An Account of
The Aboriginal Inhabitants
of the
Californian Peninsula
AS GIVEN BY
JACOB BAEGERT, A GERMAN JESUIT MISSIONARY, WHO LIVED THERE SEVENTEEN
YEARS DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE LAST CENTURY.
TRANSLATED AND ARRANGED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BY CHARLES
RAD, OF NEW YORK CITY.
INTRODUCTION.
When, in 1767, by a decree of Charles III, all members of the order of the 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 Lower 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 very scarce in Germany, and, of course, still more so in this country, bears the title : Account of the American Peninsula of California; with a twofold Appendix of False Reports. Written by a Priest of the Society of- Jesus, who lived there many years past. Published with the Permission of my Superiors. Mannheim, 1773. * [Nachrichten von der Amerlkaniaehcn Halbinsel Californien: mit einem zweyfachen Anfaaog Falscher Nachrichton. Geschriebcn von eineui Piiester der Gosellschafl Jcsu, vvelcher lang darinn diese letztere Jahr gelebot hat. Mit Eiiaubnuss der Oberen. Mannheim, 1773.]
Modesty, or perhaps other motives, induced the author to remain anonymous, but with little success; for his name, which was Jacob Baegert, 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 particulars relative to his private affairs, before or after his missionary 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. Magdalen. On the map accompanying his work there are two missionary stations marked under that latitude—-- the mission of St. Aloysius and that of the
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Seven Dolors, (Septem Doloruin,) of which the first named evidently his place of residence.
The work in question constitutes a small octavo volume of 358 pages, and is divided into three parts. The first division (of which I will give a short synopsis in this introduction) treats of the topography, physical geography, geology, and natural history of the peninsula; the second part gives an account of the inhabitants, and the third embraces a short but interesting history of the missions in Lower California. In the appendices to the work the author refutes certain exaggerated reports that had been published concerning the Californian peninsula, and ho is particularly very severe upon Venegas' "Noticia de la California," (Madrid, 1757, 3 vote.,) a work which is also translated into the English, French, and German languages. He accuses the Spanish author of having given by far too favorable, and, in many instances, utterly false accounts of the country, its productions and inhabitants, which is rathcr a noticeable circumstance, since Venegas is considered as an authority in matters relating to the ethnology of California.
While reading the work of the German missionary, I was struck with the amount of ethnological information contained in it, especially in the second part, which is exclusively devoted to the aboriginal inhabitants, as stated before; and upon conversing on the subject with some friends, members of the American Ethnological Society, they advised me to translate for publication if not the whole book, at least that part of it which relates to the native population, of which we know, comparatively, perhaps leas than of any other portion of the indigenous race of North America. As there is a growing taste for the study of ethnology manifested in thi3 country, and, consequently, a tendency prevailing to collect all materials illustrating the former condition of the American aborigines in different parts of the continent, I complied with the request of my friends, and devoted my hours of leisure to the preparation of this little work, supposing that the account of a man who lived among those Californians a century ago, when their original state had been but little changed by intercourse with Europeans, might be an acceptable addition to our stock of ethnological knowledge.
I have to state, however, that the following pages are not a translation in the strict sense of the word, but a reproduction of the work only as far as it refers to ethnological matters. The reasons which induced me thus to deviate from the usual course of a translator are obvious; for even that portion of the text which treats of the native race contains many things that are not in the least connected with ethnology, the good father being somewhat garrulous and rather fond of moralizing and enlarging upon religious matters, as might be expected from one of his calling; and, although he places the natives of the peninsula exceedingly low in the scale of human development, he takes, nevertheless, occasion to draw comparisons between their barbaric simplicity and the over-refined habits of the Europeans, much in the manner of Tacitus, who seizes upon every opportunity to rebuke the luxury and extravagance of his countrymen, while he describes the rude sylvan life of the ancient inhabitants of Germany. My object being simply to rescue from oblivion a number of fact3 relating to a portion of the American race, I have omitted all superfluous commentaries indulged in by the author, and, in order to bring kindred subjects under common heads, I have now and then used some freedom in the arraignment of the matter, which is not always properly linked in the original. Although the second part of the book has chiefly furnished the material for this reproduction, I have transferred to the English text, and inserted in the proper places, all those passages in the other divisions, and oven in the two appendices that have a bearing upon ethnology, giving thus unity and completeness to the subject, which induced me to prepare these pages. For the rest I have preserved, so far as feasible, the language of the author. Not
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much, can be said, however, in favor of the style exhibited in the original, and even the spelling of the words defies all rules of orthography, which were adopted a century ago in the German language; nor is our father unaware of his deficiencies, but honestly states in his preface that " if his style was none of the smoothest, and his orthography incorrect in some places, the reader might consider that during the seventeen years of his sojourn in California, comprising the period from 1751 to 1768, he hardly ever had conversed in German, and, consequently, almost forgotten the use of his mother language."
Of the peninsula Father Baegert gives a rather woeful account. He describes that region as an arid, mountainous country, covered with rocks and sand, deficient in water, and almost without shade-trees, but abounding in thorny plants and shrubs of various kinds. The sterility of the soil is caused by the scantiness of water. " No one," says the author, " need be afraid to drown himself in water; but the danger of dying from thirst is much greater." There falls some rain, accompanied by short thunder-storms, during the months of July, August, September, and October, filling the channels worn in the hard ground. Some of these soon become dry after the showers; others, however, hold water during the whole year, and on these and the stagnant water collected in pools and ponds men and beasts have to rely for drink. Of running waters, deserving the name of brooks, there are but six in the country, and of these six only four reach the sea, while the others lose themselves not very far from their sources among rocks and sand. There is nothing to be seen in Lower California that may be called a wood; only a few straggling oaks, pines, and some other kinds of trees, unknown in Europe, are met with, and these are confined to certain localities. Shade and material for the carpenter are, therefore, very scarce. The only tree of any consequence is the so-called mesquite; but besides that it always grows quite isolated, and never in groups, the trunk is very low, and the wood so hard that it almost defies the application of iron tools. The author mentions, further, a kind of low Brazil wood, a tree called paloblanco, the bark of which serves for tanning; the palohierro or iron-wood, which is still harder than the mesquite; wild fig trees that bear no fruit; wild willows and barren palms, "all of which would be ashamed to appear beside a European oak or nut-tree." One little tree yields an odoriferous gum that was used in the Californian churches as frankincense. But in compensation for the absence of large trees, there is a prodigious abundance of prickly plants, some of a gigantic height, but of little practical use, their soft, spongy stems soon rotting after being cut. Among the indigenous edible productions of the vegetable kingdom are chiefly mentioned the tunas or Indian figs, the aloe, and the pitahayas, of which the latter deserve a special notice as forming an important article of food of the Indians. There are two kinds of this fruit—the sweet and the sour pitahaya. The former is round, as large as a hen's egg, and has a green, thick, prickly shell that covers a red or white flesh, in which the black seeds are scattered like grains of powder. It is described as being sweet, but not of a very agreeable taste without the addition of lemon juice and sugar. There is no scarcity of shrubs bearing this fruit, and from some it can be gathered by hundreds. They become mature in the middle of June, and continue for more than eight weeks. The sour pitahaya, which grows on low, creeping bushes, bristling with long, spines, is much larger than the other kind, of excellent taste, but by far less abundant; for, although the shrubs are very plentiful, there is hardly one among a hundred that bears fruit. Of the aloe or mescale, as the Spaniards and Mexicans call it, the fibres are used by the aborigines, in lieu of hemp, for making threads and strings, and its fruit is eaten by them.
A very curious portion of the book is that which treats of the animals found in California. The author is evidently not much of a naturalist, and, in classifying animals, he manifests occasionally a sovereign independence that would
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shock the feelings of a Blumenbach or Agassiz; yet his remarks, resulting from actual observation, are for the most part correct, and evince undeniably his love of truth. In the list of wild quadrupeds arc enumerated the deer, hare, rabbit, fox, coyote, wild cat, skunk, (Sorillo,) leopard, (American panther,) onza, and wild ram. In reference to the hut-named animal the author remarks: "Where the chain of mountains that runs lengthwise through the whole peninsula reaches a considerable height, there are found animals resembling our rams in all respects, except the horns, which are thicker, longer, and much more curved. When pursued, these animals will drop themselves from the highest precipices upon their horns without receiving any injury. Their number, however, cannot be great, for I never saw a living specimen, nor the fur of one in the possession of an Indian; but many skins of leopards and onzas."
This animal is doubtless identical with the Rocky Mountain sheep, (Oris montana.)
The feathered tribe does not seem to be very plentiful in California, since, according to Father Baegert, a person may travel one or two days without seeing other birds but occasionally a filthy vulture, raven, or " bat." Among the few which he observed are the red-bird, (cardinal) blue-bird, humming-bird, and an "ash-colored bird with a tail resembling that of a. peacock and a beautiful tuft on its head;" also wild ducks and a species of swallow, the latter appearing only now and then in small numbers, and therefore considered as extraneous.
There are some small fish found in the waters of California; but they do not amount to much, and during lent the father obtained his supply from the Pacific, distant 12 leagues from his habitation. On the other days of abstinence his meal usually consisted of a "little goat-milk and dry beans, and if a few eggs were added, he cared for nothing else, but considered himself well entertained."
Under the comprehensive, but not very scientific head of " vermin," the author enumerates snakes, scorpions, centipedes, huge spiders, toads, wasps, bats, ants, and grasshoppers. These vermin seem to have been a great annoyance to the good missionary, especially the snakes, of which there are about twenty different kinds in California, the rattlesnake being, of course, the most conspicuous among them. This dangerous reptile, which seems to be very numerous in that region, is minutely and correctly described, and, as might be expected, there are also some "snake stories" related. One day when the author was about to shave and took his razors from the upper board of his book-shelf, he discovered there, to his horror, a rattlesnake of large size. He received likewise in his new dwelling-house, which was a stone building, frequent visits from scorpions, large centipedes, tarantulas, ants and toads, all precautions being unavailing against the intrusion of these uninvited guests. The grasshoppers are represented as a real public calamity. Migrating from the southern part of the peninsula towards the north, they deluge the country, obscuring the sun by their numbers, and causing a noise that resembles a strong wind. Never deviating from their line of march, they will climb houses and churches encountered during their progress, laying waste all fields and gardens over which their pernicious train passes.
Of the climate in California the author speaks well, and considers it as both healthy and agreeable. Being only one degree and a half distant from the Tropic of Cancer, he lived, of course, in a hot region, and he remarks with reference to the high temperature that some thought the name " California" was a contraction from the Latin words calida Jornax, (hot oven,) without vouching, however, for the correctness of the derivation, though he is certain that the appellation is not of Indian origin. The greatest heat begins in the month of July and lasts till the middle of October; but there is every day in the year quite a refreshing wind blowing, which begins at noon, if not sooner, and continues till night. The principal winds are north west and south west; the north
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wind blows only now and then during the winter months, but the east wind hardly over, the Litter circumstance being somewhat surprising to the author, who observed that the clouds are almost invariably moving from the cast. lie never found the cold severer than during the latter part of September or April on the banks of the Rhine, where, after his return, the persevering coldness of winter and clouded atmosphere during that period made him long for the mild temperature and always blue and serene sky of the country he had loft. Fogs in the morning are frequent in California, and occur not only during fall and winter, but also sometimes in the hot season. Dew is said to be not more frequent nor heavier than in middle Europe.
Though the author represents California as a dry, sterile country, where but little rain falls, he admits that in those isolated parts where the proximity of water imparts humidity, the soil exhibits an astonishing fertility. " There," be gays, "one may plant what he chooses, audit will thrive; there the earth yields fruit a hundred-fold, as in the best countries of Europe, producing wheat and maize, rice, pumpkins, water and other melons of twenty pounds' weight, cotton, lemons, oranges, plantains, pomegranates, excellent sweet grapes, olives and figs, of which the latter can be gathered twice in a summer. The same field yields a double or threefold harvest of maize, that grows to prodigious height, and bears sometimes twelve ears on one stalk. I have seen vines in California that produced in the second year a medium sized basket full of grapes; in the third or fourth year some arc as thick as an arm, and shoot forth, in one season, eight and more branches of sis feet length. It is only to bo regretted that such humid places are of very rare occurrence, and that water for irrigating a certain piece of land sometimes cannot be found within a distance of sixty leagues."
In the last chapter of the first part the author gives an account of the pearl fisheries and silver mines carried on in Lower California while he was there. Both kinds of enterprise are represented as insignificant and by no means very profitable. "Every summer," he says, "eight, ten or twelve poor Spaniards from Sonora, Cinaloa or other parts opposite the peninsula, cross the Gulf in little boats, and encamp on the California shore for the purpose of obtaining pearls. They carry with them a supply of Indian corn and some hundred weight of dried beef, and are accompanied by a number of Mexican Indians, who serve as pearl fishers, for the Californians themselves have hitherto shown no inclination to risk their lives for a few yards of cloth. The pearl fishers arc let down into the sea by ropes, being provided with a bag for receiving the pearl oysters which they rake from the rocks and the bottom, and when they can no longer hold their breath, they are pulled up again with their treasure. The oysters, without being opened, are counted, and every fifth one is put aside for the king. Most of them are empty: some contain black, others white pearls, the latter being usually small and ill-shaped. If a Spaniard, after six or eight weeks of hard labor, and after deducting all expenses, has gained a hundred American pesos (that is 500 French livres, or a little morn than 200 Rhen-ish florins—a very small sum in America!) he thinks ho has made a little fortune which he cannot realize every season. God knows whether the fifth part of the pearls fished in the Californian sea yields, on an average, to the Catholic king 150 or 200 pesos in a year, even if no frauds are committed in the transaction. I heard, of only two individuals, with whom I was also personally acquainted, who bad accumulated some wealth, after spending twenty and more years in that line of business. The others remained poor wretches, with all their pearl fishing."
There were but two silver mines of any note in operation at the time of Baegert's sojourn in California, and those had been opened only a few years previous to his arrival. They were situated in the districts of St. Anna and St. Antonio, near the southern end of the peninsula, and only three leagues
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distant from each other. Digging for silver in California is not represented as a lucrative business, the owner of ones of the mines being so poor that he had to beg for his travelling money when he was about to return to Spain. The proprietor of the other mine was in better circumstances, but he owed his wealth more to other speculations than to his subterranean pursuits. The mining population in the two districts amounted to 400 souls, women and children included, and the workmen were either Spaniards born in America, or Indians from the other side of the Californian gulf. The external condition of these people is represented as wretched in the highest degree. The soil produced almost nothing, and not having the necessary money to procure provisions from the Mexican side, they were sometimes compelled to gather their food in the fields, like the native Californians. The author speaks of a locality between the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth degree, called Rosario, where some supposed gold to exist, but even admitting the fact, he thinks it would be almost impossible to work mines in that region, where neither food for men and beasts, nor water and wood, can be procured. Near the mission of St. Ignatius (2Sth degree) sulphur is found, and on the islands of El Carmen and St. Joseph in the Californian gulf, and in different places on both coasts salt of very good quality is abundant.
