27. The Santa Cruz Mission

I recently painted in watercolor at the Santa Cruz Mission, part of the state park system, which also has an informative museum within the last remaining adobe building. The building I painted housed the neophyte population, which were native peoples recruited to work the various agricultural and manufacturing enterprises of any of the California Missions and at the same time, be baptized into Christianity. The old barrel and grinders that I gazed at took on added meaning as I imagined the native hands that used these tools. Native peoples had strolled under the portico and walked through the same door I was now painting. They slept under the same adobe walls and tiled roof. Many Indians died of disease in the close quarters of the mission set-up. But even greater numbers died after the system was secularized.

According to Hurtado's Indian Survival on the California Frontier, when the Spanish came to California there was an estimated 300.000 Native population. By the time of the Gold Rush in 1849 and statehood in the 1850's, that population had dwindled to about 150,000. At the end of the Gold Rush the natives had dwindled by 80% to the astonishing number of about 30,000. The demise of the Indians increased dramatically as non-native peoples flooded the state during Gold fever.

It's hard to know what to say when confronted with a subject where history echos through your paint. As an artist and human being, I dedicate this painting to the memory of the native people who lived and died here. May it be of some comfort to their spirits to know that their history is now honored by the conquering peoples who first rejected them.