSION SAN JUAN BAUTISTA

DOORWAY, MISSION SAN JUAN BAUTISTA

STAIRWAY LEADING TO PULPIT, MISSION SAN JUAN BAUTISTA

MISSION SAN MIGUEL ARCÁNGEL, FROM THE SOUTH

MISSION SAN MIGUEL ARCÁNGEL AND CORRIDORS

SEEKING TO PREVENT THE PHOTOGRAPHER FROM MAKING A PICTURE OF SAN MIGUEL
ARCÁNGEL

OLD PULPIT AT MISSION SAN MIGUEL ARCÁNGEL

RESTORED MONASTERY AND MISSION CHURCH OF SAN FERNANDO REY

CORRIDORS AT SAN FERNANDO REY

SHEEP AT MISSION SAN FERNANDO REY

RUINS OF OLD ADOBE WALL AND CHURCH, SAN FERNANDO REY

MONASTERY AND OLD FOUNTAIN AT MISSION SAN FERNANDO REY

INTERIOR OF RUINED CHURCH, MISSION SAN FERNANDO REY

HOUSE OF MEXICAN, MADE FROM RUINED WALL AND TILES OF MISSION SAN
FERNANDO REY

THE RUINED ALTAR, MORTUARY CHAPEL, SAN LUIS REY

ILLUMINATED CHOIR MISSALS, ETC., AT MISSION SAN LUIS REY

BELFRY WINDOW, MISSION SAN FERNANDO REY

GRAVEYARD, RUINS OF MORTUARY CHAPEL, AND TOWER, MISSION SAN LUIS REY

SIDE OF MISSION SAN LUIS REY

THE CAMPANILE AT PALA

MISSION SANTA INÉS

MISSION OF SAN RAFAEL, ARCÁNGEL

MISSION SAN FRANCISCO SOLANO, AT SONOMA

CAMPANILE AND CHAPEL, SAN ANTONIO DE PALA

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE CAMPANILE AND CHAPEL, SAN ANTONIO DE PALA

MAIN DOORWAY AT SANTA MARGARITA CHAPEL

HIGH SCHOOL, RIVERSIDE, CALIF

WALL DECORATIONS ON OLD MISSION CHAPEL OF SAN ANTONIO DE PALA

ARCHES AT GLENWOOD MISSION INN, RIVERSIDE, CALIF.

TOWER, FLYING BUTTRESSES, ETC., GLENWOOD MISSION INN

ARCHES OVER THE SIDEWALK, GLENWOOD MISSION INN

RESIDENCE OF FRED MAIER, LOS ANGELES, CALIF

WASHINGTON SCHOOL, VISALIA, CALIF

THE OLD ALTAR AT THE CHAPEL OF SAN ANTONIO DE PALA

ALTAR AND INTERIOR OF CHAPEL OF SAN ANTONIO DE PALA AFTER REMOVAL OF
WALL DECORATIONS PRIZED BY INDIANS

ALTAR AND CEILING DECORATIONS, MISSION SANTA INÉS

INTERIOR OF MISSION SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS

INTERIOR OF MISSION SAN MIGUEL, FROM THE CHOIR GALLERY

ARCHES, SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY DEPOT, SANTA BARBARA, CALIF

FACHADA OF MISSION CHAPEL AT Los ANGELES

THE CITY HALL, SANTA MONICA, CALIF

MISSION CHAPEL AT LOS ANGELES, FROM THE PLAZA PARK

RESIDENCE IN LOS ANGELES, SHOWING INFLUENCE OF MISSION STYLE OF
ARCHITECTURE



The Old Franciscan Missions of California

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

In the popular mind there is a misapprehension that is as deep-seated as
it is ill-founded. It is that the California Missions are the only
Missions (except one or two in Arizona and a few in Texas) and that they
are the oldest in the country. This is entirely an error. A look at a
few dates and historic facts will soon correct this mistake.

Cortés had conquered Mexico; Pizarro was conqueror in Peru; Balboa had
discovered the South Sea (the Pacific Ocean) and all Spain was aflame
with gold-lust. Narvaez, in great pomp and ceremony, with six hundred
soldiers of fortune, many of them of good families and high social
station, in his five specially built vessels, sailed to gain fame,
fortune and the fountain of perpetual youth in what we now call Florida.

