Part 2 — THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES: A RETROSPECT—CONCLUDED.

The inveterate hostility of the Florida Indians to the whites was further illustrated a few years later, when a vessel bound from Vera Cruz to Spain struck upon their shores, and the survivors, three hundred in number, including five Dominican religious, endeavored to escape through that territory to Mexico. They were so unrelentingly pursued by the natives, and suffered so many hardships on the route besides, that only one reached Tampico alive to tell the story of their fate. Father John Ferrer, however, one of the Dominicans, and a most holy man, who had predicted this fate of himself before he had even set sail from Vera Cruz, was captured by the Indians west of the Rio del Norte. If the remainder of his prediction held equally good, he must have survived among them in good health for several years; but nothing was ever heard of him afterwards. The bearer of these tidings, and the sole representative of the thousand souls who had set forth from Vera Cruz a few months before, was the Dominican lay-brother, Mark de Mena, whose escape, though he had been terribly wounded, and left to die on the road, was truly marvellous.

Such persistent barbarity needed a check, and Don Tristan de Luna was sent in 1559 to subdue the country. The expedition under his command numbered fifteen hundred men in thirteen vessels: missionaries, as usual, accompanied him. Again they were Dominicans, six in number. Again, also, storms and shipwrecks on those difficult shores played their part, and many lives were lost, among them one of the Dominicans. The aggressive character of the expedition was doubtless seriously affected by this early mishap, for but one portion of the survivors settled down at Pensacola Bay, calling their colony the mission of Santa Cruz, while the remainder, attended by two of the fathers, accompanied Don Tristan into “Coosa,” the territory of the Creeks. Don Tristan was kindly received by these Indians, formed an alliance with them, marched with them against their enemies, the Natchez tribe, and remained with them about two years. In this interval, however, the zeal of the two missionaries was rewarded only by the baptism of a few dying infants and adults. Don Tristan returned to Pensacola Bay, where the new governor arrived from Mexico shortly after, with eight more Dominicans. When the governor beheld how little had been accomplished, and heard the discouraging accounts of the missionaries besides, he resolved to abandon Florida, and to take the whole party back with him to Mexico. Don Tristan, however, persisted in remaining, and Father Dominic de Salazar, one of those who had been with him among the Creeks, together with Matthew, a lay-brother, and a few men besides, shared his solitude. But this courageous persistence was not destined to be crowned with any permanent result, for the Viceroy of Mexico despatched a vessel to the little colony with peremptory orders for all its members to return. Thus Florida was again left without the succors of a Christian mission. Father Dominic ended his life of zeal and labor as Bishop of Manila, in the Philippines.

At last, Pedro Melendez de Aviles, the first naval commander of his day, received from Philip II., together with the title of Adelantado of Florida, the command of a fleet of 34 vessels, conveying 2,646 men. Melendez had also a personal interest in this expedition, inasmuch as he hoped to recover a son, who, having been shipwrecked on the Florida coast, might still be alive and in the hands of the Indians, or have been captured by French cruisers, France and Spain being then at enmity with one another. He carried missionaries with him, chiefly Franciscans and Jesuits. The usual storms and shipwrecks intervened, and one vessel was captured by French cruisers, so that only a small force came to anchor off the mouth of the St. John’s River. Here a French fleet was found already riding, and a fort had been erected on shore. Melendez pursued the French vessel to sea, was in turn pursued by them, entered St. Augustine’s River while the French were wrecked outside, attacked their fort, and put all to the sword—a proceeding which the usages of war at that time might have palliated, but could never justify.

St. Augustine, the oldest of our American cities, was now (1565) founded by Melendez, and detachments were sent out to throw up forts along the coast. At his solicitation, St. Francis Borgia, then General of the Society of Jesus, sent three other Jesuits, one of whom, F. Peter Martinez, the superior, was killed by the natives, into whose hands he fell in consequence of having been shipwrecked. Others of the Society were afterwards sent, and the mission was erected into a vice-province, with F. John Baptist Segura as superior. It is impossible, in reading Mr. Shea’s History of the Missions, to follow the exact order of events. Suffice it to say—not to linger upon details at this point—that many Indian youths were taken to Havana and instructed by Father John Roger and Brother Villareal, the two companions of Father Martinez; that the vice-provincial and the other Jesuits sent with him were stationed at various points within the thus extensive limits comprehended as Florida; that missions were established among the Creeks and among another tribe superior to them (and supposed to have been the Cherokees), all of which were most meagre in result; that the Pope St. Pius V. addressed a letter (1569) to the governor of Florida, urging the repression of scandals among the whites, so that no obstruction should be offered to the work of conversion among the Indians; and that, finally, the working force of the Society was most seriously reduced, first, by the loss of Father Martinez, already mentioned, next by that of Brother Baez, who died from the effects of the climate, at his station on Amelia Island, and subsequently by the massacre in Virginia (or possibly Maryland) of Fathers Segura and Quiros, with four lay-brothers, at the instigation of a pretended Indian convert who had inveigled them thither. Father Segura’s party on this occasion included also several Indian youths who had been educated in Havana, and of these only one escaped with his life. From him the details of the martyrdom of his companions were gathered. Thus as early as 1570 was the region bordering on the Chesapeake, which was then called St. Mary’s Bay, sanctified by the blood of its martyrs.

The loss of so many valuable members in a field so sterile of fruit forced the Jesuits, in a manner, to abandon it, “to abandon it as they had abandoned no other, without being driven from it,” remarks Shea, and in the following year the survivors were recalled to the more inviting field of Mexico. In 1572, Melendez, who had visited Spain meanwhile, set out thence to make pursuit for the murderers of Father Segura and his companions. He captured eight of them, and these, under the instructions of Father Roger, who accompanied Melendez, embraced Christianity before their execution and died in the best dispositions. The apostate “chief of Axican,” who had promoted the massacre, had escaped to the woods and could not be taken. Melendez, on his return to Spain, was appointed to command the great Armada, which Philip was then preparing for the invasion of England, but he died before its completion. After his death, the northern limits of Spanish colonization in Florida were gradually pushed south to the line of St. Mary’s River.

