The Nation: Beyond the Wilderness

It is customary for Americans to think of this continent mainly in terms of the Atlantic settlements and the wilderness to the west, but another process of settlement is also taking place on the distant coast of the Pacific. Just the week before last, a weary band of 193 Spanish colonists and their families arrived at a large bay on the coast and pitched their tents. This sixth and northernmost Spanish installation in Upper California is on what the Spaniards have named the Bay of San Francisco.

The colonists, who come from earlier settlements in Mexico, include both soldiers and priests; their plan is not just to subdue the Indians but to convert them to Catholicism. This is not always successful. Only last November a band of Indians attacked the mission at San Diego and killed three settlers. At the Bay of San Francisco, however, Missionary Father Francisco Paldu reports that the colonists so far have been “well received by all the heathen whom we met. They brought their gifts of mussels and wild seeds, which were reciprocated with beads… And they were astonished at the cattle, which they had never seen before.” Apparently it is chiefly the Spaniards’ missionary fervor that drives them into these wilds, for there is no gold in California, and by most accounts it is a rough and desolate place, hardly worth settling at all.