For many years he labored in Mexico, among the Missions of the Sierra many years and penetrated to the farthest frontiers. He sought the blackest midnight of ignorance that he might spread the light of his faith the most widely, and his quest brought him to the North American Indian. He became a Franciscan friar at sixteen and the enthusiasm of the boy gradually evolved into the burning passion of the man for the salvation of souls. Born on the Mediterranean Island of Mallorca, in the humblest circumstances, he was benevolent and devout even in his youth and seemed to have had no other thought than to do good. He had been trained from childhood for the work he was to do. Junípero Serra was fifty-six years old when the opportunity came to him. Nevertheless, when the time for action came, a great man, garbed in the cassock of the priest, stood ready to sow the seed of a harvest which men are now but beginning to reap. But while this was doubtless taken into account, it was clearly secondary to considerations of empire. It is true, of course, that for many years the missionaries had urged the King to lend his assistance to the conversion of the gentiles of the North, and that a Catholic nation like Spain, always influenced by the Papacy, would naturally give heed to the claims of the faith. It might have been settled by Russians, or by Englishmen, or it might have slept on until a new nation almost at that hour in travail on the Atlantic Coast of North America-sent its pioneers across the plains and mountains to give a new and strange flag to the breeze. Its history might have been entirely different. If this motive had been absent, San Diego would not have been settled in 1769, nor perhaps by those who spoke the Spanish tongue. Spanish statecraft to exert itself in order to hold valuable possessions gained in previous centuries by exploration and discovery. It is important to note the influences which led to the founding of San Diego, and it is the simple truth of history to say that the most vital of these influences was the need of King of Spain when the Spanish soldiers and missionaries made the original settlement at San Diego, 1769. Put the question in another way and ask: If there had been’ no missionaries, and if the Spanish King had still desired to occupy the California coast, could he have done so with the men and money at his command? Unquestionably, he could but he was wise enough to utilize the enthusiasm and capacity which he found ready to his hand in the shape of the Franciscans and who were the more necessary because the Jesuits had but recently been expelled from their mission holdings in Lower California.ĬARLOS III. But if we seek the motive behind the movement, we find it when we ask ourselves the question: If the Spanish King had not wanted to hold California for the advantage of his empire, would it have been within the power of the Franciscans to found a line of missions from San Diego northward, and thus to lay the foundation-stones of an enduring civilization? The question must be answered in the negative, for the missionaries could not have supplied the necessary ships and soldiers nor the other provisions essential to the great undertaking. This judgment is no reflection on the Missionary Fathers, who simply availed themselves of a favorable political situation to accomplish designs unquestionably born of a high conception of duty to God and man. But as I study the records of the past it seems clear enough that it was the lust of empire far more than religious zeal which led to the pioneer plantings in California. And it is a fine tribute to the quality of mind and heart which finds its expression in unselfish and loving service that this is so. It is not, however, the name of king or statesman which survives in the popular imagination when the early settlement of San Diego, and the coast line which stretches north of it, is recalled, but the name of an immortal missionary. It was the latter’s aggression which was most feared and which probably gave the specific impulse to the new movement. Spain could not hope to hold vast territories indefinitely by mere right of discovery, and both England and Russia had eyes upon the Pacific Coast of North America.
The royal order came for occupation of the ports of San Diego and Monterey.
Carlos III was King, the Marquis de Croix, a man of great energy and enterprise, was Viceroy of New Spain, Don Joseph de Galvez was Visitador General. IT WAS in the year 1769 that Spain finally got ready to reap where her explorers had sown generations before. PART ONE: CHAPTER 2: Beginning of the Mission Epoch
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