A Cross of Thorns by Elias Castillo

Author:Elias Castillo [Castillo, Elias]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: California/Native American History
Publisher: Linden Publishing

Tac’s manuscript, Conversíon de los San Luiseños de la Alta California (Conversion of the San Luiseños of Alta California), is preserved in the Messofanti Collection in the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna. The manuscript includes a description of the first days of the mission, facts probably told to Tac by Friar Peyri since Tac was born twenty-four years after its founding. It was written in the present tense and begins with the encampment of Lasuén at the site.

The Fernandino58 Father remains in our country with the little troop that he brought. A camp was made, and here he lived for many days. In the morning he said Mass, and then he planned how he would baptize them, where he would put his house, the church and as there were five thousand souls (who were all the Indians there were), how he would sustain them, and seeing how it could be done. Having the captain for his friend, he was afraid of nothing. It was a great mercy that the Indians did not kill the Spanish when they arrived, and very admirable, because they have never wanted another people to live with them, and until those days they were always fighting. But thus willed He who alone can will. They could understand him somewhat when he, as their father, ordered them to carry stone from the sea (which is not far) for the foundation, to make bricks, roof tiles, to cut beams, reeds and what was necessary. They did it with the masters who were helping them, and within a few years they finished working. They made a church with three altars for all the neophytes (the great altar is nearly all gilded), two chapels, two sacristies, two choirs, a flower garden for the church, a high tower with five bells, two small and three large, the cemetery with a crucifix in the middle for all those who die here.59

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