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Updated: June 19, 2025
The houses here, as everywhere else in California, are of one story, built of adobes, that is, clay made into large bricks, about a foot and a half square, and three or four inches thick, and hardened in the sun. These are joined together by a cement of the same material, and the whole are of a common dirt-color.
The Apaches were raiding throughout the southeastern part of the territory and the little town of adobes was getting new reports of murders from that section every day. They drove their mules on eastward up the long mesas leading to the San Pedro Divide. At the Pantano stage station they saw the fresh scars of Apache bullets on the adobe walls.
The church was about thirty by one hundred and twelve feet and twenty-five feet high. The foundation walls to the height of three feet were of stone, the front was of masonry, and the rest of adobes. The other buildings were slowly erected, and in the autumn of 1796 a flouring-mill was built and running. It was sadly damaged, however, by the December rains.
Also, after weeks of far horizons and unending sweeps of desert, he found in this nearness of detail pleasurable relief. It was good to see something upright again without straining across miles of desolation, even as it was good to see adobes once more, with windows and doors, and smoke curling up out of chimneys.
In 1800 the report shows that the neophyte population was 1118, with 767 baptisms and 656 deaths. The cattle and horses had decreased from 2232 of the last report to 2217, but small stock had slightly increased. In 1787 the church was regarded as the best in California, though it was much improved later, for in 1797 it is stated that it was of adobes with a tiled roof.
He could even recall the positions of the different adobes; the strings of chiles dark red in the twilight; the old black-shawled señora who had spoken a guttural word of greeting as he had ridden up. Back in Sonora men had said, "Waring has made his last ride." They had told each other that a white man was a fool to go alone into that country. Perhaps he had been a fool.
The town looks prosperous. Building is easy; oysters and other shells supply lime; the clay dug to the north makes good adobes, and stone is easily quarried from the old fort. Of course 'fetish' was present, in the shape of a woman peculiarly ornamented.
Numerous aqueducts, formerly conveying and distributing water over an extensive tract of land surrounding the mission, are still visible, but as the land is not now cultivated, they at present contain no water. The mission buildings cover fifty acres of ground, perhaps more, and are all constructed of adobes with tile roofs.
It was a long ride, but Sundown's mind was so preoccupied with the preparing of his proposed appeal to the sheep-man that the morning hours and the sunlit miles swept past unnoticed. The dark green of the acacias bordering the hacienda, the twinkling white of the speeding windmill, and the dull brown of the adobes became distinct and separate colors against the far edge of the eastern sky.
There were more than two thousand Indians, and all worked busily from morning until night, the men plowing and planting in the fields, or making adobes for building houses, and the women weaving and sewing and cooking.
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