DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL ‘FOUND AN ATMOSPHERE OF DISCORD AND DESOLATION AT CAPISTRANO AS WELL AS SAN LUIS,’ page 237 from Susanna Bryant Dakin’s ‘The Lives of William Hartnell’

+++  Entries in Hartnell’s diario of 1840 abound with references to trouble with Vallejos in the north, Picos and Arguellos in the south.  He found an atmosphere of discord and desolation at Capistrano as well as San Luis.  On July 23 he noted:  ”The factories of this mission are dilapidated for the most part and even the main quadrangle is threatened with ruin everywhere, for the timbers, especially those of the corridors, are quite rotted.  The vineyards are very poor.”  Father Zalvidea now had the authority, but no longer the strength, to perfom a miracle similar to his raising of San Gabriel to high estate.

Hartnell records his progress:  ”I went to Santa Ana to sleep at the rancho of Don Thomas Yorba.”  Next day, on July 25:  ”I arrived at San Gabriel Mission.”

Here, where harmony had reigned between the Indians and Don Juan Bandini, there now was resentment against the administrator, as everywhere else in California.  Don Juan, being displaced in authority by the padre, had departed from the mission before the arrival of el visitador.  The Indians charged:

‘He has made way with many of the best horses of the mission and taken them to his rancho; he has also taken twelve new carretas which they understand to have been made in the Arroyo Seco at the expense of the mission; that he bought several chamois skins with mission horses . . . he put a bar-room in the mission; that he sold aguardiente to all the Indians that wanted to buy, and afterwards punished very harshly the ones that got drunk.’

Such a multiplicity of charges, against one whose record a short time previously had seemed unspotted, made Hartnell suspect the Indians of San Gabriel of a failing common to humans and animals.  He feared that the pack was springing on a wounded member.  Bandini, having lost his authority, was viciously being stripped of his reputation.  The diario is reassuring, on July 31, when el visitador notes:  ”I finished examining the accounts of Don Juan Bandini which I found good.  This Senor has given satisfactory answers to the complaints the Indians made against him.”  The presiding Padre Estenaga did not have sufficient presence to awe the Indians, and anarchy was in the air at San Gabriel.

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL ARTS PROPAGANDA 2009

General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo ‘actually arrested DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL and carried him bodily across the bay’

+++  This was discouraging indeed, to be rebuffed at the outset by the padre presidente, as well as the most prominent mission administrator.

There are no 1840 entries in Hartnell’s diario previous to July 19.  From contemporary sources, we learn of the visitador‘s presence at the northern missions, and his success in putting the new machinery in motion everywhere except at San Rafael.  On April 11, Manuel Jimeno told his brother-in-law:  ”In spite of everything that the commandante general Vallejo has to say about San Rafael, the Governor has decided to put that mission under the plan of the reglamento.”  As champion of an oppressed race, el visitador must now oppose the most military-minded man in California.  On May 14, he notified Alvarado that Vallejo would not permit occupation of San Rafael “in pursuance of your instructions.”

The General actually arrested Hartnell and carried him bodily across the bay “for having ventured to interfere in matters concerning the northern fr0ntier.”  Since the General had imposed the strictest military discipline on a large force of men in his domain, nobody could defy him with success.  Hartnell remained remained a prisoner with no hope of being rescued until he conceded in writing that “Vallejo’s views in this particular case were correct.”  Immediately he was released and allowed to proceed on his tour of the missions.  The incident seemed closed, but much bitterness had been generated.

Feeling flamed highest in Santa Barbara, where Vallejo had made enemies during the contest between Alvarado and Don Carlos Carrillo for the governorship of California.  While commanding Alvarado’s forces, Vallejo had arrested the venerable Don Jose de la Guerra for not obeying orders.  He also had refused an interview with the padre presidente.  These disrepectul acts were not forgotten, and the Hartnell incident added fule to the fire.

