Chapter XXVIII (2)

Though it often did happen that local governors were not ministers of this Catholic spirit, but rather of their own rapacity and cruelty, this was not always the case, and we have before us an instance. When Galvez set forth on his expedition to conquer California, the first article of the instructions which he drew up, for the guidance of all who were with him, ran in these terms: "The first object of the expedition is to establish the Catholic religion among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism, and to extend the dominion of our lord the king, and to protect this peninsula from the ambitious views of foreign nations." Nor were these mere words, written to salve a conscience or blind a critical public, as we shall now see: for he took Father Junipero, who was zealous for the salvation of souls, into his counsels; and the priest and the layman worked jointly together. Two small vessels, the _San Carlos_ and _San Antonio_, were freighted to go by sea. Señor Galvez details with a charming simplicity how he assisted Father Junipero to pack the sacred vestments and other church furniture, and declared that he was a better sacristan than the father, for he had packed his share of the ornaments first, and had to go and help the father. Moreover, in order that the new missions might be established with the same success as those which had been already founded by F. Junipero in Sierra Gorda, Galvez ordered to be packed up and embarked all kinds of household and field utensils, iron implements for agricultural labor, all kinds of seeds from Old and New Spain, garden herbs for food, and flowers for the decoration of the altars. Then he sent on by land two hundred head of cattle to stock the country, so that there might be food to eat and beasts to labor on the land.

F. Junipero placed the whole enterprise under the patronage of the Most Holy Patriarch St. Joseph, to whom he dedicated the country. He blessed the vessels and sent on board of them three fathers, who should accompany Galvez and his men. Two other parties were formed by land, which were to meet the ships on the coast far up the country; and all started, except Father Junipero, who was delayed some time by the season of Lent and by his spiritual duties. When he overtook the convoy, his leg and foot were so inflamed that he was hardly able to get on or off his mule. The fathers and their companions wished to send him back; they thought he was not equal to the undertaking. But he had faith that our Lord would carry him through. He called a muleteer and said to him: "My son, don't you know some remedy for the sore on my foot and leg?" But the muleteer answered: "Father, what remedy can I know? Am I a surgeon? I am a muleteer, and have only cured the sore backs of beasts." "Then consider me a beast," said the father, "and this sore, which has produced the swelling on my legs and prevents me by its pain from standing or sleeping, to be a sore on a beast, and give me the treatment you would apply to a beast." The muleteer replied, smiling, "I will, father, to please you;" and taking a small piece of tallow, mashed it between two stones with some herbs, heated it over the fire, and then anointed the foot and leg, and left a plaster on the sore. The father slept that night, awoke in health and spirits, and astonished the whole party by rising early to say matins and lauds and then mass, and proceeded on the journey quite restored. After forty-six days' travelling by land, they reached the port of San Diego; and F. Junipero now established his first mission. He then went on to the place since called San Francisco, and established there another mission. They fell short of provisions and supplies, the {792} _San Antonio_, which had long been due, did not arrive, and Portalá, the governor of the expedition, determined to abandon the mission, if they were not relieved by the 20th of March; but on the feast of St. Joseph the ship hove into view, bringing an abundance of provisions, and the mission was then firmly established.

The usual way of erecting a mission was as follows: the locality was taken possession of in the name of Spain by the lay authority; a tent or an adobe building was erected as the temporary chapel; the fathers, in procession, proceeded to bless the place and the chapel, on whose front a crucifix, or a simple wooden cross, was raised; the holy sacrifice was then offered up, and a sermon was preached on the coming and power of the Holy Ghost. The _Veni Creator_ was sung, and a father was charged with the direction and responsibility of the mission.

The Indians were attracted by little presents. To the men and women were given pieces of cloth, or food, and to the children bits of sugar. They would soon gather round the missioners when they found how good and kind they were, and the missioners were not slow in picking up the language. They became the fathers and instructors of the poor ignorant Indians, catechized them in the mysteries of the faith, collected them into villages round the mission church, and taught them to plough and cultivate the land, to sow wheat, to grind corn, to bake; they introduced the use of the olive, the vine, and the apple; they showed them how to yoke the oxen for work, how to weave and spin cloth for clothing, to prepare leather from the hides, and taught them the rudiments of commerce.