Having thus given an abstract of the first part of the book, I cannot conclude these introductory remarks without saying a few words in favor of the Jesuits. Whatever we may think, as Protestants, of the tendencies of that order, we cannot but admit that those of its members who came as missionaries to America deserve great credit for their zeal in propagating a knowledge of the countries and nations they visited in the New World. To the student of American ethnology particularly, the numerous writings of the Jesuit fathers are of inestimable value, forming, as it were, the very foundations upon which almost all subsequent researches in that interesting field of inquiry are based.
"The missionaries and discoverers whom the order of the Jesuits sent forth were for the most part not only possessed of the courage of martyrs, and of statesmanlike qualities, but likewise of great knowledge and learning. They were enthusiastic travellers, naturalists, and geographers; they were the best mathematicians and astronomers of their time. They have been the first to give us faithful and circumstantial accounts of the new countries and nations they visited. There are few districts in the interior of America concerning which the Jesuits have not supplied us with the oldest and best works, and we can scarcely attempt the study of any American language without meeting with a grammar composed by a Jesuit. In addition to their chapels and colleges in the wilderness, the Jesuits likewise erected observatories; and there are few rivers, lakes, and mountains in the interior, which they have not been the first to draw upon our maps."
With this well-deserved eulogy, which is quoted from Mr. J. G. Kohl's recent work on the discovery of America, I leave to Father Baegert himself the task of relating his experiences among the natives of Lower California.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF THE CALIFORNIAN PENINSULA.
CHAPTER I. — THE STATURE, COMPLEXION, AND NUMBER OF THE CALIFORNIANS; ALSO, WHENCE AND HOW THEY MAY HAVE COME TO CALIFORNIA.
In physical appearance the Californians resemble perfectly the Mexicans and Other aboriginal inhabitants of America. Their skin is of a dark chestnut or clove color, passing, however, sometimes into different shades, some individuals being of a more swarthy complexion, while others are tan or copper colored.
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But in new-born children the color is much paler, so that they hard]y can be distinguished from white children when presented for baptism; yet it appears soon after birth, and assumes its dark tinge in a short time. The hair is black as pitch and straight, and seldom turns gray, except sometimes in cases of extreme old age. They are all beardless, and their eye-brows are but scantily provided with hair. The heads of children at their birth, instead of being covered with scales, exhibit hair, sometimes half a finger long. The teeth, though never cleaned, are of the whiteness of ivory. The angles of the eyes towards the nose arc not pointed, but arched like a bow. They are well-formed and well-proportioned people, very supple, and can lift up from the ground stones, bones, and similar things with the big and second toes. All walk, with a few exceptions, even to the most advanced age, perfectly straight. Their children stand and walk, before they are a year old, briskly on their feet. Some arc tall and of a commanding appearance, others small of stature, as elsewhere, but no corpulent individuals are seen among them, which may bo accounted for by their manner of living, for, being compelled to run much around, they have no chance of growing stout.
In a country as poor and sterile as California the number of inhabitants cannot bo great, and nearly all would certainly die of hunger in a few days if it were as densely populated as most parts of Europe. There are, consequently, very few Californians, and, in proportion to the extent of the country, almost as few, as if there were none at all; yet, nevertheless, they decrease annually. A person may travel in different parts four and more days without seeing a single human being, and I do not believe that the number of Californians from the promontory of St. Lucas to the Rio Colorado ever amounted, before the arrival of the Spaniards, to more than forty or fifty thousand souls. * [Washington Irving states they had numbered from 25,000 to 30,000 souls when the first missions were established; on what authority I do not know. — Adventures of Captain Bon-neville, (ed. of 1851,) p. 332.] It is certain that in 1767, in fifteen, that is, in all the missions, from the 22d to the 31st degree, only twelve thousand have been counted. But an insignificant population and its annual diminution are not peculiar to California alone; both are common to all America. During my journey overland along the east side of the Californian gulf, from Guadalaxara to the river Hiaqui, in the Mexican territory, a distance of four hundred leagues, [1] I saw only thirteen small Indian villages, and on most days I did not meet a living soul. Father Charlevoix, before setting out on a journey through Canada or New France, writes in his first letter, addressed to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres, that he would have to travel sometimes a hundred and more leagues without seeing any human beings besides his companions. [2]
With the exception of Mexico and some other countries, North America was, even at the time of the discovery, almost a wilderness when compared with Germany and France; and this is still more the case at the present time. Whoever has read the history of New France by the above-named author, or has travelled six or seven hundred leagues through Mexico, and, besides, obtained reliable information concerning the population of other provinces, can easily form an estimate of the number of native inhabitants in North America; and if the southern half of the New World does not contain a hundred times more inhabitants than the northern part, which, relying on the authority of men who have lived there many years and have travelled much in that country, I am far from believing, those European geographers who speak in their books of 300 millions of Americans are certainly mistaken. Who knows whether they
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would find in all more than fifteen or twenty millions'? The many hundred languages which are spoken in South America alone are a sure evidence of a scanty population, although the contrary might be inferred at first sight; for, if there were more people, there would be more community among them, the tribes would live closer together, and, as a result, there would be fewer languages. The Ikas in my district speak a language different from that of the other people in my mission ; but I am pretty sure that the whole nation of these Ikas never amounted to five hundred persons.
It is easy to comprehend why America is so thinly populated, the manner of living of the inhabitants and their continual wars among themselves being the causes of this deficiency; but how it comes that, since the discovery of the fourth part of the world, its population is constantly molting down, even in those provinces where the inhabitants are not subjected to the Europeans, but retain their full, unrestrained liberty, as, for instance, according to Father Charlevoix, in Louisiana, (that is, in the countries situated on both sides of the Mississippi,) is a question, the solution of which I leave to others, contenting myself with what is written in the Psalms, namely, that the increase or diminution of the human race in different countries is a mystery which man cannot penetrate.
However small the number of Californians is, they are, nevertheless, divided into a great many nations, tribes, and tongues. * [The author probably fell into the very common error of confounding dialects with languages. Dr. Waitz, relying on. Buschmann's linguistic researches, mentions only three principal languages spoken by the natives of Lower California, viz., the Perieu, Mouqui, and Coehimi languages.v — Anthropologie der Natureoller von Dr. Theodor Waitz, Leipzig, 1864 ; vol iv, p. 248.] If a mission contains only one thousand souls, it may easily embrace as many little notions among its parishioners as Switzerland counts cantons and allies. My mission consisted of Paurns, Atshe'mes, Mitshirikutamais, Mitshirikuteurus, Mitshirikutaninnnjeres, Teaekwas, Teenguabebes, Utshis, Ikas, Anjukwares, Utshipujes; all being different tribes, but hardly amounting in all to five hundred souls.
It might be asked, in this place, why there existed fifteen missions on the peninsula, since it. appears that 12,000, and even more, Indians could be conveniently superintended and taken care of by three or four priests. The answer is, that this might be feasible in Germany as well as in a hundred places out of Europe, but is utterly impracticable in California; for, if 3 or 4,000 Californians were to live together in a small district, the scanty means of subsistence afforded by that sterile country would soon prove insufficient to maintain them. Besides, all of these petty nations or tribes have their own countries, of which they are as much, and sometimes even more, enamored than other people of theirs, so that they would not consent to be transplanted fifty or more leagues from the place they consider as their home. Avid, further, the different tribes who live at some distance from each other are always in a mutual state of enmity, which would prevent them from living peaceably together, and offer a serious obstacle to their being enclosed in the same fold. In time of general contagious diseases, lastly, which are of no infrequent occurrence, a single priest could not perform his duties to their full extent in visiting all his widely scattered patients, and administering to their spiritual and temporal wants. My parish counted far less than a thousand members, yet their encampments were often more than thirty leagues distant from each other. Of the languages and dialects in this country there are also not a few, and a missionary is glad if he has mastered one of them.
It remains now to state my opinion concerning the place where the Californians came from, and in what manner they effected their migration to the country they now occupy. They may have come from deferent localities, and either voluntarily or by some accident, or compelled by necessity; but that people
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should have migrated to California of their own free will, and without compulsion, I am unable to believe. America is very large, and could easily support fifty times its number of inhabitants on much better soil than that of California. How, then, is it credible that men should have pitched, from free choice, their tents amidst the inhospitable dreariness of these barren rocks ? It is not impossible that the first inhabitants may have found by accident their way across the sea from the other side of the Californian gulf, where the provinces of Cinaloa and Sonora are situated; but, to my knowledge, navigation never has been practiced by the Indians of that coast, nor is it in use among them at the present time. There is, furthermore, within many leagues towards the interior of the country no kind of wood to be had suitable for the construction of even the smallest vessel. From the Pimeria, the northernmost country opposite the peninsula, a transition might have been easier either by land, after crossing the Rio Colorado, or by wafer, the sea being in this place very narrow and full of islands. In default of boats they could employ their balsas or little rafts made of reeds, which arc also used by my Californians who live near the sea, either for catching fish or turtle, or crossing over to a certain island distant two leagues from the shore. I am, however, of opinion that, if these Pimerians ever had gone to California induced by curiosity, or had been driven to that coast by a storm, the dreary aspect of the country soon would have caused them to return without delay to their own country. It was doubtless necessity that gave the impulse to the peopling of the peninsula. Nearly all neighboring tribes of America, over whom the Europeans have no sway, are almost without cessation at war with each other, as long as one party is capable of resistance; but when the weaker is too much exhausted to carry on the feud, the vanquished usually leaves the country and settles in some other part at a sufficient distance from its foes. I am, therefore, inclined to believe that the first inhabitants, while pursued by their enemies, entered the peninsula by land from the north side, and having found there a safe retreat they remained and spread themselves out. If they had any traditions, some light might bo thrown on this subject; but no Californian is acquainted with the events that occurred in the country prior to his birth, nor does he even know who his parents were if he should happen to have lost them during his infancy.
To all appearance the Californians, at least those toward the south, believed, before the arrival of the Spaniards in their country, that California constituted the whole world, and they themselves its sole inhabitants; for they went to nobody, and nobody came to see them, each little people remaining within the limits of its small district. Some of those under my care believed to be derived from a bird ; some traced their origin from a rock that was lying not far from my bouse; while others ascribed their descent to still different, but always equally foolish and absurd sources.
CHAPTER II. — THEIR HABITATIONS, APPAREL, IMPLEMENTS, AND UTENSILS.
With the exception of the churches and dwellings of the missionaries, which every one, as well as he could, and as time and circumstances permitted, built of stone and lime, of stone and mud, of huge unburnt bricks, or other materials, and besides some barracks which the Indians attached to the missions, the few soldiers, boatmen, cowherds, and miners have now erected in the fourteen stations, nothing is to be seen in California that bears a resemblance to a. city, a village, a human dwelling, a hut, or even a dog-house. The Californians themselves spend their whole life, day and night, in the open air, the sky above them forming their roof, and the hard soil the couch on which they sleep. During winter, only, when the wind blows sharp, they construct around them, but only opposite the direction of the wind, a half moon of brush-wood, a few spans high,
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as a protection against the inclemency of the weather, * [Captain Bonneville gives a cheerless account of a village of the Root Diggers, which he saw in crossing the plain below Powder river. "They live," says he, "without any further protection from the inclemency of the season than a sort of break-weather, about three feet high, composed of sage, (or wormwood,) and erected around them in the shape of a half moon." — Washington Irving: Adventures of Captain Bonnceille, p. 259.] showing thus that, notwithstanding their simplicity, they understand pretty well " how to turn the mantle towards the wind." [3] It cannot be otherwise with them; for, if they bad houses, they would be compelled to carry their dwellings always with them, like snails or turtles, the necessity of collecting food urging them to wander constantly about. Thus they cannot start every morning from the same place and return thither in the evening, since, notwithstanding the; small number of each little people, a small tract of land could not provide them with provisions during a whole year. To-day the water will fail them; to-morrow they have to go to some locality for gathering a certain kind of seed that serves them as food, and so they fulfil to the letter what is written of all of us, namely, that we shall have no fixed abode in this world. I am certainly not much mistaken in saying that many of them change their night-quarters move than a hundred times in a year, and hardly sleep three times successively in the same place and the same part of the country, always excepting those who are connected with the missions. Wherever the night surprises them they will lie down to sleep, not minding in the least the uncleanliness of the ground, or apprehending any inconvenience from reptiles and other vermin, of which there is an abundance in this country. They do not live under the shade of trees, as some authors have said, because there are hardly any trees in California that afford shade, nor do they dwell in earth-holes of their own making, as others have said, but, sometimes, and only when it rains, they resort to the clefts and cavities of rocks, if they can find such sheltering places, which do not occur as frequently as their wants require.
Whenever they undertake to construct shelters for protecting their sick from heat or cold, the entrance is usually so low that a person has to creep on hands and feet in order to get in, and the whole structure is of such small dimensions as to render it impossible to stand erect within, or to find room to sit down on the ground for the purpose of confessing or comforting the patient. Of no better condition are the huts of those Indians who live near the missions, the same being often so small and miserable that man and wife hardly can sit or lie down in them. Even the old and infirm are utterly indifferent as to their being under shelter or not, and it happened often that 1 found old sick persons lying in the open air, for whose accommodation I had caused huts to be built on the preceding day. So much for habit.
As the blue sky forms the only habitation of the Californian Indians, so they wear no other covering than the brown skin with which nature has clothed them. This applies to the male sex in the full sense of the word, and even women have been found in the northern parts of California in a perfect state of nudity, while among most nations the females always covered themselves to a small extent. They did, and still continue to do, as follows: They understand how to prepare from the fibres of the aloe plant a white thread, which serves them for making cords. [4] On these they string hundreds of small sections of water-reed, like beads of a rosary; and a good number of these strings, attached by their ends to a girdle, and placed very close and thick together, form two aprons, one of which hangs down below the abdomen, while the other covers the hind part. These aprons are about a span wide, and of different length. Among
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some nations they reach down to the knees; among others to the calves, and even to the feet. Both sides of the thighs, as well as the rest of the body, remain perfectly naked. In order to save labor, some women wear, instead of the back-aprons, a piece of untanned deer-skin, or any woollen or linen rag which they can now-a-days obtain. Of the fame untanned skin they make, if they can get it, their shoes or sandals, simply flat pieces, which they attach to the feet by coarse strings of the above-mentioned aloe, passing between the big and small toes and around the ankles.
