By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—As in a game of ‘Treasure Hunt,’ clues about San Diego’s history under three flags can be found in a variety of places outside the graceful Serra Museum – including on one of the three flagpoles!
“In recognition of the financial contributions made by the inhabitants of the San Diego Presidio to Spain in its war against Great Britain; these financial contributions assisted the American colonies in their fight for independence and the establishment of the United States of America,” says a small plaque placed by the Sons of the American Revolution on the pole for the U.S. flag.
We think of July 4, 1776, as a most important date of the American Revolution – the official date of the American Declaration of Independence. This came only seven years after San Diego was established as a Spanish settlement on July 16, 1769 with the celebration of mass by Father Junipero Serra. The Spanish soldiers sent to safeguard Serra’s settlement, along with his fellow Franciscan missionaries and the indigenous Kumeyaay, were the “inhabitants of the Presidio” mentioned on the plaque.
But what did they have to do with the American Revolution which we think of as being fought on the East Coast of the United States?
The organization that sponsored the plaque wants people to change their thinking. The American Revolution really wasn’t fought only on the U.S. mainland. It was part of a worldwide conflict in which Spain and France along with the 13 American colonies (but not Canada) were arrayed against England.
In determining how to deploy its troops, the British couldn’t simply worry about George Washington and his troops. They had to worry about what the French and the Spaniards might do next. Would they attack the British home islands? Would they send their fleets against British targets in the Caribbean?
Given such circumstances, everywhere that Spain or France had garrisons contributed to Britain’s worries, and were included in the chess match of global war. The active duty soldiers of Spain, by such reasoning, were contributing factors in the eventual American victory—including those soldiers here in San Diego–even if they did not see direct action.
Besides the flags of Spain and the United States, the flag of Mexico also flutters near the Serra Museum, representing the country which exercised the shortest period of rule – only 25 years—over San Diego but which nevertheless looms large in San Diego history.
On a treasure hunt for San Diego’s past in this central portion of Presidio Park, one can find allusions in plaques or sculpture to all three of these flagged periods – as well as to the centuries of Kumeyaay history that preceded the eras of all three nations whose banners wave on the flagpoles.
The Kumeyaay period
“The Indian” sculpture was created by sculptor Arthur Putnam (1873-1930) as part of a commission he received in 1898 from newspaper publisher Edward W. Scripps to create for the grounds of his Miramar Ranch estate five heroic sculptures depicting early California life. Unfortunately, Putnam had completed only three sculptures—“The Indian, (1904)”, The Padre (1908),” which is located in a grove nearby, and “The Ploughman (1910)”—when a brain tumor caused him to lose consciousness in 1911. Although he survived another two decades, he never sculpted again. “The Ploughman,” incidentally, can be found at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The two other intended sculptures were to be of a Spanish soldier and of a Mexican woman on horseback.
The sculpture depicting an Indian with a slain puma built upon Putnam’s experience as a renowned animalist. One of the earliest reviews of the piece was in the November 1905 issue of Craftsman with writer S. Mayne Baltimore suggesting that the sculpture “represents an Indian who typifies, as unconsciously as a forest animal, the native poise and dignity of mind, as well as the grace and strength of body, of man untrammeled by civilization….This Indian has been on the trail, and a mountain lion, the spoil of his bow and arrow, lies on the boulder against which he leans. The limp carcass of the big beast, flung like a discarded blanket over the rock, is a perfect foil to the lithe strength of the figure, so vital in its repose, that leans against it. The hunter is nude, save for the breechclout of the southern Indian, and every line of his stalwart frame, lean, compact, and muscular as that of a panther.”
The Journal of San Diego History was less rhapsodic in its issue of Summer 1972: “On the grounds of the original San Diego Presidio in Presidio Park stands an imposing, nine-foot statue depicting one of the aboriginal inhabitants of the North American continent. Although somewhat fanciful in its rendering, the statue is representative of the California Indians in general….”
Near the statue is an ewaa, a traditional dwelling of the Kumeyaay, which also can be found at various other historic venues such as Mission San Diego and Mission Trails Regional Park.
San Diego’s Spanish period is depicted in this area of Presidio Park by “The Padre,” another of Putnam’s sculptures, by the “Serra Cross,” and by the ruins of the old Presidio’s chapel, which are buried under mounds of dirt on a lower lawn.
Like “The Indian,” Putnam’s “The Padre” was relocated to Presidio Park in 1933 and donated to the San Diego Historical Society during the American Bicentennial Year of 1976. Some people supposed the sculpture is meant to depict Serra, but this is not the case: it is supposed to represent all the Franciscan Padres who served in California’s 21 missions. This figure’s head is bowed, his hands are folded behind his back, his feet are in sandals and his waist is girdled with a rope holding a crucifix.
Near the statue the 28-foot-high Serra Cross pays tribute to the founder of the missions, with a plaque at its foot saying: “…Here the first citizen Fray Junipero Serra planted civilization in California. Here he first raised the cross. Here began the first mission. Here founded the first town, San Diego, July 16, 1769.”
Save Our Heritage Organization reports that the cross was “built in 1913 from fragments of tiles from the original Presidio of 1769.” The cross, officially celebrating the bicentennial of Father Junipero Serra’s birth, was dedicated by the Order of Panama during the City of San Diego’s build-up to the California-Panama Exposition in Balboa Park in 1915.
