THE MISSIONS OF CALIFORNIA AND THE OLD SOUTHWEST
                         
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			CHAPTER XX

			SANTA CRUZ

SANTA CRUZ, on the Bay of Monterey, was inspired and planned by President Lasuen 
in his house in the San Francisco Mission. It was founded in the Autumn of 1791, 
with the accustomed ceremony of a mass, chanting by neophytes from another 
Mission, and the raising of a cross on the spot over which the alter was 
designed to rest. Chief Sugert and a large following of his tribe attended, 
themselves representing the very people from which the good padres planned to 
recruit the company of their converts. The church was dedicated in May, 1794, in 
the presence of these same Indians, who on this occasion came as devotees. The 
Mission reached its zenith of influence five years after its founding, although 
it continued to acquire property in cattle and herds. Settlers encroached upon 
the lands of the Mission, and the padres retaliated upon the authorities who had 
permitted such a condition, until, eventually, in the Bouchard rising in 1818, 
the Mission was robbed of every removable effect. A padre was murdered here in 
1812 by neophytes who pleaded having been most cruelly punished, but their 
claims were never established. In 1835 Ignacio Del Valle was commissioned to 
dispose of the property under the act of confiscation. The personal property 
inventoried fifty thousand dollars, of which it was agreed that ten thousand 
dollars should be given to the Indians. It is said that this amount was actually 
divided among them; but it is usually added, ironically, that the only apparent 
evidence of the division was to be found in their wretched condition. The tower 
fell in 1840, eleven years later the walls were wrecked, and since then the 
Mission has dropped into utter obscurity, and none so poor to do it reverence.
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