Where Was The Original Mission San Gabriel?

In July 1921, a ceremony was held at the southwest corner of San Gabriel and Lincoln boulevards, newly incorporated into the City of Montebello, during which a granite marker was unveiled proclaiming the site to be that of the original Mission San Gabriel. The land was owned by Walter P. Temple, who paid for the monument in commemoration of the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of the founding of the mission.

Fourteen years later, the site was given California Registered Landmark status, giving some official credence to the idea that this, indeed, was the Mission San Gabriel's first location. The problem is that the only reason why Temple placed the marker where he did is because he owned that land. The plot on which the monument rests is against the base of the Montebello Hills and could not possibly have been the actual site of the mission compound. The facility would also not have been up on the hill behind the marker and could only have been north or east.

Research conducted in the 1980s by archaeologists has identified a potential location, in an area to the north and slightly west. The place is known as CA-LAN-1311H and would be along the west bank of the Rio Hondo (the original San Gabriel River), north of the intersection of San Gabriel and Lincoln boulevards.

As described in Greenwood and Associates' report "The First Historical Settlement in Los Angeles County: Investigations at Whittier Narrows,"

The setting is a river terrace overlooking the San Gabriel River flood plain at the base of a major ridge system. The river bank rises steeply to a narrow terrace approximately 15m[eters] wide, and then rises again to the second terrace which contains the site. This area gently slopes to the south to a small drainage channel that parallels San Gabriel Blvd., which is situated at the base of the ridge. To the east, the upper terrace curves to the south, forming the east edge of the site. To the west the upper terrace ends at the base of a small hill that has been greatly altered by the construction of a gas processing plant.

The report does state, moreover, that "the site is located in a natural gas field." The problem with archaeological investigation was that "the activities related to the drilling and placing of the wells, installation of pipelines, building and maintenance of roads, extensive grading, and other ground altering activities have seriously impacted the site and may have greatly altered the landform."

Archaeological investigation was conducted in May and June 1987, using shovel test pits, excavation areas, and surface collection. In two areas, Indian materials were located including flakes, cobbles and ground stones (manos), though there were also many items from later periods located throughout the investigation area. The issue was that there didn't appear to be any items from before the late 19th century or after Spanish and Mexican settlement, making a definitive identification of the site as the original mission somewhat problematic. Finally, the amount of disturbance, especially in the post-1917 period when heavy oil exploration and drilling was occurring, meant that "much of the information has been lost to past activities."

What has, in the historical record, most strongly pointed to the area north of San Gabriel Boulevard and west of the Rio Hondo is the diseño or map for the Rancho Potrero Grande, made about the time of its 1845 grant to Manuel Antonio Perez. This rough tracing, which was not conducted according to strict surveying (as was the case with all of the diseños), clearly shows the downslope from the hills to the west, the road coming from the current Mission San Gabriel [roughly today's San Gabriel Boulevard] and a water course marked "zanja onda," which would obviously seem to refer to the Rio Hondo. Between the road and the "zanja onda" is markings showing another change in grade in the landscape, or a short decline or hill. Between that downslope and the "zanja onda" are the words "corral Mision Vieja" and a series of hatch marks in a circular pattern.

Could this have been the original Mission San Gabriel site? It seems to correspond with the general area that was CA-LAN-1311H. If one interprets Father Palou's site description as on a "rising ground" rather than "hill," this also seems to make sense. The problem, once again, is that the mission structures were tule and wood, subject to decay and removal, and the landscape was dramatically altered by flooding, ranching and farming, oil development and other activities. On the other hand, Walter Temple's 1921 plaque site is plainly implausible, with the only rationale being that he owned that land and not the property to the north.

We'll never know the exact site because there just isn't enough evidence, but it seems that CA-LAN-1311H is about the closest we'll get.

Link to the 1840s diseño of Rancho Potrero Grande:

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb967nb58f/?layout=metadata&brand=oac

Sources:

Lois Roberts and James Brock, Cultural Resources Archival Study: Whittier Narrowes Archaeological District, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District (Newport Beach: Archaeological Advisory Group,) March 1987.

Roberta S. Greenwood, John M. Foster and Anne Q. Duffield with contributions by Gwendolyn R. Romani, A. George Toren, and Sherri M. Gust, The First Historical Settlement in Los Angeles County: Investigations at Whittier Narrows, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District (Sonora: Infotec Research Incorporated,) January 1989.

"Diseño del Potrero Grande vic. Misión Vieja," ca. 1845, U. S. District Court. California, Southern District. Land Case 243 SD, page 63; land case map B-1279, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri.

