Boletin_29_Digital

SÜrh Annual

February 15-117. 2013 Santa Barbara. CA

CMSA Conferenc:

California Mission Studies 3 Association – Mission Statement, Board Members

A Letter from the California 4 Mission Studies Association President By David Bolton

The Cross and the Spade: 30

Serra's Painter: José de Páez 79 Archaeology and the Discovery of the Earliest Serra Chapels at the Royal

By Cynthia Neri Lewis

Presidio of Monterey, 1770–1772 By Rubén G. Mendoza, PH.D.

Between a Rock and a Crucifix: 5 Father Junipero Serra in His Own Day By Steven W. Hackel

"Grocery Shopping" for Alta 100 The Virgin of the Rosary at 12

California: Documentary Evidence Tetela del Volcán: Conversion,

of Culinary Colonization on the the Baptismal Controversy, a

Frontier of New Spain Dominican Critique of the

By Margaret Graham & Franciscans, and the Culture Wars

Russell Skowronek in Sixteenth Century Central Mexico By Robert H. Jackson

Boletín

journal of the california mission studies association volume 29, Number 1, 2013

Decoding the Bones 60 Spanish Colonial Butchering Practices at the Royal Presidio of Monterey By Jennifer A. Lucido

Franciscan Missions in 144 Alta California and New Mexico: Differences and Similarities By David J. McLaughlin

Stories of Spanish California 116

By Mardith Schuetz-Miller

Mission San Miguel, 131 A Case Study: A New Methodology for California Mission History By Ryan Thornton, OFM

"Junípero Serra and the Legacies 158 of the California Missions" Exhibit at the Huntington Library Reviewed By Anne Petersen

Junípero Serra: California's 166 Founding Father Reviewed By Dan Krieger

Announcements 170

California Missions Night Photography Project By Paul C. Richmond

pages 1, 29, 59, 78, 99, 115, 172

Do You Know This Mission? 169

Editors: David Bolton Mike Imwalle Ty Smith Nick Tipon

Design: Robert Powers Production: 360 Digital Books

Boletin (ISSN 1546-5608) is published annually by California Mission Studies Association (CMSA)

Periodicals postage paid at Santa Barbara, California 93121

Postmaster, send address changes to: CMSA PO Box 420215 San Diego, CA 92124

Articles appearing in this journal are indexed in HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS and AMERICA: HISTORY AND LIFE.

Regular $45 annual membership dues include subscription to this publication.

See www.californiamissionstudies.com for membership, past issues of the Boletin and other CMSA publications, annual conference information, and the Style Guide for submissions to the journal.

Send Boletin-related inquiries, general submissions, book reviews and books for review, media reviews and media for review to CMSA Editor David Bolton at boletin@ californiamissionstudies.com or PO Box 24132, Santa Barbara, Ca 93121

Direct all other inquiries to the CMSA business address: PO Box 420215, San Diego, CA 92124

Volume 29, Number 1, 2013

s Mission Statement

The California Mission Studies Association is a nonprofit

cmsa board of directors s

officers

public benefit corporation and is organized under the Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law for public purposes. It is not organized for the private gain of any

President David Bolton, Santa Barbara

person. The specific purposes of this Association are educational in nature and are: 8 To preserve, advance, and promote early

California historic and cultural resources

Vice-Presidents Bettie Allen, Sonoma Theresa Brunner, Novato

8 To advance and promote development of

archaeological, historical, and archival resources 8 To promote research projects resulting in the

Secretary Carol Kenyon, Bradley

preservation and restoration of period landmarks 8 To encourage and support educational

opportunities for scholarship in the fields of early

Treasurer Mike Imwalle, Santa Barbara

California history and culture, regardless of color, race, creed, sex or age.

directors

Steven Hackel, Pasadena Nick Tipon, Santa Rosa John Warren, Paso Robles Mary Wood, Santa Cruz Maureen Bourbin, San Francisco Ty Smith, Cambria Cassidy DeBaker, San Rafael Mary Susa, San Juan Capistrano

s about the california mission studies association s

“ With the inception of a California Mission Studies Association...a need will be filled which has been recognized by many over the past years. It is very important that...the widest possible circle be drawn to be certain of including everyone with an active interest in the given period. Every aspect should be encompassed, including music, dance, arts, crafts, etc., as well as the obvious in an effort to make mission studies as comprehensive a subject as possible. Continuing in this vein, because of the direct relationship between all aspects of research in the mission period, it seems imperative that studies relating to presidios, ranchos, villas, pueblos, etc., be considered...along with strictly mission oriented investigations.”

