by Fabian Parmisano, OP

CHAPTER 1: BEGINNINGS

Continued

Besides other Pueblos in the Peninsula, we held exercise for a week in the Old Missions San Temlo, Santo Tomas, San Ramon, San Vicente, San Rafael, Santo Domingo, and El Rosario. We considered this last to be the end of the chain of Dominican Missions [i.e. visited from north to south, though first to be founded], at least of the west coast of the Peninsula. Below it is the desert of San Fernando, and we felt we had had hardships enough.

The few records -- merely of baptisms, marriages, and interments -- were lying around uncared for; and Fr. William packed them up and took them to Benicia. There are statues and pictures of Dominican Saints and subjects in some private houses in the missions, but the possessors will not part with them. There is hardly anything left of the Missions.

We usually held services in what must have been the Mission barn or stables. An old Indian whom the Fathers on departing from the Peninsula had left in charge of El Rosario told us that a certain lawyer from the Capital of Mexico represented himself as commissioned to take away the church furniture -- candelabra, etc., and the Indian let him have them; and I presume this kind of transaction occurred at other Missions also. The good red tiles covering the better class of private houses at the Missions must have been taken from the roofs of the church and monastery; and hence the walls of the Mission buildings have melted away under the action of the rains...

In Dominicana, an early western Dominican publication[8], Fr. Newell had given a fuller account of his and Fr. Dempflin's pilgrimage south of the boarder. This account suggests that the western Dominicans, though conscious of their origins in the east, were also aware of their roots in the Mexican/Spanish south, and treasured them.

About ten years ago, in the hope of contemplating the monuments of the Dominican Order in that country, we crossed the line of Mexico at Tia Juana [sic] with a buckboard and two Indian ponies, and drove down through the Peninsula for a distance of about four hundred miles, or to the most southerly Dominican Mission.

But let us say at once, we found very little to describe. Since Mexico's achievement of independence from Spain, and the expulsion of the Spanish Friars from the Peninsula -- that is, for a period of seventy years -- those missions had been utterly abandoned, and, what is worse, adventurers and interlopers from Sonora -- who constitute the present owners of the Mission lands -- after driving and killing off the Indians, dismantled the churches and monasteries, seized on and sold the valuable church furniture and works of art, and even tore the tiles from the Mission roofs for their own huts, thus exposing the walls to the dissolving action of the rains, so that there is hardly a Mission in that country of which it might not be said, Etiam ruinae perierunt! Even the ruins have perished.

The dwindled remains of these Dominican Missions form a long chain of ruins, at intervals of about thirty miles apart, and extending down from the line to a distance of 400 miles -- that is, not geographical, or as the crow flies, but practical, or, better still, impracticable -- awful, Mexican road miles -- every league of which we have ample reason to remember!

Here Newell pauses to counter those who claim that the missionary activity in the Californias was the result of competition among the three Orders involved. Not so, says Newell. Rather, it was planned on a cooperative basis.

The fact is that, though members of the several Missionary Orders visited the Peninsula a century ago, yet before the establishment of any missions in either of the Californias was undertaken, a joint Council of Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans was held under the proper ecclesiastical sanction, and with the aid of the civil authority, at Guadalajara, in Spain, and [sic] the respective spheres of jurisdiction and evangelization were there and then fixed and determined for each of these orders, the Jesuits being assigned to the southern half of the Peninsula -- that is, from Cape St. Lucas to the desert of San Fernando; the Dominicans to the northern half -- that is, from the desert of San Fernando to what is now called the line, and the Franciscans to Alta California -- that is, to all that region now comprising our State.

And what besides ruins did Newell and Dempflin find?

The life of the Catholic Indian, where unmolested by the vices and violence of the so-called civilized white man, is usually of great length, and it was our good fortune to meet survivors of the earliest missions -- old they were, of course, but yet vigorous enough to sit two whole days in the saddle as our guides, and who remembered no other missionaries than the "white-robed Padres del Santo Domingo." All that, for love or money, we could secure from the people as mementos of the fast-vanishing monuments of Dominican zeal are a few small oil paintings of the Rosary and of S. Vincent Ferrer, and some registers of foundations, including many thousands of recorded baptisms, marriages and interments of Indians evangelized by the sons of S. Dominic in Lower California...