There was another feature in the mode followed by the Spaniards in preaching the gospel which is worthy of mention, and which shows how Spain recognized the independent action of the Church and her own duty to lend her every assistance and protection she might need. A presidio was established, in which the secular governor, with a small number of officers, soldiers, and officials, resided. These represented the majesty of the King of Spain, and served, in case of need, for protection and order. At some distance from the presidio and independent of it, was formed the mission, a large convent for the friars and for hospitality, and a church, built of "adobe," or mud walls, sometimes seven or eight feet in thickness. The land in the surrounding neighborhood was assigned to the missions for the support of the Indians. In fact, the whole economy and arrangements, both of presidios and missions, were made subservient to the wants of civilization and religion, which were introduced among the native population. This system remained in full force, consulting simply the benefit of the poor Indian, till the liberal Cortes, in 1813, overturned the design of the Spanish monarchs, and began to introduce the idea of colonization and usurpation. Up to this time the Church had had full action upon the people, and what she wrought in the span of forty years was little less than miraculous. The Indians felt that they had been lifted out of their state of abject misery and ignorance, and that the strangers who had come among them had come simply from disinterested charity, for their temporal and eternal welfare. They felt that life was made to them less a burthen, and that a way was opened out for them to endless happiness beyond the grave, De Courcy, in his "Catholic Church in the United States," assures us that the fathers converted, within the few years they had control of the Californian missions, no less than 75,000 Indians, for whom they also provided food, clothing, and instruction. The system of colonization brought in by the Spanish liberals in 1813 was an evil, but it was a mere prelude to the confiscation of the Indian property which was perpetrated by the liberal {793} Mexican government in 1833. It was pretended that the friars were unequal to the management of the missions, and the natives' property was therefore transferred to the hands of laymen. Mr. Marshall, in his interesting work on "Christian Missions," quotes the following statistics, comparing the two conditions:

Under the Under Administration the Civil of the Friars. Administration. Christian Indians 80,650 4,450 Horned Cattle 494,000 28,220 Horses and Mules 62,000 3,800 Sheep 321,500 31,600 Cereal crop 70,000 4,000

And then he sums up in these words:

"It appears, then, that in the brief space of eight years the
secular administration, which affected to be a protest against the
inefficiency of the ecclesiastical, had not only destroyed
innumerable lives, replunged a whole province into barbarism, and
almost annihilated religion and civilization, but had so utterly
failed even in that special aim which it professed to have most at
heart--the development of material prosperity--that it had already
reduced the wealth of a single district in the following notable
proportions: Of homed cattle there remained about _one-fifteenth_ of
the number possessed under the religious administration; of horses
and mules less than _one-sixteenth_; of sheep about _one-tenth_; and
of cultivated land producing cereal crops less than
_one-seventeenth_. It is not to the Christian, who will mourn rather
over the moral ruin which accompanied the change, that such facts
chiefly appeal; but the merchant and the civil magistrate, however
indifferent to the interests of religion and morality, will keenly
appreciate the cruel and blundering policy of which these are the
admitted results, and will perhaps be inclined to explain with Mr.
Möllhausen, 'It is impossible not to wish that the missions were
flourishing once more!'"

How beautiful was the old Spanish system under which Father Junipero and his companions set forth to reclaim and convert the wandering Indian! Is it not the greatest glory of Spain that she can still cheer our dark horizon by the light of her past history, and shed a fragrance which remains for ever over lands which have been broken down by the hoof of the invader, and desolated by his diabolical pride and insatiable rapacity? What was the Spanish system as exhibited in California? It was simply this: a recognition, without question or jealousy, that our Lord, the great high priest, continues in his priesthood to be the shepherd, teacher, and minister of his people. "To go and teach all nations," "to minister to the least of the little ones," to be the "shepherd of the flock," "to lay down life for the flock." This is distinctly the operation of Christ through his priests. That this was the real character of the Christian priesthood was a clear and elementary principle, which admitted of no doubt in the mind of the Spanish people.

Conscious of their power, and with a light burning within them which shone over the vast prospects that lay before them, of extending the faith and saving innumerable souls, for whom the most precious blood had been shed, the Spanish missioners went forth to extend their conquests over the heathen world. Rapine and plunder were not their aim; they were introduced among colonizers by the snare of the devil. To maintain the Indian on his territory, to raise, instruct, and Christianize him, giving him rights and equality before the law, this was the policy of Catholic Spain. The priest, therefore, was regarded as the chief pioneer, his plans were recognized and acted upon, and he was considered to be not a mere creature of the crown, who should extend its influence, but a minister and agent of his majesty the Great King of Heaven, who had deigned in his infinite love to look upon Spain with a peculiar predilection, and to choose her as an {794} instrument to save the souls for whom he once had died.

A hundred years ago no European had ever fixed his abode in California Alta. Father Junipero and his devoted companions, led on by zeal "to establish the Catholic religion among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism," were, then, the real pioneers of California. Three Protestant writers, quoted by Mr. Marshall, shall sum up for us in a few words the civilizing effects of the Catholic education of the Indians in California. Captain Morrell says:

"The Indians are very industrious in their labors, and obedient to
their teachers and directors, to whom they look up as fathers and
protectors, and who, in return, discharge their duty toward these
poor Indians with a great deal of feeling and humanity. They are
generally well clothed and led, have houses of their own, and are
made as comfortable as they can wish to be. The greatest care is
taken of any who are affected with any disease, and every attention
is paid to their wants." And Mr. Forbes writes:

"The best and most unequivocal proof of the good conduct of the
Franciscan fathers is to be found in the unbounded affection and
devotion invariably shown to them by their Indian subjects. They
venerate them not merely as fathers and friends, but with a degree
of devotedness approaching to adoration." And, lastly, Mr. Bartlett
observes:

"They (the Indians) are represented to have been sober and
industrious, well clothed and fed. . . . . . They constituted a
large family, of which the padres were the social, religious, and,
we might almost say, political heads."

