A Port at the Edge of the World II

The Pacification of Alta California (1769 – 1821): As Spain's hold weakens, Alta California stands at a crossroads, with missions burgeoning and San Francisco coming to life. Amidst this era of change, what propels these pioneers into the heart of the unknown, and what are the stakes? This episode ventures into perilous sea voyages, shipwrecks that scar the coast, and pivotal encounters with Native Americans through the mission system. As we uncover the hidden tales of resilience and conquest, how will the fates of native tribes and Spanish settlers intertwine beneath the shadow of impending superpowers?

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  When we left off in the last episode,   the year was 1769, and these missions were just set to be established in Alta California.  Up to that point, the west coast of the United States was the extreme wilderness, unexplored by Europeans, by land.  We talked a little bit about the French and Indian War in the last episode,  probably the most important event to happen in the Americas during the 18th century. 

Spain made the mistake of throwing their hat in with the French.  When England won that battle, won that war,  not only did they establish themselves as the most powerful country in the world, arguably,  but they also diminished Spain's prominence in the world.   So Spain, under a new crown, a new king, King Charles III, He's thinking, I really need to find some more economic possibilities in these colonies. 

So they're building up these missions as a part of that.  King Charles sends in an inspector general, a man named Galvez,  and Galvez names Gaspar de Portola to lead this expedition in Dalta, California, to chart out the sites for these missions.  And he appoints a man named Junipero Serra as El Presidente of the Missions.

He's a Franciscan friar.  The timeline of this expedition, the Bortola Expedition,  was that they were going to enter from Baja,  settle San Diego,  continue to Monterey, set Monterey up as the capital of Los Californios,  and then eventually  they'll settle a port named San Francisco.  That was the cliffhanger I left you with at the end of the last episode.

Because at this point in our story,  San Francisco, as we know it today, hasn't yet been discovered.  

1595 is relatively early in the Spanish hold on the West.  They've just established themselves as having defeated the Native Americans in Central and South America.  They've established that circuital sailing route to the East Indies from Mexico City.

That long, arduous journey takes on average four months.  And so they're beginning to send these galleons around on that journey. But they're trying to maximize their profits.  They can only send each galleon maybe once a year if everything goes right.  And so it's around this time that Spain begins to develop what is known as the Manila Galleon,  doubling the size of their traditional galleon.

Name the Manila Galleon because the Manila Port, which Spain has just established,  Manila being the capital of the Philippines,  is the main port in which these Manila Galleons would land in the East Indies.  These galleons were the monsters of the sea for their time.  Each one weighed upwards of 2, 000 tons, at their largest.

It would take around 2, 000 trees to build.  So in 1595,  Sermonio takes off from Mexico City, lands in Manila, and takes a newly launched Manila galleon loaded to the brim with treasure, china, porcelain, silk,  and sets sail back on that circuitous route  down the America coast.  With him are something like 90 crew members, Franciscan friars. 

They also bring with them a dog that's said to be a favorite among the crew.  Sermonio is also tasked with finding one of these ports, or trying to find a port in which these ships can resupply.  So as he's coming down what is now California,  he rounds Point Reyes, which is about an hour north of San Francisco, a peninsular land structure that juts out into the ocean and lands just below it in what is today Drake's Bay. 

Beaches leading into high sea cliffs. Elephant seals beached on shore. Great white territory, a lot of seals. Pretty rocky area.  They don't want to take the galleon far into this bay.  But they want to explore these channels. See what's there, they've never been there before. May have been the first landing of any European in Drake's Bay.

It's kind of fuzzy who the first explorers, the first discoverers were of these territories. And in all cases, it's Native Americans, but from a European standpoint,  they anchor the Manila galleon farther out in the bay, row to shore,  and according to the official declaration, Sermonio, quote,  Asked all to witness that he took possession of the land and port in the name of the king, our master. 

He gave it the name  La Bahia de San Francisco,  and the Reverend Father Fray Francisco de la Concepcion of the Barefoot Franciscans, who comes in the ship, baptized it.  End quote.  There it is,  the name San Francisco.  Why it's named that is because they just so happened to land ashore on October 4th,  which is the feast day.

of St. Francis de Assisi,  the namesake for San Francisco.  Mr. Manio's expedition continues.  They'd brought a launch from Manila  because they can't navigate these channels with a Manila galleon. They want to build out the smaller ship.  Half the crew would stay on the Manila galleon. The other half would stay ashore. 

While they're continuing these explorations, a storm hits.  The anchor of the Manila galleon drags on the bottom of the ocean,  and sinks. 

That half a billion dollars worth of supplies is lost.  The Franciscan friar who baptized that area in the name of St. Francisco dies along with 11 members of the crew.  Even today you can go to Drake's Bay and still find screws from the scallion. That's how large it was. It gives you some idea of the bulk of this kind of ship. 

Native Americans in the years afterwards, explorers would note how they built shelters using the wood from Sermahnio's shipwreck.  And these men are stranded. At least those that survived.  And they're in dire straits because their food supply was on the Manila Galleon.  Luckily, they have this ship launch.

It's a much smaller ship that they were hoping to use for these channels, explorations. They get as much food as they can from the Native Americans. And then they set sail south, hoping to get back to Mexico City.  They pass what is today known as San Francisco Bay, don't see it, it's too foggy,  and the men start starving. 

They end up killing their favorite dog and eating it.  Once they get towards Mexico, they've run out of food again, they land ashore. Native Americans help supply them with some food, but they end up spotting a beached whale that's rotting on the shore. And they go and eat its blubber. And that's really what sustains them on the rest of the journey to Mexico City. 

Miraculously, all of them survive. Though it's a gauntly appearance when they first land ashore,  but the Spanish crown is not too happy with them.  Their whole purpose of this journey was to get this half a billion dollars worth of loot. They have lost one of their Manila galleons and all of this treasure. 

And so as consequence, not only do they dismiss Sirmano's expedition,  they stop all attempts to explore Alta California by these Manila galleons. 

When Portola takes off, the famous Portola expedition, the first overland expedition into Alta California in 1769, he's largely going off the notes of all these old explorers, the most recent 30 years before.  Most of them, 100 plus years before.  And the reason he's aiming to San Francisco is because of this discovery by Sermonio. 

The bay as we know it today still isn't discovered. It's unnamed at this point.  So Portola takes off in his expedition. From Baja, it takes three ships and two land expeditions. They hope the ships will land in San Diego, the first part of the journey, and begin building out the first mission in Presidio before the land expeditions arrive. 

