Missions: Symbols of the California Past

By Libby Motika, Senior Editor

2009-11-19
When I was in fourth grade, I attempted to construct a California Mission from flour, water and salt. I fashioned my model, painted it and over time watched its walls crack and crumble. It turns out that my mission had more similarities with the authentic adobe prototypes than I could have known.

  In 'The California Missions: History, Art and Preservation,' published by the Getty Conservation Institute, we discover the limits of adobe, the all-but-vanished colorful embellishments on the mission facades, and the near disappearance of California's oldest and richest historical legacy.

  The Getty project was originally conceived in 1995 by the late Edna Kimbro, a renowned architectural conservator and historian, as an architectural history of the missions for the Getty's Cultural Heritage series. After the project was fairly underway, Kimbro, who had been battling cancer for years, passed away, leaving the book in the hands of co-author Julia Costello, an expert on archeology and cultural resources with an expertise in the missions. Kimbro had completed the chapters on architecture and sculpture, while Costello filled in the history of the missions, the mythology that attached itself to that history, and the restoration efforts over the decades.

  'The books for popular consumption tend to carry the story of the missions to about 1850 and then stop the story there,' says Tevvy Ball, an editor with Getty Publications.

  Ball encouraged Costello to expand the scope of the book by bringing readers up to date on the new information that incorporated more recent academic work and the contributions of Native Americans.

  'I was encouraged to tell the richer history,' Costello says, by sorting out the two opposing stories that have dominated the literature, from the demise of the mission system after the Mexican Revolution in 1821 to the present.

  On the one hand, there is the romance of the missions, promulgated by California boosters who presented the mission era as a lost golden age; where the Indians were always good and the padres were always kind.

  The other story characterized the missions as institutions of enslavement, and blamed the Christians for decimating the missions' indigenous populations.

  'Neither of these two stories is the truth,' Costello says. 'Indeed, all those things happened in different time frames and different places. The padres were like captains of the ship and ran the missions like little fiefdoms. Some of them were ill tempered, while others were like the padre at San Juan Capistrano, who learned the Indian languages and wrote down their customs and beliefs.'

  The story of the missions begins with Spanish expeditionary forays in the mid-18th century. The Spanish government secured dominance of the California coast, Alta California, by sending soldiers and missionaries to establish outposts in San Diego and Monterey. The model of colonization included three institutions: the military was charged with protecting the colonists from invasions and controlling native populations; the church was responsible for converting native peoples and educating them in European values; and the pueblos or 'civilian towns' attracted entrepreneurs.

  Each mission complex was vast, often covering hundreds of acres. The casco (center of the community) included the church, the convento or priest's residence building'which often contained a reception room, an office with library, a kitchen, dining room, priests' sleeping rooms, guest rooms, storerooms'and a private chapel.

  The buildings on the other side of the mission quadrangle, those connecting the church and convento wings, contained workshops, storage areas; and the monjerio, where the unmarried Christian mission Indian women resided under supervision. Outlying areas were reserved for gardens, orchards and industries, such as gristmills, tanneries and kilns. In addition, there were soldiers' quarters and the rancheria ('Indian village.')

  By 1829, the population of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia (in Oceanside), the largest of the mission establishments, numbered about 3,000 Indians, who were engaged in various vocations. While their industry contributed greatly to the material property of the colonists, the Catholic imposition upon them greatly disrupted their traditional customs, rituals and social practices.

  The mission system was destined to fall apart when all material holdings were transferred to the citizenry. By the 1850s, mission lands had been acquired by Californio families through Mexican land grants, and the new Protestant American population showed little reverence for the remnants of the Catholic, Spanish past.

  During the years of abandonment'the late-19th and early-20th centuries'artists were attracted to the 'romantic' stupor of the abandoned missions, which helped bring awareness of the mission heritage. Their work created a record of the physical establishments upon which subsequent restorations and historical studies were based.

  At the same time, the romantic aura surrounding the mission life was encouraged by boosters, who were eager to attract visitors from across the country to California. Along with the decidedly commercial motives, travel literature often included appeals for the preservation of the missions.

  A significant aid to the rediscovery of Old California was Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel 'Ramona,' which, while recasting history as a romantic myth, nevertheless helped to bring attention to the plight of the mission Indians, who suffered an even harsher life at the hands of farmers and miners.

  The Getty book recognizes the high points of restoration and offers details about the invaluable work that was underwritten by the federal government during the Great Depression. Artists, largely unemployed, were hired to document the artistic, decorative and folk arts across America, which included a thorough inventory of mission art and historical objects. Artists working for The American Design Index produced renderings in watercolor, ink and colored pencil of the once-colorful murals and wall decorations, all but a few destroyed, by using clues from plaster fragments. A number of these drawings are reproduced in the book for the first time.

  'The California Missions' describes the dazzling interiors of the mission churches, with their wealth of adornment'alter screens, paintings, statues'at first executed by artists imported from Mexico, but later by indigenous artists.

  The history and science of preservation has undergone new definitions over the last 100 years. There was a time when restoration, or a complete rebuilding of structures, was desirable, such as with La Pur'sima Concepci'n de Maria Sant'sima (in Lompoc), which existed only as a ruin before being completely reconstructed in the 1930s for educational purposes. Others that were still marginally intact could be restored, retaining the character of the property as it appeared at a particular period.

  'In general, if you have something real, you want to use as much original fabric as possible,' Costello says. 'The real stuff has an aura and carries the story with it. Of the original 21 missions complexes, only 11 church buildings remain, and only six have interiors substantionally unchanged. (San Gabriel, San Francisco de As's, San Miguel, Santa In's, San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara.) Those six may not be the most pristinely restored, but they have the continuity of incense and prayers, as opposed to La Pur'sima, which is dead.

  'My hope for this book is that it will be useful for the future of the missions and inspire people to look and try and take care of and venerate them.'