- Edna Kimbro, CMSA Founding Member, 1984

journal of the california mission studies association ' 3

A LETTER FROM THE CMSA PRESIDENT

Fall has always been a special time along Alta California’s Mission Trail. The dry Santa Ana winds coming from the east and the often-referred to Indian Summer bring some of the best weather-wise days of the year before the winter rains and cooler temperatures set in. From the pure days of Native inhabitants, to the arrival of missionaries, and continuing until today, fall has been a time for abundant harvest in this corner of the world. From Oak Tree acorns to vegetables to wine grapes, fall has been and continues to be a special moment in California. It’s a unique time of year – celebrations, harvests and festivals. It’s a time of year enjoyed for centuries by California’s native populations, and later by the missionaries, and today by millions. Fall also is a special time for the California Mission Studies Association as we unveil yet another annual Boletín. It is with great pride that CMSA is again able to provide this outstanding journal to our valued members. We hope that you will enjoy it. Earlier this year at CMSA’s annual conference in Santa Barbara, this organization celebrated its 30th anniversary. And what a 30 years it has been. Scholars, historians, archaeologists, and mission aficionados have all contributed to a significant chapter in our mission history – perhaps, in telling the story of our missions, the most significant chapter. Never before has such a diverse and wide- spread group combined forces to paint the picture of what happened during mission times, what happened as the missions and presidios sprouted up along the Alta California coast, and what was the cultural effect that these establishments left in our unique corner of the world. It’s become tradition for CMSA’s Boletín to reflect on our organization’s most recent Conference. This year marks not only the 30th birthday of CMSA, but also the 300th anniversary of Junípero Serra’s birth. Santa Barbara proved the perfect backdrop this past February as CMSA celebrated its most widely attended Conference ever and all of us reflected on the life and legacy of Junípero Serra. That reflection and analysis continues as we look to Serra’s birthday this November 24, 2013. This edition of Boletín includes several Serra-related articles, plus other contributions from CMSA’s talented membership. This edition is truly a reflection of our recent successful conference – taking a look at Serra but also including other research of interest to everyone that enjoys studying mission history. As you can imagine, a publication of this size does not come together easily. I would personally like to thank our very talented contributors. Whether providing an article, a photograph or an idea you are again the backbone of CMSA’s Boletín. A special acknowledgment is also due to my fellow Boletín editors -- Michael Imwalle, Nick Tipon, and Ty Smith -- as well as graphic designer Robert Powers. It was truly a team effort and that is what makes CMSA so special. To our fellow CMSA members, and to all of our supporters, we send you our kindest regards. We hope that you will enjoy this 2013 edition of Boletín – the annual journal of the California Mission Studies Association.

Sincerely, David Bolton, CMSA President Boletín Editor

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CMSA Supporter's Circle 9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9= 9=99 Earl Beck David Bolton Anne M. Brown Julianne Burton Carvajal Jacqueline Cormier Susan Crutchfield PHD Jeannie Davis Mary Louise Days José Antonio Falcon Glen Farris Christine Frederickson Lois Giddens Betty Goerke Laurence Gould Diana W. Hadley Michael Hardwick Craig Alan Huber Michael Imwalle Patricia Adler Ingram Jarrell Jackman Alan Kemp Carol Kenyon Lynn Kirst Lynn Matteson Marianne McCarthy Anne J. Miller Ph.D. Emmett O’Boyle Raymond O’Brien Charles Rennie III MD Audie Robinson Michele Smith Joan Stenberg Mary M. Wood

BOLETIN s CALIFORNIA MISSION STUDIES ASSOCIATION

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A CRUCIFIX: Father Junípero Serra in his Own Day

9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9= 9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9=9==9=9=9==9=9=9=9=9=9=9

Steven W. Hackel

Junípero Serra is among the most widely recognized figures in California history. And he is second to none for the period before 1850. Today, his image appears in comic books and on coins, in postcards and postage stamps, and his name has been given to highways and high schools, wine and gin, tequila and whiskey, a mountain peak, and yes—I kid you not— at one time it even graced a landfill in Colma City on the San Francisco Peninsula.

