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Pigments Used by the Mission Indians of California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Edith Webb
Edith Webb*
Affiliation:
Los Angeles, Cal.
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Extract

The old mission buildings of California will, so long as a vestige of them remains, furnish inspiration for writers of fiction and history, poetry and song. For there were built into their very walls stories that can never be completely told; stories that can only be guessed at. And so the subject is ever new, never ending.

Over twenty years ago the writer began a serious study of the old establishments as of the mission day period, feeling that there was need of a better, fuller understanding of them and of the part they had played in the early history of our State. There has been too much of romantic, fanciful, even prejudiced writing and too little that is sanely historical.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , 1946 , pp. 137 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1946

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References

1 Copied by Arthur Woodward from the original in the Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico City), Manuscripts Division, Legajo 283–61.

2 Bolton, H. E. (ed.). Historical Memoirs of New California, by Fray Francisco Palóu, O.F.M. (Univ. of Cal. Press, Berkeley, 1926), III, 21.Google Scholar

3 Engelhardt, Z., Missions and Missionaries of California (San Francisco, 1908), I, 284.Google Scholar

4 James, G. W., In and Out of the Old Missions of California (Boston, 1905), 333–4.Google Scholar

5 Kroeber, A. L., Handbook of the Indians of California (Washington, D. C., 1925), 936–939 Google Scholar; Angel, Myron, “La Piedra Pintada”, in West Coast Magazine (July 1910); Smith, F. R., The Mission of San Antonio de Padua (Stanford Univ. Press, 1932), 88–99 Google Scholar; Hawley, Early Days of Santa Barbara, California, 20; Rogers, Prehistoric Man of the Santa Barbara Coast, 407.

6 From the Spanish translation preserved in the Archives of Mission Santa Barbara.

7 Bolton, H. E., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542–1706. (New York, 1925), 117.Google Scholar Torquemada calls the dark London blue a “bluish-black”.

8 Crespi’s diary is found in Bolton, H. E., Historical Memoirs of New California, by Fray Francisco Palóu, O.P.M., II, 109–260.Google Scholar

9 Smith, D. E. and Teggart, F. J. (egs.), Publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History (Berkeley, Univ. of Cal. Press), vol. I, (1909–1910), nos. 3 and 4. Cf. also note 11, below.Google Scholar

10 Bolton, H. E., Historical Memoirs of New California, by Tray Francisco Palóu, O.F.M., II, 123–4.Google Scholar

11 Teggart, F. J. (ed.), The Narrative of the Portolá Expedition of 1769–1770 by Miguel Costansó (Publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, vol. I, (1910), no. 4), 47.Google Scholar

12 Cf. the Diary of Fray Pedro Font, found in Bolton, H. E. (ed.), Anza’s California Expeditions (Berkeley, Univ. of Cal. Press, 1930), IV, 253–4.Google Scholar

In 1938, the writer was shown at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, a drawer containing balled lumps of cinnabar, the most brilliant of all red pigments. These specimens had been taken from burials in old Indian village sites. The source of the cinnabar was undoubtedly the present quick-silver mines near the site of the Gibraltar Dam located over the hills from Santa Barbara. A bright red ochre (hematite) is also found at a spot just off the old San Marcos Pass road, while along the new road one may see today the purplish-red used by the Indians. (See Rogers, op. cit., 407.)

13 Priestley, H. L., A Historical, Political and Natural Description of California by Pedro Fages, soldier of Spain (Berkeley, Univ. of Cal. Press, 1937), 34–5.Google Scholar

14 A bluish-gray clay found also near San Juan Capistrano.

15 Bolton, H. E., Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, 1542–1706 (N. Y., 1925), 186, 217, 239–247, 269.Google Scholar

16 Archives of Mission Santa Barbara.

17 Ibidem.

18 Hageman, , An Architectural Study of the Mission La Purísima Concepción, California (Jan. 1935 to April 1938).Google Scholar

19 Bartlett, , Mission Motifs (Southern California Index of American Design. Work Projects Administration).Google Scholar

20 Hawley, The Early Days of Santa Barbara, 20.

21 This church was destroyed by fire in 1926. The existing one was built to replace it.

22 Encarnación, Pineda, “Early Days at Santa Clara”, in The ‘Western Magazine (May, 1901). Reprinted in The Owl (April, 1934).Google Scholar

Tones from orange to vermilion are obtained from cinnabar.

23 Anderson, , “A Reminiscence of California,” in The Sunday Atlas (Philadelphia), October 21, 1860.Google Scholar

24 Vancouver, Capt. G., Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and round the World … 1790–1795 (London, 1798), vol. II, 494.Google Scholar

25 Guthe, , Pueblo Pottery Making. A Study at the Village of San Ildefonso (Yale Univ. Press, 1925), 24–26.Google Scholar

26 First, in so far as the writer is able to discover.

27 James, G. W., In and Out of the Old Missions of California (Boston, 1905), 333.Google Scholar

28 In about 1903 the original paintings were whitewashed over by one who apparently wanted to “freshen up” the little chapel. The Walls were re-decorated but the work was poorly executed.