Blog by-the-Sea

Part 4: The End of an Era and Rebuilding of the Mission

This is Part 4 (the last part) of a series of posts on the history of North San Diego County, with a focus on the Mission San Luis Rey.  Earlier posts, discussing the time frame from the founding of the mission to 1865, include : Part 1 North San Diego County, Its Mission and Its Mission Days; Part 2 When Spanish San Diego Became American; and Part 3 San Diego County's Pioneers and the Fiesta of San Luis Rey de Francia.

On May 10, 1869, came the event that would finally Americanize San Diego County, for good and for bad: Two railroads were joined with a final spike, connecting the east coast with the west coast of the United States.  In 1911, historian John S. McCroarty, in California - Its History, Its Romance  called this “the greatest achievement of the nineteenth century, or of any century that preceded it. . . . At that hour the attention of the civilized world was concentrated on the sagebrush plains of Nevada where California was joined by rail with the Atlantic seaboard.”   

San Diego was finally accessible to more than just the adventuresome and the bold.  Settlements were planned.  Land developers expected to profit.  The developers and the courts set to work to secure titles to lands that were soon to be settled.  Unless they had legally enforceable titles under state laws, the Indians’ claims to their lands were not recognized as against the title held by the Americans with legal land claims.  While this may have had little impact on Indians who had long ago abandoned tribal lands in the areas of San Diego, the Mission San Luis Rey and Rancho Agua Hedionda, it meant hardship to some of those living in the Indian communities that still existed further inland. 

By 1870, a census showed only 25 people in the San Luis Rey area who still claimed Indian ethnicity, all of them employed on the ranches.  In contrast, late nineteenth century Indian rights advocate Helen Hunt Jackson described the plight of 200 Luisenos in the Temecula Valley who were forced out of their homes in 1869 and 1870 when they could not prove good title to their land, despite the bishop's effort to help them:

"A Mexican woman is now living in that Temecula valley who told me the story of this moving.  The facts I had learned before from records of one sort and another.  But standing on the spot, looking at the ruins of the little adobe houses, and the walled graveyard full of graves, and hearing this woman tell how she kept her doors and windows shut, and could not bear to look out while the deed was being done, I realized forcibly how different a thing is history seen from history written and read.

"It took three days to move them.  Procession after procession, with cries and tears, walked slowly behind the wagons carrying their household goods. . . . They took the tule roofs off the little houses, and carried them along.  They could be used again.  Some of these Indians, wishing to stay as near as possible to their old home, settled in a small valley, only three miles and a half away to the south.  It was a dreary, hot little valley, bare, with low, rocky buttes cropping out on either side, and with scanty growths of bushes; there was not a drop of water in it.  Here the exiles went to work again; built their huts of reeds and straw; set up a booth of boughs for the priest, when he came, to say mass in; and a rude wooden cross to consecrate their new graveyard on a stony hill-side.  They put their huts on barren knolls here and there, where nothing could grow.  On the tillable land they planted wheat or barley or orchards, --some patches not ten feet square, the largest not over three or four acres.  They hollowed out the base of one of the rocky buttes, sunk a well there, and found water."

On January 2, 1882, the California Southern Railroad first ran between National City and Fallbrook.  The drought of only a few years earlier had been forgotten.  Old Town San Diego had been replaced by the new American city of 2,500 people.  Along the train line, a community formed near the old Mission of San Luis Rey.  By the mid-1880’s, the newly formed town had a population of about 600 people downhill from the abandoned mission.

On November 15, 1885, the California Southern at last extended the entire way into San Diego, with the first train departing from San Diego on November 15, and the first train arriving from the east on November 21.  A land boom overtook the county.  During the first two years of the train line’s existence, the population of San Diego grew from 5,000 to 40,000 people.  The population was also growing in the village of San Luis Rey, and in another town called Oceanside.  Posters advertised the land in England.  An English community settled near the old mission and began to build a small English country church with funds donated by a Church of England parish near London.

However, in 1888, the real estate boom ended, as many new residents found land elsewhere with irrigation.  Lots were advertised for fast sale, cheap.  Then, in 1893, a nationwide Wall Street panic led to a depression.  Of San Diego’s eight banks, five closed in the wake of the panic.

Amid the hardship, in 1892, Franciscans from Mexico wanted to start a school in California.  The bishop offered them the abandoned Mission San Luis Rey.  They accepted, agreeing to a stipulation that an English speaking priest always be in residence to serve the local English-speaking population.

Restoring the mission's buildings was to be a long process, replacing a roof and portions of walls, rebuilding a dome, pouring a new concrete floor.  The end result was to be a building nearly identical to the mission compound that had been completed in 1815.