San Luis Rey in the south was as much of a hotbed as San Rafael in the north.  Here various members of the Pico family, led by Don Pio, actively opposed el visitador when he attempted to carry out his instructions from the Governor. . .   +++

At Misiones San Jose, Santa Clara, San Rafael, San Francisco y Santa Cruz, DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL found ‘poverty, everywhere grim depletion of neophytes by disease and desertion, and resentment against greedy administrators’

+++  He found that their town house had been whitewashed in his absence, and that new “cattle-branding places” had been built at the ranch.  Dona Teresa seemed to have managed better than her letters led him to believe.

  While at Alisal, Hartnell received a letter from Hugo Reid, asking him to intercede with Alvarado or Jimeno for the grant of ‘Rancho Santa Anita’ near San Gabriel.  Reid claimed title in the name of his Indian wife and her Indian children and concluded sentimentally: “You are no doubt long ere this once more in the bozom of your family, enjoying with double zest after your petty absence, that hearfelt satisfaction and felicity which every good man feels in the center of those dependent and cherished by him.”

  During the last week of August, Hartnell resumed the role of ‘visitador’.  Conditions in the northern missions (San Jose, Santa Clara, San Rafael, San Francisco, Santa Cruz) did not differ materially from those in southern and central California.  Everywhere there was poverty, everywhere grim depletion of neophytes by disease and desertion, and resentment against greedy administrators.  But the only place where violence flared was at Sonoma, where Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the ‘comandante general’ who was also ‘administrador’ of San Francisco Solano, declined to open his records to his former tutor, or even to admit him within mission precincts.  Hartnell protested with spirit, but was forced to accept a prepared report on the state of the mission.  Senor Vallejo traded on the fact that he was Alvarado’s uncle, a person entitled to privilege.  He typified the arrogance that derives from inherited wealth and impregnable position.

  At Yerba Buena, on September 23, Hartnell recorded having finished the inspection of accounts “which are as one might expect since the administrator does not know how to read or write.”  The Indians here complained that they had to work too hard and did not receive sufficient food or clothes.  Santa Cruz was the last stop for Senores Hartnell and Castro; and ‘el visitador’ wrote to the Governor:  ”The Indians ask for their liberty and to have the little that is left distributed to them.  They greatly fear the present administrator.”

  +++

During his few days at Rancho Alisal, DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL accomplished a great deal in discipline of servants + children

+++  An entry of July 31 is headed San Miguel Mission:

‘In El Paso de Robles . . . . . the Indians complained a great deal that they had understood that that several places that they need very much were going to be taken from them, namely: Santa Rosa, where the mission has all its cattle and horses; El Paso de Robles, where there is a large granary and ‘siembras’ planted to wheat and barley; and San Simeon where there is a house, granaries, and a chapel, sheep, and most of the Mission ‘Siembras’ . . . . . They ask to be rid of the administrator; they want to be alone with the padre.  They complain especially about Manuel Ortega [a son-in-law of Manuel Cota], Majordomo of San Simeon, saying that he treats them very roughly, that he does not give them enough to eat, that he has been a scoundrel with women, beating and imprisoning those that did not want to yield to his desires.  Everybody, both men and women have a great aversion to him.’

  Continuing on to San Luis Obispo, after completing his inventories of every mission and mission ranch to that point, Hartnell found “there were not any complaints against the administrator; the Indians are very happy with him and say that although the mission does not have anything, for this he is not to blame, for so he received it.”  The damage had been done under an earlier regime.

  Only at San Luis were there no complaints against the lay administrators.  Even at La Purisima, where the Indians said they wished “to live like brothers with the present administrator Don Jose Antonio de la Guerra,” they asked to have a padre govern them.  Everywhere acounts, if kept all all, were in confusion.

  Approaching his home on the northern journey, Don Guillermo took a little time out for his own affairs.  Perhaps he had become alarmed by a recent letter from Dona Teresa claiming “the crops are not the least bit good” and telling him of insubordination from the Indian ‘mayordomo’ at Alisal.  During his few days there he accomplished a great deal in the discipline of servants and children.