The cross was located at the spot where the spacious home of the presidio’s commandant and first Mexican governor of California, Jose Maria de Echeandia, had been built so as to command a view of his officers’ quarters and San Diego Bay. To reach the home and other buildings of the presidio, 19th century visitors had to pass through the sentry gate of a wooden stockade.
Faculty and students of San Diego State University excavated the mounded grassy area during the 1960s, finding in addition to the outline of the Presidio’s post-Mission chapel various artifacts providing clues to life at the Presidio from 1769 to 1821, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain.
Indicating patterns of trade were a Chumash abalone shell fishhook, pottery of local Kumeyaay manufacture as well as fragments of pieces from Europe, Asia and Mexico; a gun flint; a blade from what was assumed to be a sword, and even a “Phoenix” button of the type ordered by Napoleon for his soldiers.
Outside the Serra Museum is a wooden wine press, described by a plaque as “a gift from the Spanish island of Mallorca , Father Junipero Serra’s birthplace, for San Diego’s bicentennial in 1969. Similar presses were used in California missions.”
The Mexican Period
At the far end of the Presidio’s main parking lot is a yellow room and observation structure upon the wall of which has been placed a plaque alluding to the story of Sylvester Pattie, his son John Ohio Pattie, and their travelling companions who constituted the first overland party to reach California from the continental United States. (Earlier, Jedediah Strong Smith had arrived in San Diego as an individual.)
The plaque says: “Sylvester Pattie, pathfinder, leader of the first party of Americans. Entered Alta California over Southern trails, arrived at San Diego Presidio March 27, 1828. An officer in the War of 1812 , born in Kentucky August 21, 1782, died near this spot April 24, 1828. First American buried in California soil. Commemorating also his son James Ohio Pattie and companions Jesse Ferguson, William Pope, Richard Laughlin, James Puter, Nathaniel Pryor, and Isaac Slover.”
Below this is another plaque reading: “1782 Sylvester Pattie 1828 The United States Daughters of 1812 San Diego Chapter April 1992.”
In his book The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, the younger Pattie, a veteran of the War of 1812, explained the circumstances of his imprisonment at or near this very spot: After being apprehended by Mexican authorities, the party told the commanding general of the Presidio that they were fur-trappers, but the officer “with a sinister and malicious smile, observed that he believed nothing of all this, but considered us worse than thieves and murderers; in fact, he held us to be spies for the old Spaniards, and that our business was to lurk about the country, that we might inspect the weak and defenceless points of the frontiers, and point them out to the Spaniards, in order that they might introduce their troops into the country …..
“Though amazed and confounded at such an unexpected charge, we firmly asserted our innocence in regard to any of the charges brought against us. We informed him that we were born and bred thorough and full blooded republicans; and that there was not a man of us who would not prefer to die, rather than to be the spies and instruments of the Spanish king, or any other king; and that but a few years since, we had all been engaged in fighting the forces of a king, allied with savages, and sent against the country of our home…..”
The father and son suffered privation in separate cells, about eight to ten feet square with walls of stone. The food was barely edible, and though the guards were sympathetic, the general absolutely refused to improve their conditions Pattie wrote: “I had become so emaciated and feeble that I could hardly travel across my prison floor. But no grief arrests the flight of time, and the twenty-fourth of April came, in which the sergeant visited me and in a manner of mingled kindness and firmness told me that my father was no more. At these tidings, simple truth calls on me to declare, my heart felt relieved. I am a hunter, and not a person to analyse the feelings of poor human nature. My father was now gone, gone where the voice of the oppressor is no more heard….”
At the entrance to the parking lot, the narrative on a California Historical Marker covers both Spanish and Mexican history at this location.
“San Diego Presidio Site,” the marker reads. “Soldiers, sailors, Indians and Franciscan missionaries from New Spain occupied the land of Presidio Hill on May 17, 1769 as a military outpost. Two months later, Father Junipero Serra established the first San Diego Mission on Presidio Hill. It was officially proclaimed a Spanish Presidio on January 1, 1774. The fortress was later occupied by a succession of Mexican forces. The presidio was abandoned in 1837 after San Diego became a Pueblo. California Registered Historical Landmark # 59, first registered December 6, 1932. Plaque placed by the State Department of Recreation in cooperation with the San Diego Department of Parks and Recreation and Squibob Chapter E Clampus Vitus, August 8, 1992.
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The American Period
The landmark Serra Museum was designed by architect William Templeton Johnson and dedicated July 16, 1929, a little more than a century after members of the Pattie party experienced their agony. Because its architectural style is reminiscent of the missions, tourists often mistakenly believe that the imposing building is, in fact, the mission. Johann Wahnon, a teacher who once worked at the Serra Museum, commented that of all questions he had heard, “Is this the Mission?” outranked them all.
Yet, near the entrance to the museum is sufficient explanation of the building’s origins and purposes. It reads: “George White Marston, 1850-1946, friend of his fellow men, lover of all growing things, piece by piece over many years acquired these acres, the site of the first Spanish settlement in the state of California. He erected this building, planted the trees and shrubs, and nurtured their growth with tireless devotion, and when the barren hillside had blossomed into beauty, he presented Presidio Park to the city he loved as a memorial to Father Junipero Serra…” The marker was placed by the San Diego Historical Society on October 22, 1950.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. This article appeared previously on examiner.com