The restoration was led by Father Joseph Jeremias O'Keefe, O.F.M., described as an "Irishborn, Spanish-speaking member of a German Franciscan province" by Father Valentine John Healy, O.F.M., writing for the Journal of San Diego History in 1965.  One might add that he was rebuilding an Indian mission in the United States named for a king of France.  When he arrived at the mission, he wrote his own description of what he found:

"The houses were unroofed for the tiles and rafters; the beautiful arches were blown down with powder to get down the brick; doors and windows were appropriated; and finally, the bare walls were left standing exposed to all changes of the weather and erosions of storm and rains.... there were no roofs on any part of San Luis Rey except the church and even that was gone in large part."

Father O'Keefe specifically chose to hire the Luisenos to help rebuild the mission, both because of their superior understanding of the construction of adobe structures and also to compensate for his inability to spend enough time teaching the Catholic Luisenos who, by then, lived far from the mission.  He wanted to offer them employment that they needed, and to offer instruction in the evening, which he could accomplish by seeking them out as construction workers to rebuild the mission compound.

The Franciscans began to move back in 1904 or 1906, including 5 priests, 5 brothers, 1 student cleric, 1 novice cleric, and one candidate for the brotherhood.  By 1906, the unfinished mission was described by Charles Frederick Holder as a gracious place in Life in the Open: Sport with Rod, Gun, Horse, And Hound in Southern California:

"We pass the San Luis Rey River, Fallbrook, and finally the coach rolls into San Luis Rey de Francia, and is again on the King's Highway, as in all probability it once ran up and down the coast, having made the inland tour as described. San Luis Rey, while a ruin, is a sumptuous pile, and originally was one of the finest Missions in Southern California. . . .

The splendid pile was one hundred and fifty feet long, fifty feet wide, and sixty feet high, its walls, like those of San Gabriel, being four feet thick. A fine tower graces the south side, and is pierced for eight bells. The corridor has two hundred and fifty-six arches. Its fine dome, its groined arches, the Byzantine pulpit, the long corridors, appeal to the imagination, and make the old Mission one of the really beautiful pictures of Southern California, whether seen against the green slopes of winter or on the barren mesa in summer, when its tints and shades seem to blend with the soil.

"The Mission has been repaired by the Franciscans who now occupy it and tender visitors a courteous reception. They relate fascinating stories of the days of Zalvidea, of the Indians saved; and one is glad that the old Mission is rehabilitated and not allowed to go to decay. . . .

"We exchange opinions with the passers-by and the owners of the ranches who come out as we pull up at the slightest excuse. Then there is the fund of wisdom drawn from the country store, and its habitués, all adding to the charm of coaching or automobiling in the land of the setting sun."

The rebuilding, as it stood a few years later, is described by John S. McCroarty in his book first published in 1911.  By then, the interior had been redecorated and a new main altar had been set in place, and McCroarty told the story idealistically, describing the rebuilding as part of California's romance:

"After long years of loneliness and isolation, the brown-robed Franciscans came back to San Luis Rey, repaired its fallen roofs, set up anew its wavering walls and once again rang the music of the ancient Mission bells across the dreaming valley and up into the silent hills.  In answer to that melodious call, the remnant of the once happy community of neophytes, tottering old Indian men and women with their children and their children’s children, came flocking back to San Luis Rey to hear again the Padres’ voices and the well-loved music of the Mass, their hearts filled with gladness beyond the power of words to tell.  Here also at San Luis Rey was planted the original California pepper tree in the patio of the Mission where Father Antonio Peyri placed it in the loving soil with his own gentle hands."

The Mission continued to be rebuilt, the arches completed only in 1914, and a second story completed in 1924.  Some work was still ongoing when Father Healey wrote about the work for the Journal of San Diego History in 1965.  Its grounds, much like the original mission compound, and its museum, serve as reminders of the early history of the Franciscan mission and also serve as a place of retreat and prayer for the present day. 

The present day Mission San Luis Rey Parish, a large congregation, describes itself as "diverse and multi-cultural," with Mass in both Spanish and English at the large, modern Serra Center, which is in the mission's historic district.  The separate mission church, which is part of the mission compound, holds Mass on Saturday evenings.

Mission San Luis Rey celebrates the 208th anniversary of its founding today with a museum tour and wine tasting in the rose garden.

Part 3: San Diego County's Pioneers and the Fiesta of San Luis Rey de Francia

This is Part 3 of a series of posts on the Catholic and Anglican history of North San Diego County.  Part  1 is North San Diego County, Its Mission and Its Mission Days.  Part 2 is When Spanish San Diego Became American.  Part 2 ended with the perceptions of the first Episcopal Church Bishop of California when he spent a few days in San Diego in January 1854 as the guest of Don Juan Bandini in Spanish Old Town San Diego about 3-1/2 years after California became a state in the United States.  At that time, the only non-Catholic clergyman in San Diego County was the Rev. Reynolds, an Episcopalian military chaplain stationed there with the military, who held civilian worship services at the courthouse each Sunday.   