The life of the Dominicans in Baja, as that of other religious missioned there, must, as Bancroft observed, have been filled with stress and strain. The terrain was bleak, mostly desert, with few villages scattered about and widely distanced from each other. But the land and the people were apparently the least of the problems. Mexico had seceded from Spain in 1823 and formed a government of its own -- several governments in rapid succession, and all of them hostile to the Church. Religious had fared badly under Spanish domination. Under the successive Mexican governments they fared even worse. There was, for instance, the confiscation by the government of the so-called Pious Fund: a trust of private benefactions established by the Jesuits for the support of the missions and missionaries, since the civil authority refused its financial help. Loss of this fund left the missionaries, and their care of the Indians, entirely at the mercy of the yearly produce from Baja's barren land. There were also the various attempts at secularization, i.e. the enforced surrendering of the missions by the religious into the hands of the secular clergy and the government. The government's theory, or ruse, behind this was the return of the land to the Indians. It was the natives' land and so the natives should manage it. So read Articles one and six of the Decree of Secularization passed by the Spanish Cortes on September 13, 1813, and observed, more or less, in Mexico in one form or another through subsequent years:

1.  All new Reductions [missions] and Christian settlements in the provinces on the other [American] side of the ocean, which are in charge of missionaries from Religious Orders, and which have been converted ten years, shall be immediately turned over to the respective Ordinaries [Bishops] without excuse or pretext whatever, in conformity with the laws and decrees on the Royal Patronato.

6.  The missionaries from Religious Orders must immediately surrender the government and administration of the estates of those Indians, leaving them to the choice and care of said Indians, by means of their Ayuntamientos and under the supervision of the civil governor, to nominate from among themselves those [Indians] who would be to their [the Indians'] satisfaction, and may have more intelligence for managing them, the lands to be divided and to be reduced to individual ownership in accordance with the Decree of January 4, 1813, concerning the reduction of the Valdios [vacant lands] and other lands to private ownership.[9]

But the practical consequence (and intention?) was that government officials (the Ayuntamientos) now stood in the place of the missionaries, with a claim on financial support from the Church (the Pious Fund?). The Indians were allowed to manage their land, but the government managed the Indians, and, for a time anyway, profited thereby. Whatever the gain or loss was to the natives, the missionaries were continually demoralized, frustrated in their attempts to christianize and educate their charge. And once the religious missionaries finally gave up and left, the missions in fact fell completely to ruin. Few secular priests applied for the job of missionary in such poor, harsh terrain, and the Indians left to themselves could not (would not?) manage the land and so abandoned the missions for their former less settled, less disciplined way of life.

Another thorn in the side of the Dominican missionary in Baja was his isolation. In his years of formation, communal living was stressed; it was an essential part of his religious commitment. He would know, of course, that often he would have to be alone, especially if he were called to the missions. But he would expect at least periodic contact with his brothers, some oasis of religious community in whatever desert of solitude he might have to endure. But Baja offered little if any fulfillment of such expectancy. At any one time in that vast wasteland of desert and mountain there would be only a modest number of Dominicans at work, each with a mission many miles distant from those of his brothers with scarcely the time or opportunity for the briefest visit. There may at times be a landfall of new recruits, as in 1792 when eighteen Dominicans arrived from Mexico, but then the exodus of others might be equally spectacular, as when in this same year thirteen veterans obtained permission to leave. By 1840 the situation had reached its nadir. From a report of Fr. Gabriel Gonzalez, O.P., presidente of the missions from 1840 to 1854, we gather that priests had become so scarce in Baja that some fathers were compelled to attend two or more widely separated missions. It seems that in 1840 only six priests, only four of whom were Dominicans, were available to minister to the spiritual needs of a territory that extended from Cape San Lucas in the extreme south of Baja to within fifteen miles of San Diego. Such isolation coupled with the other trials of Baja missionary life must have made that life scarcely tolerable for any Dominican wanting to live the fullness of the life he was vowed to.

