The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 9, 1903, Page 16

16 G SIPERO SEFRY PON ‘this, our fifty-third versary of the admissior fornia we ook 4 backwa years gone by t f the long and roman binde us past the story ¢ ries when arkness n the world's great stage Ours is a his which sings. Homer with his e lyre never recited to beard- ed king = e of heroes in an heroic age - narrative t tr of California. Like the Odyssey e of adventure has %o wer-clad hills, the rol , the boundless X and the Argonauts " golden fleece In the granite b Our Ulysses was - in cas and bu pirate ship in er T down the coast in v el as mythical as of the heroic voyages of sdventurers, the al life of holy monks, the e of thousands, drunk with golc reign of murder and riumph of law and order, work- the al ing buflding of an empire— ese are the c s of our great epic— e epic of Califo Few but scholars know that the original the possession of California came hand of a Pope in Rome and t fr. e to Papal bu led with the fisherman’s ring. None other than Alexander VI, father of the disreputable Caesar Borgla, made the title to California which has rough the hands of Span- xicans he voyage of Columbus in under the benign in- e, Henry the Navi ounded the southern cape aguese of nd discovered the Azores Islands, us, satling under the patron- surt of Spain, made his me- discoveries in the West Indies. claimed that the lands touched at by the three historic ships of the great or belonged to the crown of its v right of the previous discovery Azores The disputants referred fon to His Holiness, Alexander ttiement those days no Henry VIII had to defy the temporal power of on earth, the ruler at Rome inmake kings a breath and hange the map at a scratch of the pen. Bo Alexander sat @own and di- the world as he would cut Of course it was to his a flat world which he was parti- 0 he drew on the imperfect map of the time an arbitrary line of longitude ed leagues west of the Azores. All lands from that line west to the edge of the wc were to be forever in the &rip of Sp: al must satisfy her- self with the possession of all discovered or discoverable lands east of this papal meridian hus on May 3, 1483, did a Pope, long since mouldering in some arch- way Peter's, make over into the eternal keeping of the crown of Spain the land we are living upon. For 410 years, therefore, our land has been, legally at least, In the possession of the white race. Terrors of Unknown Sea Daunt Not Intrepid Adventurers. ITH the possession of an undis- covered half of the world theirs on the pledge of a Pope, the Spaniards were mnot long in prose- cuting their ingenious scheme of winning the souls of the heathen for God and the i of the same benighted peo- ple for themselves. With the butcheries of Pizarro in Peru and Cortez in Mexico ¢ California is not concerned. s to appear on t world drama in the ry etage of the g early part of the sixteenth century, when Her Cortez, having established a colonj the west coast of Mexico, Zaca- tula by name, was fitting out the expe- dition which was to discover California. Like all of the early voyagers, Cortez imagined that the Mexican country was distinct in itself, but yet a part of the great continent of Asia. He belleved that & long strait divideC Mexico from India and toat by lollowing the western coast line he could either discover this strait or map out a new and remarkable route to the far-famed Cathay of Marco Polo's tales. As all of the rest of the early ex- plorers, Cortez did not know that he was on & cc nt which was to prove of far greater value than any air line route from Bpain to the Orient. Like ants running hurriedly over a strange boulder, stop- ping for a second to explore a nook with their antennae, then racing away, doudb- ling and turning on their tracks, never satisfied, but always scrambling on to new inches yet undiscovered, 8o the early voyagers were ever on the search for new fields to conquer. In their blind groping they stumbled on California by accl- dent In 1532 the first expedition fitted out by Cortez left Zacatula in its search for Asian waters, but it was swallowed up in the great oblivion somewhere in the Gulf of California or along the barren coast of Baja or Lower California. Not s sur- vivor returned to tell the spot where the leaching bones of the hardy explorers The next year two other ships, un- der the command of Hernando Grijalva and Diego Becerra de Mendoza, were dispatched by Cortez to learn the fate of the former expedition and, if possible, ac- complish the mission from which the other {1l fated vessels had never returned. gave up and returned, but on N RN N7 SER-Liowy Ko 7z SROI? AN OLD PRINT: Ny the other boat a momentous occurrence took place, which resulted in the discov- ery of California. Mendoza proved to be a typical Spanish taskmaster and drove his crew to desperation by his crueltles. Under the leadership of one Fortuno Jime- nez, the pilot of the vessel, the crew mutinied, murdered Mendoza and salled northward on a private buc- caneering expedition under the command of the doughty Jimenez. The adventur- ous pilot went as far north as what is now called the Bay of La Paz, on the western coast of Lower California, about 100 miles north of Cape St. Lucas. There the party landed. They were attacked by hostile Indians, Jimenez and most of his fellows were killed and only a rem- nant survived to carry