many respects it must have been; but its shadows were long and deep.
According to the first principles adopted by the missionaries, the
domesticated Indians were held down rigorously in a condition of servile
dependence and subjection. They were indeed, as one of the early
travelers in California put it, slaves under another name - slaves to
the cast-iron power of a system which, like all systems, was capable of
unlimited abuse, and which, at the very best, was narrow and arbitrary.
Every vestige of freedom was taken from them when they entered, or were
brought into, the settlement. Henceforth they belonged, body and soul,
to the mission and its authority. Their tasks were assigned to them,
their movements controlled, the details of their daily doings dictated,
by those who were to all intents and purposes their absolute masters;
and corporal punishment was visited freely not only upon those who were
guilty of actual misdemeanor, but also upon such as failed in attendance
at church, or, when there, did not conduct themselves properly. From
time to time some unusually turbulent spirit would rise against such
paternal despotism, and break away to his old savage life. But these
cases, we are told, were of rare occurrence. The California Indians were
for the most part indolent, apathetic, and of low intelligence; and as,
under domestication, they were clothed, housed and fed, while the labour
demanded from them was rarely excessive, they were wont as a rule to
accept the change from the hardships of their former rough existence to
the comparative comfort of the mission, if not exactly in a spirit of
gratitude, at any rate with a certain brutal contentment.



XII.