MISSIONS AND MISSION INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 483 



Indian became despondent, generally refused to be ministered to, 

 and often died without apparent adequate cause. The Indian 

 rarely has much faith in civilized medical methods, and when 

 really sick almost invariably prefers* the ministrations of his own 

 shaman. Moreover, in the case of the California Indians there is 

 reason to believe that their want of faith in the skill of the 

 padres was well founded ; for both Beechey and Langsdorff, dif- 

 fering from Vancouver, note the astonishing amount of sickness 

 among the converts, and comment upon the lack of medicines and 

 the ignorance of the fathers as medical advisers. 



Acknowledgments are due to Hubert H. Bancroft, not only for 

 a mass of hitherto unpublished facts relating to mission history, 

 but for many statistics of baptisms, births, deaths, etc., which he 

 has culled from mission archives. These are given by decades 

 for every mission. From these it appears that during the mission 

 period, from 1769 to 1834, an interval of sixty-five years, seventy- 

 nine thousand converts were baptized and sixty-two thousand 

 deaths were recorded. An analysis of the statistics furnished 

 by Bancroft reveals the fact that the death-rate among the neo- 

 phytes was about twice that of the negro in this country, and no 

 less than four times as great as the death-rate of the white popu- 

 lation. 



At no time would it appear that the number of the births 

 among the mission converts was equal to the deaths. According 

 to Bandine, the governor states, in a report for 1800, that the num- 

 ber of deaths is almost double that of births ; and again, in 1815, 

 the president of the missions stated that there were three deaths 

 to two births. It was only by perpetual drafts upon the sur- 

 rounding tribes that the missions were sustained at all. The 

 high death-rate and small birth-rate explain what has become of 

 the California mission Indian. The former can not be attributed 

 to ordinary diseases, even when is taken into account the despond- 

 ency of the Indians when sick and the lack of proper medical 

 treatment. The records show that epidemics of small-pox, 

 measles, pulmonary diseases, and intermittent fever prevailed at 

 several periods, and all observers testify to the early introduction 

 of syphilis among the natives and to its severe ravages. With 

 this knowledge, perhaps it is not necessary to inquire further. 

 When are taken into consideration the unnatural herding togeth- 

 er of large numbers of Indians under the most unsanitary condi- 

 tions, practically without medicines and without proper medical 

 attendance, the ordinary effect of disease being heightened by the 

 dejection of the patients, and then add an epidemic or two of 

 any of the above diseases, and the probable result may easily be 

 foretold. The wonder is, not that the Indians died off rapidly, but 

 that any of them survived. 



