Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/497

Rh and women under their care than they could keep constantly employed the whole year, if labor were too much facilitated, they are afraid of making them idle by the introduction of mills." With the fathers the important question was, not how many converts can be well instructed, and by what method can their progress to civilization be best facilitated, but how many can be got together to be baptized and saved from the devil. Not improvement but conversion was their guiding motive.

There is no good reason to believe that the neophytes were not well fed, though the contrary was asserted by officials inimical to the mission policy. That their fare lacked variety is probable, but there was enough of it, and it was served three times a day, as Beechey tells us, adding that it consisted of "thick gruel made of wheat, Indian corn, and sometimes acorns, to which at noon is generally added meat."

That the rule at the missions was not all work and no play is evidenced by the fact that the neophytes were allowed to indulge in their own habits and customs so far, says Langsdorff, as "they are not inconsistent with their new religion. In their dances, their amusements, their sports, their ornaments, they are freely indulged." Like other Indians, they were great gamblers; and, whether by the tacit permission of the priests or not, they indulged freely in the passion, chiefly by means of games of their own invention. Drunkenness was more or less common among them.

The picture of the California neophyte under mission rule thus presented, while having its dark side, is by no means a revolting one, and at first sight it might be supposed that the Indians under such a system should be better off and happier than in their original condition. They were well fed, well clothed, if not well housed; their tasks were not heavy, a reasonable amount of amusement was allowed, and they needed to take no thought for the morrow, for everything was provided. While it must be evident at once that such a system could not but prove an absolute failure as regards the true civilization of the Indian, it does not immediately appear why he should not have been contented with his lot. If he was not contented, the fault lay with the system or the Indian, and certainly not with the personal character of the priests; for, while there were a few black sheep among them, as a body they represented a high standard of benevolence and integrity. All who visited the missions in the early days extol the fathers for the unselfish spirit with which they devoted themselves to what they believed to be the welfare of their subjects and their kind-heartedness. It is doubtful if a purer and more devoted set of men ever labored for the good of the heathen than the early missionaries of California. Having power the most