Both sexes, the grown as well as the children, wear the head always uncovered, however inclement the weather may be, even those in a certain mission who understand how to manufacture pretty good hats from palm-leaves, which, on account of their lightness, were frequently worn by the missionaries while on their travels. The men allow the hair to grow down to the shoulders. Women, on the contrary, wear it much shorter. Formerly they pierced the ears of new-born children of the male sex with a pointed stick, and by putting bones and pieces of wood into the aperture they enlarged it to such a degree that, in some grown persons, the flaps hung down nearly to the shoulders. At present, however, they have abandoned this unnatural usage. It has been asserted that they also pierce the nose. 1 can only say that I saw no one disfigured in that particular manner, but many middle-aged persons with their ears perforated as described above. Under certain circumstances, and on their gala days, they paint different parts of the body with red and yellow color, which they obtain by burning certain minerals.
The baptized Indians, of course, observed more decency in regard to dress. The missionaries gave each male individual, once or twice in a year, a piece of blue cloth, six spans long and two spans wide, for covering the lower part of the body, and, if their means allowed if, a short woollen coat of blue color. The women and girls were provided with thick white veils, made of wool, that covered the head and the whole body down to the feet. In some missions the women received also petticoats and jackets of blue flannel or woven cotton shirts, and the men trowsers of coarse cloth and long coats. But the women throw aside their veils, and the men their coats, as soon as they leave church, because those coverings make them feel uneasy, especially in summer, and impede the free use of their limbs, which their mode of living constantly requires. I will mention here that all these goods had to be brought from the city of Mexico, since nothing of the kind can be manufactured in California for want of the necessary materials. The number of sheep that can be kept there is small, and, moreover, they lose half their wool by passing through the thorny shrubs, of which there is an astonishing abundance in this ill-favored country.
It is not to be expected that a people in as low a state of development as the Californians should make use of many implements and utensils. Their whole furniture, if that expression can be applied at all, consists of a bow and arrows, a flint instead of a knife, a bone or pointed piece of wood for digging roots, a turtle-shell serving as basket and cradle, a large gut or bladder for fetching water and transporting it during their excursions, and a bag made like a fishing net from the fibres of the aloe, or the skin of a wild cat, in which they preserve and carry their provisions, sandals, and perhaps other insignificant things which they may happen to possess.
The bows of the Californians are more than six feet long, slightly curved, and made from the roots of wild willows. They are of the thickness of the five fingers in the middle, round, and become gradually thinner and pointed towards the ends. The bow-strings are made of the intestines of beasts. The shafts of their arrows consist of common reeds, which they straighten by the fire. They are above six spans long, and have, at the lower end, a notch to catch the string, and three or four feathers, about a finger long, not much projecting, and let into slits made for that purpose. At the upper end of the shaft
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a pointed piece of heavy wood, a spau and a half long, is inserted, bearing usually at its extremity a flint of a triangular shape, almost resembling a serpent's tongue, and indented like the edge of a saw. * [In the collection of Dr. E. H. Davis, of New York, there are a number of arrows obtained from the Indians of the island of Tibnron, in the Californian gulf. They answer, in every respect, the description given in the text.] The Californians carry their bows and arrows always with them, and as they commence at an early age to use these weapons many of them become very skilful archers.
In lieu of knives and scissors they use sharp flints for cutting almost everything-—cane, wood, aloe, and even their hair—and for disembowelling and skinning animals. With the same flints they bleed or scarify themselves, and make incisions for extracting thorns and splinters which they have accidentally run into their limbs.
The whole art of the men consists in the manufacture of bows and arrows, while the mechanical skill of the females is merely confined to the making of the above-mentioned aprons. Of a division of labor not a trace is to be found among them ; even the cooking is done by all without distinction of sex or age, every one providing for himself, and the children commence to practice that necessary art as soon us they are able to stir a fire. The time of these people is chiefly token up by the search for food and its preparation; and if their physical wants are supplied they abandon themselves entirely to lounging, chattering, and sleep. This applies particularly to the roaming portion of the Californian Indians, for those who dwell near the missions now established in the country are sometimes put to such labor as the occasion may require.
CHAPTER III. — OF THEIR FOOD AND THE MANNER OF PREPARING IT.
Notwithstanding the barrenness of the country, a Californian hardly ever dies of hunger, except, perhaps, now and then an individual that falls sick in the wilderness and at a great distance from the mission, for those who are in good health trouble themselves very little about such patients, even if these should happen to be their husbands, wives, or other relations; and a little child that has lost its mother or both parents is also occasionally in danger of starving to death, because in some instances no one will take charge of it, the father being sometimes inhuman enough to abandon his offspring to its fate.
The food of the Californians, as will be seen, is certainly of a mean quality, yet it keeps them in a healthy condition, and they become strong and grow old in spite of their poor diet. The only period of the year during which the Californians can satisfy their appetite without restraint is the season of the pitaha-yas, which ripen in the middle of June and abound for more than eight weeks. The gathering of this fruit may be considered as the harvest of the native inhabitants. They can eat as much of it as they please, and with some this food agrees so well that they become corpulent during that period; and for this reason I was sometimes unable to recognize at first sight individuals, otherwise perfectly familiar to me, who visited me after having fed for three or four weeks on these pitahayas. They do not, however, preserve them, and when the season is over they are put again on short rations. Among the roots eaten by the Californians may be mentioned the yuka, which constitutes an important article of food in many parts of America, as, for instance, in the island of Cuba, but is not very abundant in California. In some provinces it is made into a kind of bread or cake, while the Californians, who would find this process too tedious, simply roast the yukas in a fire like potatoes. Another root eaten by the natives is that of the aloe plant, of which there are many kinds in this country. Those species of this vegetable, however, which afford nourishment —for not all of them are edible—do not grow as plentifully as the Californians might wish, and very seldom in the neighborhood of water; the prepara-
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rious, moreover, which are necessary to render this plant eatable, require much time and labor, as will be mentioned hereafter. I saw the natives also frequently eat the roots of the common reed, just as they were taken out of the water. Certain seeds, some of them not larger than those of the mustard, and different sorts in pods that grow on shrubs and little trees, and of which there are, according to father Piccolo, more than sixteen kinds, are likewise diligently sought; yet they furnish only a small quantity of grain, and all that a person can collect with much toil during a whole year may scarcely amount to twelve bushels.* [One mutter, in German, which is about equivalent to twelve bushels.]
It can be said that the Californians eat, without exception, all animals they can obtain. Besides the different kinds of larger indigenous quadrupeds and birds already mentioned,[5] they live now-a-days on dogs and eats; horses, asses and mules; item, or owls, mice and rats; lizards and snakes; bats, grasshoppers and crickets ; a kind of preen caterpillar without hair, about a finger long, and an abominable white worm of the length and thickness of the thumb, which they find occasionally in old rotten wood, and consider as a particular delicacy. The chase of game, such as deer and rabbits, furnishes only a small portion of a Californian's provisions. Supposing that for a hundred families three hundred deer are killed in the course of a year, which is a very favorable estimate, they would supply each family only with three meals in three hundred and sixty-five days, and thus relieve but in a very small degree the hunger and the poverty of these people. The hunting for snakes, lizards, mice and field-rats, which they practice with great diligence, is by far more profitable and supplies them with a much greater quantity of articles for consumption. Snakes, especially, are a favorite sort of small game, and thousands of them find annually their way into the stomachs of the Californians.
In catching fish, particularly in the Pacific, which is much richer in that respect than the gulf of California, the natives use neither nets[6] nor hooks, but a kind of lance,—that is, a long, slender, pointed piece, of hard wood, which they handle very dexterously in spearing and killing their prey. Sea-turtles arc caught in the same manner.
I have now mentioned the different articles forming the ordinary food of the Californians ; but, besides these, they reject nothing that their teeth can chew or their stomachs are capable of digesting, however tasteless or unclean and disgusting it may be. Thus they will eat the leaves of the Indian fig-tree, the tender shoots of certain shrubs, tanned or untanned leather ; old straps of raw hide with which a fence was tied together for years ; item, the bones of poultry, sheep, goats and calves; putrid meat or fish swarming with worms, damaged wheat or Indian corn, and many other things of that sort which may serve to appease the hunger they are almost constantly suffering. Anything that is thrown to the hogs will be also accepted by a Californian, and he takes it without feeling offended, or thinking for a moment that he is treated below his dignity. For this reason no one took the trouble to clean the wheat or maize, which was cooked for them in a large kettle, of the black worms and little bugs, even if the numbers of these vermin had been equal to that of the grains. By a daily distribution of about 150 bushels of bran, (which they are in the habit of eating without any preparation,) I could have induced all my parishioners
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to remain permanently in the mission, excepting during the time when the pitahayas are gathered.
I saw one day a blind man, seventy years of age, who was busily engaged in pounding between two stones an old shoe made of raw deerskin, and when-ever he had detached a piece, he transferred it promptly to his mouth and swallowed it; and yet this man had a daughter and grown grand-children. As soon as any of the cattle are killed and the hide is spread out on the ground to dry, half a dozen boys or men will instantly rush upon it and commence to work with knives, flints and their teeth, tearing and scratching off pieces, which they eat immediately, till the hide in full of holes or scattered in all directions. In the mission of St. Ignatius and in others further towards the north, there are persons who will attach a piece of meat to a string and swallow it and pull it out again a dozen times in succession, for the sake of protracting the enjoyment of its taste.
I must here ask permission of the kind reader to mention something of an exceedingly disgusting and almost inhuman nature, the like of which probably never has been recorded of any people in the world, but which demonstrates hotter than anything else the whole extent of the poverty, uncleanness and voracity of these wretched beings. In describing the pitahayas, * [Introduction] I have already stated that they contain a great many small seeds resembling grains of powder. For some reason unknown to me those seeds are not consumed in the stomach, but pass off in an undigested state, and in order to save them the natives collect, during the season of the pitahayas, that which is discharged from the human body, separate the seeds from it, and roast, grind and eat them, making merry over their loathsome meals, which the Spaniards therefore call the second harvest of the Californians, [7] When i first hoard that such a filthy habit existed among them, 1 was disinclined to believe the report, but to my utter regret I became afterwards repeatedly, a witness to the proceeding, which they are unwilling to abandon like many other bad practices. Yet I must say in their favor that they have always abstained from human flesh, contrary to the horrible usage of so many other American nations who can obtain their daily food much easier than these poor Californians.
They have no other drink but the water, and Heaven be praised that they are unacquainted with such strong beverages as are distilled in many American provinces from Indian corn, the aloe and other plants, and which the Americans in those parts merely drink for the purpose of intoxicating themselves. When a Californian encounters, during his wanderings, a pond or pool, and feels a desire to quench his thirst, he lies flat on the ground and applies his mouth directly to the water. Sometimes the horns of cattle are used as drinking vessels.
Having thus far given an account of the different articles used as aliment by the aborigines of the peninsula, I will now proceed to describe in what manner they prepare their victuals. They do not. cook, boil, or roast like people in civilized countries, because they are neither acquainted with these methods, nor possessed of vessels and utensils to employ for such purposes; and, besides, their patience would be taxed beyond endurance, if they had to wait till a piece of meat is well cooked or thoroughly roasted. Their whole process simply consists in burning, singeing, or roasting in an open lire all such victuals as are not eaten in a raw state. Without any formalities the piece of meat, the fish, bird, snake, field-mouse, bat, or whatever it may be, is thrown into the flames, or on the glowing embers, and left there to smoke and to sweat for about a quarter of an hour; after which the article is withdrawn, in most cases
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only burned or charred on the outside, but still raw and bloody within. As goon as it bus become sufficiently cool, they shake it a little in order to remove the adhering dust or gaud, and eat it with great relish. Yet I must add here, that they do not previously take the trouble to skin the mice or disembowel the rats, nor deem it necessary to clean the half-emptied entrails and maws of larger animals, which they have to cut in pieces before they can roast them. Seeds, kernels, grasshoppers, green caterpillars, the white worms already mentioned, and similar things that would be lost, on account of their smallness, in the embers and flames of an open fire, are parched on hot coals, which they constantly throw up and shake in a turtle-shell, or a kind of frying-pan woven out of a certain plant. What they have parched or roasted in this manner is ground to powder between two stones, and eaten in a dry state. Bones are treated in like manner.
They eat everything unsalted, though they might obtain plenty of salt; but since they cannot dine every day on roast meat and constantly change their quarters, they would find it too cumbersome to carry always a supply of salt with them.
The preparation of the aloe, also called mescale or maguey by the Spaniards, requires more time and labor. The roots, after being properly separated from the plants, are roasted for some hours in a strong fire, and then buried, twelve or twenty together, in the ground, and well covered with hot stones, hot ashes, and earth. In this state they have to remain for twelve or fourteen hours, and when dug out again they are of a fine yellow color, and perfectly tender, making a very palatable dish, which has served me frequently as food when I had nothing else to eat, or as dessert after dinner in lieu of fruit. But they act at first as a purgative on persons who are not accustomed to them, and leave the throat somewhat rough for a few hours afterwards.
To light a fire the Californians make no use of steel and flint, but obtain it by the friction of two pieces of wood. One of them is cylindrical, and pointed on one end, which fits into a round cavity in the other, and by turning the cylindrical piece with great rapidity between their hands, like a twirling stick, they succeed in igniting the lower piece, if they continue the process for a sufficient length of time.
The Californians have no fixed time for any sort of business, and eat, consequently, whenever they have anything, or feel inclined to do so, which is nearly always the case. I never asked one of them whether he was hungry, who tailed to answer in the affirmative, even if his appearance indicated the contrary. A meal in the middle of the day in the least in use among them, because they all set out early in the morning for their foraging expeditions, and return only in the evening to the place from which they started, if they do not choose some other locality for their night quarters. The day being thus spent in running about and searching for food, they have no time left for preparing a dinner at noon. They start always empty-handed; for, if perchance something remains from their evening repasts, they certainly eat it during the night in waking moments, or on the following morning before leaving. The Californians can endure hunger easier and much longer than other people; whereas they will eat enormously if a chance is given. I often tried to buy a piece of venison from them when the skin had but lately been stripped off the deer, but regularly received the answer that nothing was left; and I knew well enough that the hunter who killed the animal needed no assistance to finish it. Twenty-four pounds of meat in twenty-four hours is not deemed an extraordinary ration for a single person, and to see anything eatable before him is a temptation for a Californian which he cannot resist; and not to make away with it before night would be a victory be is very seldom capable of gaining over himself.