The Anza Expeditions of 1774-1776 and Misión Vieja

One of the newer national historic trails established and maintained by the National Parks Service is the Anza Trail, commemorating the route taken by Juan Bautista Anza in his colonizing expedition of 300 settlers from Sonora, Mexico [the trail starts at Nogales, Arizona at the Mexico-U. S. border] to San Francisco in 1775-76.

There was a preliminary exploration in 1774, during which the Anza group, which was looking to establish an overland road, stopped at the original Mission San Gabriel site at Whittier Narrows. Anza and his compatriots stayed for almost three weeks before continuing their journey north. On the return trip, the group stopped at the mission, in early May, resting for two days before proceeding southward.

While it is not certain when the move of the mission was made from Whittier Narrows to the current site, the closest documentation after Serra’s February 1775 report (see the last blog entry) is the arrival of the Anza-led colonization expedition early in 1776.

This large group left Sonora in late September 1775 and reached Mission San Gabriel on 4 January 1776. The difference was that this second visit was not to the original mission at Whittier Narrows, but to the newly-selected site, on higher, drier ground at the current location. This is referred to in the diary of Father Pedro Font from the colonists’ expedition, after the group reached the San Gabriel River on the 3rd: “I celebrated holy Mass. We moved away from the Arroyo de San Gabriel at nine in the morning, and at eleven we arrived at the Mission of San Gabriel.”

From 1775 onward, the original site at Whittier Narrows became a relic and its tule and wood structures were undoubtedly pillaged for use elsewhere or were inundated by the occasional flooding occurring from intense rain seasons. Very little survives in the historical record for decades afterward. The next post looks at the first census of the Los Angeles area, taken under Mexican rule in 1836, for clues on who was occupying Misión Vieja.

Source: Zephyrin Englehardt, San Gabriel Mission and the Beginnings of Los Angeles (San Gabriel: Mission San Gabriel,) 1927.

Link to the Anza Trail website: http://www.nps.gov/juba/index.htm

Contribued by Paul R. Spitzzeri.

Father Serra's 1773 and 1775 Reports on the Original Mission San Gabriel

The Reverend Junipero Serra, founded of most of the California missions, was supposed to have been present at the founding of Mission San Gabriel in September 1771, but was not informed of the decision to send out the priests Somera and Cambón, who established the site at Whittier Narrows.

Serra did, however, visit the mission in May 1773 and submitted a long report to the viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), in which he stated that

The place together with the circumstances of soil, arroyos, timber, fire-wood, and other facilities, is beyond dispute that most excellent of all discovered. Without doubt, this one alone, if well cultivated, would be sufficient to maintain itself and all the rest [of the missions.]

Recall in the first post of this blog that Father Juan Crespí, in his diary on the Portolá expedition of 1769-1770, considered that "La Puente" a few miles to the east was superior, but that the Whittier Narrows location was also a prime one for a mission site.

According to Serra, Alta California departmental governor Pedro Fages instituted restrictions on native access to the mission compound that soured relations between them and the Spaniards. In addition to detailing the rape and consequent violence that was also covered by Father Francisco Palou in his report of the same year, Serra criticized the behavior of the soldiers stationed at San Gabriel for their laziness, violent tendencies and impudence, including the continued rape of Indian women and the killing of men.

Serra also made reference to attempts to develop the mission and noted a problem that proved to be insurmountable to keeping the facility at Whittier Narrows: "the Fathers in the first year planted a piece of land with wheat, which went up and promised well; but owing to the lack of experience in that territory, they sowed in too low ground, so that the copious rains, which set in, submerged and destroyed it." On other hand, he did state that "what did thrive very well is a garden sufficiently large and fenced in. When I passed there, it abounded in various kinds of vegetables, melons, water melons, etc."

Serra returned to Mission San Gabriel early in 1775 and sent another report to the viceroy in February. In it, he documented that the increase of livestock was to 65 cattle, 66 sheep, 34 goats, 18 pigs, 19 horses, and 16 mules. In the preceding year, harvests of wheat, corn and beans were moderately successful and wheat was sown for the new season with the land for the other two crops in preparation.

As to the neophytes, Serra reported that, from 8 September 1771 to 31 December 1774, “there have been baptized 148 Indians of all ages, of whom eight have died. Nineteen Indian marriages have been blessed. Hence the Mission is composed of 19 new Christian Indian families with 154 persons, all of whom live at the Mission in their little huts of poles.”

Yet, there was an important set of statements about the inherent problems of the site of the Mission. In this regard, Serra wrote that

from the last day of December, 1773, till the last day of December, 1774, they have constructed no new buildings at the Mission, except a structure of poles . . . for the smithy, and another . . . which is to be used as a granary for corn.

As to why this was,

The reason is that for greater convenience and utility they want to move the Mission to where the land is cultivated in the same valley, only about half a league distant.

