San Benito County History

This section is excerpted from A Memorial and Biographical History of the Coast Counties of Central California by Henry D. Barrows and Luther A. Ingersoll, and published by The Lewis Publishing Company in 1893.

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Decadence of the Missions.

From the commencement of the era of Mexican independence, in 1822, or perhaps a little later, till the acquisition of California by the United States, the missions gradually declined, the policy of Mexico, after attaining independence, being to encourage the settlement of the country, which made necessary the curtailment, and finally the secularization, of the missions.

From about 1825 or 1830, to 1846, a large and increasing number of persons, who became settlers, had been pouring into California; these included Mexicans by land and by sea, American trappers and hunters, who had emerged from the deserts east of the Sierras; Russians from Russian America; sailors and adventurers of all nationalities, who had escaped from merchant ships, or who had been left here at their own request; and occasionally a citizen of the Eastern States more venturesome or more restless than his neighbors.

With the coming of Mexicans, and of foreigners who became Mexican citizens, naturally there arose a demand for land; and as the missions practically claimed all the land, although they occupied it only by permission of the government, these citizens complained to the authorities of the difficulty of acquiring land to cultivate or to live on.

Governor Figueroa and some of his successors sought to distribute the lands of Alta California to the Indian neophytes in severalty. But these attempts were utterly impracticable, and of course were utter failures: first, because the Indians were incapable of self-government; and second, this plan left no room for the settlement of the territory by Mexican citizens and foreigners, in other words, by gente de razon (literary people of reason) who were capable of developing the country, and of local self-government, which is what Mexico desired. The logic of the situation plainly required the secularization of the missions long before that policy culminated in the passage of the law of 1883.

Therefore, it is a matter of congratulation and commendation, instead of censure and regret, that the United States Land Commission and United States Courts followed both the spirit and the letter of the Mexican law in their decisions concerning the tenure of title to lands in California.

The original aim of both the Spanish and Mexican Governments, of converting the California missions into puéblos or towns, having, by actual trial, for more than half a century, proved a palpable failure, the alternative policy of granting the public lands of the territory to actual settlers, who were capable of governing themselves without the aid of paternal or clerical guardians, was finally forced on the Mexican Government.

In looking back, we can now clearly see that this policy ought to have been adopted long before. Therefore, it was plain that if California was to ever have a future -- with her magnificent natural resources and climate unequaled anywhere in the world -- it must be by a system other than that under which the inhabitants were little better than peones, or, more properly speaking, wards, who were incapable of becoming full-fledged, self sustaining, self-governing citizens.

Hence, a change from a monastic to a civil, -- from a religious to a political system of government of the Territory, -- became a necessity. Hence the necessity of secularizing the lands, i.e., providing for the granting of legal titles to lands to actual occupants -- which in reality was what secularization meant; the tenure of ownership of the soil was to vest thenceforth in men, able to perform their civic duties as citizens and capable of building up a commonwealth, instead of in children, in trust, who must ever depend upon overseers (either clerical or secular) to manage for them.

Certainly, three-quarters of a century was long time enough in which to try the experiment of testing whether the Indians of the Californias were capable of building up a State or not.

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This section is excerpted from A Memorial and Biographical History of the Coast Counties of Central California by Henry D. Barrows and Luther A. Ingersoll, and published by The Lewis Publishing Company in 1893.