A Mission Record Of The California Indians: From A Manuscript In The Bancroft Library

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Description

This book was originally printed in 1908 and has footnotes, in addition to words given in English, Spanish, and more than a few Native American dialects.

“In 1811 the Spanish viceregal government of Mexico sent to Alta California a list of questions regarding the Indians at the missions, their customs and disposition in their native state, and their condition under missionary influence. This “interrogatorio” was answered at the more than a few missions, the replies collected, and prefaced by the president of the missions with a short general observation or abstract of the answers received to each question. The replies vary much in length, spirit, and value. One of the most missionaries evidently regarded compliance with the instructions of the questionnaire as an official requirement which was perfunctorily performed. In many cases no answers were given more than a few questions at certain of the missions. Other fathers wrote more fully, but were more interested in the condition of the converted Indians than in their wild brethren or the customs of their fathers. Some, in answering those questions of the list that an ethnologist would be specially interested in, display lack of knowledge, for the replies are brief or vague and general; but others, notably the fathers at San Luis Rey, San Fernando, and San Carlos, show an exactness of knowledge that argues not only a long acquaintance but an interest in the Indian as such. It is of such replies that the extracts here given largely consist. They are only a minor a part of all of the document. Other passages, dealing with the converted Indians, belong more properly to the realm of the historian of the missions than of the ethnologist; and the remainder would be of no great interest to either. In regard to what is presented, it will have to be admitted that a number of the replies from different missions are practical duplications, and that but few are answered as a modern ethnologist would answer them; but all are truthful, some discriminating, and few prejudiced; and above all we have here, put down by observers on the spot more than eighty years ago, what the best ethnologist of today could not obtain more than fragments or traces of. Back of San Diego and San Luis Rey there are still Indians who preserve memory of the past; but in the remainder of the mission region, from San Juan Capistrano to San Francisco, the Indians are gone, nearly gone, or civilized and Christianized into a state of oblivion of ancient customs and beliefs. How little that is specific do we know of the Chumash and Costanoan and Esselen Indians! How much less of those of Salinan stock, whose former life has vanished with scarcely a trace! It is for that reason that these replies of the Franciscan fathers, then again unconnected, and then again incomplete, are of value.”

Sections of this book cover San Diego, San Luis Rey, San Juan Capistrano, San Gabriel, San Fernando, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, San Luis Obispo, San Miguel, San Antonio, San Carlos, San Juan Bautista, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Jose, San Francisco.

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