In 1826 the Federal Government began to meddle with the affairs of the friars.  The Indians “who had good characters, and were considered able to maintain themselves, from having been taught the art of agriculture or some trade,” were manumitted; portions of land were allotted to them, and the whole country was divided into parishes, under the superintendence of curates.  The zealous missionaries were no longer to receive a salary—­four hundred dollars a year had formerly been paid them out of the national exchequer for developing the resources of the State.  Everybody and everything was now supposed to be self-sustaining, and was left to take care of itself.  It was a dream—­and a bad one!

[Illustration:  Lone Mountain, 1856]

Within one year the Indians went to the dogs.  They were cheated out of their small possessions and were driven to beggary or plunder.  The Fathers were implored to take charge again of their helpless flock.  Meanwhile the Pious Fund of California had run dry, as its revenues had been diverted into alien channels.  The good friars resumed their offices.  Once more the missions were prosperous, but for a time only.  It was the beginning of the end.  Year after year acts were passed in the Mexican Congress so hampering the friars in their labors that they were at last crippled and helpless.  The year 1840 was specially disastrous; and in 1845 the Franciscans the pioneer settlers and civilizers of California, were completely denuded of both power and property.

In that year a number of the missions were sold by public auction.  The Indian converts, formerly attached to some of the missions, but now demoralized and wandering idly and miserably over the country, were ordered to return within a month to the few remaining missions, or those also would be sold.  The Indians, having had enough of legislation and knowing the white man pretty well by this time, no doubt having had enough of him, returned not, and their missions were disposed of.  Then the remaining missions were rented and the remnants divided into three parts:  one kindly bestowed upon the missionaries, who were the founders and rightful owners of the missions; one upon the converted Indians, who seem to have vanished into thin air; one, the last, was supposed to be converted into a new Pious Fund of California for the further education and evangelization of the masses—­whoever they might be.  The general government had long been in financial distress, and had often borrowed—­to put it mildly—­from the friars in their more prosperous days.  In 1831 the Mexican Congress owed the missions of California $450,000 of borrowed money; and in 1845 it left those missionaries absolutely penniless.

Let me not harp longer upon this theme, but end with a quotation from the pages of a non-Catholic historian.  Referring to the Franciscans and their mission work on the Pacific coast, Josiah Joyce, assistant professor of philosophy in Harvard College, says:[1]