The Story of the Mission Chapel of San Antonio de Padua Connected with Mission San Luis Rey Fully Illustrated By GEORGE WHARTON JAMES Author of In and Out of the Old Missions of California; The Franciscan Missions of California; Indian Basketry; Indian Blankets and Their Makers; The Indian's Secret of Health; Etc., Etc.   1916 THE RADIANT LIFE PRESS Pasadena, California...

Copyright, 1916 by EDITH E. FARNSWORTH...

There were twenty-one Missions established by the Franciscan Fathers in California, during the Spanish rule. In connection with these Missions, certain Asistencias , or chapels, were also founded. The difference between a mission and a chapel is oftentimes not understood, even by writers well informed upon other subjects. A Mission was what might be termed the parent church, while the Chapel was an auxiliary or branch establishment. The little mission chapel, or asistencia , of San Antonio de Pa

What a wonderful movement was that wave of religious zeal, of proselyting fervor, that accompanied the great colonizing efforts of Spain in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Conquistadores and friars —one as earnest as the other—swept over the New World. Cortés was no more bent upon his conquests than Ugarte, Kino and Escalante were upon theirs; Coronado had his counterpart in Marcos de Nizza, and Cabrillo in Junipero Serra. The one class sought material conquest, the other sp

Many a time when I have been journeying between Pala and San Luis Rey, pictures have arisen in my mind of the energetic Peyri. I imagined him at his multifarious duties as architect, master builder, director, priest officiating at the mass, preacher, teacher of Indians, settler of disputes between them, administrator of justice, etc., etc. But no picture has been more persistent and pleasing than when I imagined him reaching out after more heathen souls to be garnered for God and Mother Church.

The study of the ancestors of our present-day Amerind has occupied the time and attention of many scholars with small results. Only when the ethnologist and antiquarian began to take due cognizance of language, tradition, and the physical configuration of skull and body did he begin to make due progress. Dr. A. L. Kroeber, of the University of California, affirms that the Palas belong to what is now generally called the Uto-Aztecan stock. Distant relatives of theirs are the Shoshones, of Idaho a

Every lover of the artistic and the picturesque on first seeing the bell-tower of Pala stands enraptured before its unique personality. And this word "personality" does not seem at all misapplied in this connection. Just as in human beings we find a peculiar charm in certain personalities that it is impossible to explain, so is it with buildings. They possess an individuality, quality, all their own, which, sometimes, eludes the most subtle analysis. Pala is of this character. One feels its char

The original purpose of the Spanish Council, as well as of the Church, in founding the Missions of California, was to train the Indians in the ways of Christianity and civilization, and, ultimately, to make citizens of them when it was deemed they had progressed far enough and were stable enough in character to justify such a step. How long this training period would require none ventured to assert, but whether fifty years, a hundred, or five hundred, the Church undertook the task and was prepar

When Helen Hunt Jackson, the gifted author of the romance Ramona —over which hundreds of thousands of Americans have shed bitter tears in deep sympathy with the wrongs perpetrated upon the Indians—was visiting the Mission Indians of California, in 1883, she wrote the following sketch of Pala. This is copied from her California and the Missions , by kind permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co., of Boston: One of the most beautiful appanages of the San Luis Rey Mission, in the ti

Cursed by the common fate of the Missions Pala suffered severely. In thirty years all its glory had departed as Mrs. Jackson graphically pictures in the preceding chapter. But Pala was destined to receive another blow. This is explained by Professor Frank J. Polley, formerly President of the Southern California Historical Society. In the early 'nineties he visited Pala and from an article published by him in 1893 the following accompanying extracts are quoted: Mr. Viele, the present owner of mos

In the restoration of Pala chapel the Landmarks Club of Los Angeles, incorporated "to conserve the Missions and other historic landmarks of Southern California," under the energetic presidency of Charles F. Lummis, did excellent work. November 20 to 21, 1901, the supervising committee, consisting of architects Hunt and Benton and the president, visited Pala to arrange for its immediate repair. The following is a report of its condition at the time: The old chapel was found in much better conditi

States and nations, even as individuals, are often tempted in diverse ways to forsake the path of rectitude, and, for material gain, territorial acquisition, or other supposed good, to do dishonorable things. To my mind one of the chief blots on the escutcheon of the United States is its treatment of the Indians, and California, as a sovereign state, cannot escape its individual responsibility for its utterly reprehensible treatment of its dusky "original inhabitants." When the Spaniards seized

In Southern California water is an essential element in nearly all agricultural and horticultural development. In their own primitive fashion the Indians irrigated the lands long prior to the coming of the Spaniards. When Padre Peyri, however, came to Pala, his far-seeing eye at once noted its possibilities, and he set about bringing water from the headwaters of the river. He laid a line for a ditch from the mountains to the mission lands so accurately and with such consummate skill that it is a

To many white people an Indian is always what they conceive all Indians ever have been—wild, uncultivated, useless savages. Never was idea more mistaken and cruelly ignorant. At Pala there is not an Indian on the free ration list. The putting of water upon their lands has transformed them from the crushed, disheartened, half-starved and almost despondent people they were thirteen years ago, after their removal from their beloved Palatingua, into an industrious, energetic, independent, self-suppo

The art instincts of primitive people naturally were exceedingly limited in expression. Their ignorance of tools not only restricted their opportunities for the development of handicraft ability, but also deprived them of many materials they otherwise might have used. Hence whenever an outlet was discovered for their artistic tendencies they were impelled to focus upon it in a remarkable degree. With few tools, limited scope of materials, and next to no incitement to higher endeavor as the resul

In the preceding chapter I have presented, in a broad and casual manner, the work of the Pala basket-makers. They are not confined, however, to this as their only artistic industry. They engage in other work that is both beautiful and useful. For centuries they have been pottery makers, though, as far as I can learn, they have never learned to decorate their ware with the artistic, quaint, and symbolic designs used by the Zunis, Acomese, Hopis and other Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico,

It would require many pages of this little book even to suggest the various rites, ceremonies and ideas connected with the ancient religion of the Palas. It was a strange mixture of Nature worship, superstition, and apparently meaningless rites, all of which, however, clearly revealed the childlike worship of their minds. In the earliest days their religious leaders gained their power by fasting and solitude. Away in the desert, or on the mountain heights, resolutely abstaining from all food, th

In January of 1916 a storm swept over the whole of the Coast Country of California from north to south, doing considerable damage on every hand. In the Pala Valley the rain fell in volumes. For twenty-four hours it never ceased, it being estimated that twelve inches fell during that time. The pouring floods swept over the valley, and soon began to undermine the adobe foundations of the tower. The base was simply a piled-up mass of adobe, covered with cobble-stones, which, however, had withstood