Such was the first planting in this vineyard of the Lord. Let us briefly note the blight and destruction which followed. In 1827, a Mr. Smith established himself in California to make money. In 1834, three hundred Americans settled in the country for the same purpose. In 1839, Captain Sutter built a fort and an American refuge. In 1841, he got possession of a considerable tract of land. In 1844, a revolution took place, and the American settlers sold themselves for a grant of land to the party which was afterward defeated.

In 1845, the people, being harassed by civil war, wished for the protection of some strong external government. It was a chance whether California was to become English or United States territory. H.M.S. _Collingwood_ entered the port, we believe, of Monterey, and was asked to set up the Union Jack, and declare the country to be under British protection. The captain replied that he would sail up the coast and ascertain whether this was the will of the country, and if it were, he would return and declare the protectorate. Meanwhile, the United States ship _Savannah_, under Commodore Stoat, was on the watch; so that when the _Collingwood_ returned, having ascertained the good will of the other ports, she found, to her surprise and dismay, that she had been outstripped by the Yankee, and that the stars and stripes were floating over the town. California from that time became the property of the United States. In 1848 gold was accidentally discovered, and an emigration set in with the violence of a spring tide, of a very different character to that of the pious Señor Galvez or of the humble Father Junipero and his Franciscans.

Then, indeed, the world began to ring with glad tidings of great joy: the sun had at last arisen on a benighted land--its redemption was at hand. Every newspaper in Europe--we may say in the world--teemed with reports of a new _El Dorado_ discovered on the western coast of America. This country was California. Adventurous spirits, athirst for wealth, from all parts of the world, were set in motion toward this land of promise. Ships were chartered and {795} freighted with men and youths ready to spend all they had in order only to reach the golden bourne. Merchants from the United States and from Europe, ready speculators, sent out their vessels laden to the water's edge with dry goods, hardware, corn, spirits, and general merchandise. The excitement and the recklessness were, perhaps, without a parallel. Ships reached the great and beautiful bay of San Francisco, in which all the fleets of the world could ride at ease, and were often abandoned by their captain and crews, who scampered off to the gold diggings, even before their cargo was discharged. Sometimes they fell to pieces in the bay; sometimes they became the property of adventurers, or were run aground, and served as temporary houses, and then as the corners and foundations of streets, which energetic speculators soon carried down upon piles into the water. There they stand to this day, monuments of the _auri sacra fames_.

It was, indeed, natural that none but the fiercest and most daring elements should prevail. The modest, the timid, the indolent, the sickly, the child, the woman, the aged, the leisure-learned, the owner of property, of good position, of fair prospects, the man of routine, the unambitious, were all left behind. It was said, and said truly, in the cities of Europe, America, and Australia, that men of desperate character were on the road to California; that all went armed with knives and revolvers; that the way thither was a highway of rapine and crime; and that none should start who were not prepared to fight it out any day in self-defence or in attack. There were a thousand difficulties arising from the immense length of the journey, and from the great numbers on the way; and a thousand other difficulties to be accepted on arrival in the country--expense, danger, uncertainty, perhaps sickness; and all these far away from home. Such were the prospects in those days, and such the normal condition of life in California.

It is not strange, then, that the men who formed the horde which, fifteen or sixteen years ago, began to flow into California, should represent to us a type of all that is rough, adventurous, devil-may-care, elastic, light-hearted, and determined in human nature. The Australian population began with convicts and honest emigrants. The Californian population began with all kinds of unconvicted criminals from all parts of the world, with "Sydney ducks," as they called the ticket-of-leave men from New South Wales or Tasmania; but, beside these, a considerable number of energetic, honest emigrants, chiefly from Europe and the States. Then, we may add that the Yankee element prevails in the Californian population, and the John Bull element in the Australian. The American is lean, and all nerve and impatient energy; health and life are to him of no moment when he sees an object to be attained by the risk of them. If we may be allowed to put it grotesquely, his body is human but his soul is a high-pressure steam-engine; he knows no delay and is reckless, and his bye-word is "Go ahead." The Englishman, by contrast, is fat and easy-going; much more cautious of health and life, he calculates on both. F. Strickland ("Catholic Missions in Southern India") happily applies to him the words of Holy Writ spoken of the Romans, "Possederant omnem terram consilio suo et patientia." "It is by wisdom in council, and by patiently watching their opportunity; . . . . wisdom which has often degenerated into Machiavellism, but has never neglected a single opportunity of aggrandizement; patience which has known how to 'bide its time,' and to avoid precipitation"--this is how the Englishman succeeds. And so, to look at the Englishman in a Pickwickian sense, he is a matter-of-fact, cautious gentleman, who wishes to make very sure of what he has got, {796} and when he feels comfortably confident, says "All right," and moves on deliberately to acquire more. An English traveller says:

"The first night we arrived in San Francisco we were kept awake all night on board the steamer by the incessant cry of 'Go ahead,' which accompanied the launch from the crane which sent each article of luggage and goods on to the wharf. It reminded us of a story his late eminence Cardinal Wiseman used to tell. He said the first Italian words he heard on first landing, some forty years ago or more, in Italy from England, were, 'Pazienza, pazienza.' The Englishman sums up all things that happen with the words 'All right;* the Yankee with the words, 'Go ahead.'"