The missions of Florida were now left entirely to the Franciscans, whose headquarters were at the convent of St. Helena, at St. Augustine, the venerable walls of which are still standing. Besides some who arrived in 1573, twelve Franciscans were sent thither in 1592. The accession of so considerable a number enabled the father guardian of St. Helena’s to station missionaries at various points where, from information received, there was a prospect of some success; and indeed, for the first time in the history of the missions of Florida, villages of Christian neophytes began to be formed. For the Yemassees, Father Francis de Pareja, a native of Mexico, drew up in their language his abridgment of Christian doctrine, the first work in any of our Indian languages that was ever issued from the press. The missions made peaceful progress for two years, when, in 1597, a sudden outbreak of Indian fickleness and perfidy occurred which spread havoc far and wide among them. Father Peter de Corpa, whose mission of Tolemato occupied the present site of the cemetery at St. Augustine, had found himself obliged to administer a public rebuke to the cacique’s son, who, from having been a fervent convert, fell at last into most vicious courses. The latter, filled with resentment, appealed to the national and religious prejudices of his followers, and, assembling a body of them, rushed to the chapel of Father Corpa, and slew him while he was on his knees before the altar.

Thence they repaired to the mission of Father Blas Rodriguez at Topoqui, and, warning him of his fate, bade him prepare for death. He entreated that he might be allowed first to say Mass, and by a strange condescension his murderers quietly awaited the termination of the holy sacrifice, and then despatched him as he knelt to make his thanksgiving. Fathers Badajoz and Aunon at Guale or Amelia Island were the next victims; but the latter, made aware of their approach and of their designs, had time to say Mass and communicate his companion. Then followed the massacre of Father Francis de Velascola, the most distinguished of the missionaries, at Asao. The assailants met with a repulse at St. Peter’s Isle, the seat of another mission, against which they had advanced with a flotilla of forty war-canoes; but before attacking this point they had fallen upon the mission of Father Francis de Avila at Ospa. He fled, was captured, grievously wounded, and was condemned to die. They finally concluded to sell him into a heathen village as a slave, and here for a whole year he was compelled to perform the most menial offices. At the end of this time his task-masters, growing weary of him, resolved to put him to death. He was fastened to a stake, the fagots were piled around him, and he was offered his life on condition that he should renounce his God and marry into their tribe. Spurning the proposal, he looked to receive the martyr’s crown, but on the demand of an old woman he was released, and given to her that she might exchange him against her son who was held a prisoner at St. Augustine. The exchange was effected, and the father was restored, but so changed in appearance from the effects of his hardships that he was not recognized by his friends.

The missions were now reduced to a feeble state indeed, and the governor of Florida applied himself to their restoration, in conjunction with the Bishop of Cuba, who visited the colony for the purpose. They began to revive from the year 1601, and in a few years the increase was very rapid, no less than forty-three Franciscans being sent thither in the three years 1612, 1613, and 1615, who aided in establishing on the coast and in the interior as many as twenty convents or residences. During the hundred years of peace that followed the revival of the missions under the Franciscans, towns of converts grew up along the Appalachicola, Flint, and other rivers; and the Appalaches, Creeks, Cherokees, Atimucas, and Yemassees responded to the cares bestowed upon them. Pensacola was founded in 1693.

At last, however, the encroachments of the colonists of Carolina began to grow serious. Under the auspices of the English government, a body of colonists heterogeneous in character, but of one mind in their hatred of the Spaniards and their religion, had been drawn to the shores claimed by the latter as belonging to Florida. They were composed of immigrants from Old and New England and the Low Countries, of French Huguenots, Scotch, and others. Charleston was founded by them in 1680, and they penetrated the country in various directions. They gained over the Yemassees from the Spanish; and in conjunction with them plundered and destroyed the mission of St. Catharine’s, as early as 1684. All the stations between the Altamaha and Savannah rivers, now a portion of Georgia, were broken up, and the Indians were killed, or captured and carried off by hundreds, the survivors taking refuge in the peninsula.

In 1702, the animosities of the European war of the Spanish succession extended hither, and war aggravated the hostility of the English colonists. In that year they made an attack on St. Augustine, but without capturing its fort, and fell upon the “Indian converts of the Spanish priests,” on Flint River, killing or capturing six hundred of them; and all captives of the English at this time suffered the hard fate of being sold as slaves in Charleston and other ports. The principal mission of the Appalaches at St. Mark’s was destroyed, and three Franciscans taken there were put to a cruel death. This tribe, in fact, was reduced within four years from seven thousand to four hundred. The Atimucas on the Appalachicola were invaded, and driven east of the St. John’s River. In short, ruin and desolation were spread on every side.

In 1730, the Yemassees turned upon their recent allies, the English, and were joined by the Creeks, Cherokees, and other tribes. They were defeated, as the Tuscaroras had been the year before; but while the latter were driven north and united themselves with the Five Nations, the former were compelled to take refuge in the peninsula. The treaty of Utrecht, the same year, at the close of the war of the Spanish succession, while it contracted the limits of the Spanish possessions in Florida, had also its effect in lessening the acts of hostility from which they had suffered. But the missions remained a mere shadow of what they had formerly been, and Spain was too feeble to guarantee the complete protection even of those that subsisted. Finally, the cession of Florida to England by the treaty of Paris in 1763 proved the death-blow of all of them. Most of the Spanish settlers left, and the Franciscans departed with them. England restored the country to Spain twenty years after; but, meanwhile, the Christian Indians had been expelled from the two towns they occupied under the walls of St. Augustine, and deprived of the soil they had cultivated and the church they had erected. They became Seminoles, which in their language signifies “wanderers.” Under Catholic influence, they had become a quiet, orderly, industrious race, living side by side with the Spaniards in peace and comfort. The English drove them back into barbarism and paganism. Even in their everglades they were not left in peace, for the government of the United States, which acquired Florida by purchase in 1821, expelled them from their wretched patrimony, but at a cost to the country of a thousand lives and fifteen millions of dollars. Its troops have, ever since the acquisition of Florida, made use of the ancient convent of St. Helena, at St. Augustine, as barracks. A remnant of the Indians is still left, and measures have been recently taken by the Bishop of St. Augustine, whose see was erected only in 1870, to revive the faith among them.

