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William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1, Chapter 2: Mission Indians. (search)
ived his six-score years and five. You take the Indian as he is — a wreck and waste of nature, even as this altar of San Carlos is a wreck and waste of art. For twenty cents, laid out in whisky, you may hear the story of his life, and in that tale the romance of his tribe. A youth when the first Spaniards came to Monterey, Capitan Carlos saw Fray Junipero Serra land his company of friars, Don Jose Rivera land his regiment of troops. The Spaniards had already built a Mission house at San Diego, and were creeping upward towards the Golden Gate; but no Carmelo Indian had as yet beheld a White man's face. The fathers raised a cross; the troops unfurled a flag. A psalm was sung, a cannon fired; rites, as they said, which gave the people to God, the country to the King of Spain. These strangers built a castle on the hill, above the spot on which they had raised their cross. They fenced that castle round about with walls, on which they mounted guns, and set a watch by day and n
William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1, Chapter 7: Hybrids. (search)
and would be against them. Rapine and murder might become their trade. Taking a middle course, which seemed to him the lesser of two evils, the viceroy formed three camps of refuge, which he called Free Towns; a first camp at Los Angeles in the South, a second camp near Santa Cruz in the Centre, and a third camp at San Jose in the North. These camps were ruled by martial law, and wholly separated from the great Franciscan Commonwealth. About Los Angeles he gathered in the refuse from San Diego and Santa Barbara; about Santa Cruz he gathered in the refuse of San Carlos, San Juan, and Soledad; about San Jose he gathered in the refuse of Santa Clara and San Francisco. Within these camps the veterans and their savage progeny were to dwell, but they were not to wander from their limits, under penalty of stripes, imprisonment and death. Some strangers joined the settlers in these Free Town; few, and of an evil sort; quacks, gamblers, girl-buyers, whiskey sellers; all the abominabl
William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1, Chapter 8: brigands. (search)
but even for a Mexican ranger, Capitan Soto was a dasher; going like a gale of wind; yet able, in his rapid flight, to twist himself round his horse's belly, and to cling unseen about his horse's neck. The charms of an adventurous life drew many riders, not less daring than himself, to Soto's camp. One day they were rioting with senforitas at Los Angeles; another, they were flying for their necks before such hunters as Sheriff Rowland and Sheriff Morse. Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and San Diego are the favourite scenes of brigand warfare, as the frontier offers them a ready market and a safe retreat. From Soto to Vasquez, every brigand in California has found his base of operations in Mexico. Los Angeles county is a mountain region, with a dozen trackless canons, opening into fertile plains. The soil was owned by half-breeds, children of the disbanded soldiers and their stolen squaws; but from the moment when the first British settlers fastened on the land, a fight for the e
William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1, Chapter 12: Catholic missions. (search)
, the bandit said at San Jose, I could have raised an army, driven out the English settlers, and cleared the southern counties of California from Santa Clara to San Diego. Men less heated than the prisoner think that if Vasquez had been cursed with as much genius for affairs as Castro and Alvaredo, he might have caused a civil ing the one great effort that has ever yet been made to save the natives of this coast. Ten or twelve missions were engaged in carrying on the work; missions at San Diego and Santa Barbara, at San Luis Obisco and San Carlos, at Soledad and San Juan, at San Jose and San Francisco; but the heart and brain, the rule and method, of thnborn was opened out. Who says the fathers left no fruits? Why, thirty years after landing on these coasts, they had cleared and settled the choicest spots from San Diego to San Francisco. They owned sixty-seven thousand horned cattle, a hundred and seven thousand sheep, three thousand horses and mules. When the Mexicans broke i