The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-09-14
TN BAJA CALIFORNIA.
What History Owes to the Jesuit
Pioneers.
THEIR WORK AMONG THE INDIANS
Wild, Wierd Tales are Told-The
Early COnquests.

LOWER CALIFORNIA, September J, 1852. =
Especial Correspondence of THE HERALD
The student of ethnology, however ultra
Protestant his religious views, must admit
that he owes a great deal to the Jesuits fol
their zeal in propagating a knowledge Of
the lands they visited. Especially is thi:
true Of America, and the numerous writ
ings of the early fathers form the founda
ton upon which are based all subsequent
researches. They gave the first faithful
ACCOUNTS or TIE NEW WORLD;
and under their motto, "Ad Majorem Dix
GloridHl" (To Gods greater glory, they
not only built chapels and colleges in the
wilderness, but erected observatories and
made maps Few, indeed, are the districts
in America concerning which they have
not supplied the oldest and best works; and
one can scarcely attempt the study of any
aboriginal language without finding that a
Jesuit has been there before him and left a
grammar for his guidance. Besides pos
sessing the courage of martyrs, many OF
them were men of great learning, the most
enthusiastic naturaliSts and geOgraphers,
the best astronomers and mathematlclans
Of their time.
It will be remembered that the Society
of Jesus, which created such an influence
upon the fate of California, was founded in
1884, by Ignatius of LoyOla and five of his
friends, its original purpose being only a
visit to the Holy Land. Wars with the
Turks forbidding that mission, the historic
six turned their attention toward the new
issues that arose with the reformation
so effectually that for two hundred years
the society filed large space in the
ecclesiastical and political history of the
world = until Pope Clement Y felt con-
strained to issue an edict suppressing it in
all the states of Christendom.
Viewed in the impartial light of history,
one is amazed to note how their numbers
increased; for, besides the three-fOld obi
cation common to all Romish orders (Of
chastity, poverty and Obedience), these
added before unheard of austerities, and
bound themselves unreservedly to go as
missionaries to any remote corner of the
globe the Pope might indicate. Nor were
their ranks recruited from the poor and
ignorant, and after entering the order,
twelve
LONG YEARS OF STRICT SECLUsION,
hard study, prayer and modification We're
required before one could aspire even TO
second centennial they numbered 22,5S9,
with nearly thousand schools and colleges,
and 379 mission stations i'll various intidel
countries.
Their decline was as rapid as their rise
though only in France and Spain were
they subjected to the undue severity of be-
ing driven into exile. think it was about
the year 1867 that, by edict of Carlos III,
all members of the order of Jesus were
banished from Spain and her transatlantic
Notwithstanding of course, those priests
who had long been labOring in Lower Cali
fornia- And bitter thing it must have
been for those faithful friars, who had
deprived themselves of every comfort in
this almost uninhabitable wilderness, to be
compelled to resign the fruits of their
Iabors into the hands Of rival order-the
Dominicans-and themselves go into the
world, homeless and disgraced, through no
sin of their own.
The story of Jesuitic explorations in
Lower California sounds like romance,
or an epic poem. Early as 1888, they had
pierced to the heart of the peninsula, and
in a few years had built up sixteen villages.
Through a learned Jesuit monk it was first
discovered that the country was not an
island, as COrtez and his followers had
falsely declared; and through these same
missionaries it was made known that what
the Spaniards had represented as an FL
Dorado, wonderfully rich in diamonds and
all precious metals lin order to gain greater
glories and emoluments for their dis
covery), was mostly arid and barren, with
out water or treasures of any kind.
The early fathers found the peninsular
Indians about the most degraded specimens
of humanity in eXistence-even lower than
the beasts of the field, content to lie all day
upon their faces stark naked in the sand,
basking like snakes in the hot sun. They
had no city, village, hut or dwelling of any
description; no laws, no order, and most of
them entertained no religious ideas. A few
of the tribes were moon worshipers, and a
few were imbued with u secret horror of
three invisible divinities, supposed to be
moved by mortal hatred and TO wage per
petuai war with one another and to vent
THEIR RAGE UPON HELPLESS MAN.
Among such creatures the learned and
pious monk made what Baron Won Hum
boldt called "a pacific conquest of the
country" using no force but disinterested
kindness, united to GOd-like patience.
One of the banished Jcsuits-a German,
named Jack Baegert wrote a book after
spending seventeen years on the peninsula,
which gives detailed account of this part of
the american continent and its aboriginal
inhabitants, about whom less is known than
of any other indigenous race. / have
ldJelX S6CuEtu ILLS Etnullt tltdSUIt-h lllCl
is now rare, even in Germany, and prOba-
bly, not half dozen other copies could be
found or this side of the sea The quaint
volume of $50 pages (Of course in the Ger
man language), was printed in Mannheim,
in 1773, and its translated title reads: AN
Account of the American Peninsula of Cali
fornia, with a Two Fold Appendix Of False
Reports Written by a priest of the
Society of Jesus, who lived there many
years past"
Its author does not mention over which
of the twelve peninsular missions he pre-
sided, but says that he lived under the
twenty-eighth degree, twelve leagues from
the Paciic-or rather we should say twelve
stunden, the German stundC being little
less than the French licue. There were two
missions under that latitude, those Of
Septem Dolosum (seven sorrows) and Of
Saint Aloysius; and probably his was the
latter, it being nearest the sea. He gives "a
dOleful account Of the country, describing
it as covered with mountains, rocks and
sand, almost destitute Of water and trees.
but Astounding with thorny shrubs. Says
he: mo one needs be afraid to drown him
self, but the danger of dying from thirst is
much greater. In all the land there are but
six brooks Of running water, and only four
of these reach the sea, the rest being
swallowed up, not far from their sources,
in rock and sand. y
Evidently Father Bsegert was not much
Of naturalist, and that part Of the book
which treats of animals is most curious,
with an originality of classification that
would astonish an AgassiZ. He speaks of
bats as birds, and again as 'vermin," and
under the latter expressive, If not strictly
scientific term, includes also snakes,