Golden
Nuggets Newsletter
Historical Vignettes from Rincon Publishing
Christmas in Old California
Under the direction of the mission priests, Christmas in old California was a religious celebration, but it was also a time for families that might not have seen each other for many months to rejoice together. Several traditional events, in addition to the Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) Mass, involved the Californios in the festivities.
Starting
a few weeks before Christmas, settlers began setting up crèches (nacimientos)
in their homes, with wax, clay and wooden figures of angels, shepherds,
Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. Rancheros began coming to town, wearing
their finest clothes, to join in the festivities that included singing
and dancing.
Beginning Dec. 16, and continuing nightly until Christmas eve, a procession through the pueblo streets of Alta California, called Las Posadas. Although none of the historians writing about the period mention Las Posadas, it's hard to believe the men and women who populated California in the early years of the nineteenth century wouldn't have brought the tradition with them from Mexico. Holding candles, and led by images of Mary, Joseph and an angel, the men, women and children went door to door begging shelter, reenacting the scene in Bethlehem. At each house they were turned away, continuing their procession, singing as they went, until at the last house they were promised shelter. After that, there was singing and dancing, with a piñata in the shape of a bird or flower for the children.
Among others, Alfred Robinson, a hide and tallow trader from New England, wrote about a religious play called Los Pastores he saw in San Diego on Christmas Eve. Robinson said the evening started with fireworks, and then a procession to the mission. After the Mass, costumed actors entered the church, six women as shepherdesses, three men, one the devil, another, a lazy vagabond and the third, a hermit. The boy represented the Angel Gabriel. During the play, the devil tries to tempt the others until the angel convinces him he is wrong. At the conclusion of the play there is singing and refreshments.
Following Christmas Day, the three kings appear in the crèches that have been set up, approaching the manger slowly, day by day, until Jan. 6, at the Epiphany of the Three Kings, when people give toys and incense to the baby Jesus and food and clothing to the mission priests. Dec. 28 was called The Day of the Innocents, and celebrated much like our April Fools Day, with the Californios playing pranks on each other.
A Person of Interest - Fermin Francisco de Lasuen
Far less well known than his predecessor as Padre Presidente of the Franciscan Alta California missions, Fray Fermin Francisco Lasuen gets credit for founding as many new missions - nine in all - as Junipero Serra. Father
Lasuen
was born in 1736 in Cantabria, northern Spain and took his vows as a
Franciscan priest in 1758. 
He
was a man of medium build, with light, somewhat ruddy skin and dark,
curly hair. He was not a handsome man, his face was marred by pockmarks
and dark eyes and brows.
He came to Mexico in 1761 to serve in Baja California, and came to San Diego on August 30, 1773. From there he moved on to several other missions, serving at the Monterey presidio, Mission San Juan Capistrano, and when an Indian revolt took place in San Diego he returned there to help rebuild the mission church. He went to the mission at San Luis Obispo in 1776, but San Diego kept calling him back, he returned to San Diego the following year as minister of Mission Acala.
After Father Serra died, Lasuen became Father President of all the Alta California missions. He served the church in that capacity for the next eighteen years, founding nine missions, included, Santa Barbara, La Purisma Concepcion, Santa Cruz, Soledad, San Jose, San Juan Bautista, San Miguel, San Fernando and San Luis Rey.
Despite his devotion to the missions, Lasuen never liked Alta California. Repeatedly, he asked for retirement or transfer, and he kept asking as he grew older, but he never left. He died at the Carmel mission on June 26, 1803 and is buried in the church sanctuary there.
Manila Galleon Sailors Suffered Hardships
In
the 16th century, Spain was locked out of most of the Asian trade by
Portugal. Only the Philippines were open for the Spaniards to exploit.
Early on, Spanish sailors learned to follow the 
easy
sailing route from Nueva España (Mexico) westward across the Pacific
to Manila, but it was only in 1565 that the northern route for coming
back was pioneered by two Spanish navigators. That route required the
galleons to sail far north along the coast of Asia before turning eastward
and crossing the ocean from Japan to about the California-Oregon border.