From the time when Rev. Reynolds left San Diego in 1854, no Episcopalian priest is known to have held civilian services in San Diego County until 1868.  Protestant chaplains may have been stationed in the county with the military.  As a rule, the church-going newly American residents were Catholic.  While the population was small, San Diego County covers 4,261 square miles, about the size of the State of Connecticut, or one-third the size of Belgium, with its southern boundary at the Mexican boarder.  It includes coastal communities to the desert and mountains with elevations of up to 6,500 feet in the east side of the county.

There was no gold rush in San Diego County, and no sudden rush of a new American population in the 1850’s.  Instead, San Diego County was populated by Hispanics, Indians (many of them Spanish speaking), and a few Americans who arrived as military personnel, some of them choosing to remain in San Diego after they left the military. 

From April 12, 1861 to May 26, 1865, the Civil War was fought in the eastern part of the United States, with little impact in San Diego County.  However, more American soldiers came into the local forts, and some of them remained.  Americans seeking to avoid the Civil War draft fled to California, and some settled in San Diego. 

On August 17, 1865, U.S. soldiers were stationed again at the Mission San Luis Rey.  The local newspaper said that the altar was stripped of gold ornamentation, and images were torn down.

1865 was one of those drought years that modern day Californians know all too well.  Nowadays, we hope that our reservoirs will have adequate supplies for cities and farmers, but the North County residents of 1865 had no reservoirs and little means of irrigation, depending upon the San Luis River for most of their water.  In drought years, that river can be completely dry.  Grazing lands in a drought year were of little use.  Don Juan Maria Marron, who had owned  Rancho Agua Hedionda, in what is now Carlsbad and not far from the Mission San Luis Rey, had died in 1853, leaving most of the land to his widow and four children.  The cattle on the rancho were starving, and there was nothing that could be done about the weather. 

At first, the Marrons leased the land to an American named Francis (“Jack”) Hinton who had come there with the military.  In 1865, Hinton took ownership of the rancho.  He was a former New Yorker whose real name had been Abraham Ten Eyck de Witt Hornbeck.  He had changed his name at the age of 27 and joined the United States Army, serving in the Mexican-American War.  He had come to California with the Boundary Commission Guard and remained there near San Diego, one of the American adventurers in the rugged land.  He had no wife and children, but was friends with the other Americans in southern California, including the pioneer  Judge Benjamin Hayes.  The mayordomo who managed Hinton’s ranch was Robert Kelly, who was also a merchant in San Diego. 

The Mission San Luis Rey was finally returned to the Catholic Church in 1865, but the mission was empty, and the buildings were falling into ruin.  The Catholic bishop had submitted land claims on behalf of the Indians at each of the California missions, and had submitted claims on behalf of the Church to the mission buildings, cemeteries and grounds.   The claims on behalf of the Catholic Church were granted, while the claims on behalf of the Indians were denied.  The Church did not return to the Mission San Luis Rey for another 28 years, while it remained at a fork in the road along the mail route from Los Angeles to San Diego – at least, when they had mail service. 

The condition of the mission then was described by Judge Hayes in his book, Pioneer Notes of the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes, 1849-1875:

"To the Catholic Church has been confirmed the Mission Church, with buildings and gardens, containing 53.39 acres. This was the last [eighteenth-Ed.] Mission established in California. It is said to have surpassed all the others in splendor.  It is fast going to ruin.  When I first saw it, in 1854, an expenditure of $500 for repairs on the roof would have preserved it many years.  In its decay and solitude the old grandeur yet lingers there."

The roads through what is now Oceanside and Carlsbad were a buggy route for the daring in those days, and an easy place to get lost in the grassy coastal hills.  Judge Hayes described one such trip he made between Encinitas and the ruins of the mission, passing Rancho Agua Hedionda, in that day. 

If Hispanic San Diego had its downside, there were always the good times too.  The fiesta of San Luis, on August 25, was still held despite the mission’s ruins.  It must have been a celebration worth a lengthy journey to attend.  The ladies on the ranchos proved to be good hostesses to the Americans as they were to their fellow hispanics, and the combination of Anglo-American, Hispanic American and Luiseno American cultures seemed to blend hospitably in an era of ample land and a common delight in the adventure of living, described by Judge Hayes:

"At the Mission of San Luis Rey, another road goes off intersecting that we travelled at Encinitos, distance, 16 miles; passing by Agua Hedionda rancho, now in the possession Of my old friend Jack Hinton.  The long slopes on the southeast of the ridges make this more pleasant going than coming. I always avoid it when I can, having still a vivid remembrance of trying to find San Luis Rey one night on my way to celebrate the fiesta of San Luis in company with Hon. J. W. Robinson.  Within a mile of the Mission, just below the ridge by which you approach it, we became somewhat bewildered, wandered about hither and thither, repeatedly, as we ascertained at daylight, tracing the track of our own buggy in the sand, to the infinite amusement of the ladies of Guajomito, to whom we tried to account satisfactorily for our non-arrival at an earlier hour.  It ruined the feast for me that day.  This was the mail-stage route, when we had a mail between Los Angeles and San Diego."