Many merchants realized enormous fortunes in a few months--some even by one consignment; but many were hit hard and many were ruined. A period in which an egg was worth a dollar was followed by a glut in the market of all kinds of goods and provisions. There was nobody to receive them; there was no sale for them. Warehousage cost more than the total value of goods and freight. Tons of sea-bread were abandoned; barrels of hams and bacon, cargoes of cheeses, dry goods, and even wine and spirits, were left unclaimed, and fell into the hands of "smart" men of business, or were spoiled by weather and neglect. Ships, captains, crews, and cargoes bound to California sailed as into a vortex, and were lost in the whirlpool of excitement. Even officers of men-of-war were seized by the gold mania, and "ran" to soil their white hands in the precious "pay-dirt."

Such circumstances as these which occurred in 1849-50-51 are now past and can never recur, at least in California. The country is settling down into a normal condition. The regular system of American states government is permanently established. On two occasions, once in 1851 and again in 1856, when the government of San Francisco fell into the hands of a set of low sharpers, who suspended the laws for punishment of crime and protected criminals, the people, trained from childhood to self-government, extemporized what was called a vigilance committee. They abrogated for the time the state laws, they caught thieves, tried them in the night, and hung them in the morning. They struck terror into the "Sydney ducks," and into the plunderers who had come down upon San Francisco, like vultures upon their prey, from all countries of the world. When the committee had effected its object it peaceably dissolved, and the regular form of government resumed its sway. California, however, still presents a spectacle unlike that of any other country of the world. Sydney, Melbourne, and Queensland have not the diversity of population which California has. They are more like "home;" a stronger government is exercised; there is more security, less excitement, less incident, and less variety in life. The traveller meets every day in the diggings and elsewhere men who had come over from Australia, thinking to better themselves; they have not done so, and they all complain that they have not found the same order and security for man and property; and most of them determine to return in the coming season.

For internal resources, in scenery and climate, and in variety of production, California is probably superior to the Australian colonies. There is a continual excitement, and all the business of the country is done in San Francisco; it is the only port of any note; the trade with California from the States, from South America, from Europe, Asia, and Australia, is to San Francisco. She is called the "Queen of the Pacific," and it is expected that she will become one of the largest cities of the world, and that the whole trade between China, Japan, and Europe and the States will pass through her. She will be one of the great ports, and the most magnificent harbor on the {797} high-road which, when the railroad across the plains is completed, will connect together in one line Pekin, Canton, Japan, San Francisco, New York, London, and St. Petersburg; thus girdling in a great highway the northern hemisphere of the world. The market in San Francisco is just large and manageable enough to produce the greatest amount of excitement for the merchants. Exports and imports are reckoned at about eleven million pounds each; of the exports about eight millions are of gold and silver. The highest game is played, and the English houses, always safe and sure, are looked upon as slow and plodding in comparison with the American. The stakes are, day by day, fortune or ruin. The interest on loans varies from one to ten per cent a month, according to the security. There are great losses and great gains. San Francisco is in a chronic state of exciting business fermentation; there is little amusement, no learned leisure, but everybody is occupied in trade or speculation. The people are well dressed--all the men wear broadcloth, nearly all the women silk; there are no beggars in the streets, and there is an air of healthiness, vigor, and buoyancy of life such as is not to be seen in any other city in Europe or America. No market in the world, save, perhaps, that of London, is better supplied. Railroads run along the streets in all directions. Churches, schools, hotels, and houses are lifted up from their foundations by hydraulic power; and if the owners wish to add a story, instead of clapping it on above, they build it in below, and roof, walls, and floors all go up together uninjured.