Essentially what the land journeys are like is just giant mule trains. They have 40 ish soldiers with each group, around 40 Baja Native Americans.  Horses, mules, hundreds of horses and mules.  And they're going into uncharted territory.  When they land in San Diego, hoping that these ships have already arrived, they realize that the ships hadn't had the same success.

One of the ships is completely lost, thought to be lost at sea.  The crews of the other two Scurvy.  Scurvy, if you're familiar with it, it's pretty bad. Brutal disease. It's a deficiency of vitamin C. Common among pirates and sea captains at the time because you can't take perishable goods, fruits and vegetables on these ships because they'll go rotten.

That's where you get a lot of your nutrients.  Symptoms include bleeding from the gums, loss of teeth, red spots on your body, deep bone pain. Towards the end, men will go insane.  When Portolan and his men arrive on this overland journey,  The mission and presidio haven't really been developed at all because these sea captains are too busy caring for their crew that's dying of scurvy. 

Just to give you an idea of the death rate,  one of the ships arrived with 90 men, or took off I should say, from Baja with 90 men,  only 8 men end up surviving.  Portola has orders to go settle Monterey as the capital of Los Californios and he's probably pretty eager to do that because this is his new territory in which he's going to govern. 

He wants to please the Viceroy, having just been appointed the governor of Los Californios.  So he's eager to continue, but they have to stay while their crew recovers.  Eventually, he puts together roughly 64 men, a couple of friars,  and he sets off.  The journey from San Diego to Monterey is really the bulk of this expedition. 

440 miles, roughly,  uncharted territory, the deep, deep wilderness. I think of it as like a It's almost like a Heart of Darkness expedition, though the Native Americans in California, according to these men's journals, are friendlier in general, though there are still Native Americans that are understandably combative against these settlers, and they're experiencing a lot more Native Americans during this leg of the journey. 

Some of the natives are eager to meet these men as they come along, and it's got to be such a curious sight. It's probably the first time most of these Native Americans ever encountered a European.  A lot of them are inviting Potolans men to their camps, and then other times they describe these Native Americans just standing off in the distance, staring at them blankly. 

Unlike a lot of these other conquistador expeditions, there's no battles or fights. 

Toward Los Angeles, they come to the largest Native American village they'd seen yet.  While there, they experience a number of earthquakes, and these Native Americans stop to pray to the earthquakes.  The men describe that  these Native Americans also have a few old blades, and knives, and swords.  It's very relatable to a scene in Dances with Wolves, if you've ever seen that movie with Kevin Costner. 

Great movie in its own right, won the Academy Award for Best Picture and it was one of the first movies to portray Native Americans positively.  But there's a scene toward the end,  after Kevin Costner's character has befriended the Sioux Lakota tribe,  he's sitting with one of the elders. The elder is trying to get out of him, how many white men are going to be coming into the plains? 

Kevin Costner says,  as many as there are stars in the sky,  basically meaning it's going to be an onslaught.  And this old Native American chief brings out this cloth, within it  is an old conquistador helmet.  And he talks about how it had been passed down from his great grandfather and how he knew that the white men would always be coming. 

When I read these descriptions of these men on the Portola expedition, that's what I think of . And these Native Americans, it's clear, it's seen these Europeans.  They may have interacted with them, or they may have obtained these blades and knives through trade. It may have been their grandfathers or great grandfathers, because these explorers had been coming there for hundreds of years. 

And there hadn't been many explorations along that coast, or known explorations, documented, I should say. But it's clear that the Native Americans know these men are coming.  So Potolin and his men continue.  They eventually come across land that According to these descriptions they're carrying with them,  suggests that they're nearing what is the port of Monterey. 

But they can't find it.  Either they spot it and don't realize it's Monterey because it's nothing like these descriptions of Remember that explorer from the last episode who really built up the description of Monterey, hoping it would be explored? Those are the notes he kept.  They're not accurate to what Monterey actually is. 

For whatever reason , they don't see Monterey.  And so there's a deliberation whether or not they should continue.  Eventually they decide to go on. 

There's no GPS.  There's no mileage trackers. They have no idea how far they've traveled. If they've gone far beyond Monterey, which is their goal.  As they continue, there's  disagreement as to whether or not they've passed Monterey.  And so Portola sends out a scouting party.  A few days later,  these riders return, firing off their rifles to indicate good news,  and go on to describe this great estuary they'd seen farther north that extended into the country.

As far as they could see,  they continue northward, and  on a pleasant, clear, and fogless November afternoon, they ascend.  A ridge near present day Pacifica, about a 30 minute drive south from San Francisco, to attend Mass and see if they can get a clearer view of this estuary.  So let's pick up this journey with the diary of Father Crespi,  who writes, quote,  As soon as we ascended to the summit, we described a great bay.

Formed by a point of land which runs far out into the open sea and looks like an island.  Farther out, about west northwest from where we stood and a little to the southwest of the point, six or seven white fairlawns of different sizes were seen.  Following the coast of the bay, to the north, some white cliffs are visible.

And to the northwest is the mouth of an estuary. Which seems to penetrate into the land  and view of these signs and what is stated in the itinerary of the pilot Cabrera Bueno  We came to the recognition of this port.  It is that of our father, San Francisco And we have left the port of Monterey behind End quote. 

This is the first documented viewing of what is today's San Francisco Bay by Europeans  I think they're looking at Sermonio, San Francisco. What is today Drake's Bay  in reality? They're looking at a completely undiscovered port  Much larger in scale,  one of the best known ports in the world today. 

But Portola has a decision to make.  During this journey, he's not supposed to colonize San Francisco. He doesn't even realize you're looking at the wrong San Francisco.  He has orders to establish a site for a pursuing mission in Monterey.  Instead of continuing on and further exploring the bay,  Portola decides to turn back. 

And on their return journey, of course, they can't find Monterey.  And they eventually reach San Diego. And they're building up these missions there. The entire exploration would take six months.  Even in that brief viewing,  it's clear that most of the people who were involved in this expedition realized the importance of this great estuary they'd seen. 

One sergeant describes it as a locked chest, noting it's extremely fortifiable.  Another worries that if the Spanish don't claim it,  It would be extremely difficult to remove any nation that had established colonies within it because the entrance seems so narrow, even from that far.  They think you can shoot a musket across. 

Crespi even adds, quote, In understanding of all those intelligent, the port of San Francisco is very large and could contain all the armadas of not only our Catholic monarch, but also all those of Europe, end quote.  They know how important it is.  And so when they return to San Diego  and they send word back to the Viceroy of what they'd found,  modern day San Francisco, not really crispy San Francisco, still don't realize they've spotted the wrong port. 