Later in his journals, the judge described another journey similarly – this was rugged country, but beautiful once the drought had passed, and the judge had fond memories of the hardy characters who lived there:

"Got off at 10 A.M.  At Encinitos missed the intended road and got on that leading directly to San Luis Rey.  Approached Agua Hedionda through a most beautiful valley; Prager said he would be satisfied to spend the remainder of his days there.  Covered with fat cattle.  This rancho is now in the possession of Jack Hinton.  The title is still in the Marron family; will doubtless soon pass away from them.  Night was too near to stop, else I should certainly have done so, and would have done so anyhow if I had brought along the little volume of Maj. Ringgold's Poems which had been sent to Ensworth for Jack.  The “Fountain Rock”--I should like to know friend Hinton's plain mind in relation to it.  “Thoughts of Heaven” struck my attention in a hasty glance at the volume.  Major Ringgold, the Paymaster and Poet!  Jack Hinton, the Sergeant of Buenavista!  One who knows them will ever prize their memory!"

Part 2: When Spanish San Diego Became American

This post is PART 2 of a series of posts on the early history of North San Diego County, with a focus on the local missions.  Here is a link to Part 1.  I plan to post the rest between now and Tuesday morning.

In Part 1, I wrote about the beginning of the Mission San Luis Rey in North San Diego County and the lives of the Spanish Franciscan padres and Luiseno Mission Indians up to the mid-19th century.

By 1852, the Hon. B.D. Wilson of Los Angeles issued a report to the United States Interior Department about the status of the California Indians.  The Indians had become laborers, mechanics and servants, speaking Spanish and in many cases able to read and write the language.  Helen Hunt Jackson (Glimpses of California and Its Missions, published in 1883) summarized and quoted part of Wilson’s report:

He estimates that there were at that time in the counties of Tulare, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego over fifteen thousand Indians who had been connected with the missions in those counties.  They were classified as the Tulareños, Cahuillas, San Luiseños, and Diegueños, the latter two being practically one nation, speaking one language, and being more generally Christianized than the others. They furnished, Mr. Wilson says, “the majority of the laborers, mechanics, and servants of San Diego and Los Angeles counties.”  They all spoke the Spanish language, and a not inconsiderable number could read and write it.  They had built all the houses in the country, had taught the whites how to make brick, mud mortar, how to use asphalt on roofs; they understood irrigation, were good herders.

It is interesting that Jackson described the Luisenos and Dieguenos as “practically one nation, speaking one language, and being more generally Christianized than the others.”  According to Pablo Tac (one of the Luisenos who was educated in Rome in the early 19th century), the Luisenos and Dieguenos had warred against each other constantly before the arrival of the Spanish padres, who apparently brought peace to the two warring factions in the early 1800’s.  By the middle of the 19th century, their conflict with each other appears to have been set aside.

California was still a Mexican province when the Mexican-American War began on May 13, 1846.  However, support for the Mexican government was not without opposition from California’s hispanic population.  Don Marron, for one, supported the Americans.  Don Pio Pico was by then the Mexican Civil Governor living near Los Angeles, in constant conflict with the Mexican Commandante General, and it was plain to all that Mexican control would not last.   

Still, the future was hard to forecast in a growing but still wild environment.  California’s white population at the beginning of 1846 was only about 10,000 people, with a sprinkling of American traders, sailors, lumberjacks, and others who had no thought of leaving.   In late 1846, a Mormon battalion camped at the Mission San Luis Rey, which had become a fort.   For twenty-six highly celebrated days from June 14 to July 9, 1846, an army of twenty-four Americans declared the existence of The Republic of California, a separate nation whose national flag proudly depicted a lone star and a grizzly bear.  British warships could be seen off the California coast, and rumors abounded that both England and the United States wanted California. 

When the war ended on February 2, 1848, California became a province of the United States.  By the time that news reached California in late summer, gold had been discovered at Sutter’s Mill in northern California, and the news had reached the rest of the world.

Less than three years later, on September 9, 1850, California was granted statehood in the United States.  By that time, Americans had poured into northern California, drawn by the Gold Rush and new opportunities.

While new residents poured into California, the eastern United States was seeing an influx of immigrants from Europe and the British Isles.  Between 1830 and 1860, famine in Ireland and political unrest in Germany sent 3,500,000 Irish and German immigrants to the United States.  During the same time frame, all other countries combined accounted for only 1,500,000 new United States residents.  As the nineteenth century went on, the numbers increased.   

