What Should I Write About?

First off, an apology to those who follow this blog and expect me to post interesting stuff.

It ain't as easy as it looks. There just don't seem to be enough hours in the day to do all the things I need to get done.

So, what's it gonna be?

I think one of the things I can do is post some excerpts from my Father Serra's Legacy. It seems for every five or six thousand words I write, I end up spending at least an hour doing research. Or scanning through all the reference material I have saved on my hard drive to ensure I've got the right information. As much as I enjoy the writing, I enjoy even more learning about the brave and pious friars who gave their all to carry out what they saw as their sacred duty. And, dispelling some of the lies and accusations I heard while growing up in Southern California.

Here's a small tidbit from the second novel in the series, "The King's Highway."

Mission San Luis Obispo was quite successful from the start. Part of it was due to the excellent and mild weather. But, most of all it came from the intelligent and diligent Chumash Indians who lived in the area. When the Spanish first arrived in the area, they encountered a multitude a huge and ferocious creatures - Grizzly Bears. They feared nothing. The poor Indians only had crude spears and weak bows. The bears were at the top of the food chain and had no enemies. The second most dangerous animal was the Mountain Lion or Puma. But, it would only attack an unattended bear cub or an adult male that was disabled or very ill.

And the bears decided to attack the Spanish, strange creatures riding on the back of even stranger deer or antelopes. Much to their surprise, the strange creatures had very sharp fangs. Long, steel-tipped lances, razor sharp swords and, even more powerful, muskets.

The bears didn't go down easy and several soldados de cuera fell before slashing claws and ferocious fangs. But, in the end, the Spaniards carried the day and the bears learned to find other prey.

This was an astonishing blessing to the Chumash who showed their appreciation by coming to the mission, listening to the friars, and lending a hand in making the strange structures so unlike their own wattle and dried mud huts.

In fact, when foodstuffs ran low among the first three mission, the governor led a detachments of these soldiers back to the Valley of Bears to slaughter dozens. They shared some of the meat with the Chumash and took lots of bear hides and carcasses back to Mission San Antonio and Monte Rey.

 A side note: Not all the Chumash were that pleased with the arrival of the Spanish in their area. Most unhappy were the tribal elders and "shamans" or medicine men. [In my research, I learned Shaman is not really the correct word for those leading tribal religious rites. The proper one seems to be Healer.]


They roused their people and groups from the south and east of The Valley of the Bears came and attacked the mission, using fire arrows to set the thatch and tule reed roofs afire. Padre José Cavalier, who founded the mission with Father Serra, remembered the tile roofs in his home of Majorca. He remembered out how to make clay and an oven/kiln to harden it. He then formed strong beams and covered the chapel roof with the tiles we have become so used to calling Spanish Tiles. Bit by bit, he made enough to roof, not only the chapel but the warehouses and living quarters for the soldiers and acolytes. Seeing how well they worked, it soon became a matter of common practice to use similar roofs in all the missions.

Oh yeah, to begin with, most mission structures were not very substantial, made of willow rods with smaller twigs and brush interlaces, all covered in dried mud. It was only a few years later when the hard work of making adobe bricks, that more substantial structures were erected.

And yes, the Chumash worked at the side of the friar's to do all this - without enslavement! They did so in return for better food, not having to face starvation or suffering from drought, and freedom from the predation of the bears.

  

[Hope you enjoyed this.]

Here comes a major revision!

A couple of weeks ago, while double-checking something on my second novel of Father Serra's Legacy, I chanced upon a reference to a book written by somebody named Hubert H. Bancroft. It turned out that History of the Pacific states of North America (volume 13) was available for download but, when I tried, it came out with all sorts of weird stuff on it. So, I copied and pasted all 84 pages, then spent forever trying to work out the weird stuff and sorting out pages upon pages of footnotes. I'll say one thing, back in 1884, when he wrote it, he spent one heck of a lot of time going through documents all over California, Baja California and Mexico.

He even went so far as to give the names of all Spaniards living in California as of 1800! 1,400 of them – all males!

Unlike what I was taught in school and have read since, the Franciscan friars were acknowledged by everyone he cites as being dedicated men who cared for the California Indians as if they were their children. And, even their biggest foe, Governor Pedro Fages, could never say anything against their piety, devotion and zeal to make the lives of their charges better. I did, however, learn that for most of the time from 1767 to 1800, there were constant instances of difficulties between the friars and the civilian/military authorities.

But, the biggest problem reading this book has created is a need to make changes and revisions to many of the characters in my book. In order to be accurate and authentic, I have to put real characters where they actually were. For the first time, I now have the names of the soldiers and civilian officials who worked at the various town and forts in California. I've even learned things that other sources didn't provide – such as the fact that Don Gaspar Portolá, who was always referred to elsewhere as “governor” was actually the lieutenant governor with his supervisor sitting in Loreto in Baja, the capitol of the Californias.

Bancroft gives an amazing amount of insight into who did what, when, where and how.

But, I have to admit that he was far more interested in the civilian goings on than how the missions operated and how hard the friars worked at them. He often refers to the fathers “punishing neophytes who failed to obey the rules” but, he did not indicate that the “floggings” were actually no more than spanking as done by parents of the 18^th Century. In fact, the fathers actually “punished” themselves far worse, using flails with metal spikes on their bare backs during Mass, to atone for what they saw as their own weaknesses and sins.

I could go on forever here but just want to impart that, for the first time since I undertook what I thought to be a minor project, I fully realize the enormity of what the Spaniards tried to do in this time period – with little or no support from those in Mexico or far-away Spain.

So, time to sit back, mull things over, then get to work in turning this work of historical fiction interesting and educational at the same time.

Almost There!

Received an email from my publisher telling me they are going to publish SONORA SYMPHONY on their website August 15th - tomorrow! They also indicated it should show up on Amazon.com a few days later.

It's taken so long to get something like this published that I don't know whether to celebrate - or just let out a sigh of relief.

But, the work goes on. Now I have to do a word-by-word review of the sequel for when they decide to work on it. And, this new book I found about California history is giving me major headaches. Written in 1884, it has a mountain of information to include first-hand descriptions and diary excerpts. I'm relieved to see that I got MOST of The Sailor and The Carpenter right. All I had to do was make a few minor changes to put real friars in their particular missions. I also learned more about the civil and military structure of the 18th century Californias.

The book has 254 pages of information with 224 pages of footnotes!!!!! And, it's written in the style of the time where females didn't count in history. It gave a list of 1,400 Spaniards in California from 1769 to 1800 - and not one was female!  At least it listed all the friars and where and when they served. I am impressed to know that the vast majority of those devout men served until they died in the place where they were assigned.

Ah well, back to doing research to fix The Mission Trail, book two of Father Serra's Legacy.

Oh yeah - thanks to all the 3,000 plus who've stopped by here. I don't know whether or not it shows up on your statistics, but if you check out The Blogs I Follow, you will see that I visit your site at least once a day with only a rare few missed.