That homebound voyage was frought with perils. Beginning in 1578, English Captain, Sir Francis Drake became the scourge of the Pacific, capturing and sinking galleons, and taking their treasures for Queen Elizabeth to use in her fight with Spain. Even if the galleons evaded the marauding Drake, the still face great difficulties. For starters, the favorable winds in the northern latitudes that brought them across the ocean, now threatened to dash them against the rock-bound coasts on North America. At least three, and possibly five galleons were wrecked along the California coast. Overall, it is estimated that one out of every fifteen galleons came to grief in the first two hundred years of the trade, a total of 40 ships.
When they reached the coast, the Spanish sailors still faced a 2,000-mile voyage to get back to their home base in Acapulco. By that time the ships were running out of food and water, and the crew was showing signs of scurvy, a most unpleasant disease that created lesions on the skin, spongy gums and bleeding, resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C in their diet. After a while, a sailor with scurvy became listless, depressed, he lost his teeth, and if not treated, he lost his life.
And yet, it was worth it to Spain to continue this trade from 1565 until 1815. The galleons bought spices, porcelains, ivory and lacquer ware in the Orient, paying in silver dug from Mexican mines. The rich cargos were carried across Mexico to the port of Vera Cruz and then carried by fleets of galleons back to Spain.
Spain's outpost in Asia depended on the successful return of the Manila galleons to Acapulco. Manila merchants put pressure on King Phillip II to do everything he could to ensure successful and profitable voyages. In 1595, Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño was given the task of mapping the California coast and locating safe harbors were ships could restock and sailors could recuperate before the last leg of the voyage. Cermeño, sailing the galleon San Augustin, left Manila in July, arriving off of Point Reyes in November.
What happened next is somewhat of a mystery. Cermeño had most of his crew ashore, assembling a raft he had brought with him to explore the coastal waters, when the galleon was wrecked, probably by a storm, and became a total loss and leaving him and his crew stranded. How he returned to Acapulco is an amazing story.
A Person of Interest -- Sebastian Rodriquez Cermeño
Among the annals of amazing journeys over land and sea, one of the least known is the miraculous adventure of Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño in 1595-96, After his Spanish Galleon, San Augustin, was wrecked on the California coast north of San Francisco, he led his men on a makeshift raft on a 2000 mile voyage back to Acapulco.
Cermeño
was a skill Portuguese navigator, hired by King Phillip II of Spain,
to map the coast of
California and find safe havens for returning Manila galleons to restock
their water supplies and rest their crew members who were often suffering
the effects of scurvy.
When Cermeño reached Cape Mendocino he began charting the coast southward. By November 5, 1595, he rounded Point Reyes and entered Drake's Bay, north of San Francisco. He anchored close to shore, and with his 70 crew members began assembling a plank boat brought along for mapping close to shore.
What happened next is anyone's guess-probably a storm swept into the bay-the San Augustin was wrecked, carrying valuable treasure, and leaving Cermeño and his men stranded. Undaunted, he elected to sail the small, open boat back to Mexico, continuing his work of charting the coast along the way.
Several of his men declined to go with him, preferring to walk home. They did, all the way, and must have reported sighting San Francisco Bay when they got there, but the Spanish government never acted on that news. Cermeño failed to find the Golden Gate, likely because of thick fogs and winter weather along the coast, and because he chose to sail to the Farallon Islands. He did map Monterey Bay and San Pedro as he sailed south and finally arrived safely back in Mexico.
It's not known if Cermeño received a hero's welcome for his amazing navigation, but probably he did not. From that time on, the Manila Galleons steered clear of the California coast, and sailors continued to get scurvy during the four month voyage from Manila.
In 1602, six years after Cermeño reached Mexico, another Portuguese navigator named Sebastian sailed north along the coast. This was Sebastian Viscaino, hired by the Viceroy of Mexico, Conde de Monterey, to command a fleet of three ships, again charged with charting the California coast, but perhaps more importantly from the Viceroy point of view, to try to salvage the San Augustin's valuable cargo. Viscaino reported the galleon was a total loss and returned to Mexico, but not before sailing into the Channel between the mainland and Northern Channel Islands on December 4, 1602, the feast day of Saint Barbara in the Roman Catholic Church. The priests on board the ship with Viscaino named the Channel Barbara Channel in her honor.
