Picture and Text / 1893

of San Luis

was to train the Indians in the ways of Christianity and civilization, and, ultimately, to make citizens of the

assert, but whether fifty years, a hundred, or five hundred,

rnia, there were twenty-one Missions and quite a number of branches, or asistencias. In each Mission from one to three thousand Indians were assembled, under competent direction and business management. It can readily be seen that fields grew fertile, flocks and herds increased, and possessions of a variety of kinds multiplied und

f the authorities, even those who do not in all things approve

and many hundreds to make good citizens. The idea of at once transforming the idle, improvident and brut

ions were secularized. The plea was a paltry falsehood. The Missions were the pl

eep and hogs nearly ten thousand. The Indians had increased to fifteen hundred. Fourteen hundred and fifty had been baptized while there had been only four hundred deaths recorded. By 1826 the parent mission counted nearly three thousand Christian Indians and nearly a thousand gathered at Pala, six leagues from the central establishment. A church was built there and a priest usually resided at it. At its best time San Luis Rey counted nearly thirty thousan

Luis Rey would be one of the first to be laid hold of. Pablo de la Portilla and later, Pio Pico, were appointed the commissioners, and

ht of little else and accomplished little else than enriching themselves. It cannot be said that the spoliation was immediate; but it was certainly very rapid. A few years sufficed to strip the establishments

prey of the vicious, the abandoned, the hyenas and vultures of so-called civilization. Deprived of the parental care of the fathers, and led astray on every hand, their corruption spelt speedy extinction, and two or thr