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One of them requested from his missionary a number of goats, in order to live, as he said, like a decent man; that is, to keep house, to pasture the goats, and to support himself and his family with their milk and the flesh of the kids. But, alas ! in a few days the twelve goats with which the missionary had presented him were all consumed.
A priest who had lived more than thirty years in California, and whose veracity was beyond any doubt, assured me repeatedly that he had known a Californian who one day ate seventeen watermelons at one sitting; and another native who, after having received from a soldier six pounds of unclarified sugar as pay for a certain debt, sat down and munched one piece after another till the six pounds had disappeared. He paid, however, dearly for his gluttony, for he died in consequence of it; while the melon-eater was only saved by taking a certain physic which counteracted the bad effects of his greediness. 1 was called myself one evening in great haste to three or four persons, who pretended to be dying, and wanted to confess. These people belonged to a band of about sixty souls, (women and children included,) to whom I had given, early in the morning, three bullocks in compensation for some labor. When I arrived at the place where they lay encamped, I learned that their malady consisted merely in belly-ache and vomiting; and, recognizing at once the cause of their disorder, I reprimanded them severely for their voracity, and went home again.
CHAPTER IV. — OF THEIR MARRIAGES AND THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN.
As soon as the young Californian finds a partner, the marriage follows immediately afterwards; and the girls go sometimes so far as to demand impetuously a husband from the missionary, even before they are twelve years old, which is their legitimate age for marrying. In all the missions, however, only one exempted, the number of men was considerably greater than that of the females.
Matrimonial engagements are concluded without much forethought or scruple, and little attention is paid to the morals or qualities of the parties; and, to confess the truth, there is hardly any difference among them in these respects; and, as far as good sense, virtue, and riches are concerned, they are always sure to marry their equals, following thus the old maxim : Si rix nubere, nude pari. It happens very often that near relations want to join in wedlock, and their engagements have, therefore, to be frustrated, such cases excepted in which the impedimentum ajfinitatis can be removed by a dispensation from the proper authorities.
They do not seem to marry exactly for the same reasons that induce civilized people to enter into that state; they simply want to have a partner, and the husband, besides, a servant whom he can command, although his authority in that respect is rather limited, for the women are somewhat independent, and not much inclined to obey their lords. Although they are now duly married according to the rites of the Catholic church, nothing is done on their part to solemnize the act; none of the parents or other relations and friends are present, and no wedding feast is served up, unless the missionary, instead of receiving his marriage fees, or jura stolae, presents them with a piece of meat, or a quantity of Indian corn. Whenever I joined a couple in matrimony, it took considerable time before the bridegroom succeeded in putting the wedding ring on the right finger of his future wife. As soon as the ceremony is over, the new married couple start off in different directions in search of food, just as if they were not more to each other to-day than they were yesterday; and in the same manner they act in future, providing separately for then- support, sometimes without living together for weeks, and without knowing anything of their partner's abiding place.
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Before they were baptized each man took as many wives as he liked, and if there were several sisters in a family he married them all together. The son-in-law was not allowed, for some time, to look into the face of his mother-in-law or his wife's next female relations, but had to step aside, or to hide himself, when these women were present. Yet they did not pay much attention to cou-sanguinity. and only a few years since one of them counted, his own daughter (as he believed) among the number of his wives. They met without any formalities, and their vocabulary did not even contain the words "to marry," which is expressed at the present day in the Waicuri language by the para-phrase tikere undiri— that is, " to bring the arms or hands together." They had, and still use, a substitute for the word " husband," but the etymological meaning of that expression implies an intercourse with women in general.
They lived, in fact, before the establishment of the missions in their country, in utter licentiousness, and adultery was daily committed by every one without shame and without any fear, the feeling of jealousy being unknown to them. Neighboring tribes visited each other very often only for the purpose of spending some days in open debauchery, and during such times a general prostitution prevailed. Would to God that the admonitions and instructions of those who converted these people to Christianity and established lawful marriages among them, had also induced them to desist entirely from these evil practices ! Yet they deserve pity rather than contempt, for their manner of living together engenders vice, and their sense of morality is not strong enough to prevent them from yielding to the temptations to which they are constantly exposed.
In the first chapter of this book I have already spoken of the scanty population of this country. It is certain that many of their women are barren, and that a great number of them bear not more than one child. Only a few out of one or two hundred bring forth eight or ten times, and if such is really the case, it happens very seldom that one or two of the children arrive at a mature age. I baptized, in succession, seven children of a young woman, yet I had to bury them all before one of them had reached its third year, and when I was about to leave the country I recommended to the woman to dig a grave for the eighth child, with which she was pregnant at the time. The unmarried people of both sexes and the children generally make a smaller group than the married and widowed.
The Californian women lie in without, difficulty, and without needing any assistance. If the child is born at some distance from the mission they carry it thither themselves on the same day, in order to have it baptized, not minding a walk of two or more leagues. Yet, that many infants die among them is not surprising; on the contrary, it would be a wonder if a great number remained alive. For, when the poor child first sees the light of day, there is no other cradle provided for it. but the hard soil, or the still harder shell of a turtle, in which the mother places it, without much covering, and drags it about wherever she goes. And in order to be unencumbered, and enabled to use her limbs with greater freedom while running in the fields, she will leave it sometimes in charge of some old woman, and thus deprive the poor creature for ten or more hours of its natural nourishment. As soon as the child is a few months old the mother places it, perfectly naked, astraddle on her shoulders, its legs hanging down on both sides in front, and it has consequently to learn how to ride before it can stand on its feet. In this guise the mother roves about all day, exposing her helpless charge to the hot rays of the sun and the chilly winds that sweep over the inhospitable country. The food of the child, till it cuts its teeth, consists only in the milk of the mother, and if that is wanting or insufficient, there is rarely another woman to be found that would be willing, or, perhaps, in the proper condition, to take pity on the poor starving being. I cannot say that the Californian women are too fond of their children, and some of them may even consider the loss of one as a relief from a burden, especially if they have
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already some small children. I did not see many Californian mothers who caressed their children much while they lived, or tore their hair when they died, although a kind of dry weeping is not wanting on such occasions. The father is still more insensible, and does not even look at his (or at least his wife's) child as long as it is small and helpless.
Nothing causes the Californians less trouble and care than the education of their children, which is merely confined to a short period, and ceases as soon as the latter are capable of making a living for themselves—that is, to catch mice and to kill snakes. If the young Californians have once acquired sufficient skill and strength to follow these pursuits, it is all the same to them whether they have parents or not. Nothing is done by these in the way of admonition or instruction, nor do they set an example worthy to be imitated by their offspring. The children do what they please, without fearing reprimand or punishment, however disorderly and wicked their conduct may be. It would be well if the parents did not grow angry when their children are now and then slightly chastised for gross misdemeanor by order of the missionary ; but, instead of bearing with, patience such wholesome correction of their little sons and daughters, they take great offence and become enraged, especially the mothers, who will scream like furies, tear out the hair, beat their naked breasts with a stone, and lacerate their heads with a piece of wood or bone till the blood flows, as I have frequently witnessed on such occasions. * [This statement does not seem to agree well with the alleged indifference of the Californian women towards their children, and the formalities which the Californians were obliged to observe, when meeting with the mothers and other female relations of their wives, renders a total absence of jealousy among them rather doubtful. Dr. Waitz has also pointed out the latter discrepancy while"citing a number of facts contained in our author's work, (Anthro-pologie der Naturvoelker, vol. iv, p. 250.) My object being simply to give an English version of Baegeit's account, I abstain from all comments on such real or seeming incongruities.]
The consequence is, that the children follow their own inclinations without any restraint, and imitate all the bad habits and practices of their equals, or still older persons, without the slightest apprehension of being blamed by their fathers and mothers, even if these should happen to detect them in the act of committing the most disgraceful deeds. The young Californians who live in the missions commence roaming about as soon as mass is over, and those that spend their time in the fields go wherever, and with whomsoever, they please, not seeing for many days the faces of their parents, who, in their turn, do not manifest the slightest concern about their children, nor make any inquiries after them. These are disadvantages which the missionary has no power of amending, and such being the case, it is easy to imagine how little he can do by instruction, exhortation, and punishment, towards improving the moral condition of these young natives.
Heaven may enlighten the Californians, and preserve Europe, and especially Germany, from such a system of education, which coincides, in part, with the plan proposed by that ungodly visionary, J. J. Rousseau, in his " Ernile," and which is also recommended by some other modern philosophers of the same tribe. If their designs are carried out, education, so far as faith, religion, and the fear of God are concerned, is not to be commenced before the eighteenth or twentieth year, which, if viewed in the proper light, simply means to adopt the Californian method, and to bring up youth without any education at all.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT REPORT.)
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An Account
of
The Aboriginal Inhabitants
of
THE CALIFORNIAN PENINSULA
AS GIVEN BY
JACOB BAEGERT, A GERMAN JESUIT MISSIONARY, WHO LIVED THERE SEVENTEEN
YEARS DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE LAST CENTURY.
TRANSLATED AND ARRANGED BY CHARLES RAD.
(Continued from the Smithsonian Report for 1863.)
CHAPTER V. — THEIR CHARACTER.
In describing the character of the Californians, I can only say that they are dull, awkward, rude, unclean, insolent, ungrateful, given to lying, thievish, lazy, great talkers, and almost like children in their reasoning and actions. They arc a careless, improvident, unreflecting people, and possess no control over themselves, but follow, in every respect, their natural instincts almost like animals.
They are, nevertheless, like all other native Americans, human beings, real children of Adam, and have not grown out of the earth, or of stones, like moss and other plants, as a certain impudent, lying freethinker gives to understand. I, at least, never saw one growing in such a way, nor have I heard of any of them who originated in that peculiar manner. Like other people, they are possessed of reason and understanding, and their stupidity is not inborn with them, but the result of habit; and I am of opinion that, if their young sons' were sent to European seminaries and colleges, and their girls to convents where young females are instructed, they would prove equal in all respects to Europeans in the acquirement of morals and of useful sciences and arts, as has been the case with many young natives of other American provinces. I have known some of them who learned several mechanical trades in a short lime, often merely by observation; and, on the contrary, others who appeared to me duller, after twelve or more years, than at the time when 1 first became acquainted with them. God and nature have endowed these people with gifts and talents like others; but their rude life hinders the development of these faculties, and thus they remain awkward, dull, and so slow in their understandings that it requires considerable pains, time, and patience to teach them the doctrines and precepts of the Christian faith, insomuch that a sentence of only a few words must be repeated to them twelve times and oftener before they are capable of reciting it.
It may not be out of place to corroborate here what Father Charlevoix says of the Canadians, namely, that no one should think an Indian is convinced of what he has heard because he appears to approve of it. He will assent to anything, even though he has not understood its meaning or reflected upon his answer, and he so does either on account of his indolence or indifference, or from motives of selfishness, in order to please the missionary.
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The Californians do not readily confess a crime unless detected in the act, because they hardly comprehend the force of evidence, and are not at all as-named of lying. A certain missionary sent a native to one of his colleagues with some loaves of bread and a letter stating their number. The messenger ate a part of the bread, and his theft was consequently discovered; another time, when he had to deliver four loaves, he ate two of them, but hid the accompanying letter under a stone while he was thus engaged, believing that his conduct would not be revealed this time, as the letter had not seen him in the act of eating the loaves.
In the mission of St. Borgia the priest ordered his people one day to strew the way with some green herbs, because he was about to bring the holy sacrament to a sick person, and his order was promptly executed by them, but to the great damage of the missionary's kitchen-garden, for they tore up all the cabbages, salad, and whatever vegetables they found there, and threw them on the road.
Yet, notwithstanding their incapacity and slow comprehension, they are, nevertheless, cunning, and show, in many cases, a considerable degree of craftiness. They will sell their poultry to the missionary at the beginning of a sickness, and afterwards exhibit a disposition to eat nothing but chicken-meat, till none of the fowls are left in the coop. A prisoner will feign a dangerous malady and ask for the last sacrament in order to be relieved from his fetters, and to find, subsequently, a chance to escape. They rob the missionary in a hundred ways, and sometimes in the most artful manner. If, for instance, one has pilfered the pantry and left it open in his haste, another one forthwith requests to be admitted to confession, in order to give the thief time for closing the door, and thus to remove all cause of suspicion on the part of the missionary. They also invent stories and relate them to their priest for the purpose of frustrating a marriage engagement, that some other party may obtain the bride. These and many hundred similar tricks have actually been played by them, and show conclusively that they are well capable of reasoning when their self-interest or their needs demand it.
The Californians are audacious and at the same time faint-hearted and timid in a high degree. They climb to the top of the weak, trembling stems, sometimes thirty-six feet high, which are called cardones by the Spaniards, to look out for game or mount an untamed horse, without bridle and saddle, and ride, during the night, upon roads which I was afraid to travel in the daytime. When new buildings are erected, they walk on the miserable, ill-constructed, scaffoldings with, the agility of cats, or venture several leagues into the open sea on a bundle of brushwood, or the thin stem of a palm-tree, without thinking of any danger. But the report of a gun makes them forget their bows and arrows, and half a dozen soldiers are capable of checking several hundred Californians.
Gratitude towards benefactors, respect for superiors, parents, and other relations, and politeness in intercourse with fellow-men, are almost unknown to them. * [According to Baegert's own statement, (p. 309,) the forced departure of the Jesuit missionaries from the peninsula caused great distress among the Indians, who expressed their grief by a general howling and weeping, which shows that the feelings of gratitude and attachment were not entirely wanting in their character, although selfishness may have had a largo share in the demonstration. "The parting scene is well described in a few lines by W. Irving. — Adv: of Captain Bonneville, p. 332.] They speak plainly, and pay compliments to no one. If one of them has received a present, he immediately turns his back upon the donor and walks off without saying a word, unless the Spanish phrase, Dios te lo pagne, or, "God reward you," has been previously, by a laborious process, enforced upon his memory.
Where there is no honor, shame is ever wanting, and therefore I always wondered how the word "ie," that is, "to be ashamed," had been introduced
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into their language; for, among themselves, no one would blush on account of any misdeed he had perpetrated. If one had killed his father and mother, robbed churches, or committed other infamous crimes, and had been a hundred times whipped and pilloried, he would, nevertheless, strut about with a serene brow and an erect head, and without being in the least degraded in the eyes of his people.