The traveller is astonished to see a procession of solid-built houses slowly marching through the centre of one of the principal thoroughfares. In eight-and-forty hours an hotel, brick-built and three stories high, will be carried, without interruption to business, from one part of the city to another. The country is full of interesting incident and novel excitement. It contains all the precious metals, gold, silver, platinum, copper, iron, coal, asphaltum, spring and mineral oil, borax, arsenic, cobalt. The largest crops in the world have been grown on its soil. We quote the published accounts: Crops of 80 bushels of wheat to the acre have been grown in California. Mr. Hill harvested 82-1/2 bushels from an acre in Pajaro valley in 1853, and obtained 660 bushels from ten acres. In 1851, Mr. P. M. Scooffy harvested 88 bushels, and Mr. N. Carriger 80 bushels, in Sonoma valley. Again: In 1853 a field of 100 acres in the valley of the Pajaro produced 90,000 bushels of barley, and one acre of it yielded 149 bushels. It was grown by Mr. J. B. Hill, and was mentioned as undoubtedly true by the assessor of Monterey county in his official report; and a prize was granted by an agricultural society for the crop. According to the assessor's report, the average crop of potatoes in Sacramento county in 1860 was 390 bushels per acre. Potatoes have been seen in the market weighing 7 lb. The largest beet-root was 5 ft. long, 1 ft. thick, and 118 lb. in weight--it was three years old; cabbages 45 lb. and 53 lb. each; and a squash vine bore at a time 1,600 lb. of fruit. Then the largest trees in the world are found in California, in mammoth-tree groves. Two are known to be 32 ft in diameter, 325 ft high. "One of the trees which is down must have been 450 ft. high, and 40 ft. in diameter." The tree of which the bark was stripped for 116 ft., and sent to the Crystal Palace, continued green and flourishing two years and a half after being thus denuded. The highest waterfall in the world is in the Yosemite valley, in California. It is 2,063 ft. high, according to the official surveyor. The Californian Geysers are among the wonders of the world--a multitude of boiling springs, emitting large quantities of steam with a hissing, roaring, spluttering noise; while near them, within a {798} few feet, are deliciously cold springs. There are mud volcanoes, which can be heard ten miles off, and seen at a still greater distance. A great variety of wild beasts and birds--bears, panthers, wolves, deer, elk, the Californian vulture (next to the condor the largest bird that flies), make up other sources of interest, speculation, and excitement and contribute to give to Californians a certain peculiar character and sympathy one with another, which unite them together as hail-fellows-well-met in any part of the world in which they may chance to meet. There is travelling up the rivers in steamboats three and four stories high, which not unfrequently blow up or run into each other. A considerable portion of the country can be traversed in wagons called "stages," whose springs are so very strong that ocular demonstration is necessary as a proof of their existence. They cross plains and mountains, penetrate forests, and skirt precipices, along the most difficult roads. Wooden bridges thrown across ravines or deep gullies or streams, and formed by laying down a number, of scantling poles, and covering them with loose planks, are taken by the four-horse "stage" at a gallop, just as you ride at a ditch or rasper out hunting; patter, patter, go the horses' feet, up and down go the loose planks--one's heart in one's mouth--no horses have slipped through--no broken legs--it seems a miracle--and away onward goes the stage, conducted by dauntless and skilful drivers, to the everlasting cry of "go ahead!" But much of the country must be travelled on horseback, and California has an admirable breed of thin, wiry little horses, which will gallop with their rider over a hundred miles a day, requiring little care and hardly any food. Much of the country is still unexplored. There are mountains covered with perpetual snow, and immense virgin pine forests covering their sides; long rolling plains, baked by the sun; and rich luxuriant valleys, watered by the richest fish-streams. In extent the country is 189,000 square miles, or nearly four times larger than England, and possesses within itself all the resources of the temperate and tropical zones. There are 40,000,000 acres of arable land in the state, though not more than 1,000,000 are now in cultivation.

"The climate near the ocean is the most equable in the world. At San Francisco there is a difference of only seven degrees between the mean temperature of winter and summer--the average of the latter being 57° and of the former 50° Fahrenheit. Ice and snow are never seen in winter, and in summer the weather is so cool that woolen clothing may be worn every day. There are not more than a dozen days in the year too warm for comfort at mid-day, and the oldest inhabitant cannot remember a night when blankets were not necessary for comfortable sleep. The climate is just of that character most favorable to the constant mental and physical activity of men, and to the unvarying health and continuous growth of animals and plants. By travelling a few hundred miles the Californian may find any temperature he may desire--great warmth in winter and icy coldness in summer."

It may be understood, then, from all these circumstances, that the blood of a Californian tingles with an excitement of its own. Indeed, it is constantly observed that men who leave California with their fortunes made, and with the intention of establishing themselves in the Eastern states, or in Europe, are unable to settle down, and soon return to the Golden State.

Let us now proceed with the subject before us, and draw out briefly two contrasts: one between the Spanish or Catholic and the Anglo-Saxon or non-Catholic conduct and policy toward the original lords of the soil, the Indians; the other as between the names they gave to the localities which were the scenes of their respective labors. It will indicate a difference of {799} tone and spirit sufficiently remarkable.

Of course all Californians are not to be held responsible for the acts of a low and heartless section of ruffians, any more than all Englishmen are accountable for the atrocities which we have perpetrated in times past in India or Oceanica. But as we would not pass over the crimes committed by the Anglo-Saxon race in India were India our topic, so neither will we be silent here on deeds of equal atrocity with any of which we were guilty, committed in these latter days by some of the new occupiers of California.

The love of souls and the love of wealth do not, indeed, grow in the same heart. We have already faintly sketched the result of the Church's love of souls on the temporal and spiritual well-being of the indigenous population of California. Under her gentle care was realized for its inhabitants the happiness, peace, and plenty of Paraguay. The Anglo-Saxon and the thirst for gold ushered in, alas! on these poor creatures--made in the divine image, and called equally with ourselves to an eternal share in the love of the Sacred Heart--not a miserable existence, but absolute destruction. The love of mammon has been the murderer of the native owners of the soil. The iron heart and the iron arm of the Anglo-Saxon invaders have cleared all before them. In 1862, Mr. Hittel, who is not a Catholic, and whom we hold to be an impartial witness, made a study of the subject, and he thus speaks of the destruction of the Indian population of California, page 288:

"The Indians are a miserable race, destined to speedy destruction. Fifteen years ago, they numbered 50,000 or more: now there may be 7,000 of them. They were driven from their hunting-grounds and fishing-grounds by the whites, and they stole cattle for food (rather than starve); and to punish and prevent their stealing, the whites made war on them and slew them. Such has been the origin of most of the Indian wars, which have raged in various parts of the state almost continuously during the last twelve years. For every white man that has been killed, fifty Indians have fallen. In 1848 nearly every little valley had its tribe, and there were dozens of tribes in the Sacramento basin, but now most of these tribes are entirely destroyed."