However, the east and west coasts were still quite separated from each other with no easy means of transportation between the two.  Once a family arrived in California, they were generally there to stay, like it or not, for the difficulty of returning could be worse than that of staying put.  There was not a strong sense of need to unite the California churches, other than the Roman Catholic Church, with the churches of Europe or those of the eastern United States. 

Although technically part of the United States, San Diego County was not easy to reach in those days, even from other parts of California.  A mountainous terrain, coupled with sandy, rocky soil and roads on which someone could easily become lost, made travel difficult.  San Diego County's Christian population was still almost exclusively Catholic, while the Gold Rush drew immigrants to Northern California.

Northern Californians who were not Roman Catholics organized the "Diocese of California" in 1850.  The diocese had no bishop, and the Constitution of the Diocese did not mention the Episcopal Church.  The diocese went on for a couple of years before it actually obtained a bishop.  Dr. John Rawlinson, the present-day archivist of the Episcopal Church U.S.A.'s present day Diocese of California, has concluded that the early churchmen of northern California envisioned a church with “a pan-Pacific vision and set of connections.”  Initially, they sought out the Russian Orthodox Bishop of Alaska and the Americas, hoping that he would consecrate one of the California clergy as a Bishop of California.  However, they were not prepared to become fully Russian Orthodox, which would have required the consent of the Russian Tsar and would have taken many years.   

While Northern Californian churches formed an episcopal-like diocese that was not yet recognized by the Episcopal Church, San Diego received its first Episcopal priest on December 31, 1850.  The Rev. Dr. John Reynolds was sent to San Diego as a military chaplain and formed a small civilian congregation in the city.  Although his small Episcopal congregation lasted for only the few years of his military duty, it was the first church in San Diego that was not Roman Catholic.  His ties to the Episcopal Church initially lay through the military, so that his status as a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States was on firm ground.  His arrival, and the earliest days of San Diego’s first Episcopal church, were described by William E. Smyth in 1907 in his book History of San Diego 1542-1908:

"The Reverend John Reynolds, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was appointed chaplain of the Post at San Diego, on December 31, 1850, and was army chaplain for the troops stationed at the mission until August 31, 1854.  On July 4, 1853, the Herald announced that "hereafter the Rev. Dr. John Reynolds . . . chaplain of the U. S. Army, will conduct divine service at the courthouse, and for the first time we have Protestant church services in our town of San Diego."  The very first service at Old Town was held at 3 P.M., on July 10, 1853.  The details of these early meetings are meager, but the Herald and "John Phoenix" supply some local color.  The paper complained that "an audience of over a dozen is rarely seen at the court house, where Dr. Reynolds preaches on Sunday, while the Sabbath calm is broken in upon by the riot of the inebriated, and the very words of holy writ are drowned by the clicking of billiard balls and calls for cocktails from the adjacent saloon."  Derby's references to Dr. Reynolds are almost entirely in a joking way, and not to be taken seriously." 

It was during the time that Dr. Reynolds led the sole Episcopal church in San Diego that Episcopalians in northern California decided to seek out an Episcopal bishop who did not have another jurisdiction.  They sent a delegation to the General Convention of 1853, but the House of Bishops had some reservations about them, knowing their history of approaching the Russian Orthodox Church and Bishop Southgate.  Beyond that, the northern California population had a Gold Rush reputation as the Wild West.  After the Californians left, the House of Bishops declared the state to be a missionary territory.   

In the last days of the convention, an Episcopal priest named William Ingraham Kip was chosen to become the first Episcopalian missionary bishop of California, something of a surprise even to Bishop Kip.  Ordinarily, a missionary bishop is appointed for an area without a church, and he is sent to plant churches in his territory.  In the words of John Rawlinson, “technically, Bishop Kip was a bishop without a diocese, and the Diocese of California was a diocese without a bishop.”

Dr. Kip's book, The Early Days of My Episcopate, describes the little Spanish town known as San Diego where he unexpectedly arrived in January, 1854.  Off the Coast of San Diego on January 18, his ship encountered a storm and was shipwrecked.  Those on board were rescued, but the shipwreck left the new bishop, his wife and his son stranded in San Diego for several days before they set out again by sea.  The following is a portion of Bishop Kip’s description of Old Town San Diego and its abandoned Mission San Diego de Alcala during the week that he and his family thus unexpectedly became the houseguests of San Diego’s Don Juan Bandini:

"His [Don Juan Bandini’s] residence at San Diego, at which we have now been domesticated for nearly a week, is just on the edge of the town.  It is built in the Spanish style, around the sides of a quadrangle into which most of the windows open, and is only one story high, with massive walls of adobes (sun-dried bricks).  Everything here is conducted with such ease that we feel as much at home as if we had lived here for months. Nothing is omitted that could conduce to our comfort, and in the elegance with which the Señora Bandini presides over her household and entertains her guests, we found our ideas of the grace and dignity of the Spanish ladies fully realized.