The Viceroy really doesn't have a whole lot of interest in continuing to settle San Francisco Bay.  His job  and his responsibility to the crown is really profits.  And they're gaining a lot of profits through silver and gold trade in Central and South America.  He doesn't want to risk the money and time it would take to go and colonize San Francisco.

There are already plans to go in and colonize Monterey and San Diego. So he's kind of waiting to see how those turn out.  But these members who had been on the Portola Expedition continue to spread the news of how important the San Francisco Bay is.  In 1773, four years after the Portola Expedition,  the Viceroy, still being reluctant to go into San Francisco, receives a direct order from the Crown to fortify Upper California, and specifically to set up a mission and presidio in San Francisco. 

He charges a man named Captain Rivera, who was a part of this original Portola Expedition,  to take a new expedition into San Francisco,  known as the Rivera Palo Exploration of the Peninsula, in 1774. 

And it's during this expedition they realize that San Francisco that Sermonio described is actually farther north beyond this estuary.  And so there's this question of do they continue to Sermonio San Francisco or do they continue to set up a site for the mission in Presidio at this new estuary,  which remains to this day, the improper name of San Francisco.

The name sticks.  They decide, rationally, to set sites for this mission in Presidio in this new San Francisco.  But Rivera only really explores the eastern portion of the bay.  And the Golden Gate still hasn't been seen up close.  Rivera's men are beginning to get sick. They run out of food. It's extremely rainy when they arrive. 

And if you're familiar with the area,  during the rainy season it gets so muddy that you can literally get stuck in the mud. And if no one's there to get you out, you can die.  So he decides rather than to chart the entire bay, he heads back, prematurely perhaps,  notes what he finds.  So now there's more and more excitement building  to go in  and to colonize San Francisco. 

Eventually a man named Juan Bautista de Anza  proposes to the viceroy of New Spain, organizing a group of volunteers.  To serve as the soldiers for these Far North missions,  under the conditions that those that do volunteer are able to travel with their families, provided with clothing and food, and are paid fairly handsomely,  and he agrees to have them follow through with these plans. 

Anza goes into these territories that are in the northernmost reach of Mexico,  these outer towns,  mostly poor communities.  He starts gathering volunteers.  He ends up organizing about 240 people  and their families. The first expedition with women and children involved.  So he sets off with what is virtually a traveling town. 

240 people,  Native American interpreters,  something like 170 pack mules, 320 horses, 300 cattle,  um, uh, town. They're riding with the town.  So they take off on this arduous journey. They have to travel through the Sonoran Desert, travel over mountains, extreme heat, extreme cold.  They eventually get to the port of Monterey. 

Anza gets sick, has to stay there for a while. There's an interesting encounter between Rivero and Anza. Anza is doing what Rivera had hoped to do, he had.  Thought to organize this colonizing expedition.  And so there's seems to be a bit of jealousy between Rivera and Anza and he's trying to dissuade Anza from continuing. 

Other people at the mission at the time say that Rivera is saying things like, why do you want to go there? There's nothing there. You're, this is a complete waste of time.  Of course they know how precious this port is,  but no one else really does. You know, it's all kind of hearsay, word of mouth.  Anza seriously considers abandoning this whole expedition,  but these volunteers he was with, they want to continue,  along with the pay.

They were also promised land .  Why would you risk your life unless you can get new land?  Same idea as a Jamestown settlement. That's really what I'm imagining here, like a Jamestown type settlement.  Eventually, Enza recovers from his sickness  and decides he needs to go to San Francisco to see it for himself and decide whether or not this is a worthwhile venture. 

He leaves most of the volunteers in Monterey and travels with a smaller group. including one Franciscan friar to this new estuary, this new San Francisco.  There's complications with Anza and the friar. He travels with the friar Font   disagreements on where to go and where to chart  disagreements on power. 

It doesn't lead to anything substantial, just comical relief of reading these journals.  They find Rivera's cross that he'd set on this site for the mission. It's fallen over  and they continue on toward the coast, toward what is now Fort Point. 

As they climb a hillside nearby  and sit down to overlook the view,  Father Font writes in his journal, quote,  This place and its vicinity has abundant pasturage, plenty of firewood, and fine water, all good advantages for establishing here the Presidio, or fort, which is planned. It lacks timber, for there is not a tree on all those hillsides, though the oaks and other trees along the road are not very far away.

The soldiers chased some deer, of which we saw many today, but got none of them.  We also found antlers of large elk, which are so very plentiful on the other side of the estuary.  The sea is so quiet in the harbor that the waves scarcely break, and from the campsite, one hardly heard them, although it was so near. 

Here, near the lake, there are Yerba Buena, and so many lilies that I had them almost in my tent.  San Francisco Bay is a marvel of nature,  the harbor of harbors, because of its great capacity and of several small bays which it enfolds in its margins, beach, and its islands. End quote. 

So they do indeed decide that this is an ideal site for Presidio,  and then they decide to head back to Monterey,  leaving in late March.  And so on their way back, they walk through what is today the Mission District of San Francisco.  And discover the site for the actual mission, which is still the oldest surviving building in San Francisco today. 

Set a cross on that site, and return to Monterey.  Later in the year, they have these official ceremonies establishing the mission and Presidio of San Francisco.  But before we cut off this section of our story,  there's a prophetic mentioning by Father Font,  while they're leaving the site of the Presidio. 

They've already ascended this hillside, and he's written in his journal this description of the Presidio, and then they ascend the hillside even further,  and they come to this long mesa, which begins kind of at Fort Point and continues through the Presidio  and looking from that point out across the bay,  Father Font writes,  quote,  Although in my travels , I saw very good sights and beautiful country. 

I saw none which pleased me so much as this,  and I think that, if it could be well settled like Europe, there would not be anything more beautiful in all the world.  For it has the best advantages for founding in it a most beautiful city, with all the conveniences desired, by land as well as by sea,  with that harbor so remarkable and so spacious in which may be established shipyards, docks, and anything that might be wished. 

End quote. 

As the years progress,  these missions and these presidios will continue to be built up and fortified,  and it's worth noting what else is happening around the world.  1776 is a big year , not only do you have San Francisco being established, at least from a European standpoint being colonized,  you also have the American War of Independence. 

It can't really be understated how important this is psychologically to human beings around the world.  Never before had a colony rebelled against a mother country and succeeded and broken away.  At the time of the American Revolution, England was the most powerful country, arguably, in the world.  And so when America eventually wins that war, it has this domino effect. 

