No. 4.] MONKS IX AGRICULTURE. 27 



Clara, Sun Buenaventura, San Juan Caspistrano and San 

 Francisco (Dolores), and San Lous Obispo, between 17(!7 

 and 1783, they estimated that there were over eighty thou- 

 sand 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 ener- 

 getic savages as those in California.* 



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, to raise herds of cattle, to 

 dress hides, and to 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 in- 

 duced 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. Xo 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 

 fifteen hundred years. They saved agriculture when no- 

 body else could save it. They practised it under a new 

 life and new conditions when no one else dared undertake it. 

 They advanced it along every line of theory and practice, 

 and when they perished they left a void which generations 

 have not filled. 



* Bancroft, " Pacific States;" Griswold, "Spanish Missions." 