Laziness, lying, and stealing are their hereditary vices and principal moral defects. They are not a people upon whose word any reliance can be placed, nut they will answer in one breath six times "yes" and as many times "no," without feeling ashamed, or even perceiving that they contradict themselves. They are averse to any labor not absolutely necessary to supply them with the means of satisfying hunger. If any work occurred in the mission, it was necessary to drive and urge them constantly to their task, and a great number complained of sickness during the week-days, for which reason I always called the Sunday a day of miracles, because all those who had been sick the whole week felt wonderfully well on that day. If they were only a little more industrious, they might improve their condition, to a certain extent, by plant-ing some maize, pumpkins, and cotton, or by keeping small flocks of goats, sheep, or even a few cattle; and, having now learned to prepare the skins of deer, they could easily supply themselves with garments. But nothing of this kind is to be expected of them. They do not care to cat pigeons, unless they fly roasted into their mouths.* [German proverb.] To work to-day and to earn the fruit of their labor only three, or six mouths afterwards seems to bo incompatible with their character, and for this reason there is little hope that they will ever adopt a different mode of life.
Books could be filled with accounts of their thefts. They will not touch gold or silver; but anything that can be chewed, be it raw or cooked, above the ground or below, ripe or unripe, is not more safe from them than the mouse from the cat, if the eye of the owner be only diverted for a moment. The herdsman will not even spare the dog that has been given to him to watch the flock of sheep or goats intrusted to his care. While one day observing, unseen, my cook, who was engaged in boiling meat, I noticed that he took one piece alter another out of the kettle, bit off a part, and threw it again into the vessel. The meal on the missionary's table, when he is suddenly called away, is not safe from their thievery, and even the holy wafers in the sacristy are in danger of being taken by them. Yet they sometimes lay their hands on things of which they can make no use whatever, in a way really surprising, which shows to what degree stealing has become a habit with them.
For eight years 1 kept, ranging at large, from four to five hundred head of cattle, and sometimes as many goats and sheep, until the constant robberies of the Indians of my own and the neighboring mission compelled mo to give up cattle-breeding. [8] In the bodies of nineteen cows and oxen, that had been killed in one day in the mission, there were found, after the removal of the skin, more than eight flint-points of arrows, the shafts of which had been broken off by the wounded animals while passing through the rocks and bushes. I believe that more of these animals were killed and eaten by the natives than were brought to the mission for consumption, and horses and asses suffered in like manner.
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In order to be exempt from labor, or to escape the punishment for gross misdeeds, the Californians sometimes counterfeit dangerously sick or dying persons. Many of those who were carried to the mission in such a feigned state by their comrades received a sound flogging, which suddenly restored them to health. Without mentioning all the cases that fell under my notice, I will speak of two individuals who represented dying persons so well that I did not hesitate to give them extreme auction. Another really frightened me by pretending to be infected with the smallpox, which actually raged in the neighboring mission, causing its priest for three months, day and night, a vast deal of trouble and cave, and keeping him almost constantly on horseback. A fourth, whose name was Clement, seemed also resolved to give up the ghost. With him, however, the difficulty was that he had never seen a dying person, not even his wife, whom I had buried, and often visited during her sickness, without ever finding the husband at home. But having witnessed the death of many cows and oxen, which his arrows had brought down, he imitated the dying beast so naturally, by lolling out his tongue and licking his lips, that he went afterwards always by the name of Clemente vacca or Cow Clement.
Nothing excites the admiration of the Californians. They look upon the most splendid ecclesiastic garments, embroidered with gold and silver, with as much indifference as though the material consisted of wool and the galoons of common flax. They would rather see a piece of meat than the rarest manufactures of Milan and Lyons, and resemble, in that respect, a certain Canadian who had been in France, and remarked, after his return to Canada, that nothing in Paris had pleased him better than the butcher-shops.* [Mr. Catlin relates a similar circumstance of a party of Iowa Indians that were exhibited in London. After their first drive through the city, "they returned to their lodgings in great glee, and amused us at least for an hour with their first impressions of London, the leading, striking feature of which, and the one that seemed to afford them the greatest satisfaction, was the quantity of fresh meat that they saw in every street hanging up at the doors and windows." — Catlin's Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe. New York, 1848: vol. ii, p. 9.]
They are not in the least degree susceptible of disgust, but will touch and handle the uncleanest objects as though they were roses, killing spiders with their lists, and taking hold of toads without aversion. They use as a covering the filthiest rag, and wear it until it rots on their bodies. In person they are exceedingly dirty, and waste hardly any time in decorating and embellishing themselves. I must mention here, also, that they are in the habit of washing themselves with urine, which renders their persons very disagreeable, as 1 have often experienced when I had to confess them. I was informed, by reliable people that they eat a certain kind of large spiders, and likewise the vermin which they take from each other's heads; but I never saw them doing it: whereas I saw them frequently fetch their make porridge at noon in a half-cleaned turtle-shell which they had used the whole morning to carry the dung from the folds of the sheep and goats.
Concerning their improvement by the introduction of the Christian religion, I am unable to bestow much praise upon those among whom I lived seventeen years, during which period I had sufficient opportunity to become thoroughly acquainted with their character; but I must confess, to my greatest affliction, that the seed of the Divine Word has borne but little fruit among them; for this seed fell into heart's already obdurated in vice from their very infancy by seduction and bad example, which all pains and exertions on the part of the missionary were unavailing to remove. The occasions for evil-doing, among young and old, are of daily occurrence, and numberless. The parents themselves give the worst example, and the Spanish soldiers, cowherds, and a few others who come to the country for the purpose of pearl-fishing and mining, contribute not a little to increase vice among the native population. The mo-
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tives, on the other hand, which act elsewhere as checks upon the conduct of the people, and keep them within the bounds of decency, are not at all understood or appreciated by the Californians, for which reason the teachings of religion can make but, little impression upon their unprepared minds; and being thus unrestrained by any considerations, they easily yield to the impulses of their character, in which a strong passion for illegal sexual intercourse forms a prominent feature. In all bad habits and vices the Californian women fully equal the men, but surpass them in impudence and want of devotion, contrary to the habit of the female sex in all the rest of the world. There were certainly some among the Californians who led edifying lives and behaved in a praiseworthy manner after having embraced the Christian faith; but their number was very small; the reverse, on the contrary, being the general rule to such a degree that the wicked and vicious formed the great majority of the natives.
CHAPTER VI. — THEIR CHARACTER, CONTINUED. — AN ACCOUNT OP THE ASSASSINATION OF THE JESUIT FATHERS TAMARAL AND CARRANCO.* [This episode in the missionary history of California forms a separate chapter in the third part of our author's work; but as it throws much light on the temperament of the natives, I have inserted it in this place.]
To all other bad qualities of the Californians may be added their vindictiveness and cruelty. They care very little for the life of man, and an insignificant cause will stimulate them to commit a murder. Among other cases which happened while I lived in their country, I will mention that of the master of a small ship loaded with provisions for two poor missions. This man had scolded a number of natives for some cause or other, which they resented by breaking his skull with a heavy stone, while he was eating his supper on the shore. His ship they abandoned to wind and waves. In the year 1760, a boy of about sixteen years stabbed another of the same age with a knife in the abdomen, and struck him on the head with a heavy club, almost within sight of the whole tribe, and only a stone's throw from the church and the house of the missionary. The murderer had already selected a horse on which to escape, and intended to save himself within a church thirty leagues distant from the place where the crime was committed; but he failed to effect his flight. [9]
Up to the year 1750 the Californians had revolted at different times and places, and compelled several missionaries to abandon their stations, and to seek safety in other quarters. The natives were stirred up to these insurrections either by their conjurers or sorcerers, whose influence had been considerably reduced, or because it was requested of them to keep those promises which they tad made when receiving the holy baptism.
The most extensive and dangerous revolt of all began in the year 1733, in the southern part of the peninsula, among two tribes called the Pericucs and Coras, who are to this day of a very fierce, unruly, and untractable character, and who gave much trouble to Father Ignatius Tirs, from Kommotau, in Bohemia, the last Jesuit missionary who resided in their district. [10]
In the year 1733 there existed in that part of the country, which was inhabited by several thousand natives, four missions, with three priests, who had in all only six soldiers for their protection. The missions were the following: La Paz, without a resident priest, and guarded by one soldier; St. Rosa, under Father Sigismund Taraval, a Spaniard, bom in Italy, protected by three soldiers ; St. Yago, over which Father Lorenzo Carranco, a Mexican, of Spanish
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parentage, resided, with two soldiers; and St. Joseph del Cabo, under Father Nicolas Tamaral, from Seviila, in Spain, without any guard.
The motives leading to this insurrection, which were afterwards freely divulged by the natives, consisted in their unwillingness to content themselves with one wife, although they had promised to renounce polygamy, and their displeasure at being reprimanded for certain transgressions deserving the censure of their spiritual advisers. The ringleaders and principal movers of the rebellion were two individuals, Boton and Chicori by name, who exerted a great influence among the natives, and prepared everything in secret for the outbreak. Their object was to kill the three priests, to exterminate all traces of Christianity, which most of them had adopted ten years before, and to resume their former loose and independent manner of living. Their design became, however, known, and the fire was extinguished before it could blaze up in full flames. The Indians feigned a friendly disposition, and a kind of peace was established towards the beginning of the year 1734. But as this peace was not concluded with sincerity, it could not be of a long duration. The treacherous rebels soon again made attempts to carry out at all hazards the objects they had in view, and really succeeded in the following October, though not so completely as they wished, since Father Taraval found the means to escape their murderous hands.
The six soldiers were their principal obstacle. Meeting in the field with one of them of the mission of St. Rosa, they assassinated him, and sent word to the mission that he was very ill, requesting the priest either to come to the place in order to confess him, or to order the two remaining soldiers to transport the patient to the station, their intention being to decoy the one or the others, and to take their lives. But fortunately the messenger delivered his commission in such an awkward manner that the crime they had already perpetrated, as well as their further designs, could be easily divined, for which reason neither the priest nor the soldiers complied with their request. A few days afterward they killed also the only soldier belonging to the mission de la Paz.
The rumor of these two murders, and other indubitable signs of an impending mutiny and general uprising in the south, were spread abroad, and soon reached the ears of the Superior of the missions, who was then at that of the Seven Dolors, nearly ninety leagues from the place where these events had occurred. He sent orders immediately to the three priests whose lives were endangered to save themselves by flight, but the letters fell into the hands of the mutineers, and would, besides, at any rate have arrived too late to avert the peril.
It was the intention of the conspirators to strike the first blow against the mission of St. Joseph and Father Tamaral; but learning that. Father Carranco had already received intelligence of their plans, they rushed with all speed upon his mission before he could make any preparations for defence, or effect his escape from the place. It was on a Saturday, and the 2d of October, when they arrived at the mission of St. Yago. The father had just said mass, and had locked himself in his room to perform his private devotions. Most unfortunately the two soldiers, who formed his whole body-guard, had left the place on horseback in order to bring in some head of cattle for the catechumens and other people of the mission. After a while the returned messengers, whom Father Carranco had despatched to the mission of St. Joseph to warn Father Tamaral of the danger to which he was exposed, entered the room. Father Carranco was reading his answer, when the murderers entered the house and fell upon him. Some threw him on the ground and dragged him by his feet to the front of the church, while others pierced his body with many arrows, and beat him with stones and clubs till he expired.
A little native boy, who used to wait upon the father when he took his meals, was a witness to the act, and shed tears when he beheld his benefactor's mournful fate; upon which one of the barbarians seized the boy by the legs and smashed his head against the wall, saying, that since he showed so much
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regret at the death of his master, he should also serve him and bear him company in the other world. Among the murderers were some whom the father had considered as the most reliable of his flock, and whose fidelity he never had doubted.
Having torn the garments from the lifeless body, they treated it in a most abominable manner in order to wreak their vengeance, and they finally threw it on a burning pile. After this they set the church and the house on fire, and burned to ashes the utensils of the church, the altar, the representations of our Saviour and of the Saints, and everything else that they could not apply to their own use. In the mean time the two unarmed soldiers, who had been sent after cattle, returned. They were compelled to dismount and to kill the cows for the malefactors, after which the savages despatched them with a shower of arrows.
On the following day, the same fate befell Father Tamaral, the priest of the mission of St. Joseph, twelve leagues distant, from that of St. Yago, for as soon as the villains had committed their crime at the one place, they directed their march to the other. Father Tamaral, not believing the report of his colleagues, was quietly sitting in his house, when the savage crowd, considerably increased by members of his own parish, made their appearance in the mission. In their usual manner, they demanded something from the missionary, for the purpose of finding a pretext for quarrelling and commencing their hostilities, in case the priest should disappoint them in their wishes. But their behavior, and the arms which they all carried with them, soon convinced the missionary that they had other designs, and he consequently not only complied with their requests, but gave them even more than they demanded. Being thus baffled in their attempt, and full of eagerness to carry out, their bloody plan, they put aside all dissimulation and attacked the missionary without further delay. They threw him on the ground, dragged him into the open air, and discharged their arrows upon him. One of their number, whom the father had a short time before presented with a large knife, added ingratitude to cruelty by burying the weapon in his body.
Thus the Fathers Tamaral and Carranco were led to the shambles by their own flock, and closed their days in California, after they had spent many years in that country, and, by a blameless life and great zeal, proved themselves worthy to die the death of martyrs. The abuses to which the savages subjected the body of the deceased priest were greater, in this instance, and they exhibited more wantonness in the destruction of the church and other property than on the preceding day, because the crowd was larger and had become more infuriated by previous success.
Father Taraval, of St. Rosa, the third priest of whom they intended to make a victim, succeeded in making good his flight. He sojourned for the moment on the western coast of California, at the station of All Saints, which formed an adjunct to his own mission, and was a two days' journey distant from St. Joseph. Being warned in due time by some faithful Indians of the danger that threatened him, he packed up in great haste his most needful things and rode at full speed, in company with his two soldiers, during the night of the fourth of October towards the opposite shore of the peninsula, where he embarked near the mission of La Paz in a small vessel, which had been despatched to that place when the first news of the impending rebellion became known. He landed in safety at the mission of the Seven Dolors, then situated near the sea; leaving behind him the smoking rains of four missions that had been totally destroyed in less than four days, but which could only be rebuilt and raised to their former importance with, great sacrifices of time, labor, and human life.