As in Florida, so in New Mexico, the missionaries were chiefly if not entirely Franciscans. We have already referred to the expedition of Coronado, and to the two missionaries, F. Padillo, and the lay-brother, his companion, who were left behind at their own request, and who became the first martyrs of the missions of New Mexico (1541). Little inducement presented itself for sending new missionaries in the field, but in 1581 the solicitations of a pious lay-brother, Augustin Rodriguez, engaged in the Mexican missions, caused the formation of a party consisting of Fathers Francis Lopez and John de Santa Maria, and himself, attended by ten soldiers and six Mexican Indians. After proceeding seven hundred miles, they found themselves among the tribe of Tehuas, who, unlike the Indians of the plains, lived in houses and dressed in cotton mantles. The soldiers now persisted in returning, but their departure seemed a less serious misfortune since the mission gave promise of success. So much so, indeed, that F. de Santa Maria was despatched to Mexico for auxiliaries, but on the third day out was surprised and killed by roving Indians. In an attack made on the Tehuas by their enemies not long after, F. Lopez fell by the hand of the assailants. Brother Rodriguez, left alone, subsequently fell a victim to his zeal in inveighing against the vices of those for whose conversion he was laboring; growing weary of his reproaches, they put him to death. Two other Franciscans in attendance on a subsequent expedition suffered the fate of martyrs, and thus the foundations of the New Mexican missions were laid in blood.

In 1597, Juan de Oñate led a colony to the Northern Rio Grande. Several Franciscans accompanied him, and the first Spanish post in this region, that of San Gabriel, was established. After a year, the commander sent a favorable report by the hands of two fathers and a lay-brother, who were returning to Mexico to solicit additional missionaries. One of the three, F. Christopher Salazar, died on the way, and was buried in the wilderness. The missionaries asked for were sent, five or six at one time, and six at another. So great was the success subsequently achieved that by the year 1608 eight thousand of the Indians of New Mexico had been baptized, and many of them were taught to read and write, before the Puritans set foot in New England (1620).

A report made to the crown in 1626 enumerates twenty-seven missions that had been established up to that time, six convents or residences, and four sumptuous churches built. Many of of these missions and residences, and three of the churches (those at Santa Fé, Pecos, and Jemez), are recognizable in the account of the diocese furnished in Sadliers’ Catholic Almanac for 1872. One of the missions was among the Zuñi, over against whose town of Cibola Friar Mark had planted his prophetic cross in 1539. The missionary at this post, F. John Letrado, lost his life in endeavoring to evangelize a neighboring tribe. F. Martin de Arbide perished in a like attempt.

Heaven itself seemed to come to the assistance of the missionaries by a miraculous intervention,[200] for a tribe which none of the fathers had previously met or visited was found fully instructed in Christian doctrine.

Some reverses occurred, owing to causes not clearly stated by Mr. Shea. They were probably due to the persistent hostility of the pagan portion of the population. In 1680, great devastations were committed by them, many missionaries were killed, and some churches destroyed which were never after rebuilt; but a period of comparative peace succeeded, which was disturbed finally only by the incursions of the Apaches. A mission was established among the latter in 1733, but without fruit. Nine years afterwards, some converts were made among the Moquis and Navojoes. A report among the United States Executive documents of 1854—and which corresponds with the statements published by Villaseñor, so long ago as 1748—bears testimony to the happy moral and industrial condition of the Christian Indians of New Mexico. The Puebla Indians, as they are now called, number in the diocese of Santa Fé 12,000.

The history of the missions of Texas need not greatly prolong our narrative. Shortly after the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi by La Salle in 1691, who made no permanent settlement in Texas, the Spanish authorities sent thither a number of Franciscans. By them, eight missions were established, which prospered until a failure occurred in the crops which the Indians had been taught to raise. The cattle with which the missions had been stocked died at the same time, and moreover the soldiers, of whom there was a small guard at each post, had rendered themselves obnoxious to the natives. In consequence, the missions fell into decay. Their restoration began in 1717, and by 1746 they embraced posts among five different tribes. Visits were also made to the Osages and Missouris, in one of which expeditions a father lost his life and another was long retained as a prisoner.

The missions subsisted and flourished until 1812, when they were suppressed by the Spanish government. Even then, the Indians, though deprived of spiritual succor, remained faithful to the religious teachings they had received. Father Diaz was sent to them by the Bishop of Monterey, in 1832, and after laboring for a year at Nacogdoches, was killed by wandering Indians. Soon after this the whites began to pour into Texas, and by 1836 grew powerful enough to declare and to maintain the independence of the state. The demoralization and dispersion of the Indians followed, as a natural consequence. Father Timon, afterwards Bishop of Buffalo, was appointed in 1840 Prefect Apostolic of Texas, and, despatching thither Father Odin as Vice-Prefect, followed him shortly after. By an act of justice, of which modern governments rarely afford so striking an example, the old ecclesiastical property was restored to the church by the Texan legislature. Father Odin was made bishop in 1842, and his see became the diocese of Galveston in 1847, two years after the annexation of Texas to the United States. The biography of this eminent prelate (who subsequently became Archbishop of New Orleans), in Clarke’s Deceased Bishops, furnishes much interesting matter regarding the history of the church in Texas. The report of the diocese for 1871 supplies no information in regard to the Indian population, if indeed any Christians are still to be found among them within the limits of the state. Many relics remain of the churches, aqueducts, and other public works erected by the Franciscans and their neophytes during the prosperous period of the missions.

The first expedition to any portion of California, which was accompanied by missionaries, was that under Vizcaino, in 1596, to the peninsula, but no permanent footing was made at the time. In 1601, three Carmelite fathers visited that portion now included in the United States, and made a temporary stay, and no more, at what are now Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco. The Jesuits began their missions south of the Gila in 1642, and gradually extended them north, until, in 1697, they had entered the limits of our present territory. The success characteristic of their missions everywhere—for their failure in Florida was something abnormal—followed them here. All was proceeding well, when that extensive conspiracy arose in Europe against the Society which the history of the age subsequently shows to have been directed quite as much against the church as against the Jesuits. The King of Spain, having been drawn into the plot as other sovereigns were, ordered the Jesuits to be torn in a single day from all their missions throughout his wide domains. On the 3d of February, 1768, every Jesuit was carried off from California a prisoner. Accused of no crime, condemned without a trial, the missionaries were dragged from amid their neophytes, who in grief and consternation deplored their loss.