Disaster, destruction, death--I had almost said entire
annihilation--followed him and scarce allowed his expedition to land,
ere it was swallowed up, so that had it not been for the escape of
Cabeza de Vaca, his treasurer, and a few others, there would have been
nothing left to suggest that the history of the start of the expedition
was any other than a myth. But De Vaca and his companions were saved,
only to fall, however, into the hands of the Indians. What an unhappy
fate! Was life to end thus? Were all the hopes, ambitions and glorious
dreams of De Vaca to terminate in a few years of bondage to
degraded savages?

Unthinkable, unbearable, unbelievable. De Vaca was a man of power, a man
of thought. He reasoned the matter out. Somewhere on the other side of
the great island--for the world then thought of the newly-discovered
America as a vast island--his people were to be found. He would work his
way to them and freedom. He communicated his hope and his determination
to his companions in captivity. Henceforth, regardless of whether they
were held as slaves by the Indians, or worshiped as demigods,--makers of
great medicine,--either keeping them from their hearts' desire, they
never once ceased in their efforts to cross the country and reach the
Spanish settlements on the other side. For eight long years the weary
march westward continued, until, at length, the Spanish soldiers of the
Viceroy of New Spain were startled at seeing men who were almost
skeletons, clad in the rudest aboriginal garb, yet speaking the purest
Castilian and demanding in the tones of those used to obedience that
they be taken to his noble and magnificent Viceroyship. Amazement,
incredulity, surprise, gave way to congratulations and rejoicings, when
it was found that these were the human drift of the expedition of which
not a whisper, not an echo, had been heard for eight long years.

Then curiosity came rushing in like a flood. Had they seen anything on
the journey? Were there any cities, any peoples worth conquering;
especially did any of them have wealth in gold, silver and precious
stones like that harvested so easily by Cortés and Pizarro?

Cabeza didn't know really, but--, and his long pause and brief story of
seven cities that he had heard of, one or two days' journey to the north
of his track, fired the imagination of the Viceroy and his soldiers of
fortune. To be sure, though, they sent out a party of reconnaissance,
under the control of a good father of the Church, Fray Marcos de Nizza,
a friar of the Orders Minor, commonly known as a Franciscan, with
Stephen, a negro, one of the escaped party of Cabeza de Vaca, as a
guide, to spy out the land.

Fray Marcos penetrated as far as Zuni, and found there the seven cities,
wonderful and strange; though he did not enter them, as the uncurbed
amorous demands of Stephen had led to his death, and Marcos feared lest
a like fate befall himself, but he returned and gave a fairly accurate
account of what he saw. His story was not untruthful, but there are
those who think it was misleading in its pauses and in what he did not
tell. Those pauses and eloquent silences were construed by the vivid
imaginations of his listeners to indicate what the _Conquistadores_
desired, so a grand and glorious expedition was planned, to go forth
with great sound of trumpets, in glad acclaim and glowing colors, led by
his Superior Excellency and Most Nobly Glorious Potentate, Senyor Don
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, a native of Salamanca, Spain, and now
governor of the Mexican province of New Galicia.

It was a gay throng that started on that wonderful expedition from
Culiacan early in 1540. Their hopes were high, their expectations keen.
Many of them little dreamed of what was before them. Alarcon was sent to
sail up the Sea of Cortés (now the Gulf of California) to keep in touch
with the land expedition, and Melchior Diaz, of that sea party, forced
his way up what is now the Colorado River to the arid sands of the
Colorado Desert in Southern California, before death and disaster
overtook him.

Coronado himself crossed Arizona to Zuni--the pueblo of the Indians that
Fray Marcos had gazed upon from a hill, but had not dared approach--and
took it by storm, receiving a wound in the conflict which laid him up
for a while and made it necessary to send his lieutenant, the Ensign
Pedro de Tobar, to further conquests to the north and west. Hence it was
that Tobar, and not Coronado, discovered the pueblos of the Hopi
Indians. He also sent his sergeant, Cardenas, to report on the stories
told him of a mighty river also to the north, and this explains why
Cardenas was the first white man to behold that eloquent abyss since
known as the Grand Canyon. And because Cardenas was Tobar's subordinate
officer, the high authorities of the Santa Fé Railway--who have yielded
to a common-sense suggestion in the Mission architecture of their
railway stations, and romantic, historic naming of their hotels--have
called their Grand Canyon hotel, _El Tovar_, their hotel at Las Vegas,
_Cardenas_, and the one at Williams (the junction point of the main line
with the Grand Canyon branch), _Fray Marcos._

Poor Coronado, disappointed as to the finding and gaining of great
stores of wealth at Zuni, pushed on even to the eastern boundaries of
Kansas, but found nothing more valuable than great herds of buffalo and
many people, and returned crestfallen, broken-hearted and almost
disgraced by his own sense of failure, to Mexico. And there he drops out
of the story. But others followed him, and in due time this northern
portion of the country was annexed to Spanish possessions and became
known as New Mexico.