The rebels, however, fared badly, and had no cause to glory in their triumph. The southern tribes, whose number was four thousand souls at the outbreak of the revolt, are now reduced to four hundred, for not only was war waged against
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them by the Californian and foreign militia, but they had also quarrels among themselves.* [This is the only instance in which the author alludes to wars among the natives in the body of his book, though the first appendix contains, on page 328, the following remark in reiteration of a passage in the French translation of Venegas's work: "All that is said in reference to the warfare of the Californians is wrung. In their former wars they merely attacked the enemy unexpectedly during the night, or from an ambush, and killed as many as they could, without order, previous declaration of war, or any ceremonies whatever."] Yet these causes were less effective in their destruction than the loathsome diseases and ulcers by which they were visited, and among the four hundred that now remain, only a few are free from the general malady and enjoy the blessing of sound health.
On the other hand, be that grace of Heaven a thousand times praised, which, in our day also, inspires among the members of the Catholic priesthood, and especially in the Society of Jesus, men of superior courage who, without the slightest self-interest and for the sole purpose of propagating the Christian faith, not only brave all dangers to which they are exposed in wild countries and amidst barbarous tribes, but who also willingly give up their lives when occasion demands such sacrifices! For besides these two Californian missionaries, many others belonging to the same society have suffered death in the course of this century, while engaged in the conversion of heathen nations. Among the great number of these victims, I will only mention Father Thomas Tello, a Spaniard, and Father Henry Ruhen, a German from Westphalia, both Jesuits, who were killed as late as 1751, by the mutinous Pimas, on the other side of the Californian gulf. With Father Ruhen, I had crossed the Atlantic ocean a year before, and we made also in company the journey overland as far as the Pimeria, where he closed his days six months after his arrival.
CHAPTER VII. — THEIR TREATMENT OF THE SICK. — FUNERAL CUSTOMS.
With all their poor diet and hardships, the Californians are seldom sick. They are in general strong, hardy, and much healthier than the many thousands who live daily in abundance and on the choicest fare that the skill of Parisian cooks can prepare. It is very probable that most Californians would attain a considerable age, after having safely passed through the dangers of their childhood; but they are immoderate in eating, running, bathing, and other matters, and thus doubtless shorten their existence. Excepting consumption and that disease which was brought from America to Spain and Naples, and from thence spread over various countries, they are but little subject to the disorders common in Europe; podagra, apoplexy, dropsy, cold and petechial fevers being almost unknown among them. There is no word in their language to express sickness in general or any particular disease. "To be sick," they signify by the phrase atemba-tie, which means " to lie down on the ground," though all those in good health may be seen in that position the whole day, if they are not searching for food or otherwise engaged. When I asked a, Californian what ailed him, he usually said, "I have a pain in my chest," without giving further particulars.
For the small-pox the Californians are, like other Americans, indebted to Europeans, and this disease assumes a most pestilential character among them. A piece of cloth which a Spaniard, just recovered from the small-pox, had given to a Californian communicated, in the year 1763, the disease to a small mission, and in three months more than a hundred individuals died, not to speak of many others who had been infected, but were saved by the unwearied pains and care of the missionary. Not, one of them would have escaped the malady, had not the majority run away from the neighborhood of the hospital as soon as they discovered the contagious nature of the disease.
In the month of April of the same year, 1763, a young and strong woman of my mission was seized with a very peculiar disorder, consisting in eructa-
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tions of such violent character that the noise almost resembled thunder, and could be heard at a distance of forty and more paces. The eructations lasted about half a minute, and followed each other after an interval of a few minutes. The appetite of the patient was good, and she complained of nothing else. In this condition she remained for a week, when she suddenly dropped down in such a manner that I thought she would never rise again ; but I was mistaken, for the eructations and the peculiar fits continued for three years, until she became at last emaciated and died in the month of July, 1766. A few days after the outbreak of her malady, her husband was attacked by the same disorder, and on my departure, in 1768, 1 left him without hope of recovery. Subsequently the woman's brother and his wife suffered in like manner, and after these several other Californians, principally of the female sex. Neither the oldest of the natives, nor missionaries living for thirty years in the country, had hitherto been acquainted with this extraordinary and apparently contagious disease.
The patience of Californians in sickness is really admirable. Hardly a sigh is heaved by those who lie on the bare ground in the most pitiable condition and racked with pain. They look without dread upon their ulcers and wounds, and submit to burning and cutting, or make incisions in their own flesh for extracting thorns and splinters, with as much indifference as though the operation were performed on somebody else. It is, however, an indication of approaching death when they lose their appetite.
Their medical art is very limited, consisting almost exclusively, whatever the character of the disease may be, in the practice of binding, when feasible, a cord or coarse rope tightly around the affected part of the body. Sometimes they make use of a kind of bleeding by cutting with a sharp stone a few small openings in the inflamed part, in order to draw blood and thus relieve the patient. Though every year a number of Californians die by the bite of the rattlesnake, their only remedy against such accidents consists in tightly binding the injured member a little above the wound towards the heart; but. if the part wounded by the reptile is a finger or a hand, they simply cut it off, and I knew several who had performed this cure on themselves or on individuals of their families. Now-a-days they beg in nearly all cases of disease for tallow to rub the affected part, and also for Spanish snuff which they use against headache and sore eyes. Excepting the remedies just mentioned, they have no appliances whatever against ulcers, wounds, or other external injuries, and far less against internal disorders; and though they may repeatedly have seen the missionary using some simple for removing a complaint, they will, either from forgetfulness or indolence, never employ it for themselves or others, but always apply to the missionary again.
They do not, however, content themselves with these natural remedies, but have also recourse to supernatural means, which certainly never brought about a recovery. There arc many impostors among them, pretending to possess the power of curing diseases, and the ignorant Indians have so much faith in their art that they send for one or more of these scoundrels whenever they are indisposed. In treating a sick person, these jugglers employ a small tube, which they use for sucking or blowing the' patient for a while, making, also, various grimaces and muttering something which they do not understand themselves, until, finally, after much hard breathing and panting, they show the patient a flint, or some other object previously hidden about their persons, pretending to have at last removed the real cause of the disorder. Twelve of these liars received one day, by my orders, the punishment they deserved, and the whole people had to promise to desist in future from these practices, or else I would no more preach for them. But when, a few weeks afterwards, that individual, who first of all had engaged to renounce the devil, fell sick, he sent immediately again for the blower to perform the usual jugglery.
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It is to be feared that some of those who are seized with illness far from the mission, and not carried thither, are buried alive, especially old people, and such as have few relations, for they are in the habit of digging the grave two or three days before the patient breathes his last. It seems tedious to them to spend much time near an old, dying person that was long ago a burden to them and looked upon with indifference. A person of my acquaintance restored a girl to life that was already bound up in a deer-skin, according to their custom, and ready for burial, by administering to her a good dose of chocolate. She lived many years afterwards. On their way to the mission, some natives broke the neck of a blind, sick old woman, in order to be spared the trouble of carrying her a few miles further. Another patient, being much annoyed by gnats, which no one felt inclined to keep off from him, was covered up in such a manner that he died of suffocation. In transporting a patient from one place to another, they bind him on a rude litter, made of crooked pieces of wood, which would constitute a perfect rack for any but Indian bones, the carriers being in the habit of running with their charge.
Concerning their consciences and eternity, the Californians are perfectly quiet during their sickness, and die off as calmly as though they were sure of heaven. As soon as a person has given up the ghost, a terrible howling is raised by the women that are present, and by those to whom the news is communicated, yet no one sheds tears, excepting, perhaps, the nearest relations, and the whole proceeding is a mere ceremony. But who would believe that some of them show a dislike to be buried according to the rites of the Catholic religion ? Having noticed that certain individuals, who were dangerously sick, yet still in possession of their faculties, objected to being led or carried to the mission, in order to obtain there both spiritual and material assistance, I inquired the cause of this strange behavior, and was informed they considered it as a derision of the dead to bury them with ringing of the bells, chanting, and Other ceremonies of the Catholic church.
One of them told me they had formerly broken the spine of the deceased before burying them, and had thrown them into the ditch, rolled up like a ball, believing that they would rise up again if not treated in this manner. I saw them, however, frequently putting shoes on the feet of the dead, which rather seems to indicate that they entertain the idea of a journey after death; but whenever I asked them why they observed this probably very ancient custom, they could not give me any satisfactory answer. In time of mourning, both men and women cut off their hair almost entirely, which formerly was given to their physicians or conjurers, who made them into a kind of mantle or large wig, to Be worn on solemn occasions.
When a death has taken place, those who want to show the relations of the deceased their respect for the latter lie in wait for these people, and if they pass they come out from their hiding-place, almost creeping, and intonate a mournful, plaintive, ku, hu, hu ! wounding their heads with pointed, sharp stones, until the blood flows down to their shoulders. Although this barbarous custom has frequently been interdicted, they are unwilling to discontinue it. When I learned, a few years ago, that some had been guilty of this transgression after the death of a certain woman, I left them the choice either to submit to the fixed punishment or to repeat this mourning ceremony in my presence. They chose the latter, and, in a short time, I saw the blood trickling down from their lacerated heads.
CHAPTER VIII. — THEIR QUALIFICATIONS AND MANNERS.
From what I have already said of the Californians, it might be inferred that they are the most unhappy and pitiable of all the children of Adam. Yet such a supposition would be utterly wrong, and I can assure the reader that, as far as their temporal condition is concerned, they live unquestionably much
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happier than the civilized inhabitants of Europe, not excepting those who seem to enjoy all the felicity that life can afford. Habit renders all things endurable and easy, and the Californian sleeps on the hard ground and in the open air just as well and soft as the rich European on the curtained bed of down in his splendidly decorated apartment. Throughout the whole year nothing happens that causes a Californian trouble or vexation, nothing that renders his life cumbersome and death desirable; for no one harasses and persecutes him, or carries on a lawsuit against him ; neither a hail-storm nor an army can lay waste his fields, and he is not in danger of having his house and barn destroyed by fire. Envy, jealousy, and slander embitter not his lite, and he is not exposed to the fear of losing what he possesses, nor to the care of increasing it. No creditor lays claim to debts; no officer extorts duty, toll, poll-tax, and a hundred other tributes. There is no woman that, spends more for dress than the income- of the husband allows; no husband who gambles or drinks away the money that should serve to support and clothe the family; there are no children to be established in life; no daughters to be provided with husbands; and no prodigal sons that heap disgrace upon whole families. In one word, the Californians do not know the meaning of meum and tuum, those two ideas which, according to St. Gregory, fill the few days of our existence with bitterness and uncountable evils.
Though the Californians seem to possess nothing, they have, nevertheless, all that they want, for they covet nothing beyond the productions of their poor, ill-favored country, and these are always within their reach. It is no wonder, then, that they always exhibit a joyful temper, and constantly indulge in merriment and laughter, showing thus their contentment, which, after all, is the real source of happiness.
The Californians know very little of arithmetic, some of them being unable to count further than six, while others cannot number beyond three, insomuch that none of them can say how many fingers he has. They do not possess anything that is worth counting, and hence their indifference. It is all the same to them whether the year has six or twelve mouths, and the month three or thirty days, for every day is a holiday with them. They care not whether they have one or two or twelve children, or none at all, since twelve cause them no move expense or trouble than one, and the inheritance is not lessened by a plurality of heirs. Any number beyond six they express in their language by muck, leaving it to their confessor to make out whether that number amount.-! to seven, seventy, or seven hundred.
They do not know what a year is, and, consequently, cannot say when it begins and ends. Instead of saying, therefore, "a year ago," or "during this year," the Californians who speak the Waicuri language use the expressions, it is already an umbia past, or, during this ambia, the latter word signifying the pitahaya fruit, of which a description has been given on a previous page. A space of three years, therefore, is expressed by the term " three pitahayas;" yet they seldom make use of such phrases, because they hardly ever speak among themselves of years, but merely say, " long ago," or, " not long ago," being utterly indifferent whether two or twenty years have elapsed since the occurrence of a certain event. For the same reason they do not speak of months, and have not even a name for that space of time. A week, however, they call at present ambuja, that is, "a house," or " a place where one resides," which name they have now, per antonomasiam, bestowed upon the church They are divided into bauds, which alternately spend a week at the mission, where they have to attend church-service, and thus the week has become among them synonymous with the church.
When the Californians visit the missionary for any purpose, they are perfectly silent at first, and when asked the cause of their visit, their first answer is cura, which means " nothing." Having afterwards delivered their speech,
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they sit down, unasked; in doing which the women stretch out their legs, while the men cross them in the oriental fashion. The same habits they observe also in the church and elsewhere. They salute nobody, such a civility being unknown to them, and they have no word to express greeting. If something is communicated to them which they do not like, they spit out sideways and scratch the ground with their left foot to express their displeasure.
The men carry everything on their heads; the women bear loads on their backs suspended by ropes that pass around their foreheads, and in order to protect the skin from injury, they place between the forehead and the rope a piece of untanned deer-hide, which reaches considerably above the head, and resembles, from afar, a helmet, or the high head-dress worn by ladies at the present time.
The Californians have a great predilection for singing and dancing, which are always performed together; the first is called ambera diti, the latter agenari. Their singing is nothing but an inarticulate, unmeaning whispering, murmur-ing, or shouting, which every one intonates according to his own inclination, in order to express his joy. Their dances consist in a foolish, irregular gesticulating and jumping, or advancing, retreating, and walking in a circle. Yet, they take such delight in these amusements that they spend whole nights in their performance, in which respect they much resemble Europeans, of whom certainly more have killed themselves during Shrovetide and at other times by dancing, than by praying and fasting. These pastimes, though innocent in themselves, had to be rigidly interdicted, because the grossest disorders and vices were openly perpetrated by the natives during the performances; but it is hardly possible to prevent them from indulging in their sports. While speaking of these exercises of the natives, I will also mention that they are exceedingly good runners. I would gladly have yielded up to them my three horses for consumption if I had been as swift-footed as they; for, whenever I travelled, 1 became sooner tired with riding than they with walking. They will run twenty leagues to-day, and return to-morrow to the place from whence they started without showing much fatigue. Being one day on the point of setting out on a journey, a little boy expressed a wish to accompany me, and when I gave him to understand that the distance was long, the business pressing, and my horse, moreover, very brisk, he replied with great promptness: "Thy horse will become tired, but I will not." Another time I sent a boy of fourteen years with a letter to the neighboring mission, situated six leagues from my residence. He started at seven o'clock in the morning, and when about a league and a half distant from his place of destination, he met the missionary, to whom the letter was addressed, mounted on a good mule, and on his way to pay me a visit. The boy turned round and accompanied the missionary, with whom he arrived about noon at my mission, having walked within five hours a distance of more than nine leagues.
