MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 465 



is situated upon a stream, as was the case at Johnstown, it will be 

 necessary for the Board of Health to watch that no cause of dis- 

 aster to regions below is overlooked. It may be necessary to patrol 

 the river below and open drift-piles *and burn the carcasses of do- 

 mestic animals. If the stream is the water-supply for towns or 

 cities below, at the earliest possible moment it must be placed in 

 a condition not to carry disease to such places. 



In a word, in a great national disaster, the Board of Health 

 must be prepared to meet each and every emergency as it may 

 arise. 



-♦♦♦- 



MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA.* 



By HENRY W. HENSHAW. 



FROM the time of its discovery by Grijalva in 1534 until 

 1607, a number of fruitless attempts had been made by the 

 Mexican authorities to colonize the peninsula of Lower Cali- 

 fornia, and no small amount of treasure had been wasted in 

 the efforts. 



The sole obstacle to the success of the schemes for colonization 

 lay not in the indolent and peaceably disposed Indians, but in the 

 barren and inhospitable nature of the country itself, the wastes 

 of which offered but moderate subsistence to the natives, and 

 nothing whatever to satisfy the love of adventure and the thirst 

 for wealth of the Spaniard. Finding that all attempts to colonize 

 the new country were failures, the Mexican Government turned it 

 over to the Jesuits, who readily undertook its subjection to ecclesi- 

 astical authority. The first settlement was made on the Bay of 

 San Dionisio in 1697. The establishment of the missions proper 

 began immediately, and between this period and 1745 no fewer 

 than fourteen were established on the peninsula. It was not until 

 1769 that the occupancy of Upper California was inaugurated by 

 the founding of the mission of San Diego by the Franciscans, who 

 had superseded the Jesuits in charge of mission work in western 

 Spanish America. From this date until 1823 mission after mission 

 was established to the number of twenty-one, until the entire 

 coast area of California up to and a little beyond the Bay of San 

 Francisco was under mission sway. As mission history forms 

 one of the most interesting chapters relating to the aborigines of 

 this continent, it is the purpose of the present paper to briefly 

 notice the subject, with especial reference to some of the more 

 salient features of mission life and its effect upon the natives. 



* The accompanying illustrations are from photographs generously loaned by Mr. S. I. 

 Jannus, who obtained them in 1889. 

 vol. xxxvn. — 34 



