Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/103

Rh oversight of all the incidents and experiences of the daily life of the natives, for an illustration of the ideal of mission work as entertained by the priests of that period. The Jesuit commonwealth stands in strange contrast with the Puritan theocracy of Massachusetts, and it would be a curious study to draw out that contrast in particulars as covering matters of faith and rules of life. Our views of the extreme austerity and bigotry of the Puritan discipline as enforced among themselves by a company of English Protestants, would find quite another field for their exercise in tracing the method of priestly control over a generally docile and inert people, who were to be isolated on their peninsular domain from all intercourse with the open world.

The Fathers in the California missions had for the most part to feed and clothe their converts, to arrest their nomadic life, and, as the soil was light, to bring in the means of subsistence. The population of Lower California presented to Forbes, in 1835, a curious mixture of the progeny of European seamen, Spanish Creoles, and Indians. The writer says the missionaries had the finest fields and climate, the fairest opportunities, and the most facile subjects. But while he extols their sincerity and devotion, the results of their labors were to him doleful and dreary enough. “Most of the missions,” he says, “are in a wretched condition, and the Indians — poor and helpless slaves, both in body and mind — have no knowledge and no will but those of the Friars.” The word domesticated, as applied to animals, is more applicable to them than the word civilized. In 1833 about twenty thousand natives were connected with the missions, and soldiers were needed at every station. The Indians were lazy and helpless slaves, fed and flogged to compel their attendance on the Mass, and besotted by superstition.

When California was joined to the Union, it was estimated, — doubtless, extravagantly, — that there were in