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