Steven W. Hackel - Junipero Serra: Californias Founding Father

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For Heidi and Anna and Gabriel

Contents

Preface

In 1931, an imposing statue of a man who stood a bit taller than five feet and suffered from a chronically ulcerous leg was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol. It was of Father Junpero Serra (17131784), a Mallorcan-born Franciscan, who in 1749 gave up a successful career as a priest and university professor in his homeland and sailed to Mexico to begin his life there as a missionary to Indians. Twenty years later, at the age of fifty-five, Serra played a key role in the settlement and colonization of Altaor UpperCalifornia, most notably as the founder of the chain of Catholic missions that eventually extended from San Diego to just north of San Francisco. This is why he is one of two Californians represented in the Capitols Statuary Hall and why a newspaper poll, conducted in 1984, the bicentennial of Serras death, revealed that two-thirds of Californians considered him the most important individual in the states history.

Today Serras statue stands awkwardly alongside bronzes of George Washington, Samuel Adams, and Ethan Allen, men more commonly thought of as founding fathers and whose legacies are less divisive. While they helped the American colonies make a decisive break from England, Serra was a colonizer, and so did something of the reverse, transplanting pre-Enlightenment European institutions, ideals, and hierarchies to a distant corner of the continent. He was not alone in his mission. Spanish missionaries like Serra were enormously importantif largely forgotten todayto the history of America. They were often the ones who made first contact with the continents indigenous peoples and brought to them unprecedented change. They were also the ones who, both long before and decades after Washington and others were ensuring that Englands colonial rule came to an end in British North America, made it possible for Spain to assert control, not only over much of Central and South America but also over vast expanses of North America as well.

Of the thousands of Catholic missionaries like Serra who came to the Americas, nearly all have been forgotten, losers not so much in the contest for North America as in the subsequent battle for a place in American history. Pitted against the founders of Protestant New England and the signers of the Declaration of Independence, they stood little chance. Those few Catholic missionaries who have been rememberedSerra, the Jesuit Eusebio Kino, and a handful of othersare for the most part viewed today through the haze of myth, not with the clarity of historical fact and context. At the same time, only their years in North America are considered, further obscuring their lives and purposes. However, as historians reexamine the historical development of North America, reenvision the geographic and chronological boundaries of colonial America, and reconsider whose early American life is worth telling and teaching, Serras complete life, and his contributions to the history of California and early America, are especially worthy of study.

Compelling and instructive on its own, Serras life offers a view into the transformative events of his time. Serra figured centrally in Spains exploration and colonization of three regions of North America, in the Catholic Churchs attempts to convert Native peoples to Catholicism and instill in others a more devoted form of observance, in the rivalries between church and state in the Bourbon era, and in the frustration of Indians attempts to retain elements of their own culture and society in the face of a relentless onslaught of European men and the diseases they carried. Serra was a visionary, indefatigable and unyielding, who extended Spains imperial reach, protected the privileges of the Catholic Church against attack, and ushered in a period of dramatic and even calamitous change for many Indians, especially those of California. For the last he is regarded by some as a destructive imperialist. Yet others see in his life evidence that he was a civilizing pioneer or even a virtuous saint. This book seeks to restore Junpero Serra both to history and to his full complexity, for only by doing both can we come to understand how an island-born Spaniard became one of Americas founding fathers and why his legacy divides us like no others.

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A brief explanatory note on translations and sources. Francisco Palous Relacin histrica is a hagiographical account intended to portray Serra as heroic and saintly, but it remains the most useful source on the basic chronology and events of Serras life. Maynard J. Geigers very elegant translation of the Relacin histrica from time to time glosses over or shades the meaning intended by Palou. When I disagree with Geigers translation, I rely on my own translation of the original 1787 version and cite it in the notes. Otherwise, I quote from and cite Geigers edition. Similarly, Antonine Tibesars translations of Serras letters capture Serras meaning most of the time. However, in some instances I felt the need to provide my own translation, and for those passages I rely on the transcriptions provided by Tibesar. Thus, my quotes from Serras letters sometimes depart slightly from the translation in Tibesar.

PART ONE

Mallorca

ONE

Mallorca

The man whom Californians know as Father Serra came from Mallorca, an island whose rich and complex history shaped his life and character and gave him direction and identity through all of his days. The largest island in a chain known as the Baleares and equidistant from the coasts of Spain and Africa, Mallorca was for thousands of years a center of trade and thus a place where diverse peoples came into contact with one another. Economically, religiously, and culturally, it was deeply integrated into a larger Mediterranean and European world, yet it did not share the regions characteristic and salutary lushness. For most of its history, and in particular between Serras birth in 1713 and his departure for Mexico in 1749, Mallorca was in fact an arid and unforgiving land, one stalked by disease and famine and surrounded by enemies both real and imaginary. Rival imperial powers desired Mallorca for its strategic location; conquest and religious conflict marked the island and remade its peoples. Mallorcans alternated between a wary embrace of others and violent attempts to convert, enslave, or expel those with different beliefs and customs. But because of the islands small size and history of famine, Mallorcans also came to look longingly beyond their shores, first across the Mediterranean Sea for material sustenance and then across the Atlantic Ocean for spiritual fulfillment. It is no coincidence that Junpero Serra, an ardent, crusading, and hardened Franciscan missionary, came from Mallorca.