Indeed, it was not long afterward that the move was approved and made. The next entry will detail the visits of famed explorer Juan Bautista de Anza to both the original and current sites of the Mission San Gabriel.
Sources:
Zephyrin Englehardt, San Gabriel Mission and the Beginnings of Los Angeles (San Gabriel: Mission San Gabriel,) 1927.
Chester Lyle Guthrie, "Site of Mision Vieja: Registered Landmark #161," State of California, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks, 1933, found in Cultural Resources Archival Study: Whittier Narrows Archaeological District, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District by Lois Roberts and James Brock, Archaeological Advisory Group, March 1987.
Roberta S. Greenwood, John M. Foster and Anne Q. Duffield (with contributions by Gwendolyn R. Romani, A. George Toren and Sherri M. Gust), The First Historical Settlement in Los Angeles County: Investigations at Whittier Narrows, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District, January 1989.
Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Father Francisco Palou's 1773 Report on the First San Gabriel Mission

From the time of the founding of the Mission San Gabriel in September 1771 until its relocation sometime in 1775, little has survived to document the existence of the mission at its original Whittier Narrows site (which some have claimed was always, at the time, considered temporary.) One of the key documents is the December 1773 report of Father Francisco Palou to the viceroy of New Spain (Mexico).

In it, the priest noted that "the mission is situated in the slope of a hill [on the edge of a rising ground] in the valley called San Miguel, about half a league from the source of the river of that name." San Miguel was the name bestowed by the Portolá expedition of 1769-70 for what later was rechristened the San Gabriel Valley. Palou continued that "it has in sight that plain, which is very spacious, with plenty of land and an abundance of water. It runs through the plain in channels formed by the river, and it would be easy to take the water from them to irrigate all the land they might wish for planting."

As to the strucutres, Palou reported,

The buildings . . . not far from the stockade, are constructed of poles and covered with tules. Within the stockade is the church built of poles and roofed with tules; the dwelling of the Fathers with the workshops, etc., and the granary, all constructed with poles and roofed with tules . . .

Also as part of the complex were "the guard-house for the soldiers of the escort; and ten little houses for the Indians of California . . ."

According to 19th century historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, certainly paraphrasing from Palou, "the natives cheerfully assisted in the work of bringing timber and constructing the stockade enclosure with its tule-roofed buildings of wood, continuing in the mean time their offerings of pine-nuts and acorns to the image of Our Lady." It is important to repeat that the structures erected at Whittier Narrows were tule and poles of wood, not adobe. Photographs purporting to be the adobe ruins of Mission San Gabriel were taken many decades later, but they were in error. Whatever was left of the wood and tule buildings at the mission were obviously long gone, by expsoure, scavenging and flooding, by the time photographers descended on the site.

As for farming, Palou stated "they are going to make a good planting of wheat, for which they had eight bushels of seed, and for which they were preparing the land. Then they were going to set to work to prepare more ground, in order to make, in season, a large planting of corn." Beans were another crop being raised, although in small amounts to date. Six plows, along with other tools and implements, were available for the planting, although the priest indicated that a forge was needed to make iron tools for the mission.

Livestock were also recorded by Palou, who noted that there were 38 cattle, 40 sheep, 12 goats, 20 pigs, 6 horses and 16 mules.

With these promising first efforts in agriculture, "they now have enough to make larger plantings and attact the heathens. This will be a great inducement," the friar went on, "as the Indians are very poor, on account of the small crops of wild seeds they receive from the plains and on account of the poor results of the chase [for wild game]. They lack also the aid from the fisheries, since the beach is about eight leagues distant.” Moreover, Palou claimed, their tendency to fight each other prevented their going to the ocean to obtain fish. These statements are strange, given that native peoples had lived for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans and there is no reason to believe, accounting, of course, for drought and other climactic changes, that they had trouble obtaining food.

There was, however, a significant item of grave concern to report from Palou. On 10 September 1771, just two days after the establishment of the mission, a dispute broke out. As stated by Bancroft (again from Palou), "a crowd of natives attacked two soldiers who were guarding the horses. The chief discharged an arrow at one of the soldiers, who stopped it with his shield, and killed the chief with a musket-ball." From here, the tale grows more disturbing: "Terrified by the destructive effects of the gun the savages fled, and the soldiers, cutting off the fallen warrior's head, set it on a pole before the presidio gates." A few sentences later, Bancroft added a postscript that blandly went to the heart of the issue: "There is little doubt that their sudden hostility arose from outrages by the soldiers on the native women."