With boys and girls who have arrived at the age of puberty, with pregnant women, new-born children, and women in child-bed, the Californians observed, and still secretly observe, certain absurd ceremonies of an unbecoming nature, which, for this reason, cannot be described in this book.
There existed always among the Californians individuals of both sexes who played the part of sorcerers or conjurers, pretending to possess the power of exorcising the devil, whom they never saw; of curing diseases, which they never healed; and of producing pitahayas, though they could only eat them. Sometimes they went into caverns, and, changing their voices, made the people believe that they conversed with some spiritual power. They threatened also with famine and diseases, or promised to drive the small-pox and similar plagues away and to other places. When these braggarts appeared formerly in their gala apparel, they wore long mantles made of human hair, of which the missionaries burned a great number in all newly established missions. The object
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of these impostors was to obtain their food without the trouble of gathering it in the fields, for the silly people provided them with the best they could find, in order to keep them in good humor and to enjoy their favor. Their influence is very small now-a-days; yet the sick do not cease to place their confidence in them, as I mentioned in the preceding chapter.
It might be the proper time now to speak of the form of government and the religion of the Californians previous to their conversion to Christianity; but neither the one nor the other existed among them. They had no magistrates, no police, and no laws; idols, temples, religions worship or ceremonies were unknown to them, and they neither believed in the true and only God, nor adored false deities. * [According to Father Piccolo, the Californians worshipped the moon; and Venegas mentions the belief in a good and bad principle as prevailing among the Perienes and Cotehimies.—(Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturrolker, vol. iv, p. 250.) These statements are emphatically refuted by Baegert in his first appendix, p. 315, where he says: "It is not true that they worshipped the moon, or practiced any kind of idolatry."] They were all equals, and every one did as he pleased, without asking his neighbor or earing for his opinion, and thus all vices and misdeeds remained unpunished, excepting such cases in which the offended individual or his relations took the law into their own hands and revenged themselves on the guilty party. The different tribes represented by no means communities of rational beings, who submit to laws and regulations and obey their superiors, but resembled far more herds of wild swine, which run about according to their own liking, being together to-day and scattered to-morrow, till they meet again by accident at some future time. In one word, the Californians lived, salva tenia, as though they had been freethinkers and materialists. [11]
I made diligent inquiries, among those with whom I lived, to ascertain whether they had any conception of God, a future life, and their own souls, but I never could discover the slightest trace of such a knowledge. Their language has no words for "God" and "soul," for which reason the missionaries were compelled to use in their sermons and religious instructions the Spanish words Dios and alma. It could hardly be otherwise with people who thought of nothing but eating and merry-making and never reflected on serious matters, but dismissed everything that lay beyond the narrow compass of their conceptions with the phrase aipekeriri, which means "who knows that?" I often asked them whether they had never put to themselves the question who might be the creator and preserver of the sun, moon, stars, and other objects of nature, but was always sent home with a vara, which means "no" in their language.
CHAPTER IX. — HOW THEY LIVED BEFORE AND AFTER THEIR CONVERSION.
I will now proceed to describe in a few words in what manner the unbaptized Californians spent their days.
In the evening, when they had eaten their fill, they either lay down, or sit together and chatted till they were tired of talking, or had communicated to each other all that they knew for the moment. In the morning they slept until hunger forced them to rise. As soon as they awakened, the eating recommenced, if anything remained; and the laughing, talking, and joking were likewise resumed. After this morning-prayer, when the sun was already somewhat high, the men seized their bows and arrows, and the women hitched on their yokes and turtle-shells. Some went to the right, others to the left; here six, there four, eight, or three, and sometimes one alone, the different bands always continuing the laughing and chattering on their way. They looked around to espy a mouse, lizard, snake, or perhaps a hare or deer; or tore up here and there a yuka [Yucca] or other root, or cut off some aloes. A part of the day
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thus spent, a pause was made. They sat or lay down in the shade, if they happened to find any, without, however, allowing their tongues to come to a stand-still, or they played or wrestled with each other, to find out who was the strongest among them and could throw his adversaries to the ground, in which sport the women likewise participated. Now they cither returned to the camping-place of the preceding night, or went a few leagues further, until they came to some spot supplied with water, where they commenced singeing, burning, roasting, and pounding the captures they had made during the day. They ate as long as they had anything before them and as there was room in their stomachs, and after a long, childish or indecent talk, they betook themselves to vest again. In this manner they lived throughout the whole year, and their conversation, if it did not turn on eating, had always some childish trick or knavery for its subject. Those of the natives who cannot be put to some useful labor, while living at the mission, spend their time pretty much in the same way.
Who would expect, under these circumstances, to find a spark of reli-giou among the Californians? It is true, they spoke of the course taken by a deer that had escaped them at nightfall with an arrow in his side, and which they intended to pursue the next morning, hut they never speculated on the course of the sun and the other heavenly bodies; they talked about their pitahayas, even long before they were ripe, yet it never occurred to them to think of the Creator of the pitahayas and other productions around them.
I am not unacquainted with the statement of a certain author, according to which one Californian tribe at least was found to possess some knowledge of the incarnation of the Son of God and the Holy Trinity; but this is certainly an error, considering that such a knowledge could only have been imparted by the preachers of the Gospel. The whole matter doubtless originated in a deception on the part of the natives, who are very mendacious and inclined to invent stories calculated to please the missionary; while, on the other hand, every one may be easily deceived by them who has not yet found out their tricks. It is, moreover, a very difficult task to learn anything from them by inquiry; for, besides their shameless lies and unnecessarily evasive answers, they entangle, from inborn awkwardness, the subject in question in such a pitiable manner, and contradict themselves so frequently, that the inquirer is very apt to lose his patience. A missionary once requested me to find out whether a certain N. had been married before his baptism, which he received when a grown man, with the sister of M. A simple "yes" or "no" would have answered the question and decided the matter at once. But. the examination lasted about three-quarters of an hour, at the cud of which I knew just as little as before. I wrote down the questions and answers, and sent the protocol to the missionary, who was no more successful than myself in arriving at the final result, whether N. had been the husband of the sister of M. or not. So confused are the minds of these Californian Hottentots.
Of baptized Indians, there resided in each mission as many as the missionary could support and occupy with field-labor, knitting, weaving, and other work. Where it was possible to keep a good number of sheep, spinning-wheels and looms were in operation, and the people received move frequently new clothing than at other stations. In each mission there were also a number of natives appointed for special service, namely, a sacristan, a goat-herd, a tender of the sick, a catechist, a superintendent, a fiscal, and two dirty cooks, one for the missionary and the other for the Californians. Of the fifteen missions, however, there were only four, and these but thinly populated, which could support and clothe all their parishioners, and afford them a home during the whole year. In the other missionary stations, the whole people were divided into three or four bands which appeared alternately once in a month at the mission and encamped there for a week.
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Every day at sunrise they all attended mass, during which they said their beads. Before and after mass they recited the Christian doctrine, drawn up for them in questions and answers in their own language. An address or exhortation delivered by the missionary in the same language, and lasting from half an hour to three-quarters of an hour, concluded the religious service of the morning. This over, breakfast was given to those who were engaged in some work, while the others went where they pleased in order to gather their daily bread in the fields, if the missionary was unable to provide them with food. Towards sunset, a signal with the bell assembled them all again in the church to say their beads and the litany of Loretto, or to sing it on Sundays and holidays* The bell was not only rung three times a day, as usual, but also at three o'clock in the afternoon, in honor of the agony of Christ, and also, according to Spanish custom, at eight o'clock in the evening, to pray for the faithful departed. When the week was over, the parishioners returned to their respective homes, some three or six, others fifteen or twenty leagues distant from the mission.
On the principal holidays of the year, and also during passion-week, all members of the community were assembled at the mission, and they received at such times, besides their ordinary food, some head of cattle and a good supply of Indian corn for consumption; dried figs and raisins were also given them without stint in all missions where such fruit was raised. On these occasions, articles of food and apparel were likewise put up as prizes for those who were winners in the games they played, or excelled in shooting at the target.
Fiscals and superintendents, appointed from among the different bands, preserved order within and without the mission. It was their duty to lead all those who were present to the church when the bell rung, and to collect and drive in to the mission that portion of the community which had been roaming for three weeks at large. They were to prevent disorders, public scandals and knaveries, and to enforce decent behavior and silence during church-service. It was further their duty to make the converts recite the catechism morning and evening, and to say their beads in the fields; to punish slight transgressions, and to report more serious offences at the proper place; to take care of those who fell sick in the wilderness, and to convey them to the mission, &c, &c. As a badge of their office they carried a cane which was often silver-headed. Most of them were very proud of their dignity, but only a few performed their duty, for which reason they received their flogging oftener than the rest, and had to bear the blows and cuffs, which it was their duty to administer to others. * [On a preceding page the author gives, not exactly in the proper place, the following particulars concerning the penal law established among the Californians: " In cases of extraordinary crimes, the punishment of the natives was fixed by the royal officer who com-manded the Californian squadron; common misdeeds fell within the jurisdiction of the corpora! of the soldiers stationed in each mission. Capital punishment, by shooting, was only resorted to in cases of murder; all other transgressions were either punished by a number of lashes administered with a leather whip on the hare skin of the culprit, or his feet put in irons for some days, weeks, or months. As to ecclesiastical punishments, the Roman pontiffs did not think proper to introduce them among the Americans, and fines were likewise out of the question, in accordance with the old German proverb: 'Where there is nothing, the emperor has no rights.'"] There were also catechists appointed upon whom it was in-cumbent to lead the prayers, and to give instruction to the most ignorant of the catechumens.
Every day, in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, either the missionary himself, or some one appointed by him, distributed boiled wheat or maize to the pregnant women, the blind, old and infirm, if he was unable to feed them all; and for those who were sick, meat was cooked at least once every day. When any work was done, all engaged in it were fed three times a day. Yet their labor was by no means severe. Would to God it had been
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possible to make them work like the country people and mechanics in Germany! How many knaveries and vices would have been avoided every day! The work always commenced late, and ceased before the sun was down. At noon they rested two hours. It is certain that six laborers in Germany do more work in six days than twelve Californians in twelve days. And, moreover, all their labor was lor their own or their countrymen's benefit; for the missionary derived nothing but care and trouble from it, and might easily have obtained elsewhere the few bushels of wheat or Indian corn which he needed for his own consumption.
For the rest, the missionary was the only refuge of the small and grown, the sick and the healthy, and he had to bear the burden of all concerns of the mission. Of him the natives requested food and medicine, clothing and shoes, tobacco for smoking and snuffing, and tools, if they intended to manufacture anything. He had to settle their quarrels, to take charge of the infants who had lost their parents, to provide for the sick, and to appoint watchers by the dying. I have known missionaries who seldom said their office while the sun shone, so much were they harassed the whole day. Fathers Ugarte and Druet, for instance, worked in the fields, exposed to the hot sun, like the poorest peasants or journeymen, standing in the water and mire up to their knees. Others carried on the trades of tailors and carpenters, masons, brick-burners and saddlers; they acted as physicians, surgeons, organists, and schoolmasters, and had to perform the duties of parents, guardians, wardens of hospitals, beadles, and many others. The intelligent reader, who has so far become acquainted with the condition of the country and its inhabitants, can easily perceive that these exertions on the part of the missionaries were dictated by necessity, and he will, also, be enabled to imagine in what their rents and revenues, in California not only, but in a hundred other places of America, may have consisted.
CHAPTER X. — THEIR LANGUAGE.
The account thus far given of the character and the habits of the Californians will, to a certain extent, enable the reader to form, in advance, an estimate of their language. A people without laws and religion, who think and speak of nothing but their food and other things which they have in common with animals, who carry on no trade, and entertain no friendly intercourse with neighboring tribes, that consist, like themselves, only of a few hundred souls and always remain within their own small district, where nothing is to be seen but thorns, rocks, game, and vermin, such a people, 1 say, cannot bo expected to speak an elegant and rich language. A man of sixty years ran away from my mission with his son, a boy of about six years, and they spent five years alone in the Californian wilderness, when they were found and brought back to the mission. Every one can imagine how and on what subjects these two hermits may have conversed in their daily intercourse. The returned lad, who had then nearly reached his twelfth year, was hardly able to speak three words in succession, and excepting water, wood, fire, snake, mouse, and the like, he could name nothing, insomuch that he was called the dull and dumb Pablo, or Paul, by his own countrymen. The story of this boy may almost be applied to the whole people.
Leaving aside a great many dialects and offshoots, six entirely different languages have thus far been discovered in California, namely, the Laymona, about the mission of Loreto; the Cotshimi, in the mission of St. Xavier, and others towards the north; the Utshiti and the Pericua in the south; the still unknown language spoken by the nations whom Father Linck visited in 1766, during his exploration of the northern part of the peninsula; and, lastly, the Waicuri language, of which I am now about to treat, having learned as much of it as was necessary for conversing with the natives.
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The Waicuri lauguage * [Waicuri Father Begert's very curious account of the language is contained on pages 177-194 of the " Nachrichten." It comprises, besides the general remarks on the characteristic features of the language, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, both with literal and free translations, and the conjugation of a verb.—W. W. T.—The Literature of American Aboriginal Languages, by Hermann E. Ludewig, with Additions and Corrections, by Professor William W. Turner. London, 1858, p. 245. It may be remarked in this place, that the author's name is printed in three different ways, viz: Berger, Begert, and Baegert. In writing "Baegert," I follow Waits:, who probably gives the correct spelling of the name.] is of an exceedingly barbarous and rude description, by which rudeness, however, I do not mean a hard pronunciation or a succession of many consonants, for these qualities do not form the essence of a language, but merely its outward character or conformation, and are more or less imaginary, as it were, among those who are unacquainted with it. It is well known that Italians and Frenchmen consider the German language as barbarous, while the Germans have the like opinion of the Bohemian or Polish languages; but these impressions cease as soon as the Frenchmen or Italians can converse in German, and the Germans in the Bohemian or Polish tongues.
