252 HENRY HILL GOODELL 



Santa Clara, San Buenaventura, San Juan Capistrano and 

 San Francisco (Dolores), and San Luis Obispo, between 

 1767 and 1783, they estimated that there were over eighty 

 thousand Indians in Alta California. At the mission of 

 San Gabriel there were about seven thousand. The priests 

 wrote that they had never found anywhere such tractable 

 and energetic savages as those in California. 1 



After a few years the missionaries were never afraid to 

 trust their lives and property among the Indians. The 

 fathers taught the Indians at the several missions to sow 

 wheat, grind corn, till the soil, raise herds of cattle, dress 

 hides, and make their clothing. The priests brought grape- 

 vines, olives, fruits, and nuts from their old homes in Spain 

 and Castile, and taught the Indians how to cultivate them 

 in California soil. In time the missionaries had induced 

 all the Indian families to come and dwell in pueblo com- 

 munities about the missions, where the Spanish padres were 

 monitors, socially, industrially, and religiously. When the 

 missions were legally disestablished by order of the Mexi- 

 can government, and the lands were partitioned to Mexican 

 families, the herds and flocks sold, and the missionaries told 

 to seek other walks of life, the Indian pueblos soon went to 

 ruin. The Indians themselves wandered aimlessly away, 

 settling in one place until driven to another by the white 

 man. No one attempted to preserve their moral condition, 

 and to the natural savage inclination for licentiousness was 

 added the bad example of the low whites of the frontier of 

 those days. 



My friends, I have outlined to you in briefest manner to- 

 day the work of these grand old monks during a period of 

 1 Bancroft, Pacific States ; Griswold, Spanish Missions. 



