here, and to which may be applied much of what I have said about Duran's notes on the original decree. Sanchez, giving his attention chiefly to the preamble, begins by suggesting that precepts on obedience to law would come with better grace from one who had given a better example than Echeandía. His pretensions to teach the padres their obligations and rights, or to change their status, are met with protest and ridicule. If the laws and his instructions required him to secularize the missions, why had he waited six years, until the arrival of his successor, before acting? If the Indians of the south, as was certainly true, were assuming a threatening attitude, it was due to the license they had enjoyed under Echeandía, and to his unwise act in having put arms in their hands against Zamorano, being thus a reason for a return to the old restraint rather than for additional license. As to the enthusiasm of the Indians for Echeandía, the padre has little to say beyond reminding him that there are several ways of winning popularity among school-boys, one of the most successful being to let them do as they please. Of course he dwells on the theory that the Indians were children and 'savages of yesterday;' and of course he fails to recognize the fact that this theory in itself was a condemnation of the mission system in all but missionary eyes. In the reglamento itself the padre easily found no end of faults and inconsistencies; yet in one of his notes he expressed a degree of favor for an experimental emancipation and distribution of property at a few of the oldest missions. President Duran also issued at his mission of San José a series of notes so similar in argument and expression to those of Sanchez as to require no further notice.[1] The answers from the padres of San Diego, San Luis, and San Juan, that from San Gabriel not being extant, were to the effect that they left the matter entirely with the prelate. Martin
- ↑ Duran, Notas á una Circular ó Bando intimado por El Sr D. José María Echeandía á las cuatro Misiones, 1832, MS. 20 p. Original.