Other colonies from these other countries begin to see that it's possible to rebel. against their mother countries and succeed.  And for the most part, all of these, powerful countries in Europe that have colonies aren't treating the colonies very well.  The Americans, they revolt because of these taxes, these high taxes, and the English kind of look down upon the colonists as lesser than. 

The same is true in Spanish colonies and Portuguese colonies,  inspired by the United States gaining their independence.  In 1789, you have the French Revolution,  which is also based on these widening economic and social gaps.  Louis XVI is executed,  and it's right around that time that you have all these colonies in Central and South America rebelling. 

All the countries in Central and South America are all descendants of these Portuguese or Spanish colonies. 

If you read any descriptions of these California Native Americans during this time, you get a kind of, skewed picture of what they were really like,  particularly if you read historians that arrive after the Spanish colonization.  And to give you an example, I'm going to read to you a passage from one of the more popular books during the Gold Rush era  called The Annals of San Francisco, written in 1855. 

Quote,  Generally speaking, the Indians along the whole northwest coast of America were very inferior order of beings to the great tribes who inhabited the Atlantic border. And, in particular, the different races who dwelt in California were but poor wandering clans who subsisted on what they could procure by hunting and fishing, and on the fruits and grains which grew spontaneously. 

But they knew nothing of the arts of agriculture, or even of a pastoral life.  They may properly enough be compared to the Aborigines of Australia, or the Hottentots, or, perhaps, even the Baz Haasmans of Southern Africa, who have been considered the most barbarous and brute like people on Earth.  On this subject, Humboldt remarks, That the Indians of the Bay of San Francisco were equally wretched at that time, the establishment of the missions, with the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land, current day Tasmania. 

Vangis had said of the Aborigines of the peninsula, who closely resembled their brethren in Upper California,  It is not easy for Europeans who were never out of their own country to conceive an adequate idea of these people, for even in the least frequented corners of the globe, there is not a nation so stupid of such contracted ideas and weak both in mind and body as the unhappy Californians. 

Their characteristics are stupidity and insensibility, want of knowledge and reflection, inconsistency, impetuosity, and ignorance. and blindness of appetite, an excess of sloth, an abhorrence of all fatigues of every kind, however trifling or brutal,  in fine, a most wretched want of everything which constitutes the real man and renders him rational, inventive, tractable, and useful to himself and society. 

These notices and the extracts previously given from the voyages of Drake and Cavendish Abundantly established the fact of the wretched state of humanity in California.  And so it might have been till doomsday had not a new people appeared on the scene.  End quote. 

Certainly an undressing.  Where do you even begin with that?  It should be noted that the authors of the Annals of San Francisco were gold miners and had never interacted with these Native Americans prior to their interaction with the Spanish Missions.  And they do have a way with flair, I'll give that to them. 

But their opinions are woefully misguided  and influenced by an idea that was spreading throughout the Americas  called Manifest Destiny.  The Idea that the United States is destined to take over the West.  To accomplish this, there's an active campaign going on this time, supported by the governor of California, to commit genocide against these California Native Americans. 

You get a hint of that at the end of this passage. And so it might have been till doomsday had not a new people appeared on the scene,  i. e. had the Americans not appeared. The Americans being the, in their opinion, exemplary people.  They're describing these Native Americans in this negative way to defend what they're doing to them. 

This is nothing new in humanity.  If you think about any war, any attempted genocide, conquest is always attached to some active PR campaign  to defend what each country is doing.  You think of Caesar with Rome and the barbarian horde of the German tribes,  painting them as uncivilized, barbaric. 

Using the worst of them, their worst acts, as propaganda to defend going in and conquering them.  The Nazis do it with their idea of the superior man. Ordained by God to eliminate those who are of lesser species. These lesser humans,  trying to defend this conquest, this genocide.  The Americans have done it. 

Think of Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction. These people are terrorists.  If we don't do something, they're going to kill us all, never mind that they have oil.  In order to get your people behind you, you need to attach these conquests, these conversions, these genocides, with this idea of rightness.  If you go in and you kill off a population that has no means of defending themselves, that's not something populations will generally get behind and cheer for. 

If you think of an NFL football team going and crushing, a peewee football team, No one's going to cheer them on,  but if that P. U. E. football team is on the field that these NFL teams want to practice on and they need to get them off,  maybe paint them as demons. And then, if you do crush them, people won't treat you as harshly, although some might see through that. 

That's probably a terrible example, but that's the kind of idea.  That's essentially what the Spanish do with these Native Americans when they're building out these mission systems.  They're cloaking this conquest  with moral rightness.  That makes it more palatable.  Now, to be fair The Spanish friars, the Franciscan friars, they, from all accounts, believed in what they were doing  and they weren't actively perpetuating a genocide. 

They had already been taught that these Native Americans were lesser than. It helps you do the less palatable thing.  To really  understand the Native Americans of California, you  need to understand what that land was like and what the Bay of San Francisco was like.   San Francisco Bay is the largest estuary on the West Coast. 

Created at the end of the Ice Ages, around 10, 000  years ago.  Prior to that, humanity had lived in a much colder world, filled with ice and hardship.  And San Francisco wasn't a bay at the time, it was really just a deep valley,  with a stream running through that was eventually getting bigger and bigger.  The coast of California actually extended miles out at sea. 

If you're familiar with the Bay Area and you know the Fairlawn Islands, the land off the coast of California extended beyond the  Fairlawns. Once this melting begins around 11, 000, 12, 000 years ago,  you have these large bays coming into existence, the San Francisco Bay being one of them.  So once the melting process continued, the bay fills with water  and really creates a confluence of four bays. 

There's the Suisson Bay. which is below the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which is really marshy.  The North Bay, which is the freshest water north of San Francisco. The Central Bay, which most people are familiar with, borders San Francisco and Oakland, deepest, saltiest. And then the South Bay, which is shallow, extends into quiet marshes and lagoons and salt points. 

And that kind of natural land structure, these bays that were just being created during this ice age,  they bring with them such an abundance of life.  Think of the different ecological areas the San Francisco Bay had at that time, and still has to this day, but a lot of it's taken over by development. 

It's also new territory for breeding for fish that hadn't been already established by another species. So you have different populations, sea populations moving in, shellfish moving in, and you have all these animals moving in.  There's descriptions by Rivera and other soldiers that went to explore San Francisco of herds of grizzly bears, elk, deer.