+++

Dona Maria Teresa de la Guerra Hartnell wrote to DON GUILLLERMO HARTNELL: ‘Your loving wife who longs to embrace you unendingly’

+++  Not only the administrators, in fear of losing their lucrative positions, but members of the ‘gente de razon’ who had profited by nepotism, were beginning to fear, even to hate, Hartnell and his zeal for reform.  Don Manuel Cota had spewed verbal venom upon him and attempted physical violence.  Pio Pico’s animosity, though more subtly and politely expressed, was no less violent.  Don Francisco Castillo felt he had been insulted at San Fernando, and Senor Valle was angry that ‘el visitador’ had not supported his claim to ‘Rancho San Francisco’.  These were only a few of the open enemies accumulated on what Alvarado had fondly believed would be a good-will tour.

  Hartnell had been without illusion all along.  So perhaps it did not come as too great a shock when he received a warning from a friend named Nicolas Den.  This Irish doctor wrote from Santa Barbara in Indian dialect telling “me to be vigilant because he has learned that some harm to my person is planned before I leave this neighbourhood” [Hartnell's 'Diario', entry of July 20].

  How welcome, in the atmosphere of hate where he now so often found himself, was a love letter received simultaneously from Dona Teresa.  The handwriting is atrocious, but the sentiment that inspired it is beautiful and undying.  After fourteen years of married life, and bearing him eleven children, Teresa ends her laboriously written epistle (translation): “And now, goodbye dear heart, I shall never again stay alone so long.  Your loving wife who longs to embrace you unendingly.”

  A letter to Don Manuel Jimeno, dated July 27, shows that at least one of Hartnell’s enemies decided threats will get him nowhere.

  ’Senor Manuel Cota presented himself to me with all humility at La Purisima Mission, putting himself at my disposal and urging me to reinstate him in the administration of Santa Barbara.  I answered that by no means  could I return to him his position now; that it was necessary for him first to cancel or settle Mission accounts which he had left pending with many of the tradesmen and inhabitants of Santa Barbara, to submit them to me and then we would see.  But to Your Excellency I shall say frankly that by no means should he be reestablished in his present position, and I am ready to prove it when it is necessary.’

+++

El Visitador DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL found failure at all missions along ‘El Camino Real’, save at ‘Misiones San Gabriel y San Juan Capistrano’

+++  In his ‘diario, el visitador’ describes the interview with the Indians wherin he informed them of concessions secured from the government:

‘July 14 – Sunday – Today I went to the mission to appoint an alcalde mayor.  I told the Indians that one by one they should come with me to put down the name of the person that each wanted for the position . . . . but I charged them to name a man of worth and one capable of discharging his obligations.  So it was done; and Ambrosio, one of the present alcaldes, having obtained 56 votes and no one else more than 10, he obtained the position.  After this election I warned the Indians that now that they do not have an ‘administrator de razon’ they must work hard so that the mission will prosper and they have clothing . . . . By means of their interpreter Jaime the Indians of this mission said to me,

  ’”Senor, the people are very happy about what you have done here and we thank you very much.  We are poor as you know, but there are a few hides and some tallow; take what you want.”‘

  Hartnell held an audience with the grateful Indians and distributed government money for clothing and staples.  During the day, ragged strangers came and threw themselves at the feet of ‘el visitador’.  These were runaways from San Diego and San Luis Rey.  They asked for pardon from their fearless champion.

  ’The first ones said it was a well-known fact that in their mission [San Diego] there was no longer anything to eat and that the whole Indian population went about almost nude.  Therefore they had come to Santa Barbara to get, by their work, something with which to cover themselves.  The latter said that all that the San Luis Rey Mission produces is not enough for the administrator [Don Pio Pico], his brothers, and brothers-in-law. . . . . They all say that if the administrators are removed they will return to their missions and take the responsibility of founding them again.’

  The story was the same at Santa Ines, next in line along ‘El Camino Real’.  Everywhere, save at San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano, the ‘visitador’ found a failure in responsibility on the part of the civil administrators.  His final recommendation was forming in his mind.  It would hit hard, and without discrimination, at the lay successors of the founding fathers.

