Category Archives: State emblems

The Devil Made ‘Em Do It

MONUMENT CONTROVERSY DEPT.

Last week we re-Viewed the “historicity” of the bronze Fr. Serras scattered around the state. For years they have been targets of vandalism, and lately, the calls to remove or re-interpret the most inappropriate memorials, are growing louder, and angrier. Statues are being pulled down.

The Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco is taking the challenge seriously, doubling down on his defense of the statues and going so far as to say those who wish to remove them, are tools of the Devil:

The controversial archbishop of San Francisco claimed Father Junipero Serra, the man famed for bringing Catholicism to California in the 1700s, is a “great hero” and “great defender” of Indigenous peoples and partly blamed the removal of Serra’s monument in Golden Gate Park on the devil. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, head of the archdiocese of San Francisco, held an exorcism and conducted “acts of reparation” in Golden Gate Park Saturday at the site of the statue, which was pulled down by protesters on June 19.This is the activity of the evil one who wants to bring down the church, who wants to bring down all Christian believers,” Cordileone said in a YouTube video of the event.
“So we offer that prayer and bless this ground with holy water so that God might purify it, sanctify it.” He said the statue’s removal was “disparaging of the memory of Serra, who was such a great hero, such a great defender of the Indigenous people of this land.”This is not a characterization shared by most Indigenous peoples. Jonathan Cordero, chairperson of the Ramaytush Ohlone and California Native history expert, told the San Francisco Chronicle he believes up to 80% of the Indigenous population died in Serra’s mission system. Serra is considered by some to be a de facto slave owner who used the labor of Native individuals against their will to build the missions.
“Everywhere they put a mission the majority of Indians are gone,” Ron Andrade, then-executive director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, told the Guardian at the time of Serra’s canonization in 2015, “and Serra knew what they were doing: They were taking the land, taking the crops, he knew the soldiers were raping women, and he turned his head.” Cordileone further praised the mission system at the weekend ceremony, saying there is “ignorance of the real history.”
“I would ask our people to learn the history of Father Serra, the missions, the whole history of the church, so they can appreciate the great legacy the church has given us, given the world. So much truth, beauty and goodness,” he said. “It’s a wonderful legacy that we should be proud of. There are those that want to make us feel ashamed of it.”
— SF Chronicle report, 7/1/2020

FACT CHECK: While Mr. Andrade of the Ohlone group is on good grounds of evidence in asserting the overall disastrous effect upon the Indians at the Missions, it is an inaccurate rhetorical flourish to assert that Fr. Serra “knew the soldiers were raping women, and he turned his head.” He certainly did NOT turn his head, in fact, the Father President did absolutely everything he could to punish promiscuous soldiers, report them to Mexico City, have them re-assigned or discharged. In fact, out of his ideological imperative to completely separate the corrupting soldiers from the native girls, Serra came up with a system with the most horrifying consequences for the Indians. He arranged the system of monjeros, “women’s houses,” to lock up the nubiles each night in window-less adobe barracks little better than jails. Without access to their own men to defend them or comfort them, the Indian women proved even more vulnerable to attacks by rogue soldiers. And the un-hygienic conditions of the monjeros proved to be perfect spreading grounds for syphillis in practically the whole population of breeding females. This was, in itself, probably the main demographic driver of Indian collapse. But it was not caused by Serra “turning his head” at the Indian rapes. In fact, the opposite.

Currant Events — Keep Repeating “It’s The Berries”

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THE TRANSFORMATION OF LOPEZ CANYON, 2

When I first shambled through the denuded creek beds, the bare oak terraces, and the blasted-sand alluvial dunes here, back in Feb. of ’19, there was only one flower to be seen, on a distinctive bush right in the transition zone between the lower canyon (oak woodland) and the middle canyon (chaparral). There were maybe a dozen bushes evident. Sweet. I wondered what they were, with their merry yellow-orange flowers and trifoliate leaves.

Currant events in February 2019; see the same meadow, today, below.

Never having seen such a thing, I was beguiled. As I’ve visited over the last eighteen months, I’ve tracked them, and they have spread and flourished, and the flowers made berries, that went from green, to pale yellow, to amber, to orange, to red, to purple to black. I found them delicious from orange, on. Turns out these are golden currants, aka bear currants.

As sweet as you could wish. See how they catch and refine California’s golden sunshine. These currants have recovered a range here during the time I’ve been observing. Maybe for the first time since 1797, when the Mission and the cows went in, golden currants are getting a chance to love life in Lopez Canyon. If only there were grizzlies here to eat all those globes of fabulous sunlight! These foothills of the San Gabriels had one of the greatest concentrations of grizzlies in CA, a great scourge to the Tataviam, and later, to the ranchers’ herds. Our state symbol romped in here until about 1900.

Last year’s berries, gone black, with no bears to eat them. Still good…still there….hmmm….

The California gardener could find no better solution for a sunny, dry back corner, or as a border along a slopey property line, than a hedge of golden currant. I needn’t remind you, like ALL California natives, they need no soil amendments or watering or maintenance whatsoever during the entire course of their gorgeous existence. That has traditionally been a deal-breaker for the fussy California gardener, who wants to pour thousands of dollars a year into the dead weeds on their property. But for the frugal freeholder, these will trouble you not in the slightest, and amply reward your family’s pie baker.