Panthers, mountain lions,  these animals that would naturally be predator and prey were just living side by side. There's so much seafood there, they didn't need to worry about this potential predator is eating right beside me.  And it also brings, a lot of plant life for these deer and elk to eat. 

The soldiers described these streams as being filled to the brim with so many fish, birds blotting out the sun.  And these Native Americans had been there from the beginning,  arguably even longer. There's some Native Americans and some scientists who think the Native Americans could have been there for over 100, 000 years.

It's hard to say, if they've been there 10, 000 to 100, 000, but they'd been there since the beginning.  It seems that they migrated to this point. We found the ideal location to survive at the end of the Ice Ages.  If you remember the last episode, I discussed the population of the Native Americans at being around 60 million at the time of Columbus journey. 

Most of that population was in Central and South America.  In North America, United States proper, in Canada, there's around 6 million Native Americans, and even less in the United States.  Most of those were thought to be in California, about a third to a sixth by most estimates.  California, after this melting, was an idyllic area to settle. 

And not just the Bay. I mean, think of the Central Valley.  When settlers were coming across to get to San Francisco and they crossed through the Central Valley, many of them and their journalists literally described the Central Valley as a Garden of Eden  because of the abundance of life that was there.

It doesn't look that way now if you drive through. You'll see, like Amazon supply centers and all the roads that have cut through But at that time, abundance of life.  When you think of it in that way,  these Native Americans hit the jackpot in terms of finding a spot to settle  and to survive. 

There's no need to develop agriculture when you have such an abundance of life forms around you. That's why the population booms so easily there and they didn't have a whole lot of competition.  The Native Americans in Central and South America, they're much more compact, so you have a lot more competition. 

That's largely why they evolve.  If you want to evolve, you need competition. You need some reason to evolve.  Unless you come into contact with a competing organism, human species will evolve based off of the land they have around them.  And the Native Americans arguably evolved perfectly for this place. 

It's hard to argue with that if they've survived there for 10, 000 years. 

It's hard to get an idea of what these Native Americans are really like because all the accounts, or most of the accounts, come after these missions.  But I did find one account, somewhat biased because it is a European, so it's coming from their perspective,  that painted the picture of these Native Americans, I think, with a more literal touch,  not the same flair as the writers of Annals of San Francisco used. 

He was written by a member of Captain Wood Rogers' crew,  captain Wood Rogers being an English Privateer and 1709 quote.  They lived in huts made of bows and leaves erected in the form of Bowers with a fire before the door round, which they lay and slept.  The men were quite naked and the women had only short petted coats reaching scarcely to the knee made of silk grass for the skins of pelicans or deers. 

Some of them wore pearls around their necks.  Which they fastened with a string of silk grass, having first notched them round. And Captain Rogers imagined that they did not know how to bore them.  These pearls were mixed with sticks, bits of shells, and little red berries, which they thought so great an ornament that they would not accept of glass beads of various colors, which the English would have given them. 

The men are straight and well built, have long black hair, and are of a dark brown complexion.  They live by hunting and fishing, they use bows and arrows, and are excellent marksmen.  The women, whose features are rather disagreeable, are employed in making fishing lines, or in gathering grain, which they grind upon a stone. 

The people were willing to assist the English in filling water, and would supply them with whatever they could get.  They were very honest people, and would not take the least thing without permission. 

It seems that these people hadn't learned ideas of dishonesty, that they didn't have to prepare for. People breaking treaties or any diplomacy or politics. I don't want to say that they didn't have encounters with other tribes. I'm sure they did. Though it's unknown. We don't have these written accounts.

But any human is going to have to fight for their land at some point.  But these encounters were limited. And they were among their own kind.  We have a people coming in from places you've never been before. With technology you've never seen. Crossing this ocean you thought was the end of the world.  You're likely inclined to believe what they have to say. 

So let's compare that to these Franciscan friars  who are converting these Northern California Native Americans to Catholicism. That's their whole purpose.  They believe that if they baptize these quote unquote savages. That they'll reach heaven. You know, that's their purpose. That's their goal.  Their founder, as I mentioned earlier in that story of the origin of the name San Francisco,  is a man named St.

Francis de Assisi.  So let's unpack who he was.  He arrived in Europe  during the Dark Ages, a time of deep poverty and sickness, social unrest.  You have the aristocracy owning most of the land, nobility controlling most of the wealth. And the rest of the population was essentially the lower class.  And this man, St.

Francis de Assisi, inspired by a scripture he reads,  decides to renounce all his wealth and try to emulate the life of Jesus Christ by living in extreme poverty  and trying to earn alms by preaching.  Preaching this idea of being saved in the afterlife.  And so he goes to the Pope,  who confirms his religion,  gives him kind of the thumbs up, so to speak. 

Because at this point he's gained a lot of followers, this idea of  being equal to the nobility in terms of Potentially being saved in the afterlife. That's got to be pretty appealing  when your life is crumbling all around you  The idea that you will be saved in the afterlife so long as you follow these tenets gives you some hope here on earth that there's better things to come. 

The Pope and the Crown, they see this potential.  If you have these people following a faith like the Franciscan Order, believing that they will be rewarded in the afterlife so long as they live a good life emulating Jesus Christ.  That lessens the threat of revolt.  And  if you look at the Franciscan order, and you know, I don't want to exclude the Franciscan order this.

If you look at any religion at their beginning, they look very cult esque by their practices.  They're always, in just about every case, pretty extreme. That's not to say that they aren't beneficial. Don't misinterpret this as saying religion is terrible,  but they all evolve from this idea of cult to religion. 

I heard one historian describe the difference between a cult and religion as being a hundred years  because it takes that long to be generally accepted.  Think of Scientology.  Fifty years ago, that was an extreme cult. Now, it's a worldwide religion and they have some pretty rough and drastic practices.

You know, if you watch the documentary on Netflix,  Once you are converted into the faith of Scientology, if you're trying to get out, they take you into a conversion therapy. There's practices that are torture esque.  They're people who escape by, you know, hopping into the trunk of cars and driving away. 

This Franciscan order, their early practices were pretty  rough, I should say. And that's, uh, putting it lightly.  If you've ever watched The Da Vinci Code, these practices of torture, self torture, stigmata,  those were all practiced by the early Franciscans.  And they had a prominent role in the Spanish Inquisition, finding out heretics, finding anyone who wasn't Christian,  and trying to extract these emissions by torture. 

If you're trying to think of them visually, think of the monk with the funny haircut and the brown robe with the robe wrapped around him. 

