6o HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



orignal site was of adobe bricks, and some fragments of its walls may be 

 seen there yet. The first church built at the new site was also adobe, a 

 short distance north of the present stone edifice ; but its walls were cracked 

 by an earthquake and made unsafe ; and about 1791 work was commenced 

 on the stone church. In 1797 the stone church was about half finished and 

 partly occupied. In 1800 it was still unfinished. In 1804 foundation was 

 laid for some additional portion of the great structure. These various 

 changes of site, and the long slow progress of work on the present stone 

 edifice, with occasional change of plan and change of priest, gave rise to 

 conflicting reports as to dates in the matter, so that I found variations among 

 different authors amounting to a difference of over twenty years as to when 

 this stone church was built. It was about fifteen or sixteen years being 

 built. Now, the point I was coming at is, that sometime while the Mission 

 remained at the old site, the Indian chief, Hahamovic, who had befriended 

 Gov. Portola and his famished men at South Pasadena [their village being 

 near the Garfias Spring], was baptized at this Old Mission and given the 

 name "Pascual," from the fanciful name " La Sabanilla de San Pascual," 

 which had been given to the vast cloth-of-gold poppy fields within or bor- 

 dering, his tribal domain, that comprised both sides of the Arroyo Seco from 

 South Pasadena to the mountains ; and his tribe were thenceforth known as 

 the Pascual Indians. [Chief Pascual afterward married a white woman 

 named Angela Seise, and lived at San Gabriel to a very old age.] Then, after 

 the Mission was removed to its present site, and the old Mill erected [about 

 i8ioto 181 2], and the Wilson Lake dammed up for irrigation purposes and 

 to run a saw mill, etc. , these Indians were reduced to heavy servitude, and 

 proved a very important factor in producing the wealth for which the San 

 Gabriel Mission became famous, even exceeding all others in California ; but 

 they also specially served as herders and shepherds.* This mill was in- 

 tended to be the source of breadstuff for the San Fernando, San Buenaven- 

 tura and Santa Barbara Missions, and all the outlying settlements ; and the 

 main road leading to the Mill and the Mission from these western localities 

 is still called the Monterey road. It crossed the Arroy Seco at lyincoln Park 

 or Garvanza, where there was always a good fording place, just below the 

 present county bridge at that point. The cement quarry in the Lincoln Park 

 hills, where the reservoir is now, was then worked by Indians and its pro- 

 duct hauled in heavy ox-carts [carretas], to the other Missions — even as far 

 as Monterey, away up the coast almost to San Francisco. 



RANCHO SAN PASQUAL's FIRST OWNER. 



In 1806 Father Jose Maria Zalvidea was removed from San Fernando to 

 the San Gabriel Mission and placed at the head of its affairs, a position 



* "After the removal of Mission San Gabriel toils present site, the San Pascual Indians were 

 employed as herders; the ' bell mare,' fleetest and most beautiful of the padres' stock, ranged in the 

 glades and led the band of wild horses to crop the grasses of the Altadena uplands."— Mrs. Jeanne C 

 Carr, Hist. Los Ang. Co., p. 314. 