Spain was, however, not yet prepared to cut loose entirely from her religious traditions, and she sent Franciscans to take the place of the banished Jesuits. The vessel that landed the latter at San Blas returned to California with twelve Franciscans, at the head of whom was Father Junipero Serra, an experienced Indian missionary. After placing priests at the vacated missions, Father Serra went on to found others, San Ferdinand, San Bonaventura, and San Diego being established in 1769, that at Monterey in 1770—at the news of which foundations all the bells in the city of Mexico were rung—San Gabriel the same year, St. Anthony of Padua in 1771, San Luis Obispo in 1772, San Juan Capistrano in 1774, San Francisco in 1776, Santa Clara in 1777. In this interval many more of the sons of St. Francis came to join in the labors of their brethren, or to replace those who were worn out with toil. At Monterey, in 1771, when the feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated with a pomp such as the wilderness had never before seen, twelve priests joined in the sacred procession. The Dominicans, moreover, applied for a share in the work of the missions, and in 1774 were assigned to all those stations formerly served by the Jesuits, the Franciscans retaining only those that had been founded by themselves, except San Ferdinand, which was also given to the Dominicans. As the missions thus transferred were chiefly in Old California (the peninsula), their history does not enter within the scope of this narrative.

In 1775, the mission at San Diego was attacked by a large force of pagan Indians, led on by two apostates of their own race. Father Louis Jayme, one of the two priests stationed here, was awakened by the flames, and, supposing the fire to be accidental, came to the door with his usual salutation, “Love God, my children.” He was immediately seized, dragged off, pierced with arrows, and hacked to death by blows with swords made of hardened wood. The other father happily escaped. When Father Serra heard what had occurred, he exclaimed, “Thank God, that field is watered,” rebuilt the mission, after some opposition from the civil authorities, and went on with his labors in founding others. Father Crespi, the principal assistant of Father Serra, died in 1782, after a missionary career of thirty years, of which fourteen had been spent in California. Father Serra himself expired two years after. Although seventy-one years of age at the time of his death, his zeal was undiminished and his faculties were unimpaired. Under his administration, as Prefect Apostolic of California, ten new missions had been established, and ten thousand Indians baptized. Yet death found him busy with plans of still other foundations.

By a Papal Bull of June 16th, 1774, the power of administering confirmation was granted to the prefect apostolic. This privilege was of course shared by Father Serra’s successors in the same office. The first of these was Father Palou, under whom the following new missions were founded: Santa Barbara in 1786, La Purisima Concepcion, near San Luis Obispo, in 1787, Santa Cruz near Branciforte, and Nuestra Señora de Soledad, near Monterey, in 1791. Father Palou then returned to Mexico, where he became superior of the convent of San Fernando. He was succeeded as prefect by Father Lazven, who remained in office until his death in 1803. In the interval, Father Lazven founded three great missions, San José, San Miguel, and San Fernando, all in the year 1797. San Luis, Rey de Francia, was founded in the following year. St. Louis of France was thus honored in this remote wilderness at a time when the nation over which he had ruled rejected alike his faith, his institutions, and his family. The celebrated Father Peyri, whose portrait is given in Mr. Shea’s History of the Missions, superintended the foundation of this greatest of the Californian reductions. In front of the church, which is ninety feet in length, of stone, and rises at one end in a beautiful tower and dome (says Mr. Shea), “extends a colonnade not without architectural beauty, and nearly five hundred feet long, while in depth it is almost of equal proportions.” Three thousand five hundred Indian converts were soon gathered together, occupying twenty ranches around this abode of peace and plenty.

Father Mariano Payeras succeeded Father Lazven as prefect, and founded the mission of Santa Inez in 1804. At this time Spain became unable, amid the distractions which arose from the French Revolution—for which she herself had assisted in preparing the way by the share she took in the persecution of the Jesuits—to extend the aid which new foundations required, and, therefore, none were made. The missions already in existence were not affected to any great extent by the difficulties of the mother country, for they were self-supporting. In 1817, however, it became possible to found the mission of San Rafael, and this proved to be the last foundation under Spanish auspices. Others were projected, but the power of Spain in the western world was already tottering to its fall. In 1821, Iturbide’s short-lived empire replaced the authority of the Spanish crown in Mexico, and two years after, Santa Anna’s successful revolt changed the empire into a republic. Father Sanchez was now prefect, and in 1823 established the mission of San Francisco Solano, the first and last erected under Mexican rule.

Echandia, the governor sent out by the Mexican authorities, arrived in California in 1824. Then began the robbery and destruction of the missions, the first step in which was the substitution of government agents in the temporal rule of the missions for that of the fathers, who had always exercised this authority to the great advantage of the Indians, and without drawing thence any profit for themselves, since they were both by habit of life and by religious vow poor men. Father Peyri was driven from his mission of San Luis Rey which he had founded more than thirty years before, and had directed ever since with admirable skill; nor could the tears and entreaties of his neophytes move the stony-hearted governor to retain him. At this populous mission, many of the Indians had been taught the trades, and were blacksmiths, carpenters, and mechanics in various departments; they also owned sixty thousand head of cattle, and raised thirteen thousand bushels of grain yearly. At San Luis Obispo, Father Martinez had in like manner formed his flock to industry; they wove and dyed ordinary cloth and fine cotton fabrics, and could have always maintained a state of prosperity and happiness had their possessions and their beloved director been left to them, but the former were wrecked, and the latter was brutally expelled.

Five other fathers were driven from their missions, and a regular system of robbery commenced: ranch after ranch was taken, cattle were swept off, and the minds of the Indians were endeavored to be poisoned against the missionaries by Echandia, through wilful representations, so that in one case they attempted to take the life of a priest. Other missionaries, after having spent thirty or forty years in civilizing the Indians, and raising them to a state of comfort and plenty, found themselves obliged, by the ill-treatment they suffered, to leave the country. The prefect, Father Sanchez, was the special object of this persecution on the part of Echandia, and died of grief in 1831, consoled only by the momentary peace which reigned at the time under Echandia’s successor, Don Manuel Victoria, who during the few months he was in office restored the missions so far as he was able; but after his removal the pillage progressed as before.

