Chapter Two—
Of the Habitations and Shelters of the Californians

Since returning to my fatherland from California, many questions have been put to me concerning the California cities, villages, and the College of the Jesuits, because nobody can imagine a settled country without these, nor a monk without a monastery. The oft-mentioned French translator^[19] also uses not infrequently the words villes, villages , which mean cities, villages, and even the expression métropole , which, if I understand it correctly, means a principal city or the seat of an archbishop, although there is no bishop or archbishop residing in California

and none has ever set foot in it nor, in all likelihood, will ever do so in the future. The field chaplain^[20] of Señor Portolá, at present Royal Governor of California, imagined, however, that there would be no dearth of goldsmiths in the California city of Loreto to repair a silver reliquary which had been damaged on his journey. He found himself in this, as in many other respects, miserably mistaken.

Except for the churches and the dwellings of the missionaries (which the padres built as well as they could, and as time and other circumstances permitted, some of stone and lime, others of stone and mud, of huge unburned bricks, or of other materials), and except for some barracks built by those few Indians employed in the fifteen missions for daily house and church services and by a few soldiers, sailors, cowherdsmen, and miners—except for these, I say—there is nothing to be seen in California which bears a resemblance to a town, a village, a human dwelling, a shack, or a doghouse.

The Indians therefore dwell, eat, sleep, and live all the time under the free sky, in open fields, and on the bare ground. Yet, by using brushwood, they construct in winter, when the wind blows somewhat sharply, a kind of wall in the shape of a half-moon, two spans high. They erect it only toward the side whence the cold is coming, revealing thus, in contrast to their usual stupidity, that they understand "how to trim one's sails to the wind." Nothing else is possible, and no more can be asked from them, unless they were forced to carry their houses consistently on their backs like snails and turtles or transport them on carts like Tartars, for which methods this land, as has been mentioned above, is admirably suited, of course. They spend all their lives wandering about unendingly, driven to it by the necessity of collecting food. They cannot start every morning from the same place and return to it in the evening, because a small stretch of land is not sufficient to provide them with provisions for the whole year. This is true in spite of the small size of the tribes. Today water may fail them here, tomorrow at another place seeds which they collect for food may be getting scarce. Thus they fulfill to the letter what is written about all of us, that we have no abiding place on this earth.

God alone, who has numbered our steps even before we were born, knows how many thousands of miles a native eighty years of age has wandered about until he has found his grave, from which he was all his life separated only by a finger's length. I am certainly not greatly mistaken

when I say that many of them change their sleeping quarters more than a hundred times a year. They hardly ever sleep in the same place and in the same territory more than three successive nights, except when they are staying at the mission. They lie down wherever night overtakes them without worrying about harmful vermin or the uncleanliness of the ground.

The Indians do not live under the shade of trees (as some authors state, who do not credit them with towns and villages) because there are no trees in California which would serve that purpose. Nor do they live in holes dug in the ground (as other writers would make us believe), but rather in cleft rocks and caves, and that only when it actually rains and if such places are close at hand. However, there are not many of these caves, and they cannot be found everywhere.

If the Indians make a shelter for a sick person as a protection against heat or cold, the entrance to this shelter is, as a rule, so low that it is necessary to crawl into it on hands and knees. The whole structure is so small that a man can neither stand up nor find room to sit on the ground in order to hear confession or comfort the sick. Similar huts are built by those Indians who live permanently at a mission because of their work or for other reasons. These huts are often so small, so narrow and low that a man and his wife can barely sit or lie down in them. The reason for this is that the California Indians know nothing about standing together in discussion or conversation or about the habit of walking back and forth inside or outside their dwelling. Also, their belongings do not take up much space in their houses.

Those who are not occupied spend their time sitting or lying down. When they call on the missionary, they sit down on the floor as soon as they have stated the reason for their visit, without waiting until they are asked to do so. The women sit with legs stretched out, the men cross them in the Asiatic manner. They follow this custom in church as well as in all other places. They care so little about having a house or a roof overhead that I would often find a sick, old man lying out in the open when I had had a shelter made for him only the day before. So powerful is the force of habit.