"San Diego is a little Spanish town of about a thousand inhabitants, built in a straggling style, and with a perfectly foreign air.  The houses are mostly constructed of adobes, except that here and there some white painted, clapboard shop tells us of the occupancy of one of our countrymen.  As usual, the town is built around a large Plaza, where the population, Spaniards and Indians, wrapped in their ample mantles, sun themselves and lounge; and here, on Sundays, are their amusements.  Through the week, however, it is as quiet as possible.  The climate is delicious, said to be the most healthy on the coast, reminding me indeed of that of Naples. The people do not seem disposed to show any activity, except when on horseback. Now and then some cavalier, mounted on a fine horse, dashes across the Plaza, lasso in hand, his huge spurs and stirrups jingling as he goes.  The American population, is gradually coming in, and in a few years the place will lose its Spanish characteristics. During the Mexican war, San Diego was taken by Commodore Stockton, and on the hill above, are the remains of the breastwork he threw up to command the town.

"Opposite to Don Juan's is a long Spanish house, the residence of the Padre, one end of which is fitted up as a Chapel.  I looked into it when passing, but found everything, pictures, images, etc., in the worst possible state of tawdriness.  One of our countrymen--a steerage passenger from the ship--followed me in, and lounged round the place with his hat on and a cigar in his mouth!  Four miles further up the harbor is New Town, a more recent settlement, where several of our army officers are quartered; while six miles farther back in the country, at the old Mission of San Diego, a force of about one hundred soldiers is stationed.  This is at present the residence also of the Rev. Mr. Reynolds, one of our clergy, who is a Chaplain in the United States Army.  He officiates there on Sunday morning, and in the afternoon comes down to San Diego and holds service,--the only one, except the Romish, in the place."

North San Diego County, Its Mission and Its Mission Days

June 13 is the anniversary of the founding of Mission San Luis Rey, one of California's several famous missions founded by the Franciscans.  The mission (which is now home to a large, modern Catholic congregation and a popular retreat center, as well as a point of historic interest) is celebrating the day with wine tasting in the mission's rose garden. 

With the anniversary in mind, as well as a thought that the history of San Diego County as a whole is worth reviewing while the Court of Appeals takes what may be the last careful look at whether a 50-year old cross can remain a part of the Mt. Soledad War Memorial (a memorial for those who died in the Korean War), I am going to do some posts over the next few days or weeks with an eye to the history of Catholics and Anglicans in north San Diego County, as well as some information about San Diego and a contrast between our county's history and that of the rest of our state.

If you plan a trip to San Diego, I would suggest you avoid our notorious grey weather known as "May Grey" and "June Gloom."  Despite a sunny Memorial Day week-end, most of this past week we have lived in fog that would remind you of London's worst weather.  July through October are ideal, and winter can be quite lovely although too cool for a swim suit on the beat.  With that much caution, here begins the history of our missions and our little corner of the world (nothing particularly academic, but hopefully interesting anyway):

In 1769, Spanish explorers came from Mexico into Alta California to claim it for the King of Spain.  Led by Don Gaspar de Portola, they traveled in the company of Roman Catholic missionary Fray Juan Crespi.  As they journeyed north, it is said that they stopped to rest by a lagoon the troops called “Agua Hedionda,” which means “stinking water.”  The name is still the name of one of Carlsbad’s lagoons, and it became the name of a Spanish rancho, but why the name would have lasted is a mystery.  The water doesn’t stink.

It was not until June 13, 1798 that Spanish Franciscan missionaries established the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia  (St. Louis, King of France), named for King Louis IX.  It lies near what is now the intersection of Mission Road and El Camino Real in Oceanside.  It was called the “King of Missions,” the largest of twenty-one Catholic missions in California.  The construction of the Mission San Luis Rey was directed by one Fray Antonio Peyri, who was there, at the mission, when it began and remained for more than thirty years.   

In his 1911 book on California history (an old source, by California standards), John S. McCroarty described the mission’s origins:

"On September 8, 1797 [Fr. Fermin Francisco de] Lasuen came down from Santa Barbara and founded the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana . . . . One month following the founding of San Fernando another important step toward the closing of the gap was taken by the establishment of the famous Mission San Luis Rey de Francia.  Although it was upon the date mentioned that this Mission was decided upon, it seems that its erection was not really begun until June of 1798.  San Luis Rey began very auspiciously, fifty-four Indian children having been baptized on the spot the day of its foundation.  The church that was later built was wonderfully spared from the vandalism of time and in later days of the nineteenth century experienced a thrilling restoration."

Not all Spanish missions are remembered as so successful in their work.  In San Luis Rey, the missionaries seemed to have an easy time of it, and they were accepted by the Indians.  Fr. Peyri took his vow of poverty seriously, and he stayed with them more than 30 years.

