File:The Spanish in the Southwest (1903), Interior of ruins of San Fernando.jpg

Identifier: spanishinsouthw00wint (find matches)
Title: The Spanish in the Southwest
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Winterburn, Rosa V. (Rosa Viola)
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Publisher: New York, Cincinnati, American book company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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Ruins of San Fernando of four others, were to be sold; four were to be rentedto the highest bidders; the remaining six were also to berented as soon as their affairs could be straightened outlegally. The missions as a part of the active life of Alta Cali-fornia were dead. They passed out of existence, and thestreams of the new life in California flowed over theirruins with hardly a ripple to tell of what lay beneath. Secularization 165 The only people who were seriously affected by theirdestruction were the Indians. The mission Indians seemed to dwindle out of existence, \to melt away into nothingness. Where there had beenhundreds and even thousands of neophytes, they were soonto be counted only by tens. In 1839, at San Luis Rey,five hundred were left; at San Juan Capistrano, about
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Interior of ruins of San Fernando eighty, in each case about an eighth of the former num-ber. Similar conditions prevailed at all the missions.The few who were left complained bitterly of the treat-ment given them by the officers sent out by the govern-ment. They said that they were crowded off the bestlands of the old mission estates; food was rarely giventhem ; and they were in such rags that some of the womenhad been obliged to make and wear tule skirts like thoseworn by the savages. They were flogged for every little 166 The Missions of Alta California offense, and far more cruelly than in the days of missionlife. Those of the neophytes who stayed near the missions,trying to adapt themselves to the new .life, were usuallymen and women grown old under the call of the well-known bells. They could not go out again into the wildmountains to live as the savages of their own race mustlive; so, in their poverty and helplessness, they lived onnear the old homes, or hid somewhere away from

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