CHAPTER VII.

HYBRIDS.

'WE cannot now undo what has been done,' Don Mariano sighs, when we are talking of the bad blood in his province. The Franciscan fathers tried to check this evil by keeping White men and Red women apart. They failed; the customs of the country were too strong for them. No one has yet succeeded in arresting an evil which baffled the Franciscan fathers. Too well we know the mischief, for this mixture of White with savage blood is giving us a vicious and unstable race.'

seen in

White female faces are not often the southern parts of California; thirty years since they were never seen outside a military post. The Spaniards are not planters of Free States. They came to take possession of the country for their king, the people for their Church. To find new

homes for men desirous of a wider field and freer atmosphere, was not an object of their voyage. Sailing in search of gold and spices, they left the coast when they had found these articles and filled their ships. A company of friars remained to teach the natives, and a company of soldiers to secure the soil. The rest returned to Spain. No women, as a rule, came out. The men were either soldiers, friars, or trappers, and in every case were single men. The soldiers and the friars were not allowed to marry. A trapper was of course at liberty to woo and wed; but in a land with no White women he could only woo a squaw. If the stranger made a home, he took such females as an Indian lodge supplies.

A governor of Monterey might bring his family from Mexico, but such a luxury as the companionship of wife and children was reserved for persons of exalted family and official rank.

'When I first came into these parts,' says David Spence, the only White people near Monterey were the fathers at San Carlos, and the soldiers in the citadel. No other White men had a right to dwell in Monterey. We bought our licences to live and

trade, but after paying our money, we held these licences at the governor's will. On any whimsey, he could put us on board the fleet, or drive us into the mountains. No civil rights were known. At gunshot, soldiers drove us into camp, and when the curfew tolled these soldiers compelled us to put out light and fire. The life we led was not a thing for women of our kin to share.'

'You were encamped, not settled in the country?'

'You are right. No man among us thought of staying over nine or ten years; just long enough to make a pot of money out of hides and skins. Nobody cared to get the land; nobody thought of Monterey as home. Home! There was not one English woman, and not a dozen Spanish women in the province. Fair faces were as rare as gold; and never to be seen, except in some great officer's ranch. Not one man in fifty, even among the rich, could hope to get a European wife.'

'You were a lucky one?"

Ha, yes! My wife, a doña and señora, was the daughter of an officer. She fell in love with my

blue eye and yellow locks. Most of my rivals in that

day took

up with squaws, and left a progeny of halfbreeds in their homesteads.'

'Custom of the country?'

"Yes, an Indian custom; but the Whites fell into it very soon, and keep it up with an amazing spirit.' 'Still keep it up?'

'Yes, keep it up. The practice of selling young Indian girls to White men is still so common, that in some adjoining counties a Red man cannot get a squaw.'

From Santa Barbara to San Juan, from Santa Clara to San Francisco, things were much the same as in the mountains; like causes producing everywhere like effects.

Living in a savage waste, surrounded by native tribes, the Franciscan fathers were obliged to lodge some soldiers at each Mission-house, as a protection to their persons and properties. These men were fair of face and strong of limb. The squaws looked kindly on them; and the lax moralities of an Indian lodge, where wedlock is unknown, permitted freedoms and alliances which ended in a new race of Hybrids being brought into the world. This cross

between White blood and Red was called Mestizo, and the females of this family, called Mestizas, are often very handsome. The men are savage, the women licentious; inheriting the worst vices of their parent stocks.

No power on earth could stop this intercourse, or check this growth of Hybrid offspring. If a native growled, the soldiers kicked him from their post. If he presumed to strike, they broke his

bones and set his thatch on fire.

What holy men

could do to stay such outrages was done, but the Franciscans had to deal, not only with an Indian custom, but with officers as lax in morals as their men. No legal injury was done. A native never urged that his daughter was disgraced by being carried to a White man's hut. He only grumbled that he was not paid her price. Generals and captains all kept squaws. As chiefs, these officers had rights which they were quick enough to seize, laughing away reproof of their confessors with the old campaigner's answer, Holy Father, soldiers are not monks.' How could the Franciscan fathers get such captains to restrain their men?

By taking Indian mates, and rearing offspring