the news of the discovery to Cortez. Thus was California discovered by a mutineer and pirate who paid for his adventure with his life. A remarkable and romantic event oc- curred at about the same time as Jimi- nez' discovery, which shows the terrors and awful hardships which were under- gone by these restless pioneers of discov- ery. According to the quaint old chroni- cles of the Jesuit Father Miguel Venegas, four Spaniards, Alvar Nunez, Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, Dorantes and & negro named Estevanclo, dragged themselves into Culiacan, on the Gulf of California, in the year 1537 with a terrible story on their lips. They were the sqle survivors of the band of 300 under the command of Pamfilo Navaraez, which had undertaken the conquest of Florida in 1627. For ten years they had wandered through the deserts of the great Southwest, leaving their dead companions one by one to rot in their heavy armor on the burning sands'and in the bleak mountains. Only a few years ago the bleached bones of men, encased in Spanish armor, were found in a cave in New Mexico. Could these have been a part of Navaraez’ luckless adventurers? Through a subsequent voyage of Cap- tain Francisco de Ulloa in 1539, California received its name. The cause for Ulloa’s christening the new land by this name has been the object of much antiquarian wrangling, but Dr. Edward Everett Hale has given as the most probable sponsor for the name, a mythical land in a Span- ish romance of the time—*Sergas of Is- planadian,” which was peopled by demons and griffins innumerable and called the Island of California. Out of the many abortive explorations and tragic voyages of the time, that of THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1908, Juan Rodriguez Cabrilio clatms for ftself the success of having located the out- lines of California’s coast. On the 27th of June, 1542, he salled from the port of Navidad. He first entered San Diego Bay which he named San Miguel. After pay- ing a visit to the Santa Catalina islands, he continued northward, through Santa Barbara channel, until he entered the bay of Monterey. Pressing still northward, he passed the outlet of San Francisco Bay without seeing it and went as far north as Cape Mendocino, which, accord- ing to the chronicles of the Monk Vene- gas, he named In honor of the Viceroy of Spain, Mendoza. Returning to Mex- ico, Cabrillo announced in glowing phrase the discovery of the magnificent harbor of Monterey, which he sald would hold all the navies of Spain. Sir Francis Drake, Bold Pirate and Doyager, Claims Coast. HB next name in the history of California’s explorers is that of the rare old courtier, buc- caneer and gentleman of England, Bir Francls Drake. Not the least among the romantic deeds of this man was his voyage of discovery, which resulted in his coming perilously near to the discovery of San Francisco Bay. In the year 1577 the gallant captain salled up the Mexican coast, sacking towns as he passed, until he was caught in the grip of adverse winds and carried far to the north out of his course. Bighting some lofty white cliffs in the latitude of 38 degrees, Drake made a landing in the bay which now bears his name, a few miles to the north of the Golden Gate. From the description of the cliffs in his chron- icles of the voyage and from the fact that no mention was made of a magnificent harbor, such as he surely would have noted had he entered San Francisco Bay, the deduction is nearly authoritative that Old Prints Tell the Tale of Incidents in Our Eanly History. the Nova Albion of Drake was not in the harbor of San Francisco. Sebastlan Viscayno, commissioned by the Viceroy of Spain in 1602, undertook to find a sunken treasure galleon from Ma- nila which had been reported as lost on the California coast. He too sailed past San Francisco Bay unawares and Te- turned to Mexico with a glowing account of the harbor of Monterey. Strange as it may seem, Monterey Bay then became the special object of quest for the Spanish in Mexico, but for 166 years after Viscayno left its waters it was never again found by the searching mariners. For more than the space of a century the history of California now became a blank. Sundry cursory and fruitless ef- forts at the discovery of a northwest passage to Asia were made by Spanish viceroys up to the year 1688, when all ac- tivity ceased. It fell to the lot of that father of California explorers, Father Junipero Serra, to do yeoman work in the civilization of our great State. The work of civilizing the Indians of Baja California was carried on faithfully by the Jesuit order under Fathers Kuan and Salvatierra, backed by the active support of the Spanish viceroys, until 1776, when the captious Charles III of Spain expelled the order and gave over their missions to the Franciscan monks. Of this order was Junipero Serra, a native of the island of Majorca, born November 24, 1713. Becoming a friar at the age of 16, he was soon widely known on account of his brilliant rhetorical powers. Besides being a fervent worker, Serra was in his earlier years a decided flagellant, often emphasizing his exhor- tations by burning himself with a candle, beating his breast with chains cr bruising himself with a heavy stone. Of a tender heart, an iron will and untiring zeal, he was the man in a thousand to conduct the march of civilization in California. Having come to Mexico in 