The History of Father Junipero Serra Complexities of Mission Life

May 14, 2015

This is part of a series on Junipero Serra. To read the full series, click here.

FRAY Junípero Serra's zeal and determination to establish more missions continued unabated into 1775. He still wanted four missions to be founded between Monterey and San Diego as a "ladder" for better communications. Two of these, San Buenaventura and Santa Clara, should be located along the populous Santa Barbara channel. At the very least, San Buenaventura should be located there. That particular mission was Serra's great desire, yet, he wrote, "despite all I have done to have it established, I have not been able to see it realized." 

Word arrived at Monterey in June of 1775, ordering the establishment of two missions and a presidio in the San Francisco area. Captain Juan Bautista de Anza was coming for that purpose with soldiers, settlers and supplies. The news "filled me with joy," Serra told the viceroy by letter. 

The Presidente continued to urge the establishment of a mission along the Santa Barbara Channel. He described the passage as dangerous and the natives as numerous and spirited. With Pedro Fages, he had witnessed an encounter with them at the Rincon in 1772, and recently there had been a battle at Dos Pueblos where the Indians attacked the Monterey pack train. Volleys of Spanish bullets answered the flying arrows of the Indians. 

The baptismal register of San Carlos Mission between May 11, 1774 and the end of 1775 does not merely record baptisms. Serra added many interesting notes which help reconstruct not only the spiritual activity but the general history and statistics of the area. Of the one hundred and ninety-four baptisms administered from Serra's return from Mexico until the end of 1775, he personally performed one hundred and seventy-one. As a matter of fact, Serra baptized the very first one who was prepared. 

Most of the Indian infants as well as the adults came from the towns of the Carmel Valley - San Francisco, Santa Teresa, San Miguel, San Carlos, San Jose and other smaller places. Of particular interest is entry no. 350, which shows Serra was deep in the Santa Lucia mountain country, inland from Big Sur: 

On May 9, 1775, in the rancheria of Xasauan in the sierra about ten leagues from this Mission of San Carlos de Monterey, toward the east, I baptized privately an adult about ninety years of age in danger of death, married, and who is captain of the Excelen territory and its rancherias, called Pachhepas, and I gave him the name Miguel Gregorio. The greater part of the natives of both sexes of that rancheria were present at the baptism and they gave signs of happiness on seeing their new chief now a Christian and offered good hope of imitating him. I sign, giving testimony thereto, Fray Junípero Serra. 

Besides the naval men whom Serra honored from time-to-time with sponsorship of those to be baptized, he frequently employed the soldiers, the servants, the skilled workmen and their wives to act as sponsors. Thus can be seen the people whom the Presidente had brought to California on the Santiago frequently mentioned in the Carmel register 'book. Conspicuously absent from the register is the name of Fernando Rivera y Moncada. 

Serra's difficulties with the commander were fairly well pinpointed by his biographer who put it this way: When Serra proposed something, Rivera refused to accede; after delaying a month or so, he would usually do what was requested. Then (and now), such human tactics were annoying, to say the least.