Father Francisco Garcia Diego was appointed prefect in 1832, and arrived in California in January of the following year, taking up his residence at Santa Clara. The number of missionaries was now so reduced that Father Garcia found it necessary to take with him ten fathers to recruit their ranks. The new prefect did what he could to ward off the ruin which threatened the missions, but they were doomed, and the decree of secularization passed by the Mexican Congress in 1834 and enforced in 1837 only completed their destruction. Thus, this wretched republic, which is and always has been unable amidst the contentions of its rival chiefs, with their ever recurring pronunciamentos, to preserve domestic peace, and which has suffered the great public works erected in Mexico by the crown to fall into decay, carried spiritual and temporal ruin to the fair regions which had been consecrated to religion and peace, to industry and innocence, and overthrew the noblest monuments which the zeal and the faith of Spain had bequeathed to her colonies.

Father Garcia’s heart was wrung with anguish at the spectacle of desolation which surrounded him, and to which, with all his efforts, he was able to interpose only a feeble barrier. He repaired to Mexico to intercede with the government in behalf of his oppressed and helpless people. Through his influence the law of secularization was repealed, and an act passed restoring the property of the missions. But the reparation came too late; the plunderers were in full possession of their ill-gotten property, and no power could wrest it from them. Meanwhile, a severe illness at the capital, and the affairs of his order in Zacatecas, retained him in Mexico, where, in 1840, he received notice of his appointment to the bishopric of the Californias. He was consecrated in the same year, but was unable to take possession of his diocese until December, 1841.

On arriving at San Diego, he found the mission and the church in ruins. At San Gabriel, where extensive vineyards had been in full bearing, and to protect which the father was in negotiation with an American house for iron fences, even the vines were pulled up. This mission had loaded ships with its products, which were despatched regularly to San Blas and Lima. Amid its ruins, a traveller (Duflot de Mofras) describes in 1842 seeing the missionary Father Estenega seated in a field before a large table, with his sleeves rolled up kneading clay and teaching his Indians to make bricks. San Luis Obispo was in the same condition, and Father Abella, the oldest missionary in the country, whom La Perouse had seen here in 1787, still survived in 1842. His only bed was a hide, his only food dried beef, and he divided among his poor and plundered Indians the alms he received. At San José, Father Gonzalez, prefect of the northern missions, subsisted on the scanty rations furnished him by the officials. La Soledad, from having been an earthly paradise, was now a wilderness of ruin and desolation. Its missionary, Father Serra, of whom an American says “it was a happiness indeed to have known him,” had died of hunger and wretchedness in 1838 on the spot where thousands had enjoyed his hospitality. He expired in the arms of the Indians whom he had spent thirty years in instructing and protecting, falling at the foot of the altar just as he had begun Mass. At San Francisco Solano, everything had been destroyed, and the materials of the mission-house and chapel sacrilegiously used in building the palace of Don Mariano Vallejo. Santa Barbara still possessed its missions, the residence of the devoted prefect of the southern missions, Father Narcisso Duran, and at San Fernando, Santa Clara, and Santa Inez (where Bishop Garcia afterwards erected a seminary) the missionaries had succeeded in saving much. Everywhere else, ruin and desolation had overtaken the missions.

The Indian population of the missions was reduced from 30,650 to 4,450, their cattle dwindled from 424,000 to 28,000, and their other stock in proportion, for they had owned 62,500 horses and 321,500 sheep besides. They had raised annually 122,500 bushels of wheat and corn.

Their agriculture was now destroyed, and they themselves were mostly scattered and demoralized. “Bishop Garcia Diego y Moreno,” says Mr. Clarke in his Lives of Deceased Bishops, “stood in the midst of desolation, and but for his apostolic zeal and robust courage would have despaired.” He saved what he could of the missions, and rescued many souls from crime and barbarism; he made long, difficult journeys throughout his devastated diocese, and addressed the most moving appeals to the Mexican government. At last, after wearing himself out with labors that were far from fruitless, and which certainly stayed for a time the progress of disintegration, he retired to Santa Barbara to die, and there peacefully gave up his soul to God, April 13, 1846.

Thirteen missionaries still survived amidst the relics of the great works of charity and beneficence they had created or sustained, when in 1848 the soil of Upper California changed owners, and became attached to the domains of the United States. A new population overran the land, and the Indians of the missions have entirely disappeared. What is worse, they have been driven by the hostility of the Americans to the mountains, and provoked into acts of reprisal, the result of which will be that at no distant day the career of plunder and outrage of which they have been the victims, will be crowned by their total extermination.

We shall give in a note an account collated from Mr. Shea’s History of the Catholic Missions in the United States, of the manner of living followed in the mission establishments of California, by the Indians, under the direction of the fathers.

In the history of the missions of Maryland we are presented with a remarkable example of the influence of pure bigotry in arresting the most beneficent ministrations of religion towards both the white and Indian races. Under the mild and paternal administration of Lord Baltimore, the settlement, made so auspiciously on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1634, soon attached to it the native tribes; for they were fairly dealt with, and were paid for whatever lands were required of them. Father Andrew White, an English Jesuit, and a confessor of the faith—for he had suffered exile abroad and imprisonment at home on account of it—was the spiritual director of the mission. Although fifty-five years of age, he had no sooner landed than he applied himself to the study of the Indian tongue. He and his companions then established themselves at the more advanced posts, prepared catechisms, etc., in the Indian language, and made good progress in the conversion of the natives, the principal chief and his family being the first to demand baptism.

In 1644, Claiborne, the persecuting agent of the persecuting colony of Virginia, swooped down upon the peaceful settlements of Maryland, and among other outrages carried off the Jesuits as prisoners to England. Father White was never able to return, but Father Fisher and others did after three years, and resumed the work of the missions. The rise of the Puritan party in 1652 after the usurpation of Cromwell, and the subsequent accession to power of the Anglicans, who in 1692 made their religion the state church, effectually extinguished the Indian missions. What became of the poor Indians, we know not; but, judging from what this class of religionists have done elsewhere, their fate must have been first to be robbed, then demoralized, and finally to be exiled or exterminated.

Thenceforward, not only were the Catholics who had planted the colony and who had invited thither the persecuted of other colonies to share with themselves in all the privileges of government and of perfect freedom of religion—not only were the Catholics deprived of all share in the administration of public affairs, but their religion was proscribed and their priests were hunted down. Grasping and domineering as the Puritans have shown themselves to be everywhere, never did they or their Anglican abettors display a blacker ingratitude than in their transactions on the soil of Maryland, where those who bestowed upon them an exceptional religious liberty were excluded from all share in its benefits.