They're tolerated because they had this benefit to the Spanish crown.  And they're given this task of converting the Native Americans because they're so effective, conquering the mind of these natives,  conquering their spirituality and religion,  so that when  There's less resistance. 

By the time these missions come around, it's a long way from the Dark Ages,  and you have this man at the head of the Alta California missions, El Presidente  Junipero Serra, who I mentioned before as being a part of that Portola expedition.  It's his teachings that really lay the foundation for how these missions will interact with these Native Americans. 

Sarah,  prior to taking over these Alta California missions, was also involved in this Spanish Inquisition.  His biographer, a man named Stephen Hackle, called him, quote, a calculating and unrelenting interrogator of those he thought had committed crimes against the church, end quote,  i. e. He wasn't afraid to use torture. 

Sarah was known to take his self abuse to the extreme.  There are descriptions of him in sermons, taking a torch, ripping open his brown robe, and burning his chest.  At one point he does this so long he passes out and the congregation thinks he's killed himself.  Think of that image seared in the congregation of these people. 

They must be thinking, if he's willing to do that to himself, he must believe in his teachings. Why would he do that to himself if it wasn't true?  And in Sarah's own words, he used this practice with the California Native Americans after converting them.  Quote,  that spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, with blows appears to be as old as the conquest of the Americas.

Two or three whippings applied to them may serve, for them and the rest, as a warning of spiritual benefit to them all. End quote.  Picture someone like Father Sarah at one of these missions,  interacting with these Native Americans as I described them before. Very honest, having lived in this area for thousands of years. 

Wouldn't steal a thing.  Hasn't even learned.  The concept of lying and you have the spiritual leader who arrives in a ship which you've never seen before crossing this ocean that you thought was impenetrable with all this technology. You're probably thinking he's been places I've never been.  He knows things that I don't know because he's been to this world that I didn't even know existed before. 

And he harms himself.  He's telling me my spiritual beliefs are wrong, and that if I'm baptized, I will reach heaven, even though I live in this savage state that he so claims I live in.  But if I follow the tenets of his religion, if I follow what he says and these other friars say, then I will be saved in the afterlife. 

That's the cell.  Convert. And be saved, you potentially have to live a harder life devoted to this emulation of Jesus Christ, quote unquote emulation,  or go back what these friars describe as living a savage life  and risk eternal damnation.  Once these Native Americans were baptized and were brought into the church, there was really no getting out after that. 

If you tried to run as a Native American, you'd be brought back and tortured. You'd have to work all day in these fields, this hide and tallow trade, all these missions were enormous ranches, hundreds of thousands of cattle, over a million cattle slaughtered during the mission's existence.  Living in kind of filth  and they're all being you know forced to go to church if they aren't paying attention They're whipped  or beaten with a stick.

It'd be comical if it weren't so terrible 

So the San Francisco mission  edge of the world still complete wilderness still continues evolving in relative isolation  The only descriptions we really have of this time in San Francisco are from the Franciscan friars themselves.  In 1792, we have the first non Spanish ship enter San Francisco Bay,  a man named Captain George Vancouver of the British Navy. 

He's sent to explore the northwest coast in the name of England, and he publishes his narration, a work called, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Around the World.  This is the first description we have of these missions from someone who is not Spanish.  And so I'm going to read a few accounts of what Captain George Vancouver has to say about these Spanish settlements. 

And before I do, let's just pause and set the scene a little bit.   Vancouver and his crew are exhausted. He's sailing into the San Francisco Bay for the first time.  Expecting to find a town, an established Spanish town, passing what is today the Golden Gate,  and we'll pick up with his journal there. 

Quote,  Having passed the inner points of entrance, we found ourselves in a very spacious sound, which had the appearance of containing a variety of sounds. of as excellent harbors as the known world affords.  The Spanish establishment, being on the southern side of the port, our course was directed along that shore, with regular soundings from nine to thirteen fathoms. 

Several persons were now seen on foot and on horseback, coming to the southeast point above mentioned. Now, this is the Presidio.  From whence, two guns were fired, and answered by us, agreeably to the signal established between Señor Cuadra and myself.  As the night soon closed in, a fire was made on the beach, and other guns were fired, but as we did not understand their meaning, and as the sounding continued regular, we steered up the port, under an easy sail and constant expectation of seeing lights of the town, off which I purported to anchor. 

But as these were not discoverable at eight at night, and being then in a snug cove, entirely landlocked with six fathoms of water and a clear bottom, we anchored to wait the return of day. 

He continues with these Spanish soldiers riding out, it's kind of chaotic,  it's probably the first ship they've seen in maybe years.  This has to be, one of the most exciting things to happen to them in a long time. The first European they're seeing other than each other.  When these friars and the Presidio soldiers arrive at Vancouver's ship, each of them, competitively it seems, it's Invite Vancouver and his crew to come explore these settlements. 

And he first explores the Presidio.  Quote,  We soon arrived at the Presidio, which was not more than a mile from our landing place. Its walls, which fronted the harbor, were visible from the ships. But instead of a city or town, whose lights we had so anxiously looked for on the night of our arrival,  we were conducted into a spacious, verdant plain, surrounded by hills on every side, excepting that which fronted the port. 

The only object of human industry which presented itself was a square area, whose sides were about 200 yards in length, enclosed by a mud wall, and resembling a pound for cattle.  Above this wall, the thatched roofs of their low, small houses just made their appearance.  On entering the Presidio, we found one of its sides still unenclosed by the wall, and very indifferently fenced in by a few bushes here and there, fastened stakes in the ground. 

Vancouver ends his tour of the Presidio saying,  Thus, at the expense of very little examination, though not without much disappointment, was our curiosity satisfied concerning the Spanish town and settlement of San Francisco, instead of finding a country tolerably well inhabited and far advanced in the cultivation if we accepted its natural pastures, the flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle.

There is not an object to indicate the most remote connection to any European or other civilized nation.  End quote.  The following day,  Vancouver and his crew  are invited by the friars,  and it's through this encounter that we get our first description of these Native Americans under the mission system. 

The major part of the Indians I understood were converted to the Roman Catholic persuasion.  But I was astonished to observe how few advantages had attended their conversion.  Deaf to the important lessons and insensible to the promised advantages, they still remained in the most abject state of uncivilization.

And if we accept the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego and those of Van Diemen's Land, they are certainly a race of the most miserable beings possessing the faculty of human reason I ever saw.  Their persons, generally speaking, were under the middle size and very ill made. Their face is ugly, presenting a dull, heavy, and stupid countenance, devoid of sensibility or the least expression. 