While Fray Peyri was good with people, he did not keep very good records.  We don’t know how many people lived at the Mission San Luis Rey in those days, since most of the records are missing.  Estimates of the number of Indians baptized during his 30 years there range from a total of 3,000 to as many as 5,000 people.   They were called “neophytes,” as new Christians.  They were called “Luisenos,” as Indians living at the Mission San Luis Rey.   

While the records do not provide a clear picture of how many of the Indians became Christians, they do confirm that the mission grew.  In 1810, the mission built a granary in “Rancho de Paula.”  By 1816, a village had formed there, and the Franciscans built the Mission San Antonio de Pala, named for St. Antonio of Padua, 30 miles east of the primary Mission San Luis Rey. 

Although the Pala mission was among the smallest in California and was operated under the Mission San Luis Rey, it is the only one of the missions that is still serving its original purpose.  As of 2004, the Mission San Antonio de Pala is still an active Roman Catholic parish on the Pala Mission Indian reservation.  (The present day “Pala Indians” were formed later by a merger of a group of Luisenos near the Pala mission, with a smaller group of Cupa Indians who joined them in 1902.)

The original floor and bell tower are standing, and the adobe walls are still in Fr. Peyri’s architectural design.  It still has the rustic flavor of a California mission, although it is now only about one-quarter of a mile from one of the finest desert resorts and casinos in the United States.   Before the casino was built, unemployment among the Pala Indians was estimated at 40%.

The mission days began to end in the early 1830’s, when a revolutionary Mexican government “secularized” the missions and made the land available to settlers.  Almost all of the missions eventually closed, including the Mission San Luis Rey.  The secularization of the missions included a series of government decrees which appeared to release Indians from the missionaries’ control, but with the effect of transferring mission property into private hands.   Some of the government’s administrators obtained official government grants on the mission lands and gathered the livestock as their own.  Fr. Peyri began to see the pattern by January 1832, and he asked the church to transfer him back to Mexico.

Some of the mission padres fled the country, feeling humiliated by the administrators.   Fr. Jose Maria Zalvidea remained at the Mission, and it continued to function until 1846.

On January 13, 1832, Fr. Peyri left the mission that had been his home for so long, never to return.  He slipped out during the night, headed to the old City of San Diego and a ship bound for Mexico.  In the morning, when the Indians saw that he was missing, they guessed the reason why.  Other priests had also fled the country.  As many as 500 Luisenos followed Fr. Peyri on horseback, and some of them jumped into the bay to try to catch up with his ship.   

At least two young Luiseno boys actually reached the ship, and Fr. Peyri took them with him to Mexico, where they remained two years.  He then sailed home to Spain together with the two young Luisenos, and sent the boys on to school in Rome.  One of the two became sick and died.  The other completed his studies and took vows to prepare for the mission field, but suffered from smallpox and died not long before his twentieth birthday.  Neither of the boys ever returned to California.   

Before his death, the boy who finished his education, whose name was Pablo Tac, wrote the story of Indian life as it had been at the mission.   He described some of their traditional Indian dances and games they played.  He described the Indians’ lives before the mission as lives of conflict with the Indians who lived to the south (later known as the Dieguenos). 

Pablo Tac described how Fr. Peyri had quickly become a good friend of the Luisenos’ Indian “captain”, and how the Indians had shown mercy and had acted admirably when the Spanish arrived in allowing the Spaniards to live among them when the Indians were always fighting with each other.  At the mission, Pablo said, the Indians had known a few English and Anglo-American traders who bought the Luisenos’ goods, as he remembered them:

"The Fernandino Father drinks little, and as almost all the gardens produce wine, he who knows the customs of the neophytes well will not wish to give any wine to any of them, but sells it to the English or Anglo-Americans, not for money but for clothing for the neophytes, linen for the church, hats, muskets, plates, coffee, tea, sugar, and other things.  The products of the Mission are butter, tallow, hides, chamois, leather, bear skins, wine, white wine, brandy, oil, maze, wheat, beans, and also bull horns which the English take by the thousands to Boston."

The two Luiseno boys’ deaths from European diseases were not unusual for Native Americans brought into a European environment.  European settlers brought with them to North America a host of diseases not previously known in North America, and the toll was high for Indians who had no acquired immunities to them.  In the American colonies on the eastern seaboard, settled in the seventeenth century when those diseases abounded in Europe, half or more than half of the Indians are thought to have died of diseases like bubonic plague, smallpox, influenza, typhoid, dysentery, malaria, and other diseases previously unknown to the Indians.  While Fr. Peyri had shown so much love and respect for the boys by arranging for their education in Rome, he and the other Europeans were unaware of the high risk the European diseases posed for Indians.

