352 THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF 



AN ACCOUNT 



OP 



THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS 



THE CALIFORNIA^ PENINSULA, 



AS GIVEN BY 



JACOB BAEGERT, A GERMAN JESUIT AIISSIONARY, WHO LIVED THERE SEVENTEEN 

 YEARS DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE LAST CENTURY. 



TRAKSLATED AKD ARRANGED I OR THE Sx^UTHSONIAN INSTITUTION BY CHARLES RAU, OF KEW YORK CITY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



When, in 1767, by a decree of Charles III, all members of the order of tbe 

 Jesuits were banished from Spain and the transatlantic provinces subject to that 

 realm, those Jesuits who superintended the missions established by the Spaniards 

 since 1697 in Lov/er California were compelled to leave their Indian converts, and 

 to transfer their spiritual authority to a number of friars of the Franciscan order. 

 One of the banished Jesuits, a German, who had spent seventeen years in the 

 Californian peninsula, published, after his return to his native country, a book 

 which contains a description of that remote part of the American continent, and 

 gives also quite a detailed account of its aboriginal inhabitants, with whom the 

 author had become thoroughly acquainted during the many years devoted to 

 their conversion to Christianity. This book, which is now vefy scarce in 

 Germany, and, of course, still more so in this country, bears the title : Account 

 of the American 'Peninsula of ' Calif ornia ; with a twofold Appendix of False 

 Reports. Written hy a Priest of the Society of Jesus, loho lived there many 

 years 2^ast. Puhlishcd with the Permission of my Superiors. Mannheim, 1773.* 



Modesty, or perhaps other motives, induced the author to remain anonymous, 

 but with little success ; for his name, which was Jacob Baegcrt, is sometimes 

 met with in old catalogues, in connexion with the title of his book. That his 

 home was on the Upper Rhine he states himself in the text, but further par- 

 ticulars relative to his private affairs, before or after his misrjionary labors in 

 California, have not come to my knowledge. He does not even mention over 

 which of the fifteen missions existing at his time on the peninsula he presided, 

 but merely says that he had lived in California under the twenty-fifth degree, 

 and twelve leagues distant from the Pacific coast, opposite the little bay of St. 

 Mao-dalen. On the map accompanying his work there are two missionary sta- 

 tions marked under that latitude — the mission of St. Aloysius and that of the 



* Nachrichtcn ron der Amerikanischeii Halbinsel Californien: mit einem zweyfaclien 

 Anliang Falsclier Nachrichtcn. Gcschrieben von einem Priester der Gesellschalt Jesu, 

 wolcher lang darinn diese letztere Jahr gelebet hat. Mit Erlaubnuss der Oberen. Mann- 

 heim, ]77o. 