One of their greatest aversions is cleanliness, both in their persons and habitations, which, after the fashion of their forefathers, were still without the most trivial improvement.  Their houses were of a conical form, about six or seven feet in diameter at their base, which is the ground, and are constructed by a number of stakes, chiefly of the Willow tribe.

which are driven erect into the earth in a circular manner, the upper ends of which, being small and pliable, are brought nearly to join at the top, in the center of a circle. And these, being securely fastened, give the upper part of the roof somewhat of a flattish appearance.  Thinner twigs of the like species are horizontally intertwoven between the uprights.

Forming a piece of basket work about 10 or 12 feet high.  These miserable habitations, each of which was allotted for the residence of a whole family. were erected with some degree of uniformity, about three or four feet asunder, in straight rows, leaving lanes or passages at right angles between them.  But these were so abominably infested with every kind of filth and nastiness, as to be rendered not less offensive than degrading to the human species. 

Close by stood the church,  which, for its magnitude, architecture, and internal decorations, did great credit to the constructors of it. And presented a striking contrast between the exertions of genius and such as bare necessity is capable of suggesting.  The rising and decorating of this edifice appears to have greatly attracted the attention of the fathers, and the comforts they might have provided in their own humble habitations seem to have been totally sacrificed to the accomplishment of this favorite object. 

Both sides, 

Brescidio and the mission, everyone living in pretty dire circumstances.  The huts and rows, you know, this little mini village of huts that are filled with families, that's where these Native Americans get to live after they're married.  The one I described before where the women are locked in this one stable almost, that's for the singles, to prevent them from performing fornication pre marriage. 

Vancouver has this negative opinion of these Native Americans, it's after the Spanish rule, similar to what the Gold Rush authors of the Annals of San Francisco had written, writing from this European perspective, but not taking into consideration what this sort of displacement does to a people.  Their entire culture, after they've been baptized, is uprooted. 

They're doing things physically they've never done before. Being fed this kind of porridge that seems  counterintuitive to eat when you understand the diet of these Native Americans.  You can understand why they are kind of disillusioned.  They're promised all these things in the afterlife, but their life on earth seems pretty hellish from these sort of descriptions. 

A lot of these old historians describe the period under the next president of the missions as being much kinder toward the Native Americans, but  kinder compared to what? It's a  Bancroft's account from the history of Mexico, volume, I think it's one.  He writes about this report of the missions following Sarah's rule,  and he writes, quote, Alrigalia's report on mission management in 1804, in which he stated, as a result of his experience, that the Indians were not cruelly treated, while it was absurd to suppose that so lazy a race could be made to do too much work. 

True, there were grillios, which are chains, azotes, multi tailed whips, and capos, wooden stocks and leg traps used for torture.  But such punishments were necessary, were judiciously administered, and were in every way better than to crowd the prisons with petty offenders and thus exhaust the gratification fund.

End quote.  This is still clearly torture.  It's this PR campaign to paint these Native Americans as lesser than. As to defend this forced slavery, which is really what it is. 

Three years later, in 1806, just about the time that Lewis and Clark are finishing exploring the Louisiana Territory,  another ship enters the bay. A Russian ship,  looking to resupply Russian traders that are starving in Alaska at a trading post up north.  And there's a German scientist aboard. This ship that keeps a journal and publishes his own work  called Observations of a Journey Around the World. 

And it's from his account that we get some sense of what diseases are doing to these Native Americans after they're being converted.  This account's a little longer.  A lot of these accounts are long ish.  But I think they're important and they're a few of the first hand accounts we have from non Spanish friars. 

So this doctor writes,  Notwithstanding all that has been said in favor of the treatment of the Indians at the missions, an irresistible desire for freedom sometimes breaks out in individuals.  This may probably be referred to the natural genius of the race, their attachment to a wandering life. Their love of alternate diversion from hunting and fishing to entire idleness seem, in their eyes, to overbalance all the benefits they enjoy at the mission, and attempts to escape are made. 

On such occasions, no sooner is the neophyto missed than search for him is at once commenced, and as it is always known to what tribe he belongs, and on account of the enmity he subsists among the different tribes, he can never take refuge with any other.  He is always brought back to the mission, where he is bastinadoed, which is tortured by caning of the bottom of the feet, and an iron rod a foot and a foot and a half long and an inch in diameter is fastened to one of his feet. 

This has a two fold use, in that it prevents the Indian from making another attempt to escape, and has the effect of terrifying the others to deterring them from indulging in escapades of a similar nature.  End quote.  Continues with a description of these diseases ravaging the Native Americans.  Quote,  The measles have been very general here for some months, with fatal results in the Indians, and some thousands of them in Nueva California died of the disease. 

But the Spaniards, who had also caught the infection, recovered without any further evil consequence.  It seems that the main pores of the Indians are closed, and hence the eruption does not easily break out.  This results in a severe fever of a lingering and malignant character.  Almost every pregnant Indian woman that was infected with the disease miscarried. 

These Native Americans are dropping like flies.  It's not just malaria.  Venereal diseases were spreading rapidly through these communities.  There's indications of rape.  These VDs had to have come from either the friars or the soldiers, because it hadn't been spreading through Native Americans before. 

These Native American women would also marry some of these soldiers who didn't have a wife or maybe their children. As these generations go on, they have these families.  Soldiers themselves, by the way, most of them are mixed blood.  The Spanish had been around so long that you have these ethnicities being combined. 

And the friars, it should be mentioned, weren't necessarily the best friars.  You're not going to send your best people to these missions at the end of the world.  It's the equivalent of being sent to the North pole, being reassigned to the North pole, so to speak. You're being reassigned to San Francisco. 

The farthest port away from civilization.  It's not really known what goes on at the mission, except for these occasional ships that come in,  trading with the mission for hide and tell or getting supplies  or just exploring out of curiosity.  Things begin to change around 1808.  And that's when the Mexico war of independence breaks out. 

Napoleon invades Spain and then inserts his brother on the Spanish crown.  And so the viceroy of Mexico. He declares sovereignty, he doesn't want to follow this French ruler, this usurper,  writes his own constitution. It's the same idea as, um, really the American Revolution, where you have loyalists and changing sides.

But the missions, for the most part, don't even know what's going on. Communication is so infrequent, they think it's a small rebellion that's about to be put down.  And they still are supporting Spain in this whole endeavor.  The Spanish crown is what gave them their power. The Spanish crown is also what's paying these soldiers,  and what has promised them land. 

