As I have elsewhere shown, it was the plan of the Spanish Crown not only to christianize and civilize the Indians of California, but also to colonize the country. In accordance with this plan the pueblo of San Jose was founded on the 29th of November, 1776. The second was that of Los Angeles in […]

In 1816—-19 the padres at San Diego urged the Governor to give them permission to erect a chapel at Santa Isabel, some forty miles away, where two hundred baptized Indians were living. The Governor did not approve, however, and nothing was done until after 1820. By 1822 the chapel was reported built, with several houses, […]

It must not be forgotten that one of the early methods of reaching California was inland. Travelers came from Mexico, by way of Sonora, then crossed the Colorado River and reached San Gabriel and Monterey in the north, over practically the same route as that followed today by the Southern Pacific Railway, viz., crossing the […]

TO the indomitable energy of Galvez, the California Missions owed much, but his work was largely initial. It required the steady, patient, constant labors of men on the ground, to see that the plans so carefully formulated were carried out. From St. Francis down, the chief aim of the members of his order has been […]

IT is generally believed that the California Indian in his original condition was one of the most miserable and wretched of the world’s aborigines. As one writer puts it : ” When discovered by the padres he was almost naked, half starved, living in filthy little hovels built of tule, speaking a meagre language broken […]

LASUEN’S third Mission, of 1797, was San Miguel, located near a large rancheria named Sagshpileel, and on the site called Vahia. One reason for the selection of the location is given in the fact that there was plenty of water at Santa Isabel and San Marcos for the irrigation of three hundred fanegas of seed. […]

One of the ranchos of San Luis Obispo was that of Santa Margarita on the north side of the Sierra Santa Lucia. As far as I know there is no record of the date when the chapel was built, yet it is a most interesting and important structure, even in its present utterly ruined and […]

ON September 8, 1797, the seventeenth of the California Missions was founded by Padre Lasuen, in the Encino Valley where Francisco Reyes had a rancho in the Los Angeles jurisdiction. The natives called it Achois Comihavit. Reyes’ house was appropriated as a temporary dwelling for the missionary. The Mission was dedicated to Fernando III, King […]

The chapel at Pala is perhaps the best known of all the asistencias on account of its picturesque campanile. It was built by the indefatigable Padre Peyri, in 1816, and is about twenty miles from San Luis Rey, to which it belonged. Within a year or two, by means of a resident padre, over a […]

FOR thirteen years the heart of the venerable Serra was made sick by the postponements in the founding of this Mission. The Viceroy de Croix had ordered Governor Rivera ” to recruit seventy-five soldiers for the establishment of a presidio and three Missions in the channel of Santa Barbara : one towards the north of […]