degraded savages into self-respecting men and women, fit for the duties
and responsibilities of civilization. Yet to put it in this way is to
show sharply enough that such failure is not hastily to be set down to
their discredit. It is often said, indeed, that they went altogether the
wrong way to work for the achievement of the much-desired result; and it
is unquestionably true, as La Pérouse long ago pointed out, that they
made the fundamental, but with them inevitable mistake, of sacrificing
the temporal and material welfare of the natives to the consideration of
so-called "heavenly interests." Yet in common fairness we must remember
the stuff with which they had to deal. The Indian was by nature a child
and a slave; and if, out of children and slaves they did not at once
manufacture independent and law-abiding citizens, is it for us, who have
not yet exhibited triumphant success in handling the same problem under
far more favorable conditions, to cover them with our contempt, or
dismiss them with our blame? Civilization is at best a slow and painful
affair, as we half-civilized people ought surely to understand by this
time - a matter not of individuals and years, but of generations and
centuries; and nothing permanent has ever yet been gained by any
attempt, how promising soever it may have seemed, to force the natural
processes of social evolution. The mission padres bore the cross from
point to point along the far-off Pacific coast; they built churches,
they founded settlements, they gave their strength to the uplifting of
the heathen. Little that was enduring came out of all this toil. Perhaps
this was partly because their methods were shortsighted, their means
inadequate to the ends proposed. But when we remember that they had set
their hands to an almost impossible task, we shall perhaps be inclined
rather to acknowledge their partial success, than to deal harshly with
them on the score of their manifest failure.

Be all this as it may, however, the missions of California passed away,