In the meantime the missionaries of the Church were active beyond the
conception of our modern minds in the newly conquered Mexican countries.

The various orders of the Roman Catholic Church were indefatigable in
their determination to found cathedrals, churches, missions, convents
and schools. Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans vied with each other in
the fervor of their efforts, and Mexico was soon dotted over with
magnificent structures of their erection. Many of the churches of Mexico
are architectural gems of the first water that compare favorably with
the noted cathedrals of Europe, and he who forgets this overlooks one of
the most important factors in Mexican history and civilization.

The period of expansion and enlargement of their political and
ecclesiastical borders continued until, in 1697, Fathers Kino and
Salviaterra, of the Jesuits, with indomitable energy and unquenchable
zeal, started the conversion of the Indians of the peninsula of Lower
California.

In those early days, the name California was not applied, practically
speaking, to the country we know as California. The explorers of Cortés
had discovered what they imagined was an island, but afterwards learned
was a peninsula, and this was soon known as California. In this
California there were many Indians, and it was to missionize these that
the God-fearing, humanity-loving, self-sacrificing Jesuits just
named--not Franciscans--gave of their life, energy and love. The names
of Padres Kino and Salviaterra will long live in the annals of Mission
history for their devotion to the spiritual welfare of the Indians of
Lower California.

The results of their labors were soon seen in that within a few years
fourteen Missions were established, beginning with San Juan Londa in
1697, and the more famous Loreto in 1698.

When the Jesuits were expelled, in 1768, the Franciscans took charge of
the Lower California Missions and established one other, that of San
Fernando de Velicatá, besides building a stone chapel in the mining camp
of San Antonio Real, situated near Ventana Bay.

The Dominicans now followed, and the Missions of El Rosario, Santo
Domingo, Descanso, San Vicenti Ferrer, San Miguel Fronteriza, Santo
Tomás de Aquino, San Pedro Mártir de Verona, El Mision Fronteriza de
Guadalupe, and finally, Santa Catarina de los Yumas were founded. This
last Mission was established in 1797, and this closed the active epoch
of Mission building in the peninsula, showing twenty-three fairly
flourishing establishments in all.

It is not my purpose here to speak of these Missions of Lower
California, except in-so-far as their history connects them with the
founding of the _Alta_ California Missions. A later chapter will show
the relationship of the two.

The Mission activity that led to the founding of Missions in Lower
California had already long been in exercise in New Mexico. The reports
of Marcos de Nizza had fired the hearts of the zealous priests as
vigorously as they had excited the cupidity of the _Conquistadores_.
Four Franciscan priests, Marcos de Nizza, Antonio Victoria, Juan de
Padilla and Juan de la Cruz, together with a lay brother, Luis de
Escalona, accompanied Coronado on his expedition. On the third day out
Fray Antonio Victoria broke his leg, hence was compelled to return, and
Fray Marcos speedily left the expedition when Zuni was reached and
nothing was found to satisfy the cupidity of the Spaniards. He was
finally permitted to retire to Mexico, and there died, March 25, 1558.

For a time Mission activity in New Mexico remained dormant, not only on
account of intense preoccupation in other fields, but because the
political leaders seemed to see no purpose in attempting the further
subjugation of the country to the north (now New Mexico and Arizona).
But about forty years after Coronado, another explorer was filled with
adventurous zeal, and he applied for a charter or royal permission to
enter the country, conquer and colonize it for the honor and glory of
the king and his own financial reward and honorable renown. This leader
was Juan de Oñate, who, in 1597, set out for New Mexico accompanied by
ten missionary padres, and in September of that year established the
second church in what is now United States territory. Juan de Oñate was
the real colonizer of this new country. It was in 1595 that he made a
contract with the Viceroy of New Spain to colonize it at his own
expense. He was delayed, however, and could not set out until early in
1597, when he started with four hundred colonists, including two hundred