+++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL suspended Don Manuel Cota for disrepecting Padre Narciso Duran, putting the latter back in charge of Mision Santa Barbara

+++  Next day Hartnell receives a note from Father Narciso Duran warning him that Cota had become “devil-possessed or rather a demon; that he had dragged an Indian by the hair and when the Padre wanted to separate them the administrator knocked him down, treating his scandalously!”  Duran advises taking three or four soldiers to subdue the madman, but Hartnell writes: “I went immediately to the mission but without any soldiers. . . . I reproached Cota for the lack of respect which he had shown the padre; and as it was lacking with me too (not recognizing me as his chief) . . . I made known to him the suspension of his position.”

  Don Guillermo gave over direction of Santa Barbara Mission to Padre Duran during the suspension of Senor Cota, and wrote to Manuel Jimeno of all he had done lately, trying to help the abused Indians.  At the same time, in fulfillment of Duran’s desire, he said:  ”I also sent word to the administrators from San Buenaventura to San Diego suggesting to them that, in regard to worship, the padres . . . . should have the power to punish on their own authority any offense which the latter [neophytes] might commit in this direction.”

  On July 13, Don Guillermo is still in Santa Barbara, sending another letter to his brother-in-law:

  ’Very satisfactory were the contents of your Excellency’s two official notes dated the 7th of this month, in which you impart to me the agreeable news that all my transactions and arrangement from San Diego to San Fernando have been approved as much by Your Excellency’s honorable predecessor as by Your Excellency himself: and I shall try in the future to so conduct myself that I may merit the continued approbation of my superiors.’

  Hartnell was backed by the government in every move he made, and could report with some satisfaction that “for a time at least the neophytes became more contented and industrious under Father Duran’s supervision.”  In spite of recent despoliation, considerable increase in livestock and agriculture was noted by Hartnell at the end of 1839; also, the buildings were in better repair than elsewhere.

+++

At Santa Barbara, as at San Buenaventura, DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL, ‘el visitador finds a state of destitution among the Indians who had not deserted the mission’

+++  While Don Carlos counted cattle on outlying mission ‘ranchos’, Don Guillermo wrote a letter of reproof to the administrator, Don Francisco del Castillo.  To the Governor he reported that “in regard to accounts nothing can be cleared up here.”  Crops were good because of an unprecedented absence of grasshoppers and rust.  But the Indians complained that the ‘San Francisco Rancho’,”in ordinary years the only place where there is any certainty of harvesting a crop,” was being taken from them to be given to Don Antonio del Valle. A decade earlier, Don Alfredo Robinson had called this ‘vecino’ “a dried up little piece of vanity.”  Hartnell advised against a grant which, “for the sake of pleasing one individual who does not at all deserve to be preferred,” would cause “incalculable damage to the whole working community.”

  Receiving no answer from the Governor, ‘el visitador’ inquires of Don Manuel Jimeno, his brother-in-law, ‘if my operations have met with the approval of the Senor referred to.”  Jimeno informs him immediately of Alvarado’s illness, and of his own heading of the provisional government.  On July 6, at Santa Barbara, Hartnell helps Don Jose de la Guerra with his correspondence and himself write to Senores Jimeno and Alvarado.  To Don Juan he writes as teacher to erring pupil:

  ”God grant that you may recover soon, but if you do not take wise measures for your own improvement. . . . . God is not obliged to do miracles.”  Alvarado was becoming too fond of the bottle and the life of ease.  Hartnell must have been thinking, while composing this letter, of a similar one sent to him long ago in South America by an older friend who feared his downfall from self-indulgence.

  At Santa Barbara, as at San Buenaventura, ‘el visitador’ finds a state of destitution among the Indians who had not deserted the mission.  He is  welcomed by Father Antonio Jimeno, brother to Don Manuel, and taken for a walk in the vineyard.  He learns distressing things about Don Manuel Cota’s administration of mission affairs. “Indeed,” reads an entry of July 8, “I found out that he had put down scarcely half of the cattle that he was sending to various individuals of the presidio.”