In this 300th anniversary commemorating Serra’s birth, it is worth considering the different ways he has been remembered over time. Because, ultimately, it appears there is an enormous gap between how we see Serra today and how his contemporaries saw him.

The most enduring image of Serra today quite possibly may be in sculpture. In 1931, a nine-foot statue of Serra was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. In truth, Serra stood only a bit taller than five feet and suffered from a chronically ulcerous leg. But he was indeed larger than life. The Mallorcan-born Franciscan played a crucial role in the settlement and colonization of Alta California, most notably as the founder of the chain of Catholic missions that eventually extended from San Diego to just north of San Francisco. For that accomplishment and many related to it Serra has been given an exalted place in Washington.

From his marble pedestal, Serra’s heavenly gaze and commanding posture suggest his confidence, inner strength, and higher purpose. On the day that the monumental work was installed in Statuary Hall, speaker after speaker extolled Serra’s piety, his tireless work among Indians, and most important, his role as the “pioneer of pioneers” who brought civilization to California. In the words of Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Department

About the Author Steven W. Hackel is associate professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, a member of the board of the California Mission Studies Association, and co-curator of "Junípero Serra and the Legacies of the California Missions", an exhibition on view at the Huntington Library through January 6, 2014.

journal of the california mission studies association ' 5

Figure 1. The statue of Serra by the sculptor Ettore Cadorin (American, 1876–1952) in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building. Serra holds a plain cross and a miniature model of Mission San Carlos. Photo courtesy U.S. Capitol.

of Interior at the time, Serra, “imbued with divine spirit, charged with an exalted mission and sustained by an unfaltering faith, faced with supreme courage, danger, privation, suffering, disease, to carry the message of salvation over unknown paths along the uncharted shores of the Pacific . . . He was the torch bearer of civilization.” Notably, Serra was also lauded for bringing to California the key components of the Pacific agricultural empire: oranges, lemons, olives, figs, grapes, and assorted vegetables, as well as cattle, sheep, goats, and horses. With all of this bounty, one might imagine that Serra came to California in an ark, not on a mule.

A generation later, in 1959, on the 175th anniversary of Serra’s death, luminaries again gathered in Statuary Hall to offer similar tributes.

So, who was this man? Miquel Joseph Serra was born in 1713, in the town of Petra on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. A community of 2,500 residents, Petra’s rhythms, folkways, and institutions were those typical of rural 18th-century Europe, dictated by religion, climate, environment, and inherited social status. Most people in the Mallorcan countryside were poor, and Serra’s family appears to have been no different. There was no guarantee of steady work; they typically had little or no savings and lived in full awareness that a season’s wages could be wiped out during crop failures and that they were just one stroke of bad luck away from destitution.

In the world of Serra’s childhood and youth, Catholicism loomed large: it was a way of life, a way of ordering the world, the most powerful and pervasive institution Mallorcans knew. Serra’s own zeal for the preservation and propagation of the faith was honed early on as he came of age in a world where church and state distrusted one another even as they were partners in Bourbon expansionism.

The church also provided some measure of security. Economic hardship must have helped provide at least some incentive to Serra to begin his formal training for the priesthood. At age 17, Serra joined the Franciscan Order; at that time he chose for himself the name Junípero, inspired by the life of St. Francis’s companion, Brother Juniper.

It was not unusual for a promising young boy from Petra to take holy orders. Nor was it unusual for a Mallorcan priest to leave the island for life as a missionary. But it was unexpected for a Franciscan priest to give up a university professorship for the uncertain life of a missionary in the New World.

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Figure 2. A man working the land outside the village of Petra, Serra’s birthplace. Serra would encourage Indians in Mexico and California to adopt similar forms of agriculture. Detail of map created by Cardinal Antonio Despuig y Dameto, ca. 1785. Museu de Mallorca.

Serra left Mallorca at age 35 after spending more than a decade preaching throughout Mallorca and nearly as long teaching philosophy and theology at the University in Palma. He understood he was making a life commitment and would never cross the Atlantic again. There could be no doubts: he was enacting God’s will, just as he had heard it through a voice in his heart.