1749, Father ) Sérra was ready to answer the call of destiny when in 1767 he was appointed to take charge of the missionary fleld of Alta California. God’s Faithful Steward, Priest and Pioneer, Junipero Serra. ITH Loreta in Baja California, w as the starting point, two expe- ditions by land and two by sea were dispatched to San Miguel, the site of the present city of San Diego. The ship San Carlos sailed from Cape Saint Lucas on January 11, 1769, and after a disastrous vovage of three and a half months, reached her destination. The ship San Antonio, though it started a month later than the San Carlos, reached San Miguel on April 11, colonization of California. The two land in command, reached their destination in safety in the following months and the first California settlement was started with a full complement of half a hundred soldiers and friars. No sooner had Serra arrived than he immediately started the mission of San Diego. Directly afterward Captain Por- tala, Friars Crespi and Gomez and a small party of colonists and friendly In- dians started out to locate the famous from Mexico in the holds of ships, ylelded From the hardy By droves of cattle and herds of sheep driven some mishap, however, Portala and his up from the arid plains of the south there sprung the thousands “of cloven hoofs rich abodes of cattle kings in the splendid It was had left the main camp to follow some the missions which laid the first founda- harbor of Monterey, which had bcen lost to the ken of man for a century. party passed Monterey Bay without rec- ognizing it. They traveled as far north as Point San Pedro and then, on the first day of November, 1763, a party which deer over the low sandhills, returned open-mouthed to camp with the report sed, stretching north and south as far as the eye could reach and surrounded by interminable lines of mountairs. - Thus it was that San Francisco Bay, after eluding the vigilant eyes of adventurous mariners for two hundred years, became CABRILLO DIScovers Enown to the Christian world. Monterey Bay was finally located by a land expedition and a sea exploration party in May of the following year and on June 8 the Mission of San Carlos and the presidio of Monterey were established by the indefatigable Father Junipero. ‘With such enthusiasm were. the reports of these successes received by the Span- ish authorities in Mexico that funds and men were immediately supplied for the founding of new missions. By 1778 new centers of civilization had been established at San Antonio, San Gabriel, S8an Luls Obispo, Ban Juan Capistrano and San Francisco. ‘While Serra was in Mexico in consulta- tion with the Viceroy in 1774 the ship San Carlos had been nt up to investigate Ban Francisco Bay with the view of establishing a mission thereon. In the month of June, 1775, this first vessel to pass through the Golden Gate made a thorough investigation of the bay and its arms and returned to report to Father Berra in glowing terms upon the great body of water locked within the chain of the hills. As a result the lengthening arm of the church was stretched out to the great bay and on March 22, 1776, the site of Mission Dolores was determined upon and the settlement of San Fran- cisco commenced. Padres’ Wise Provision For Wants of Their Indian Flocks. brief survey of the work which was dons by the missions and thelr mode of government will serve to give an idea of the part played by them in the history of our State. ‘Wherever a mission was founded thers the Indians would flock in great numbers. And right barren soll did these low-lived aborigines offer for the spiritual seed which the mission fathers sought to im- plant therein. By far the mental and physical inferiors of the plains Indians or the Moquis, Navajos and Pueblos of the Southwest, the California Indians were little higher in the human scale than the Bushmen of Africa or aborigines of Aus- tralla. They lived on insects, roots and nuts; they recognized no bonds of mar- riage or family ties; they knew no arts save the rude crafts of the stone age. Fiithy in habits, sluggish of intellect, sub- Jects of loathsome diseases, the Califor- nia Indlan was the lowest of his kind— little better than the brutes. Recognizing the character of the er tures with whom they had to deal, the padres mapped out their government for them accordingly. The Indlan was made to give his body as well as his soul Into the safe keeping of the ecclesiastical mas- ters. They were given adobe huts to live in and furnished a regular supply of food from the mission granaries and gardens. They were given spiritual edu- cation. Here their benefits ceased. The mission Indian could not own any prop- erty. He was forbidden to till any soil save that of the mission, and this act was made compulsory. No choice was given: him in the selection of his place in the care of his children He of dwelling, or the disposition of his leisure hours. was bound by a wisely forged chain to the center of civilization which owned his life and soul. Arcadian Dream Idyls Found Again in Old Spanish Days. BY this despotic course the missions gradually began to gather about them a steadily growing community, 1769, thus marking the date of the first closely knit and an excellent unit for the The expeditions, over one of which Serra was mission fathers rarely abused their power and worked steadily and surely for the groundwork of a vast