While the Luisenos had been blessed with perhaps the finest of the Spanish padres, they were not fortunate in the assignment of a Mexican administrator, a man named Pio Pico.   Pio Pico arrived at the Mission San Luis Rey late in 1835 and began to treat the Indians' property as if it were his own.  He and his brother moved into one of the mission ranchos and took several Luiseno girls as their private Serrallo.   The Luisenos complained, and Pio Pico was replaced by Jose Antonio Estudillo, who then took possession of the mission rancho just as Pio Pico had done.

On November 16, 1835, a group of the Catholic Luisenos who had had homes in some portion of the Mission San Luis Rey left the mission and headed for an appanage of the mission in the San Pasqual valley.  In 1883, Helen Jackson described their departure in her book Glimpses of California and Its Missions:

On Nov. 16, 1835, eighty-one “desafiliados” --as the ex-neophytes of missions were called--of the San Luis Rey Mission settled themselves in the San Pasqual valley, which was an appanage of that mission. These Indian communities appear to have had no documents to show their right, either as communities or individuals, to the land on which they had settled.  At any rate, they had nothing which amounted to a protection, or stood in the way of settlers who coveted their lands.  It is years since the last trace of the pueblos Las Flores and San Dieguito disappeared; and the San Pasqual valley is entirely taken up by white settlers, chiefly on pre-emption claims.  San Juan Capistrano is the only one of the four where are to be found any Indians' homes.  If those who had banded themselves together and had been set off into pueblos had no recognizable or defensible title, how much more helpless and defenceless were individuals, or small communities without any such semblance of pueblo organization!

In 1842, a land grant of 13,311 acres was given to Don Juan Maria Marron from land in the southern part of what is now Carlsbad.  The land grant was called “Rancho Agua Hedionda,” the name that the first Spanish expedition to the region gave to the lagoon that lay within Marron’s land.  Some of the original ranch houses were incorporated into modern buildings.  On such a large rancho, there was no need to force the Luisenos out of the area if they did not want to go.  In fact, the ranchos existed quite compatibly with the Indians, described again by Helen Jackson:

Most of the original Mexican grants included tracts of land on which Indians were living, sometimes large villages of them. In many of these grants, in accordance with the old Spanish law or custom, was incorporated a clause protecting the Indians. They were to be left undisturbed in their homes: the portion of the grant occupied by them did not belong to the grantee in any such sense as to entitle him to eject them.  The land on which they were living, and the land they were cultivating at the time of the grant, belonged to them as long as they pleased to occupy it.  In many of the grants the boundaries of the Indians' reserved portion of the property were carefully marked off; and the instances were rare in which Mexican grantees disturbed or in any way interfered with Indians living on their estates.  There was no reason why they should.  There was plenty of land and to spare, and it was simply a convenience and an advantage to have the skilled and docile Indian laborer on the ground.

By 1844, only about 400 Luisenos still lived at the Mission San Luis Rey and its ranchos.  Many of the skilled workers were assimilated into the general population, as the ranchos needed their construction and agricultural skills. The Mexicans considered the Luisenos to be the most skillful of the southern California Indians.   Moreover, they had been trading their products for Anglo-American clothing at the mission, and had grown accustomed to Catholic values.  Such people scarcely had to tolerate slave conditions for long.  Those left behind at the mission were the old, the sick, the very young, and people who did not want to join a more competitive society.

In 1846, United States troops arrived to find the mission abandoned, and the nearby Luiseno village had only a few dozen people remaining.   Commodore Stockton and Gen. Kearny camped at the mission on January 2, 1847.  An unpublished journal of Dr. John S. Griffin described the mission as it was at that time: 

This Mission is situated in a large valley, with handsome grounds. It is an extensive building, the front being five hundred feet, including the Church which is said to be beautifully ornamented. It was locked up and we did not see the inside, though some of the sailors did break In at the back window, and, I am sorry to say, removed articles, fortunately of little value. Every effort was made to discover the sacrilegious scamp, without avail.

The rooms in the Mission are very commodious, many of them adorned with rude paintings, some of saints, others of birds, marvelously resembling a goose, (the refrectory). The chairs are of oak of the most capacious dimensions and covered with dressed skins; the sofas also are of oak of like capacity.

There is the finest and most extensive vineyard, olive garden, pear orchard, a great deal of land enclosed for gardens; the fences made of adobes and covered with tiles; the lands well irrigated, with beautiful reservoirs for water.

The internal face of the building is a square about 300 feet on a side, with the corrals and what I took to be the quarters of the laborers on the right flank. Colonnades all around the four sides of the square. The whole front of the Church to the right is a long row of colonnades. The whole building presents a most grand appearance. It is all of brick about eight inches broad and some two inches thick. It is roofed first with reeds, then with some composition; over that brick and earth, tiles covering the whole. These tiles present very much the appearance of a flower pot split vertically and the bottom broken out.

(To be continued)