We have been ourselves assured by eye-witnesses that such an incident as the following has frequently happened in the gold diggings. A man would be quietly cleaning his gun or rifle on a Sunday morning, when he would espy an Indian in the distance, and, without the least hesitation, would fire at him as a mark. The Indians were fair game, just as bear or elk were, and men would shoot them by way of pastime, not caring whether the mark was a "buck" or a "squaw," as they call them--that is, a man or a woman. Murder became thus a relaxation. And we must add, that not only American citizens, but also men who pride themselves on the greater civilization and virtue of their country nearer home, thus imbrued their bands with reprobate levity in the blood of their fellow-creatures. We should be very sorry to imply that these horrible deeds are perpetrated only by inhabitants of the United States. On the contrary, it is certain that men who from circumstances lapse into a state of semi-savage life, without public opinion to check them, living in the wilderness and the bush, and without religion, naturally become so enslaved to their passions that at last they commit the foulest abominations and the most horrible murders as though they were mere pastimes. We have read abundant examples of this in India and other British colonies. The American government passed many wise and humane laws in favor of the Indian. It was not her fault that pioneers, squatters, buccaneers, and outlaws, at a distance, laughed at her laws and set them at defiance.

{800}

The other contrast is quickly drawn. It shall be the contrast of names. We do not wish to found any strong argument upon it. Names are not actions, and yet to call a man hard names is the next thing to giving him hard blows; and we know that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." Let the two lists go down in parallel columns, and illustrate the old times and the new:

_Spanish baptisms of localities or settlements._

San Francisco
Sacramento
La Purisima Concepcion
Trinidad
Jesus Maria
Santa Cruz
Nuestra Señora di Solidad.
Los Angeles, Reina de.
San Jose
San Pedro
San Miguel
San Rafael
Santa Clara
Santa Barbara
San Luis Obispo
San Paolo
Buena Vista
Mariposa
San Fernando
Alcatraz
Contra Costa
San Mateo
Plumas

_Yankee baptisms of localities or settlements_

Jackass Gulch
Jim Crow Cañon
Loafer Gill
Whiskey diggings
Slap Jack Bar
Yankee Doodle
Skunk Gulch
Chicken Thief Flat
Ground Hog's Glory
Hell's Delight
Devil's Wood
Sweet Revenge
Shirt-tail Cañon
Rough and Ready
Rag Town
Git up and Git
Bob Ridley Flat
Humpback Slide
Swell-head Diggings
Bloody Run
Murderers' bar
Rat trap Slide
Hang town

We may now dismiss these contrasts, which we have only insisted on in order to bring into greater relief the spirit of God and the spirit of mammon. The Spaniard went with the tenderest devotedness to serve and save the Indian, recognizing him from the first as a brother. The Yankee came, straining every nerve and energy in the pursuit of wealth; the Indian was in his way; he recognized no spiritual ties of brotherhood; his soul presented to him no divine image deserving of his love and service; rather it was said, let him be trodden into the mire, or perish from the face of the land. The former cast over their humble settlements, on the coast and inland, the sacred association of the names of mysteries and holy saints, so that men for all generations might be reminded that they are of the race of the people of God; whereas the latter have named many of the places where they have dug for gold with the names of their hideous crimes, and with terms compared to which the nomenclature of savage and uncivilized tribes is Christian and refined.

This sketch of the principal features of the two occupations of California, as they have borne upon the native population, may be sufficient for our present purpose. We shall presently dwell upon the better qualities in the American character--the natural foundations upon which religion has to be built. Our object is not to write a political or commercial essay; all we attempt is to note the action of the Church at the present day upon the heterogeneous elements which compose the population of California, and to record as briefly as may be the several influences observable as making up that action.

It has long been a favorite theme with the anti-Catholic philosophers of the day to descant upon the feebleness of the Catholic Church. They judge her as a purely human institution, good in her day; but her day is gone. She was a good nurse, who held the leading-strings which mankind needed in early childhood. But we have grown to the ripeness of perfection; and the good nurse has grown old and past work: she may be allowed therefore to potter about the world, as an old servant round her master's hall and grounds, till she dies and is buried away. We may render some little service if we point to one more instance of her present vigor and vitality in our own day; if we can show that she is stamping her impress upon the lettered horde that has overrun the western shore, as she did formerly upon the unlettered hordes that possessed themselves of the plains of Italy or of the wolds of England. We believe that she is by degrees assimilating into herself the strange mass of the Californian population; she is standing out in the midst of them as the only representative of religions unity, order, and revelation. She is executing her commission in California to-day as faithfully as she did when Peter entered Rome, or {801} Augustine Kent, or Xavier Asia, or Solano the wilds of South America.