The faith, though persecuted, was kept alive among the whites by the Maryland Jesuits, who continued to adhere to their flocks. Nor did the suppression of their Society in 1773 dissolve this bond, for by an association among themselves they retained their missions; and as their property was not confiscated here as was everywhere done in Europe, they retained that also. In 1805, Bishop Carroll, himself an ex-Jesuit, obtained from the superior in Russia, where the Society still subsisted, the privilege of affiliation with it for the late members of the order in Maryland. The bishop then confirmed them in the possession of their missions, and thus the Society resumed its footing in Maryland nine years before it had been restored all over the world by Pius VII. Among the young men who joined it in 1806 was the now venerable Father McElroy, who, in his ninetieth year, retains the zeal and energy of younger days. The Jesuit province of Missouri was, as before stated, an offshoot from that of Maryland, and some fathers of the western province are still living who made their novitiate in Maryland. Bishop Vandevelde, of Chicago, and subsequently of Natchez, where he died in 1855, was one of these. The present Vicar Apostolic of Kansas, a Jesuit from Missouri, perpetuates amidst his Indians the traditions of the mother province.

The old Catholic families of Maryland, sustained and encouraged by their pastors, and preserving the faith amidst obloquy and disfranchisement, have contributed their full share to the distinguished laity of their country, to the ranks of the religious of various orders, male and female, the secular clergy, and the episcopate. Their honorable record is too full to admit of a reference to individuals, were this even the place for it; but we might recall, among prelates, the names of Archbishops Carroll and Neale of Baltimore, and Bishops Fenwick of Boston, Fenwick of Cincinnati, and Miles of Nashville. Archbishop Eccleston of Baltimore, although a Marylander by birth, was of Protestant family, and was himself a convert. Bishop Chanche of Natchez was also a Marylander, but the child of refugees from San Domingo. The sees of Wheeling, Natchez, Chicago, and North Carolina are filled by sons of Maryland, the descendants of a later immigration. Even in colonizing other states, the faithful children of Maryland formed a nucleus of Catholicity, as in Kentucky, wherever they went. By a happy dispensation, this colony, grown into a diocese, and governed by a scion of one of these old families, the late eminent and beloved Spalding—gave him back to the archiepiscopal chair of his ancestral state.

In later, as in former times, Maryland has been the “land of the sanctuary” for the oppressed of other lands, and the trials and triumphs in which her own children have borne part have been shared by the strangers who have taken refuge within her borders. When, in 1770, a solitary Jesuit from Whitemarsh in Lower Maryland visited Baltimore, then an insignificant settlement, and so poorly provided as to Catholic worship that the priest brought his own altar-furniture, and had to say Mass in a private house, a large part of the flock in attendance was composed of Acadians who had been cruelly transported from their homes by the British government. Still later, the French Revolution threw upon her shores those devoted clergymen whose virtues and whose labors have shed so much honor on the church of their adopted country. The institutions of religion and of learning which they founded in Maryland have educated for civil life or for the church men who have attained the highest eminence in one or the other. The founders of or the preceptors in these institutions have filled sees in various portions of the country—Dubois at New York, David at Bardstown, Flaget at Louisville, Dubourg at New Orleans, Maréchal at Baltimore, and Bruté at Vincennes, all now deceased, besides the present Bishop of St. Augustine, among living prelates. St. Mary’s Seminary at Baltimore has seen advanced to the mitre, from among her Levites, Bishops Reynolds of Charleston, O’Reilly of Hartford, and Portier of Mobile; while Mount St. Mary’s, the “mother of bishops,” has given to the American hierarchy from among hers, Archbishop Hughes of New York, Bishops Quarter of Chicago, Gartland of Savannah, Carrell of Covington, Young of Erie, and the living archbishops of New York and Cincinnati—probably others.

The subsequent revolution in San Domingo drove hither also whites who escaped with little more than life, and blacks whose fidelity to their masters and to their religion withstood the shock of those terrible times. Among the former were the parents of Bishop Chanche; also, young Joubert, who, after becoming a priest, devoted himself to the blacks, that he might overcome his horror for the race that had massacred his parents; in furtherance of this lofty act of self-renunciation, he formed a community of religious women of color, whose first members were creoles of San Domingo. The Oblate Sisters of Providence still flourish, and impart the blessings of secular and religious education to the young of their sex and color. Finally—for we must hasten to a close—it is a noticeable fact that New England, which sent forth its Puritan colonists to harass the Marylanders and persecute the Jesuits, is now a portion of the Jesuit province of Maryland.

The great length to which this paper has expanded will preclude the possibility of giving any space to the history of the missions of France in Louisiana, and those extending from Canada into what is now New York and into the regions west of that state. This omission will be the more pardonable inasmuch as the history of the French missions is better known to Catholic readers than much of our other remote ecclesiastical history. There is one page, however, in these annals, touching the Christian settlements on our northeastern border, that we cannot pass over without notice. The town in the British Provinces now known as Annapolis was the point where Catholicity made its first foothold in any portion of the region north of us, at least the first since the time of the Northmen. Here, in 1608, two Jesuit missionaries arrived, who in 1613 were to be the pioneers of the Abnaki mission in Maine. The Recollects, a branch of the Franciscans, began their labors in Quebec in 1615. Other religious men, and some communities of pious women, came to their assistance. Notwithstanding wars between the various tribes, in the course of which the once powerful Hurons were almost annihilated, the missionaries had gathered together, by 1685, a number of Christian villages of Indians on the St. Lawrence, of which three still exist. Thence, missionaries were sent to the shores of Lake Superior, to the tribes south of the lakes, to Arkansas, and to the lower Mississippi. The heroic lives, the sufferings, and the death of Jogues, Brébeuf, and Lalemant, and so many other holy men who consecrated their lives to these missions, are almost familiar themes.

Of the Abnaki mission referred to above, and which was established on Mount Desert Island at the mouth of the Penobscot, nothing remained after a few years except a solitary cross guarding the grave of a French lay-brother, who died from wounds received in an attack made on the mission by the English from Virginia. The fathers were carried off by them on this occasion, and narrowly escaped being put to death by the authorities of Virginia. Thus, as Mr. Shea remarks, the first Abnaki mission was crushed in its very cradle by men who founded a colony in which the Gospel was never announced to the aborigines.