government. advancement of church and state. Settled in a country which needed but the touch of man to cause it to blossom like a garden, the mission fathers were ' the first to discover the hidden wealth of agriculture, which was so grossly overlooked in the frantic days of gold to follow. The olive 'and the vine, brought fruit an hundred fold. which were to make the ranges days before the argonauts came. tions of California’s future greatness. The civil government of the province that they had discovered a great open had its foundations in the presidios or usvally These rude forts military encampments Bard by the missions. were under the rule of the commandante, who was responsible alone to the Gov- ernor of the Province of California. Con- stitution or charter were absolutely lack- situated ‘CALIFORNIA. ing. AN civil and military powers wers united under the single hand of the com- andante. He was appointed and re moved at will by the Viceroy of Mexico. Under the balmy skies of distant Call- fornia it was & dream life which was lived in those days. The earth gave of her increase. The increasing stream of settlers from Mexico brought with them the happy, careless manana spirit of old Spain. Arcadia was born again. But on the falr horizon the clouds of future tur- moil began to gather with the dawn of the nineteenth century. Scarcely had the nolse of the American Reyolution on the other side of the con- tinent penetrated to far-distant, dreaming California, when the inquisitive American himself began to slip down from the lofty Slerras to worry the snuffy old com- andantes with their ubiquitous epylng and prying. The dreaded Columbia did not trouble Comandante Arguello, however, for she kept on to the Columbia River and tners laid tbe seeds for future coatention with Great Britain. The Russians also began to become a menace about this time. The French traveler De Mofras mentions in his memoires the appearance in San Franctsco in May, 1807, of one, Von Resanoff, Cham- berlain of the Emperor of Russia, who came with an eye to establishing com- mercial relations between Russia and the province. The Russians, however, entered the so-called peninsula of California with- out even asking permission of the Spanish. In 1512 they had come down from the north and established themselves at the port of Bodega in a colony of 200, This colony of fishermen and trappers greatly worried the Spanish inhabitants of California. They feared the incursion of a foreign people and an opposing re- ligion. It threatened the utter overthrow of their arcadian existence. It was a men- ace to the possession of a new world. Accordingly when the home government could not be aroused to enter a protest the padres took it upon themselves to carry the war into the enemy’s country. They crossed the bay and founded the mission of San Rafael in 1519 and that of San Francisco Solano at Somoma in 1823. At Fort Ross the Russians had erected a church. The spectacle of the Greek and Roman crosses flashing deflance across a few miles of Intervening territory was one of the oddities of old Califorfila. The rival dogmas had met In & new land, each having eneircled the globe In opposite di- rections. Gathering Storm Clouds Cast Shadow of War and Conquest. UT the swift movement of succeed- B ing events soon brought to Spain & trouble far greater than the threatened danger to her religion. The fires of revolt were started in ‘'her colonies of South America and one by one they hegan to fall away from the mother country. California, re- malning stanch to the throne, in the year 1818 was made to feel the first throes of years of impending rebellion and dis- order. The newly emancipated republic of Buencs Ayres sent one Captain Hip- polyte Bouchard, in command of a priva- teering force, to compel the submission of Alta California, The renegade French- man attacked and reduced to surrender the capital city of Monterey, causing Gov- ernor de Sola to retreat inland. After burning the presidio, Bouchard sailed away and California was for a time free, The news of the successful liberal up- rising of 1520 in Spain soon after fired all Mexico to emulate the example and under the leadership of Iturbide, Mexico pro- claimed its freedom in February, 1821 Iturbide assumed the title first of Regent and later, in the Intoxication of new- found power, that of Emperor. Almost immediately he called upon Gov- ernor de Sola of Alta California to recog- nize the independent government of Mex- ico as his llege. The greatly puzzled Gov- ernor therefore called a junta of the four comandantes of the presidios and of Father Payras, representing the missions, to meet in Monterey on April 9. - A deputa- tion from Mexico completed the personnel of this, the first legislative gathering In California. Its object was soon accom- plished, for after a brief session, it recog- nized the new government and all the offi- cers took the oath of office as members of the Department of Alta California of the Empire of Mexico. Only one mere step was needed to make the department a living part of the Em- pire of Mexico. On November 9, a com- missioner from Iturbide assembled as a legislative assembly the individuals who had attended the junta in April. Ex-Gov- ernor de Sola was chosen Deputy to the Mexican Cortes and Captain Luls Ar- guello, a native Californian, was elected first Mexican Governor of the new Mexie can territary.