In the Waicuri alphabet the letters o, f,g,l,x,z are wanting, also the s, excepting in the tsh; but the great deficiency of the language consists in the total absence of a great many words, the want of which would seem to render it almost impossible for reasonable beings to converse with each other and to receive instruction in the Christian religion. For whatever is not substantial, and cannot be seen or touched or otherwise perceived by the senses, has no name in the Waicuri language. There are no nouns whatever for expressing virtues, vices, or the different dispositions of the mind, and there exist only a few adjectives of this class, namely, merry, sad, lazy, and angry, all of which merely denote such humors as can be perceived in a person's face. All terms relating to rational human and civil life, and a multitude of words for signifying other objects, are entirely wanting, so that it would be a vain trouble to look in the Waicuri vocabulary for the following expressions: life, death, weather, time, cold, heat, world, rain, understanding, will, memory, knowledge honor, decency, consolation, peace, quarrel, member, joy, imputation, mind, friend, friendship, truth, bashfulness, enmity, faith, love, hope, wish, desire, hate, anger, gratitude, patience, meekness, envy, industry, virtue, vice, beauty, shape, sickness, danger, fear, occasion, thing, punishment, doubt, servant, master, virgin, judgment, suspicion, happiness, happy, reasonable, bashful, decent, clever, moderate, pious, obedient, rich, poor, young, old, agreeable, lovely, friendly, half, quick, deep, round, contended, more, less, to greet, to thank, to punish, to be silent, to promenade, to complain, to worship, to doubt, to buy, to flatter, to caress, to persecute, to dwell, to breathe, to imagine, to idle, to insult, to console, to live, and a thousand words of a similar character. [12]
The word living they have neither as a noun nor as a verb, neither in a natural nor a moral sense; but only the adjective alive. Bad, narrow, short, distant, little, &c, they cannot express unless by adding the negation ja or ra\ to the words good, wide, long, near, and much. They have particular words for signifying an old man, an old woman, a young man, a young woman, and so forth; but the terms old or young do not exist in their language. The Waicuri contains only four words for denoting the different colors, insomuch that the natives cannot distinguish in their speech yellow from red, blue from green, black from brown, white from ash-colored, &c.
Now let the reader imagine how difficult it is to impart to the Californians any knowledge of European affairs; to interpret for them some article from a
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Madrid newspaper, if one happens to be seen in California a year or more after its appearance; or to enlarge upon the merits of the Saints, and to explain, for instance, how they renounced all vanity, forsaking princely possessions and even kingdoms, and distributed their property among the poor; how their lives were spent in voluntary poverty, chastity, and humility; and, further, that they subjected themselves for years to the severest penances, conquered their passions and subdued their inclinations; that they devoted daily eight and more hours to prayer and contemplation; that they disregarded worldly concerns and even their own lives; slept on the bare ground, and abstained from meat and wine. For want of words, the poor preacher has to place his finger to his month in order to illustrate eating; and concerning the comforts of life, every Californian will tell him that he never, as long as he lived, slept in a bed; that he is entirely unacquainted with such articles as bread, wine, and beer; and that, excepting rats and mice, he hardly ever tasted any kind of meat.
The above-mentioned and a great many other words are wanting in the Waicuri language, simply because those who speak it never use these terms; their almost animal-like existence and narrow compass of ideas rendering the application of such expressions superfluous. But concerning heat or cold, rain or sickness, they content themselves by saying, it is warm, it rains, this or that person is sick, and nothing else. Sentences like the following: " The sickness has much weakened a certain person;" or, "cold is less endurable than heat;" or, "after rain follows sunshine," &c, are certainly very simple in themselves and current among all peasants in Europe, yet infinitely above the range of thought and speech of the Californians.
They cannot express the degrees of relationship, for instance, father, mother, son, brother, nor the parts of the human body, nor many other words, such as word or speech, breath, pain, comrade, &c., singly and without prefixing the possessive pronouns my, thy, our, &c. They say, therefore, bedare, edare, tiare, kepedare, &c., that is, my, thy, his, our father ; and hecue, e'cue, ticue, kepecue, that is, my, thy, his, our mother. So also mapa, etapa, tapa, that is, my, thy, his forehead. Minamu, einamu, tinamu, that is, my, thy, his nose; betania, etania, tishania, my, thy, his word; menembeu, enembeu, tenembeu, my, thy, his pain, &c. But no Californian who speaks the Waicuri is able to say what the words are, cue, apa, namu, tania, and nembeu, express, for father, forehead, word, or pain are significations which they never thought of using in a general sense, and far less has it ever entered their minds to speak, for instance, of the duties of a father, of a gloomy, a serene, a narrow or large forehead, or to make a long, a flat or an aquiline nose the subject of their conversation.
The Waicuri language is exceedingly deficient in prepositions and conjunctions. Of the first class of words, there exist only two that have a definite application, namely, tina, on or upon, and dive or tipitsheu, which is equivalent to the phrase on account of or for (propter.) The prepositions out, in, before, through, with, for (pro,) against, by, &c., are either represented by the words me, pe, and te, which have all the same meaning, or they are not expressed at all. The article is entirely wanting, and the nouns are not declined. The conjunction tshie, and, is always placed after the words which it has to connect; the other conjunctions, such as that, but, than, because, neither, nor, yet, as, though, &c., are all wanting, and likewise the relative pronouns which and who, so frequently occurring in other languages. They have no adverbs derived from adjectives, and hardly any of the primitive class. The comparative and superlative cannot be expressed, and even the words more and leu do not exist, and instead of saying, therefore, Peter is taller and has more than Paul, they have to use the paraphrase, Peter is tall and has much, Paul is not tall and has not much.
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Passing to the verbs, I will mention that these have neither a conjunctive nor a mandative mood, and only an imperfect optative mood, and that the passive form is wanting as well as the reciprocal verb, which is used in the Spanish and French languages. The verbs have only one mood and three tenses, viz., a present, preterit, and future, which are formed by affixing certain endings to the root of the verb, namely, in the present re or reke ; in the preterit rikiri, rujere, raupe, or raupere ; in the future me, meme or eneme.* [From the conjugation of the verb amukiri, given at the end of this chapter, it is evident that these ending's have do reference to the person or number of the tenses, but may bo indif-ferntly employed.]
Sometimes the natives prefix the syllable ku or a k alone to the plural of the verb, or change its first syllable into ku; for example, piabake, to fight, urnutu, to remember, jake, to chat; but kupidbake, kumutu, and kuake, when they will indicate that there are several persons fighting, remembering, or chatting. A few of their verbs have also a preterit passive participle ; for example, tshipake, to beat, tshipitshurre, a person that has been beaten, plural kutipau. Some nouns and adjectives are likewise subject to changes in the plural number, as, for instance, anal, woman, kanai, women; entuditu, ugly or bad, and entudi-tamma,[1] bad or ugly women. Be expresses I, me (mihi,) me (me) and my; ei means thou, thee (tibi.) thee (te) and thy, and so on through all the personal and possessive pronouns. Yet becun or beticun signifies also my, and ecun or eiticun, thy.
They know nothing of metaphors, for which reason the phrase blessed is the fruit of thy womb in the "Hail Mary" has simply been replaced by thy child. On the other hand they are very ingenious in giving names to objects with which they were before unacquainted, calling, for instance, the door, month; bread, the light; iron, the heavy; wine, bad water; a gun, bow; the functionaries of the mission, bearers of canes ; the Spanish captain, wild or cruel; oxen and cows, deer; horses and mules titshenu-tsha, that is, child of a wise mother; and the missionary, in speaking of or to him, tia-pa-tu, which means one who has his house in the north, &c.
In order to converse in such a barbarous and poor language, a European has to change, as it were, his whole nature and to become almost a Californian himself; but in teaching the natives the doctrines of the Christian religion in their own language, he is very often compelled to make use of paraphrases which, when translated into a civilized language, must have an odd and sometimes even ridiculous sound to Europeans; and as the reader may, perhaps, be curious to know a little more of this peculiar language, I will give as specimens two articles from the Waicuri catechism, namely, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed; each with a double interpretation, and also the whole conjugation of the verb amukiri. [14]
Concerning this Californian Lord's Prayer and Creed and their interpretations, the reader will take notice of the. following explanatory remarks:
1. The first translation, which stands immediately under the Californian text, is perfectly literal and shows the structure of the Waicuri language. This version must necessarily produce a bad effect upon European ears; whereas the second translation, which is leas literal and therefore more intelligible, may servo to convey an idea how the Waicuri text sounds to the natives themselves as well as to those who understand their idiom, and have become accustomed, by long practice, to the awkward position of the words, the absence of relative pronouns and prepositions, and the other deficiencies of the language.
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2. The words holy, church, God, ghost, communion, grace, will, cross, virgin,
name, hell, kingdom, bread, trespass, temptation, creator, forgiveness, life, resurrection, Lord, daily, Almighty, third, &c., are wanting in the Waicuri language, and have either been paraphrased, when it was feasible, or replaced by corresponding Spanish words, in order to avoid too lengthy and not very intelligible
sentences. Some words that could bo omitted without materially changing the
sense, such as daily in the Lord's Prayer, and Lord in the Creed, have been
entirely dropped.
3. The sentence "he shall come to judge the living and the dead" could not
be literally translated, because the Californians are unable to comprehend the
moral and theological sense of that passage and others of similar character.
Nor could they bo taught in the Creed that the flesh will live again, for by
"flesh" they understand nothing but the meat of doer and cows. They would
laugh at the idea that men wore also flesh, and consequently be led to believe in
the resurrection of deer and cows, when they were told that the flesh will rise
again on the day of judgment.
4. In the Waicuri language Heaven is usually called aena, that is, the above; and also, but less frequently, tekerckdaatemba, which means curred or arched earth or land, because the firmament, resembles a vault or arch. Hell they have been taught to call the fire that never expires; but this expression is not employed in the Waicuri Creed.
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The above less literally translated.
I believe in God the Father, who can make everything: he has made of nothing Heaven and earth. I believe also in Jesus Christ, the only Son of his Father; was made man by the Holy Ghost; was born of the Virgin Mary, I believe also this same Jesus Christ suffered great pain while Pontius Pilate was commanding in Judea: he was extended on the cross; he died and was buried; he went; below the earth; he became alive again in three days; he went up to Heaven; he sitteth at the right hand of God his Father, who can make everything; he will come from thence to give rewinds to the good and bad. I believe in the Holy Ghost; I believe there is a Holy Catholic Church and communion of the baptized. I believe God will forgive those men who thoroughly hate and thoroughly confess all their great sins. I believe also all dead men will become alive again, and then they will be always alive. Amen.
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APPENDIX.
Note on the Cora and Waicuri languages, by Francisco Fimenld.* [Boletin de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia y Estadistica. Mexico, 1862, tomo viii, num. 11, p. 603, &c]
Father Ortega refers in various places to the grammar of the Cora language which he in tended to write; but the work, if it was ever written, has been lost, since there is no mention of it, and it is unknown to bibliographers.
The Cora dialect is known also by the names of Chora, Chota, and Naynrita. This last name conies from the fact that it was spoken, and is still so, in the mountains of Nayarit in the State of Jalisco. There is another idiom called Cora in California, which is a dialect of the Guaicuro. or Vaicura, differing" from that spoken in Jalisco. I have compared various words of the Guaicura and the Cora of Jalisco, and have found them entirely different.
Note relative to the Author. — The only facts concerning the author, which I was able to obtain while engaged in translating his work, are contained in De Backer's Bibio-theque des Ecrivains de la Compagnie de Jesus, Liege 1859. Vol. v, p. 28.
The author, whose name is given here as Jacob Begert, was born (1717) at Schlettstadt (Upper Rhine.) He went to California in 1751 and preached the Gospel there till the decree of Charles III tore the Jesuits from their missions. On returning to Europe, he retired to Neuberg in Bavaria, where ho died in the month of December, 1772. Clavigero stands as authority for ascribing the "Nachrichten" to him, and it is also mentioned that the "Berlin-'sche litterorischo Wochcnblatt," (1777, vol. ii, p. 625,) contains an extract of the work. Mousel's large work on German authors, entitled "Das gelehrte Deutschland," is given as the source from which these statements are derived.
The "Nachrichten" appeared first in print in 1772, the same year in which the author died, who consequently could have survived the publication of his work only a short time. The copy in my hands, which was printed in 1773, is not properly a second edition, but merely a reprint, in which the most glaring typographical errors are corrected.
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[1] Stunden. — I translate this word by "league," though the French lieue is a little longer than the German stunde.
[2] Histoire de la Nouvelle France, par le P. de Charlevoix. Paris, 1744; vol. v, o. 66
[3] German proverb.
[4] It may not be out of place to mention here that in Mexico the dried fibres of the aloe or maguey plant (Agave Americana) are a universal substitute for hemp in the manufacture of cordage and packing-cloth.
[5] In the introduction.
[6] Venegas mentions fishing-nets made of the pita plant, (Noticia de la California, vol. i, p. 52.) According to Baegert, (Appendix i, p. 322.) no such plant, exists in California, and (the word "pita" only signifies the thread twisted from the aloe. In refuting Venegas, Father Baegert hardly ever rotors to the original Spanish work, nor mentions the name of its author, but attacks the French translation, which was published in Paris in the year 1707. He probably acted so from motives of delicacy, Venegas himself being a priest and brother Jesuit. The effect of this proceeding, as can be imagined, is comical in a high degree.
[7] This statement is corroborated in all particulars by Clavigero, in his Storia delta Califorma, (Venice, 1789,) vol. i, p. 117.
[8] The cattle, as well as the goats and sheep, are described as small and lean, owing to the scanty pasturage. The horses, though small, were of a good breed and enduring, but they did not sufficiently multiply, and fresh animals had to be imported every year to mount the soldiers and cowherds. "The ass alone," says the author, "which is nowhere choice, but always contented, fares tolerably well in California. He works but little, and feeds on the prickly shrubs with as much relish as if they were the most savory oats." The number of hogs on the whole peniusula hardly amounted to a dozen.
[9] This church was probably considered as an asylum or place of safety.
[10] He was one of those who shared with the author, in 1767, the fate of banishment. At that time there were in all sixteen Jesuits in Lower California—fifteen priests and one lay brother. Six of them were Spaniards, two Mexicans, and eight Germans. The names of the latter are given on page 312 by the author, who omits, however, his own name in order to preserve his anonymous character.
[11] This is literally his expression.
[12] The author adds: "And all nouns in general that end in German in licit, keit, niss, ung, and schaft."
[13] It will hardly be necessary to mention that the Waicuri words must be pronounced as German. Excepting the tsch, which is replaced by the equivalent English sound tsh, the orthography of the author has strictly been preserved.
[14] This compound word illustrates well the polysynthetic character of the Waicuri language.
[15] We cannot bo too thankful to Father Baegert, who, with all his oddity and eccentricity, has had the philological taste to preserve and explain a specimen of the Waicuri—a favor the greater, as neither Venegas nor the polished Clavigero has preserved any specimen of a Californian language, much less a verb in full.