Where in the world is San Diego?
Did
you ever wonder what Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was doing sailing along
the coast of California in 1542? Do you suppose 
someone
higher up said, Juan why don't you go claim a new land for us? Maybe
you've never thought about it, but Cabrillo's voyage wasn't an isolated
act of exploration.
To begin with, Cabrillo was not a navigator, he was a ship builder. He appears in the records in 1519 as part of Hernan Cortéz's army of conquest. Later, he went to San Salvador before settling in Guatemala where he became a rich businessman.
The young men who followed Columbus to the new world were all in search of treasure. They were the second and third sons of Spanish noblemen with no promise of inheritance. So the New World beckoned to them as a place to enrich themselves. Finding that the easy riches had already been taken by Cortez and Pizarro, and disinclined to work for a living, they begin to go a field in search of wealth.
It was a time when the famous names of Spanish exploration were roaming the south and southwest of what became the U.S. Ponce de Léon, DeSoto and Coronado were all actively seeking treasure in the 1530s and 1540s. So was Pedro de Alvarado, governor of Guatemala and a veteran of Pizarro's Inca conquest. He decided to outfit an expedition of four ships to sail in search of treasure in the Western Sea and commissioned Cabrillo to build them.
Alvarado was killed in an Indian battle before his ships set sail nevertheless. His partner, Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of Mexico, took over the project, dispatching two ships under López de Villalobos toward the Philippine Islands and two ships, the San Salvador and Victoria, with Cabrillo as expedition leader and Bartolomé Ferrelo as chief pilot, to the north. They left from the port of Navidad on June 24, 1542.
There were at least two possible goals: first, they might find the seven cities of Cibola, which some believed lay close to the Pacific. More primary was the hope Cabrillo would find the storied Straits of Anian and a quick route to China and the riches of the Spice Islands.
Cabrillo failed to reach either goal. He also failed to find Monterey and San Francisco Bays. In the process he lost his life. His band, under Ferrelo, returned to Mexico in 1543; the expedition was considered a great failure.
But Cabrillo did find San Diego Bay in September 1542. And he did manage to plant Spain's flag on its soil, thereby claiming all of Alta California for King Carlos I.
A Person of Interest: William Heath Davis
William Heath Davis is definitely a Person of Interest if you want first hand accounts of life in California from the 1830s until the early days of the 20th century. Davis came to Alta California with his father from Hawaii and became a trader. Not well know because he played no prominent politic role, Davis nevertheless became one of the wealthiest of the early Yankees to settle the Golden State, owning much of downtown San Francisco before the turn of the century.
Dark,
portly, with heavy brows and bushy mutton chops that flow into mustache
and beard, Davis is the picture of prosperity in boiled shirt, cravat
and frockcoat. He married into one of the most prominent Bay Area Californio
families and shared the confidence of almost everyone who met him.
Davis was a friend and business associate of Captain José de la Guerra y Noriega, retired comandante of the Santa Barbara Presidio. Davis wrote of his "immense wealth in lands, cattle, horses, sheep and money." Here's how he described de la Guerra's wealth. "…Noriega took me to the attic of his house, where he kept his treasure, the room being exclusively for that purpose. There was no stairway, the attic being reached by a ladder, which was removed when not in use. In this room were two old-fashioned Spanish chairs and ranged round about were twelve or fifteen strong, completely woven baskets… of which contained gold, some nearly full. I was astonished to see so much coin in the possession of one man in a country where the wealth consisted mainly of horses and cattle."
Davis continued, "Being the wealthiest man in that part of California, and having so much ready money, at least $250,000, he was applied to by the rancheros for loans whenever they were in need of funds." But the rancheros weren't the only ones in need of funds.
"Some of the old gentleman's boys were a little wild," Davis wrote of de la Guerra. "Knowing that their father had plenty of money and the place where it was deposited, they devised a plan to secure some of it for their own use. The ladder was kept in the old captain's bedroom, beyond their reach, so they climbed to the roof from the outside and took off two or three tiles, beneath which were standing these baskets of gold. Reaching down into the baskets with an improvised pitchfork they drew out as many coins as they thought it advisable to take. The trick was soon discovered and reported, and this mode of abstraction was brought to an end."