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William Henry Hudson - The Famous Missions of California
more essential features would be found common to all the establishments.
At sunrise the little community was already astir, and then the Angelus summoned all to the church,
where mass was said, and a short time given to the religious instruction of the neophytes. Breakfast
followed, composed mainly of the staple dish atole, or pottage of roasted barley. This finished, the
Indians repaired in squads, each under the supervision of its alcalde, to their various tasks in workshop
and field. Between eleven and twelve o'clock, a wholesome and sufficiently generous midday meal was
served out. At two, work was resumed. An hour or so before sunset, the bell again tolled for the Angelus;
evening mass was performed; and after supper had been eaten, the day closed with dance, or music, or
some simple games of chance. Thus week by week, and month by month, with monotonous regularity,
life ran its unbroken course; and what with the labours directly connected with the management of the
mission itself, the tending of sheep and cattle in the neighboring ranches, and the care of the gardens and
orchards upon which the population was largely dependent for subsistence, there was plenty to occupy
the attention of the padres, and quite enough work to be done by the Indians under their charge. But all
this does not exhaust the list of mission activities. For in course of time, as existence became more
settled, and the children of the early converts shot up into boys and girls, various industries were added to
such first necessary occupations, and the natives were taught to work at the forge and the bench, to make
saddles and shoes, to weave, and cut, and sew. In these and similar acts, many of them acquired
considerable proficiency.
It is pleasant enough to look back upon such a busy yet placid life. But while we may justly acknowledge
its antique, pastoral charm, we must guard ourselves against the temptation to idealization. Beautiful in
many respects it must have been; but its shadows were long and deep. According to the first principles
adopted by the missionaries, the domesticated Indians were held down rigorously in a condition of
servile dependence and subjection. They were indeed, as one of the early travelers in California put it,
slaves under another name - slaves to the cast-iron power of a system which, like all systems, was
capable of unlimited abuse, and which, at the very best, was narrow and arbitrary. Every vestige of
freedom was taken from them when they entered, or were brought into, the settlement. Henceforth they
belonged, body and soul, to the mission and its authority. Their tasks were assigned to them, their
movements controlled, the details of their daily doings dictated, by those who were to all intents and
purposes their absolute masters; and corporal punishment was visited freely not only upon those who
were guilty of actual misdemeanor, but also upon such as failed in attendance at church, or, when there,
did not conduct themselves properly. From time to time some unusually turbulent spirit would rise
against such paternal despotism, and break away to his old savage life. But these cases, we are told, were
of rare occurrence. The California Indians were for the most part indolent, apathetic, and of low
intelligence; and as, under domestication, they were clothed, housed and fed, while the labour demanded
from them was rarely excessive, they were wont as a rule to accept the change from the hardships of their
former rough existence to the comparative comfort of the mission, if not exactly in a spirit of gratitude, at
any rate with a certain brutal contentment.
XII.
It does not fall within the scope of this little sketch, in which nothing more has been aimed at than to tell
an interesting story in the simplest possible way, to enter into any discussion of a question to which what
has just been said might naturally seem to lead - the question, namely, of the results, immediate and
remote, of the mission system in California. The widely divergent conclusions on this subject registered
by the historians will, on investigation, be found, as in most such cases, to depend quite as much upon
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