Also weighing heavily upon the missionaries were the accusations of cruelty toward the Indians leveled against them by the civil authorities. Bancroft, surmising from evidence dubious at best, asserted that Dominicans especially were guilty of severe maltreatment of the Indian: "The fact is the Dominicans were harder task-masters than either the Jesuits or the Franciscans, and administered severer punishments, and the natives were weary of excessive labor and the lash."[10]   In corroboration Bancroft offered the incident of the murder of a Dominican missionary by four Indians, as reported in a letter from Fr. Rafael Arvina, O.P., presidente of the Baja missions, to Fr. Fermin Lausen, O.F.M., presidente of the missions of Alta California:

Loreto, June 18, 1803. My Most esteemed Brother and Senor.-Under date of May 19th last, I received the unhappy notice that Fr. Eudaldo Surroca, missionary of Santo Tomas, was found dead in his bed. Although at first he was believed to have died a natural death, it is now known that it was a violent one, and that it was perpetrated by four Indian domestics. Three of them have been arrested, and one of them immediately acknowledged being guilty of the parricide. The body was found beaten all over, full of bruises and bones fractured. From signs, which were observed about the room, it may be believed that the deceased must have made a strong defense to save his life. I communicate all this to your Reverence in order that... you may inform all my Beloved Brethren [the Franciscans in Alta California] and Fathers religious that they have the goodness to relieve the soul of this unfortunate religious by means of the customary suffrages; and that, at the same time, it may serve them as a useful lesson to guard themselves against the treachery of the Indians, and escape such a terrible catastrophe.[11]

No motive for the murder is given here or, apparently, anywhere else, and so Bancroft's surmise as to Dominican cruelty must remain just that. There is, however, no doubt that the Indians of the missions were physically punished when rules were not observed -- as also, however, were the soldiers in the adjacent garrisons and the friars themselves. Corporal punishment for misconduct, within the family as in other institutions, was the accepted rule of the day. Even so, the friars were forbidden by the "twelve ordinances and instructions" issued by Pedro Garrido, the Dominican provincial of the Province of Santiago, Mexico, on May 15, 1772, to act harshly toward the Indians: they "were to avoid all things unbecoming, and were to practice charity, patience, kindness, prudence, treating all with gentleness and not with rigor."[12] Some friars probably abused their authority in the inflicting of punishment, others would be shy of exercising it. There is a letter dated January 7, 1797, from Fr. Mariano Apolinaro, O.P., of Mission San Miguel, in response to one by the governor of the locale. The Governor speaks of complaints leveled against the Dominicans accusing them of causing Indians to flee the missions because of the severity of punishments inflicted upon them. Apolinaro's reply may throw some light on a difficult and volatile subject:

To the contents of your letter I have to say in the first place that I do not know how it is that the paternal jurisdiction (as Your Honor expresses it in your communication), should extend only to twenty-five lashes, for as we see every day a father at times inflicts a slight punishment, and at other times a grave chastisement according as the misdeed demands. Can it forsooth be said that such a father does not love his sons?

In the second place, the motive for the running away of the Indians does not, as Your Honor says, rise from too much chastising. Considering the character of these Indians I dare say that they run away for lack of punishment rather than for punishing them in keeping with the guilt. I prove this by telling Your Honor that when my companion, Fr. Mariano Yoldi, received charge of this mission, he at the same time received from the Fr. Presidente a list of the Indians. It showed that there were then forty deserters. Had they forsooth run away because of too much chastising? Your Honor knows very well the kind and affable character of our Rev. Fr. Presidente.

Finally Your Honor may question all the soldiers that are in this ancient mission, who have always lived in the neighborhood of this mission. They will tell you that since the founding of the mission until the present moment the Indians have always run away. Now, perhaps, we have fewer runaways than any of the Fathers that have been stationed here. I may be wrong, but the cause of so many desertions is the neglect of going in search of them, as is evident from their own declaration which the Indians have made to us. When an Indian was asked one day why they ran away, since they were not whipped, and they were regularly given food and clothing, he told us that they deserted because they saw that no one went after them, and that not the slightest solicitude was manifested for the runaways. This, as Your Honor tells me in your letter, is not found in the report. Well, many other things pertaining to the royal service are not found in the report; but when the Fathers are accused that is quickly put into the report.[13] >>>

Partial Endnotes
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[8] vol. 1. no. 7, 1900, p.210.

[9] as in Engelhardt, p. 660

[10] as in Engelhardt, p. 565

[11] Englelhardt, p. 626

[12] quoted by Nieser, p. 40

[13] In Engelhardt, pp. 578-579

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