Father Palou, however, gave greater details in his 1773 report: "the pagan chief wanted to revenge himself for the outrage, which had been committed against him and his wife [italics added for emphasis.]" Palou further noted that one of the two soldiers who was attacked was the rapist and that he was the one who killed the chief. Indeed, the annals of Spanish-era California are riddled with examples of military misconduct against the women and men of native tribes throughout the region. It is also notable that the incident at the first Mission San Gabriel was such that Governor Fages delayed the founding of a new mission further up the coast; consequently, Mission San Buenaventura (Ventura) was not established for over a decade.

Fortunately, Palou was not the only chronicler about the original Mission San Gabriel. Father Junipero Serra, who founded most of the early missions, twice described San Gabriel in reports to the viceroy. This will be the focus of a later entry, so check back soon!

Sources:

Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, Vol. 1: 1542-1800 (San Francisco, The History Company,) 1886.

Zephyrin Englehardt, San Gabriel Mission and the Beginnings of Los Angeles (San Gabriel: Mission San Gabriel,) 1927.

Chester Lyle Guthrie, "Site of Mision Vieja: Registered Landmark #161," State of California, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks, 1933, found in Cultural Resources Archival Study: Whittier Narrows Archaeological District prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District by Lois Roberts and James Brock, Archaeological Advisory Group, March 1987.

Roberta S. Greenwood, John M. Foster and Anne Q. Duffield (with contributions by Gwendolyn R. Romani, A. George Toren and Sherri M. Gust), The First Historical Settlement in Los Angeles County: Investigations at Whittier Narrows, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District, January 1989.

Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri

The Founding of Mission San Gabriel

It is remarkable how little known is the fact that the Mission San Gabriel was not founded in its current location. Although the mission has been at its San Gabriel site since about 1775, it began in the Whittier Narrows near South El Monte, Montebello and Pico Rivera. The photographs (click on each for a closer view) included here are of a plaque erected by Walter P. Temple and commemorating the founding of the mission on the 150th anniversary in 1921. The site, at the corner of San Gabriel Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue in Montebello, was approved in 1935 as California State Landmark 161.

As the last post showed, Father Juan Crespí of the Portolá expedition of 1769-70 identified the Whittier Narrows areas as a prime location for the establishment of a mission, although he felt that a better location would be the area further east where the expedition crossed San José Creek as it moved from the Puente Hills northwestward. This area, where a bridge (la puente) was constructed to cross the creek, was considered by Crespí to be the best location for a mission encountered to date on the group's trek.

Nonetheless, in September 1771, fathers Pedro Cambon and Angel Somera, charged by Governor Pedro Fages to establish a mission in the area, intended to put it on the Rio de los Temblores (Earthquake River, because the Portolá expedition encountered temblors there in 1769), known now as the Santa Ana River in today's Orange County.

The two felt, however, that there wasn't a suitable site and so moved on further north to the river named San Miguel by Crespí, where Cambon and Somera decided on a location on the 8th. The reasons for choosing the Whittier Narrows location seemed obvious. First, there was substantially more water from the emergence of the San Gabriel River from underground channels as it emanated from the mountains to the north. This water could be used for farming, raising livestock and the household uses connected to mission living. Further, there was plenty of trees for use in constructing buildings, lighting fires and other important needs. Next, there was fertile soil from the river and the mineral deposits brought down from the San Gabriel Mountains over millenia. Finally, there were settlements of indigenous peoples in the area, who would form the basis for the work of the missionaries. Without getting into the great controversies over the missionary/native American relationship, of which plenty has been written and published, the key element for the founding of the mission was proximity to Indian habitations.

Indeed, an account, perhaps apocryphal, states that when Cambon and Somera, accompanied by fourteen soldiers and four muleteers ferrying supplies, arrived at their chosen site, a large group of indigenous people came forward and, it was said, demonstrated some hostility (this would be natural, of course, given that the Spaniards were "squatting" on someone else's land.) According to 19th century historian Hubert Howe Bancroft who quotes Father Francisco Palou's 1777 account, "but when one of the padres held up a painting of the virgin, the savages instantly threw down their arms and their two captains ran up to lay their necklaces at the feet of the beautiful queen, thus signifying their desire for peace." Variations of this theme are found throughout the world, in which so-called "savages" are brought to their knees (not unlike Saul/Paul in the New Testament) by the miracle of confronting a "greater" religious reality. Obviously, this tale is a one-sided story from the Spaniards and we have no idea what the native peoples would have said about the alleged event.

More on the first site of Mission San Gabriel soon!

Sources: Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, Vol. 1: 1542-1800 (San Francisco, The History Company,) 1886; Zephyrin Englehardt, San Gabriel Mission and the Beginnings of Los Angeles (San Gabriel: Mission San Gabriel,) 1927; photographs courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri and The Juan Matias Sanchez adobe museum contributed by Tim Poyorena-Miguel, Archivist.