The work of grace, through the Church of Christ, is gaining sensibly and irresistibly upon the population of California. We are far from foreseeing a day when all its inhabitants will be of one faith and one mind, or from saying that the number of conversions to the faith is prodigious and unheard-of. But we affirm that the Catholic Church, with a far greater rapidity than in England, is daily attaining a higher place in the estimation of the people, is becoming more and more the acknowledged representative of Christianity, and is actually gaining in numbers, piety, and authority. The sects there, as elsewhere in America, are ceasing by degrees to exercise any religious or spiritual influence upon the people; they act as political and social agents, and hold together as organizations by the force of local circumstances, which are wholly independent of religion. As forms of religion, the people see through them, and have no confidence in them; the consequence is, that an immense proportion are without any religion at all, and many join the Catholic Church. It was the policy of imperial Rome to open her gates to every form of heathenism: every god was tolerated, every god was accepted, no matter how incongruous or contradictory its presence by the side of others. The empire was intent upon one thing, self-aggrandizement; and for religion it did not care. Thoughtful men smiled or sneered at those mythologies and divinities, and their forms of worship; and the people became cold and indifferent to them. They were dying of this contempt, when behold the newly imported presence of the Fisherman into their midst, with his Catechism of Christian Doctrine, inspired one and all with a new life and energy; the gods began to speak, and the people began to hear them. It was not that a new faith had been awakened in their old idolatry; but a new hostility and hatred had been aroused against the majesty of consistent truth, which stood before them humble, yet confounding them. They began to believe themselves to be devout pagans, and to prove the sincerity of their convictions by endeavoring to smite down the divine figure of the Catholic Church, which claimed a universal homage and a universal power. Events strangely repeat themselves in the world. That which occurred among the sects of ancient Rome is now taking place among the sects of America. Men smile at their pretensions; their convictions are not moulded by them, and they will not submit to their discipline or bow to their authority. But the sects object to death, and they think to prolong the term of their existence not by a life of faith, but by a life of sustained enmity against the religion which is slowly gaining upon them, and supplanting them in the mind and affection of the people.

There are many who believe that the day is not far distant when the Catholics of America will have to brace themselves up to go through the fire, for American religious persecution would be like an American civil war, determined and terrible. It would carry us beyond the limits of our scope to attempt to trace the steps by which persecution is approaching. This spirit has ever existed in the New England states. _Know-nothingism_ was a political and social form of it which failed for a time; and the knowledge of the immense progress made by the Church amidst the din of war, in the camp and in the hospital, in North and South, among officers and men, has quickened this movement. The government is not to blame for this. We believe the American government, in point of religion, to be perfectly colorless. It is noteworthy that nowhere in the world has religion made more rapid progress in this century than in the United States.

We cannot doubt that the Church is repairing in America the losses she {802} has suffered in Europe through the pride, abuse of grace, and apostacy of many of her children.

In California the Church has no easy task before her. It is no longer the simple and rude Vandal, Dane, or Lombard she has to lead into her fold, but a population composed of men of keen wits, of the most varied, world-wide experiences, and drawn from countries in which they have been more or less within the reach of Catholic teaching. These are the men whom she has now to reduce into the obedience of faith.

We are not of those who imagine that Almighty God has lavished all the treasures of natural virtues upon one nation, and has withheld them proportionately from others. In intellectual gifts men differ much less one from another than is often supposed, as with their physical strength and stature the difference, on the whole, is not very large. And so their moral natural gifts, if considered in their full circle, will be found before the tribunal of an impartial judge to be on the whole pretty evenly distributed among the nations. One nation has faith and trust, another understanding and subtlety, another mercy and compassion, another truthfulness and fidelity, another tenderness and love, another humility and docility, another courage and energy, another determination and patience, another purity, another reverence. These natural virtues may be elevated into supernatural, and then that nation is _really_ the _greatest_ which has made best use of the grace of God. The bounteous hand of God has enriched every part of the canopy of heaven with stars and planets, differing infinitely in light, color, distance, size, and combination, and he leaves no portion in absolute poverty or darkness; and the "distilling lips" and "shining countenance" have scattered in every direction over his immortal creation precious gifts of natural virtues, set like gems in the souls of men the moment his fingers first fashioned them. It will, no doubt, often require the study and patient love of an apostle's heart to discover them, so defiled and obscured have they become; but they are ever there, though dormant, and when once they become subject to the touch of divine grace, it is surprising what inclination and facility toward their eternal Father break forth and become apparent.

Now, in speaking of the sufferings of the Church in California, we have been marking some of the worst features of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. But in viewing, as we are about to do, the future prospects of the Church, we must, at the outset, point toward some of those better qualities and characteristics, upon which, under God, the Church has to build her hopes.