Soon after his arrival in New Spain, as colonial Mexico was known in those days, Serra was assigned to oversee five missions in the Sierra Gorda, a region about 100 miles north of the capital city. There he stayed until 1758 after which he spent 10 years dividing his time between his duties at the College of San Fernando in Mexico City and preaching throughout the countryside. In 1767 he ventured north to reorganize the formerly Jesuit missions of Baja California, and less than two years later he was the spiritual leader of the overland expeditions that took possession of Alta California for Spain. He would devote the remaining years of his life to the establishment of missions in Alta California, to indoctrinating Indians into Catholicism, and to ensuring that the Franciscans—not the military—had control over Indian lives.

The Serra whose life was honored in 1931 in the U.S. Capital is not exactly the Serra I have just described. 18th-century depictions of Serra stand in stark contrast to those from the 20th. In a 1785 painting by Mariano Guerrero, we see Serra how he was in his last years: small, sickly, anticipating death. The painting shows Serra as he wished to be remembered: publicly acting out what Franciscans and devout Catholics of his day would have considered a good death. According to those with him when he died at Mission San Carlos, Serra, having already confessed, rose from his deathbed, walked to the mission chapel, and, as we see here, in his last act of public devotion, received Final Communion. This representation of his final days is heroic and didactic; it was an image that would have been intelligible and acceptable to his contemporaries and to a wide range of Spanish and Mexican Catholics, and perhaps that is one reason why for generations it has been displayed in the Museo Nacional de Historia in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park.

Another image that captures Serra’s life as he lived it appeared in 1787. It is an engraving that served as the frontispiece for the seminal biography of Serra written by his devoted student, friend, colleague, and fellow Mallorcan, Francisco Palóu. This one is by far the grittiest, the most complicated, and likely to be the most accurate image that exists of Serra.

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Figure 3. The ailing Serra is surrounded by Indians and soldiers as he receives the sacrament of Final Communion from his devoted colleague and first biographer, Francisco Palou. Mariano Guerrero, Fray Junípero Serra recibe el viático, 1785, oil on canvas. Museo nacional de Historia, INAH-CONACULTA.

Figure 4. A rendering of Junípero Serra by Francisco Palou, from Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable padre fray Junípero Serra, 1787. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Here, Serra holds in his left hand a crucifix upon which we can see the body of Christ crucified, the central object of Franciscan devotion and the symbol of man’s potential redemption through the physical suffering and death of God’s only son. To Franciscans of Serra’s day it was Christ’s death, rather than his life, that was inspiring.

Serra in his right hand holds a symbol of his own religious devotion and practice, gripping a rock, the sort of pounding stone that he was known to have used to strike his chest during his fiery sermons. Arrayed at Serra’s feet are the instruments—props if you will—of the traveling missionary and itinerant preacher of 18th-century Mexico: a broken skull—the warning to those who had not yet repented their sins that death is always near—and his tools for dramatic and public self-mortification: the chain and burning taper.

All around Serra are sinners being moved to repentance. These people seem overwhelmed by his presence. They clutch their hearts. They avert their eyes. Serra rises above them all, presiding from on high. In a sense he is as enormous here as he is in the 1931 statue. Above him circle birds, perhaps representations of saved souls. Serra here is the savior. His tunic surrounds him and he appears impenetrable, a metaphor for the strength of his inner faith. Serra stands ready—rock in one hand, crucifix in the other, and chains and tapers at his feet—to punish his own body to atone for the sins of others, all in the name of the crucified Christ.

Jump now to 1931, to the statue in the Capitol. Gone is the crucifix, the object of Franciscan devotion, replaced by a more generic cross. And missing from Serra’s other hand is the rock, the symbol of his self-mortification and the intensity of his faith; the stone has been replaced by a model of San Mission Carlos, not as it stood in Serra’s day, when it was still composed of crude huts, but as it appeared a century later. There is no trace of Indians or anyone else or of the angst and soul-searching that Serra intended to inspire in those who attended his sermons. The Serra here is not the small and sickly Serra of the 18th century but the polar opposite; Serra in the near-death painting crouches down, sick and weak; here we have a big man whose body projects strength, not mortality.

Similar erasures and substitutions characterize Serra in a medal that was stamped in 1963 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth. Here, as in Statuary Hall, Serra holds aloft with one hand a large cross, while the other displays a miniature of Mission San Carlos. As in 1931 Serra comes across as physically quite impressive.

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Figure 5. A 1963 commemorative medallion produced by the U.S. Mint on the 250th anniversary of Serra’s birth. Photograph by Patrick Tregenza.