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Lasuen himself explored the region and determined the site. The governor agreed to it, and on February 27, 1798, ordered a guard to be furnished from San Diego who should obey Lasuen implicitly and help erect the necessary buildings for the new Mission.
Ortega then instructed Padres Lasuen and Figuer to prepare the condemned. "You will co-operate for the good of their souls in the understanding that if they do not accept the salutary waters of baptism they die on Saturday morning; and if they do they die all the same!" This was the first public execution in California.
Santa Barbara was the next Mission to be founded. For awhile it seemed that it would be located at Montecito, now the beautiful and picturesque suburb of its larger sister; but President Lasuen doubtless chose the site the Mission now occupies. Well up on the foothills of the Sierra Santa Inés, it has a commanding view of valley, ocean and islands beyond.
On June 9, 1797, Lasuen left San Francisco for the founding of the Mission San José, then called the Alameda. The following day, a brush church was erected, and, on the morrow, the usual foundation ceremonies occurred. The natives named the site Oroysom.
The missions were gradually but slowly dispossessed of their lawful property, and all their wealth confiscated, several times were many of the dear Spanish fathers deported; they returned to Spain where a warm welcome awaited them, but how sad to leave their missions reared by the most heroic labors of the "martyr stuff" within them or their immediate predecessors, Serra, Lasuen, Lopez, Dumetz, Crespi, Palou, names "held in benediction;" and what would become of their poor converted Indians who clung to them so faithfully and whom they had raised to the plane of christian men and women from nakedness, savagery and paganism!
He was not a man to limp through life on a sore leg if a cure could be found. . . . First among the Californian prelates let us ever rank Fermin de Lasuen, as a friar who rose above his environment and lived many years in advance of his times."
Governor Borica, who called California "the most peaceful and quiet country on earth," and under whose orders Padre Lasuen had established the five Missions of 1796-1797, had himself made explorations in the scenic mountainous regions of the coast, and recommended the location afterwards determined upon, called by the Indians Alajulapu, meaning rincon, or corner.
Next in order, between the two Missions of San Antonio de Padua and San Luis Obispo, was that of "the most glorious prince of the heavenly militia," San Miguel. Lasuen, aided by Sitjar, in the presence of a large number of Indians, performed the ceremony in the usual form, on July 25, 1797.
Because he was a grand missionary, he was none the less a money-maker and civilizer; but money-making and civilizing were adjuncts only to mission work, and all not for his glory, but for the glory of God." After Junípero Serra came a saner and wiser, if not a better, man, the Padre Fermin Lasuen. I need not go into details in regard to him or his life.
It is to Vancouver, on this voyage, that we owe the names of a number of points on the California coast, as, for instance, Points Sal, Argüello Felipe, Vicente, Dumetz, Fermin, and Lasuen. In 1795 there was a fight between the neophyte and gentile Indians, the former killing two chiefs and taking captive several of the latter.
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