Spanish Settlements on the Pacific Coast 

 single individual being allowed to own as many as 

 eleven square leagues. There the proprietor with 

 his family lived a life of ease and plenty, surrounded 

 by numerous servants, and there he entertained as 

 lavishly as did those of the towns. Occasionally 

 the proprietor rode over his land to see his animals, 

 for grazing was the only great industry of the 

 ranchos. There was no agriculture nor even dairy- 

 ing of any consequence. Mission fathers thundered 

 against the rancheros, claiming that they were in- 

 vading mission territory, and causing dissatisfac- 

 tion among mission Indians, but their protests were 

 without avail. 



The missions* came to be almost completely 

 self-sufficient establishments, having not only the 

 mission church, but also mission flocks and herds, 

 gardens and fields, warehouses, dormitories, etc. 

 The object of the fathers was to civilize and Chris- 

 tianize the Indians. But the Spanish kings employed 

 missions primarily as an effective agency of con- 

 quest, to which conversions and the mission system 

 among the backward peoples conduced. In theory 

 the lands and personalty of missions belonged to the 

 Indians, to whom they were to be turned over when 

 the Indians were sufficiently civilized and Chris- 

 tianized to leave the mission and take up settled life. 

 The length of time before this could happen was 

 supposed to be but a few years, but in fact the day 

 of emancipation never came. The Indians of Cali- 

 fornia were unable to compete with a civilized race; 

 the attempts to civilize them were from . the first 

 hopeless. 



In the early years the Indians were treated with 

 great kindness. Later, when danger of an Indian 

 uprising was no longer a dread possibility, kindness 

 was tempered by correction, whether iSy the lash 

 or by imprisonment, it being recognized dv the au- 

 thorities of that day that instruction of Indfians and 

 punishments to them were inherently inseparable. 

 The Indians were virtually slaves of the missions. 

 They spent most of the daylight hours at work, and 

 the rest of their time, whether at church service, 

 eating, sleeping, or play, was planned for them by 

 mission rules. Nor were the missionaries able to 

 check the appalling death rate of the Indians, for at 

 the missions as elsewhere more died than were 

 born. Perhaps, in a measure, they put off the fatal 



* Not including the ill-fated Purisima Concepcifin and San 

 Pedro y San Pablo of the Colorado and mission visitas (In- 

 dian towns near a mission, to some extent under authority 

 of the missionaries), there were twenty-one missions in Cali- 

 fornia, all established by the Franciscans of the College of 

 San Fernando, Mexico. (See text fig. 1, and PI. II.) 



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