tenderly clasped about the
fondest memories of mission times, we shall not forget their friends and
champions of later years.

But first let us see what the brave Spanish pioneers did for California.
We will begin with the missionaries. To them we owe the conversion of
the heathen and savage Indians, which work was super-human in
itself, and which contrary to the statements of libelers, the fathers
accomplished with heroic patience and charity, teaching the Indians
besides religion, useful trades, civilizing them, and taking such
conscientious care of them that they made a nightly round of their
quarters, not with whip in hand to punish imaginary misdemeanor, but
to see that the spiritual and temporal welfare of their converts and
neophytes, was guarded, and so great was the attachment of the Indians
to the fathers that if a father was called on business from one mission
to another, the Indians would follow him a long distance weeping. Very
few of the Indians were taught the art of reading, not because the
fathers were in any way unwilling to teach it, but because for this one
art most of the Indians showed no desire or willingness to learn, yet
this has given the ever ready, unscrupulous writer food for saying
that "the fathers endeavored to keep the Indians in ignorance" and the
healthy rule of the fathers with its hours of prayer, labor, instruction
and recreation for the Indian families in the mission quarters, has been
distorted by erroneous histories, and statements have been made by
some writers to the effect that "the Indians were treated harshly and
oppressed." Whereas under what nation were Indians or unenlightened
natives christianized, allowed to remain in their lands or treated
with more humanity than under Spain or her missionaries, wherever they
explored and wherever they went?

"Harsh, oppressive, endeavoring to keep the Indians in ignorance," if
such actions mean all that these saintly missionaries accomplished, if
they mean their leaving refinement, christianity, fond home and kindred
in distant Spain to brave untold hardships, nay, martyrdom, to rescue
souls from paganism, and if such conduct as "harshness, oppression,
endeavoring to keep the Indians in ignorance" could be compatible with
the practice of heroic virtue and acts of mortification of mind and body
which to the spiritual man or woman appear beyond words of admiration,
to the scoffer and frivolous (but for this latter class we are not
wri