It's during this war that the missions and the presidios begin to go neglected.  Spain stops sending money to the soldiers,  the church goes on finance,  they do have essentially all the slave labor of these Native Americans, hide and tallow to sell,  and working these horses is cattle.  The viceroy of Mexico starts to begin to question the land holding power of the church. 

There are rumors of secularization.  Secularization being, reducing the churches to non religious institutions, removing the Franciscan order from their control.  Originally, secularization was the written purpose of these missions. Now, that was the plan, to bring in these Native Americans to the church, pacify them through conversion, and then give these missions over to the Native Americans to control. 

That was in the written reports.  Father Sarah and others fought back against that.  There had been attempts at secularization and other missions they said were unsuccessful.  They pointed to the savageness, uh, of these Native Americans, where they couldn't control these missions on their own.  It could be argued that they were making these distinctions because they wanted to maintain the power they had over these Native Americans. 

Now at this point, San Francisco is still a complete wilderness.  And I've been repeating this over and over again because I think it's important to drive this point home.  In 1800, the European population in San Francisco proper is still roughly what it was when he had the first colonization attempt by Anza, roughly 40 years before. 

The Spanish population is about 200 in San Francisco.  Most of those are soldiers and their families.  There's roughly 300 Europeans in the extended territory around the Bay. Other sailors had come in and settled on different areas, but they think of the deep frontier and that's what they're living in. 

There's no more than 300 Europeans in the entire area.  Things seem to be getting stranger and stranger at these missions, once they lose their financial support from the crown.  The soldiers aren't getting paid, so they have to rely on these missions.  Soldiers don't know if they're going to get land at this point, which they'd been promised, which was the reason many of these families traveled to San Francisco to begin with.

But  there's one story that does come out in 1815 that gives some sense of the kind of things that are happening at these missions.  It's around that time that some Kodiak Native Americans from up north  are captured, they're on a seal hunting journey,  and they're brought to a San Francisco mission.  These Kodiaks had been converted by the Russians much in the way the Spanish had converted the California Native Americans to Franciscan Catholicism.

These Kodiak Native Americans had been converted to Eastern Orthodox Catholicism.  But the Franciscan friars are trying to convert them into the Franciscan order.  These young Kodiak Native Americans this man named Peter,  that's his Christianized name,  refuses to convert,  and in front of his other comrades, these friars, string him up and begin to torture him,  removing fingers first,  and beginning to remove limbs. 

When he doesn't convert, they end up disemboweling him, cutting his stomach open, pulling his intestines out, and leaving them hanging there, waiting for him to die.  In front of all these other Kodiak Native Americans,  Peter would later be canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the Saint of San Francisco. 

Now what's interesting is  Father Sarah, you know, the Franciscan who created these practices, the president of the Franciscan Order at the beginning.  He was quite recently, in 2015, canonized by Pope Francis, our current pope, as a saint.  There's a ton of controversy around that. A lot of people don't think he should be a saint,  but what's interesting is you have these followers of Father Sarah, Saint Sarah, I should say,  murdering the saint of the Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, both of them Catholic, the followers of one Catholic saint murdering another Catholic saint. 

And it's just after this.  In 1816,  we have a Russian ship enter San Francisco Bay, a man named Otto von Cotsbue, who's traveling on an around the world voyage.  It's unclear if he has any knowledge of what's happening with Peter, but he has the kind of most poignant description of these missions and presidios following the Mexican War of Independence. 

And he writes, quote,  California has remained neglected without any importations from Mexico. During the six or seven years of the war between Spain and its colonies.  But the maintenance of this colony is ascribed to another motive besides policy,  namely, the pious intention of propagation of the Christian religion and the conversion of heathen nations. 

The governor of the Providence himself informed us this was the case.  The Indians die in the missions in an alarming and increasing proportion.  San Francisco contains about a thousand Indians. The number of deaths in the last year exceeded 300.  It amounts already this year, until October, to 270, of which 40 occurred during the last month. 

End quote. 

Things are falling apart.  The friars are beginning to worry about what this might look like to the rest of the world.  And to go back to the example I used before, the idea of attaching rightness to conquest or conversion.  It's not going to look too good if it gets out that all these Native Americans were dying. 

And they were dying at alarming rates.  In the course of these missions, around 70 to 100, 000 baptisms, and that's a rough estimate, occurred.  That constitutes almost the entire coastal Native American population in California.  Almost all of them were baptized, brought into these mission systems.  And of those, roughly 70, 000 deaths occurred. 

These Native Americans also had children,  so it's not like they all died out, but it's a pretty telling number.  So these friars, seeing that secularization is possible,  There's accounts of them writing to the viceroy that they need to do something to try to mitigate the realization that so many of these Native Americans were killed off by these Franciscans. 

The same idea as certain historians trying to downplay the idea of slavery.  My father's history book describes slaves as being, happy and getting lots of exercise.  They were better off under the supervision of these plantation owners,  and they couldn't survive otherwise.  That's really what these books said, and what were being shared to the greater population,  trying to downplay really the brutality of what slavery was and what happened to these people. 

It's the same thing that's happening to these Native Americans.  If you look at the details, if you look at what actually happened, these things are really indefensible, at least the treatment of these Native Americans.  And this effort is still being carried on today.  If you go through the missions today in California, it's kind of romanticized. 

The days ride between missions, you know, the friars would travel back and forth, converting these Native Americans, bringing them out of poverty. They have, if you drive down Highway 1, they have these bells, which represent where the missions were. Said to be a day's ride from one another.  That whole plan, by the way, was developed by, uh, a bell maker, ironically.

Using that as an advertisement device. And someone who wanted to build a road.  That's how that whole system got built out. Kinda lessens the impact of what these missions are, if you build it out as a tourist attraction.  Saying that these missions are a day's ride apart is a complete fallacy.  Some of these missions were more than 300 miles from one another.

The Pony Express, you know, the fastest riders in the West delivering mail across the frontier, the farthest their best riders would travel in a day was 100 miles, and that was changing horses regularly.  To think that these friars and these soldiers could travel 300 miles in a day is just nonsensical.

They couldn't do it.  It's all part of this PR campaign. 

Then, in 1821,  Mexico gains independence.  Nearly all of the Spanish colonies in Central and South America are revolting at this point.  The idea of secularization seems inevitable.  These missions and these presidios have continued to be neglected.  There's no Certainty that they're going to get repayment off of the funds that Spain hadn't paid them during this war.

There's no guarantee that these soldiers are going to get their land.  And it's these soldiers, having been neglected by the crown, who came out there for a better life, who  really take up the bulk of the next section of the story,  which will be the two decades of the Don.