If once turned to God from materialism and mammon-worship, we are persuaded that the American would rank among the foremost Catholics of the world; not shining, perhaps, in the extraordinary gifts of faith, and in the offices of the contemplative life, like the children of Italy and Spain, but fruitful and overflowing in good works and in pushing forward every active operation of charity.

Of the Californians it may be said that they are bold and independent adventurers, and that they admire these qualities in others. They are quick and devoted in their own business, and appreciate devotedness in the business (the Chinese call it "sky business") of priests and nuns. They are practical and determined, and failure after failure does not discourage them. Health and life have no value when any temporal end is to be gained. And, therefore, they are struck by the Catholic Church, her bishops and missionaries, steadily pursuing her supernatural end, in spite, of the allurements, distractions, and threats of the world; preaching always and at all times the same doctrines of faith and charity; ready day and night to obey the call of her poorest member, in the camp and the battle-field, in the penury and hardship of' emigration, in {803} pestilence and fever-wards, in no matter what clime or among what people; always alike joyful to save the soul of the negro, the red man, or the white man; esteeming suffering, illness, contempt, poverty, and persecution, when endured for God or for his souls, as so many jewels in her crown, and holding life itself cheap and contemptible in comparison with the one end she has in view.

The Californians are a singularly inquisitive and intelligent race. Everybody is able to read and write; and even the common laborer has his morning newspaper brought every day of his life to his cottage door. The state prison of St. Quintin shows some curious statistical of the proportion of native Americans and foreigners who are able to read and write. The comparison, as will be seen, is in favor of the United States: January 1, 1862, there were 257 prisoners, natives of the United States; of these only 29 were unable to read or write. And there were 333 of foreign birth; of these 141 were unable to read or write. The spirit of free inquiry and private judgment, which brought about the apostacy of the sixteenth century, is carried by Californians to its legitimate conclusions. They are not stopped half-way as Anglicans are by love or reverence for what may appear to be a venerable, time-honored establishment, full of nationality and wealth, and hoary with respectability. They wish to learn the reason _why_ of everything, and they are little inclined to take anything upon a mere _ipse dixit._They love knowledge, and desire to obtain it easily, so they are great frequenters of lectures and sermons; and will go anywhere to hear them when they believe them to be good. This gives the Catholic priest a strong and solid advantage over every other minister. He is able to give an account of his faith, to show the reasonableness of submission, to prove that faith rests upon an infallible basis, that religion is not a caprice of reason, not a mere expedient, not a police, which was useful in ignorant days, and may be still useful for superstitious minds and a leading-string for children and the weak. Show the American that the submission of his intellect to the divine intellect of the Church of God is not its destruction, but its perfection, and elevation, and his intellectual pride will yield as quickly as any man's. Explain to them the doctrine of the Holy Ghost and his indwelling life in the Church and in the individual, and they will be ready to call out, "Give us also the Holy Ghost." There are some natures so confiding and so simple that it is enough to address them as the centurion did his soldiers, or to tell them what to believe, and they believe at once. It is a blessed thing to have the grace of little children to believe from the first; but there are some who have placed themselves out of the pale of this great grace, or have been born outside it, on account of the sins of their parents, and the mould they have been formed in. This is the case with the Anglo-Saxon race, and pre-eminently so with the American. And the Church accommodates herself to the peculiarities of the human mind, with infinite charity and condescension, seeking the surest avenue to the conversion of the soul to God, in faith, hope, and charity. She is ready to meet the American on his own ground, and to give the clearest and most convincing of explanations. Again, the Americans are what has been called "viewy," and with all their practical power and love for the positive, they prefer to have the truth presented to them as in a landscape, in which the imagination is able to throw the reason into relief on the foreground. Compare the instructions and sermons of Peach, Gother, Fletcher, and Challoner, excellent and solid though they be, where the imagination has no play, with those of Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop Manning, Dr. Newman, and our meaning is at once illustrated.

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A priest who should draw his sermons out of Suarez or Petavius, rather than from Perrone or Bouvier, or some hand-book of controversy--his homilies on the gospel from, _e.g._, Dionysius the Carthusian, illustrating them from such works as "Burder's Oriental Customs," "Harmer's Observations," etc., rather than heap up platitudes and common generalities, or should even take our common little catechism and develop its doctrine and popularize it by abundant illustrations from Scripture, history, from the arts, science, commerce, government--familiar themes to the American mind--would be certain to attract around his pulpit large audiences of anxious souls, and, by God's blessing, to win them to Catholic truth with astonishing facility.

The Americans are keenly alive to coarse or rough manners in a priest. They will not suffer masterful or domineering language from him in the pulpit or in private. Above all, they consider the "brogue" to be a capital sin--_talem devita_. This is a little inconsistent in men who are not themselves remarkable either for the _suaviter in modo_ or for a reticence of provincialisms and cant words and phrases. But still we consider, unhesitatingly, that the brogue is more prejudicial to a clergyman's influence upon Americans than upon Englishmen; and also that a priest, through refinement of mind and manners, can effect more in America than in England. Whether the reason for this fact is that the latter qualities are rarer in the States than here, or that having no hereditary titles, Americans attach greater value to adornments of mind and manners, we may not pause to consider.