In 1642, an Abnaki who had been rescued from death by a Christian Indian, in one of the forays made by the pagan Iroquois on their neighbors, extolled the virtues of the Christians so highly on his return home that his people sent for black-gowns. Father Druillettes was sent to them in 1646, and the wonderful change effected by him in the few months of his stay excited even the admiration of the English, whose countrymen in Massachusetts were at this time enacting cruel laws against the religion and the order to which F. Druillettes belonged. In 1650, he returned to the Abnakis, and was received by them at Norridgewock, their principal village, amidst volleys of firearms, and with every demonstration of delight. A banquet was spread in every cabin, and he was forced to visit all.

“We have thee at last,” they cried; “thou art our father, our patriarch, our countryman. Thou livest like us, thou dwellest with us, thou art an Abnaki like us. Thou bringest back joy to all the country. We had thought of leaving this land to seek thee, for many have died in thy absence. We were losing all hopes of reaching heaven. Those whom thou didst instruct performed all that they had learned, but their heart was weary, for it sought and could not find thee.”

At the same time that Druillettes was planting the faith among the Abnakis—who have preserved to this day the precious legacy bequeathed to them—Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, certainly a well-meaning man and a credit to the times and to the people among whom he lived, was endeavoring to christianize the Indians of Massachusetts—an attempt which the cruelty and rapacity of his countrymen would have rendered abortive, even if his barren theology had been able to affect anything in their behalf. So Drake, the Indian historian, admits that even among Eliot’s nominal disciples there was not the least probability that one-fourth of them were sincere believers in Christianity. Eliot himself said, before his death, “There is a dark cloud upon the work of the Gospel among the poor Indians.” In King Philip’s war even the Indian ministers threw off all disguise and took up arms against their white Christian neighbors. This last struggle against their destroyers resulted in a total ruin of the Indians. The Puritan, imagining himself the chosen of God, and regarding the Indians as Amalekites and Canaanites whom he was to exterminate out of the promised land, fell upon them with fire and sword.

Even the innocent son of King Philip, the last of the family of Massasoit, was sold into slavery to Bermuda by the men whose children have since lifted the finger of scorn at the population of the South, among whom England forced the institution that lately perished amid the throes of civil war—forced it by the aid, in part, of the vessels and the means of the pious fathers of New England. Father Druillettes, strange to say, visited Eliot, by whom he was hospitably received and entertained, and who invited him to pass the winter under his roof. But this visit to New England was probably one of business, and the father was soon with his beloved Indians again.

Father Rale was among the successors of Druillettes. An expedition of New Englanders destroyed his church and village in 1705, but the cession of the territory to England by France in 1713 restored temporary peace to the Abnaki mission. A deputation of their chiefs therefore visited Boston, and called upon the governor to solicit means for the rebuilding of their church. As Protestantism is always ready to interfere with religious enterprises which it could never itself have succeeded in, this exponent of the religion of New England offered to rebuild their church at his own expense if they would dismiss their missionary and take a minister of his own choice. The reply of the indignant spokesman of the Indians is worth quoting:

“When you first came here,” said he, “you saw me long before the French governors, but neither your predecessors nor your ministers ever spoke to me of prayer or the Great Spirit. They saw my furs, my beaver and moose skins, and of this alone they thought; these alone they sought, and so eagerly that I have been unable to supply them with enough. When I had much, they were my friends, and only then. One day my canoe missed the route; I lost my path, and wandered a long way at random, until at last I landed near Quebec, in a great village of the Algonquins, where the black-gowns were teaching. Scarcely had I arrived, when one of them came to see me. I was loaded with furs, but the black-gown of France disdained to look at them; he spoke to me of the Great Spirit, of heaven, of hell, of the prayer which is the only way to reach heaven. I heard him with pleasure, and was so delighted by his words that I remained in the village near him. At last the prayer pleased me, and I asked to be instructed: I solicited baptism, and received it. Then I returned to the lodges of my tribe, and related all that had happened. All envied my happiness, and wished to partake it; they too went to the black-gown to be baptized. Thus have the French acted. Had you spoken to me of the prayer as soon as we met, I should now be so unhappy as to pray like you, for I could not have told whether your prayer was good or bad. Now I hold to the prayer of the French; I agree to it; I shall be faithful to it, even until the earth is burned and destroyed. Keep your men, your gold, and your minister: I will go to my French father.”

In the unsettled condition of the boundaries, the New Englanders continued to make incursions upon the territory of the Abnakis. In one of these expeditions, Father Rale barely escaped capture, but his celebrated Abnaki dictionary was pounced upon and carried off, and now forms one of the treasures of the library of Harvard University. In 1724, he fell a victim to the persistence of his enemies. Notwithstanding these cruelties, the Abnakis, in the war of the Revolution, took part in the defence of the soil against England with the people who had desolated their home and put to death their beloved pastor. Orono, the Penobscot chief, bore a commission throughout the Revolution, and distinguished himself during the war as much by his bravery as by his attachment to his religion, never consenting to frequent Protestant places of worship.

These sketches, grown so much more lengthy than we had expected, and yet restrained with difficulty within their present bounds, must now close. May they be read with the attention the subject deserves, and thus serve to awaken the honest pride of our fellow-Catholics in the past history of their church on the soil of the United States. May our men of culture, stimulated by the appeal that shall be made to them by the reading classes, spread far and wide the affecting story of the church’s triumphs and reverses in our land, with all the glorious details of the lives and deaths of its heroes and martyrs! May this history grow to be a familiar one to the generation that is rising and the generations that shall succeed it. We love our country, and none dare question our love but they who would have the statute-books bristle with laws against us such as the genius of our institutions forbids and the fathers of the Republic rejected. Let us show our love for it by mingling the memories of all that is dear to us in the career of our religion with all that is noble and inspiring in the civil history of our land, our fair heritage of political and religious freedom.

NOTE.