+++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL ‘was pleasantly surprised at the look of things’ at Misiones San Fernando y San Gabriel

+++  The mission has planted 22 fanegas of wheat, 2 of barley, 4 of corn, 3 1/2 of beans, 1 1/2 of peas, and 1/2 of lentils, all in good condition.’

  To Padre Zalvidea or even Don Alfredo Robinson these figures must have seemed pitifully small in contrast with the past.  In 1829, Don Alfredo had estimated the population as from twelve to fifteen hundred, and said that it probably possessed “from eighty to over a hundred thousand head of cattle, besides horses, mules, and sheep and countless numbers which run at large.”  But Hartnell found hope in the fact that Bandini was encouraging his charges to emerge from hopeless lethargy, to commence the task of rebuilding from the ruins.  He continues his report:

  ’The vineyards, too, promise to produce more than last year.  The Indians have worked hard to enclose them with walls; now all the vineyards have them except the large one that is being enclosed with a wooden fence; the farming lands also have their walls.’

  In Zalvidea’s day, no protective fencing had been necessary, save cactus hedges to keep the cattle out of vegetable and flower gardens close to the mission buildings.

  On June 13, while ‘el visitador’ is examining the accounts, he notes:

  ’Nothing in them can be understood clearly before the time of the present administrator, because he took over without inventory, and many documents are lacking, especially the ‘libro maestro’ that was used in the time of Padre Sanchez.’

  After mass, on the fifteenth, Hartnell and Castro mounted their horses for a day’s ride to San Fernando Mission.  Here Don Guillermo was pleasantly surprised at the look of things, as he had been at San Gabriel.  Crops were good.  Grapes of best quality were forming on the 30,000 vines that composed the mission vineyard, and “a stately garden was in front, with many choice fruit trees.”  But on entering the mission to examine the records, ‘el visitador’ found them in hopeless confusion.

+++

DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL found evidence, in his June 1839 inventory, that Mision San Gabriel had been restored by Don Juan Bandini to ‘a semblance of its former constructive activity’

+++  Though the queen of the missions had suffered despoliation during first enforcement of the Secularization Act (see Hugo Reid’s letters on the subject, in the appendix of ‘A Scotch Paisano’), she was fortunate in having a few members of the ‘gente de razon’ living near-by who interested themselves in the welfare of the Indians.  Slowly these succeeded in ending an ugly display of greed by other ‘vecinos.’  Most influential was an old lady named Dona Eulalia Perez, who had served as housemother of the mission in Zalvidea’s day.  Upon retirement to her ‘Rancho de San Pasqual’ (a grant of mission land from Father Zalvidea), she took an Indian family to live with her.  The man, Pablo, was to oversee ‘las cosas del campo’ and his beautiful wife, Victoria, acted as Dona Eulalia’s companion.  They had four children who were the delight of the old lady’s heart.

  With an uncounted number of his race, Pablo succumbed to smallpox.  Not long afterward, the Scotsman, Hugo Reid, married the young Indian widow and adopted her children.  She brought him a dower of land, given by the mission fathers to Pablo in recognition of faithful service; and Reid became as ardent as Dona Eulalia in his championship of Victoria’s people.

  When Bandini came to live near San Gabriel, early in 1838, he was antagonistic to the neophytes.  His own ranch at Tecate near San Diego had been sacked by hostile Indians, who left nothing but a smoking ruin of his home and bloody carcasses of the livestock they could not take with them.  But close association with his ‘compadre’ Hugo Reid  and the intelligent and good Victoria caused him to become more reasonable in his attitude; so much  so that Governor Alvarado, after granting him ‘el Rancho Jurupa’ in the neighbourhood of San Gabriel, appointed him ‘administrador’ of the mission.

  There is evidence that Don Juan Bandini restored at San Gabriel a semblance of its former constructive activity.  Hartnell takes inventory in June of 1839:

  ’There are in the mission and adjacent ranchos 221 tame horses, 1480 mares with their colts, 13 mules, 81 0xen, 1040 sheep, 981 head of cattle and 2 old herding-asses.  The Indian population that has been counted is composed of 369 people, namely: 174 men, 121 women, 41 boys, 12 girls, 21 children. . .

+++