The Mission Establishments of California.—The plan of the early missionaries in Florida and New Mexico had been to form the converts into villages near the Spanish settlements, in which they were trained to the usages of civilized life. In the numerous Christian villages thus spread over the country, all civil functions were exercised by the chiefs, the missionaries confining themselves to those of a spiritual nature only. The progress of the Indians under this system was slower than was desirable, and experience led to an improvement in the manner of conducting the missions that were subsequently established in New Mexico and California. In the latter, the missionary went in the first place attended by a small guard, with a colony of Indian converts, herds of cattle, and a plentiful supply of agricultural and other implements. Chiefly through the converted Indians, the surrounding natives were drawn to the mission. The next step was to proceed to the erection of the mission building, a rectangular structure eighty or ninety yards square, with a court-yard in the centre, which was adorned with trees and fountains. The church and the pastor’s residence occupied one side, and galleries surrounded the court, opening upon the rooms of the missionaries, stewards, and travellers, the shops, schools, store-rooms, infirmaries, and the granary.

A part of the buildings entirely separated from the rest, and called the monastery, was reserved for the Indian girls, where they were taught by native women to spin and weave, and received such other instruction as was suited to their sex. The boys learned trades, and those who excelled were promoted to the rank of chiefs, thus giving a dignity to labor which impelled all to embrace it. Once in the mission, the native was instructed in Christianity, and constrained to labor. Many of the missionaries being skilled in mechanical art, the Indians were formed to every trade, and the surplus products of their industry were exported yearly in exchange for necessary European goods. The Indians were apportioned into sections, each under a chief who led his party to church or to labor, and who was not backward in enforcing promptness. Against this the Indian at first rebelled: but, as all his wants were satisfied, he soon became attached to his manner of life, and would draw others of his countrymen in, whom he easily persuaded to submit to the routine.

Many learned Spanish thoroughly, and all acquired a knowledge of the Christian religion, which they faithfully practised. Thus they gained two great benefits—peace and comfort in this life, and means of attaining happiness in the next. Those who visited the missions were amazed to see that with such petty resources—most frequently without the aid of white mechanics—the missionaries accomplished so much, not only in agriculture, but in architecture and mechanics; in mills, machines, bridges, roads, and canals for irrigation; and accomplished it all by transforming hostile and indolent savages into laborious carpenters, masons, coopers, saddlers, shoemakers, weavers, stone-cutters, brickmakers, and lime-burners. Around the mission building arose the houses of the Indians and of a few white settlers; at various distances were ranches or hamlets, each with its chapel. In a little building near the mission-house was a picket of five horsemen, who were at once soldiers and couriers.

The regulations of the mission were uniform. At daybreak, the Angelus summoned all to the church for prayers and Mass, after which they went to breakfast. Then all joined their respective bands, and proceeded to their regular labors. At eleven, they returned to dine, and rested till two, when labor recommenced, and continued until the ringing of the Angelus bell, an hour before sunset. After prayers and beads, they supped, and spent the evening in innocent amusements. Their food was the fresh beef and mutton plentifully supplied by their herds and flocks, cakes of wheat and Indian corn, peas, beans, and such vegetables as they chose to raise. The missionaries themselves, bound by vows of poverty, received only food and clothing. The Indians of a mission were not all of the same tribe, but perfect harmony prevailed, and when the season of work was over, many paid visits to their countrymen, and seldom returned alone. Sometimes a zealous Christian would visit his own tribe as an apostle, to announce the happiness which was attainable under the mild rule of the Gospel. In this way the missions constantly received new accessions, for the good missionaries had the art of making labor attractive. All the men and women in the mission were, moreover, well and completely dressed.

It will be seen that this discipline was strict, and the Spanish government, at the time of the forcible withdrawal of the Jesuits, wished to bring odium upon them in connection with this system of administration of their origination. The Franciscans, however, who succeeded the Jesuits, continued the method of their predecessors, convinced of its expediency. An attempt on the part of the government to alter it, in the establishment of a mission near the mouth of the Colorado, on its own principles, a few years after the expulsion of the Jesuits, only resulted in cruel outrages upon the Indians by those who were placed in the temporal administration in lieu of the Franciscans. These outrages provoked rebellion, and led to the massacre of the civil functionaries, and of the religious as well. The government did not repeat the experiment.

Forbes, the author of a work on California, after commending the labors of the California Jesuits, says of their successors, “The best and most unequivocal proof of the good conduct of the Franciscan fathers is to be found in the unbounded affection and devotion invariably shown towards them by their Indian subjects. They venerate them not merely as friends and fathers, but with a degree of devotedness approaching to adoration.” He adds, “Experience has shown how infinitely more successful the Catholic missionaries have been than the Protestant.” These and many other testimonies from unprejudiced sources might be given to show the state of happiness in which the Indians formerly lived. An American traveller, Bartlett, who in 1854 visited the mission of San Gabriel, to which at one time five thousand Indians were attached, says, “Humanity cannot refrain from wishing that the dilapidated mission of San Gabriel should be renovated and its broken walls be rebuilt, its roofless houses be covered, and its deserted halls be again filled with its ancient industrious, happy, and contented population.”

Two classes of persons, therefore—as Marshal remarks in his History of Catholic Missions—“have been instrumental in the irreparable injury inflicted on the Indian tribes: Mexicans who had forfeited their birthright as Catholics, and Protestants who had never possessed it. Affecting to follow the precedents of modern European policy, of which the chief maxim seems to be the exclusion of all ecclesiastical influence in the government of human society, the Mexican civil authorities resolved to secularize all the missions. The result has been as in every land where the same experiment has been tried, a swift relapse into barbarism, from which the church alone has saved the world, the immediate decay of material prosperity, and a vast augmentation of human suffering.

“History might have taught the Mexicans to anticipate these inevitable fruits. When England laid her hand on the possessions of the church, which had been for centuries the patrimony of the poor, she took her first step towards her present social condition. Prisons and workhouses became the dismal substitutes for monasteries, and jailers supplanted monks. England has not profited much by the change. The new institutions are at least ten times more costly than the old, and the benefits derived from them have been in inverse proportion. They now receive only prisoners, and disgorge only criminals; while a whole nation of heathen poor, a burden on the present resources of the country and a menace for her future destiny, have sunk down, as even English writers will tell us, to the level of the most degraded tribes of Africa or America, and are as utterly void of religion or of the knowledge of God as the Sioux, the Carib, or the Dahoman.”