The Letters of Jacob Baegert, 1749-1762: Jesuit Missionary in
Baja California. Translated by Elsbeth Schulz-Bischof; Edited by Doyce B.
Nunis, Jr. Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1982. Illustrations. 237 pages.
$36.00.
Reviewed by Homer Aschmann, Professor of Geography,
University of California, Riverside, author of The Central Desert of Baja
California: Demography and Ecology (1959).
Of all the books dealing with the Jesuit mission to Baja
California that of Johann Jakob Baegert, Observations in Lower California, (Translated by M.M. Brandenburg
and Carl L. Baumann, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1952. The original is Nachrichten von de
Amerikanischen Halbinsel Californien, Mannheim, 1771.) is
accurately recognized as presenting the bleakest and least idealized or
sanitized picture of mission life. The discovery, translation and publication of
nine letters to his brother, also a Jesuit, and one to his mother, demonstrate
that Baegert also sanitized what he published. His Jesuit mission, San Luis
Gonzaga among the Guaicura, was run as harshly and with as little respect for
native traditions and values as were the later Franciscan and Dominican ones.
These family letters, apparently all but two written in Latin, had
been translated into German and transcribed, possibly by Baegert
himself after the Jesuit expulsion, or by one of his three clergyman brothers
and had been preserved at the Municipal Library in Strasbourg. Working with a
microfilm copy Professors Nunis and Schulz-Bischof have done well with a
singularly difficult manuscript. Four languages, Latin, German, Spanish and
French must have confused the original transcriber because some
passages continue to refuse to make sense, even after
laborious effort. Annotations have been supplied to identify persons, things
and events alluded to in the text. Baegert must have had access to the originals
or to the transcriptions after 1769 because many anecdotes, written a decade or
more earlier, appear verbatim in the Observations.
The first five letters recount Baegert's observations en
route to Mexico City from Schettstadt in Alsace via the Brenner Pass, Genoa, by
sea to Santa María near Cádiz and to Vera Cruz and overland to Mexico. Baegert
seemed interested in everything and was sure his brother would be. Clothing,
architecture, church furnishings, national variations in Catholic rites, food
and the general landscape are described to make this an excellent eighteenth
century travelogue. I found professional value in his reference to
deforestation in Northern Italy and the extreme scarcity and costliness of
lumber for construction. The sad letter to his mother consists only of
assurances that her sufferings on earth would receive recompense in heaven.
Once he reaches his mission in Baja California his negative
comments on the character of the Indians expose Baegert's psychological makeup
to an almost embarrassing degree. It may have been typical of contemporary
missionaries though they did not express it so openly in official letters and
publications. Rage at departure from the Church's prescriptions for sexual
behavior is constant, but eating habits that depart from European norms provoke
comparable outbursts. Disciplined behavior in all areas of life was sought from
the Indians. It was not obtained so they were regarded as stupid and incapable
of learning. Baegert shows a complete incapacity to appreciate the validity of a
foreign culture. It is different so it is wrong. On the other hand he maintained
a lively relation with his own culture, even in extreme isolation. He developed
a substantial library by requesting specific books, to be paid for from his
annual stipend. His geopolitical awareness of the incipient struggle for the
West Coast of North America between Spain, Britain and Russia and the part
missionization played in advancing the Spanish cause, is fully modern.
Baegert's sincerity in choosing a life of extreme discomfort,
both physical and intellectual, to save the souls of a modest number of Indians
is unquestionable. He was obliged to give them the sacraments, but he believed
that all adults sinned and were unrepentant and would go to Hell. His solace was
the infants he baptized and who died before falling into the sins of adolescents
and adults.
This is an important book. Any reader will find it
fascinating and informative. As one quite familiar with both published and
manuscript literature on Baja California I kept finding references to the dark
side of mission history that have been concealed in other mission literature:
the execution of nine Indians at one mission for killing livestock; free use of
beatings and chainings for theft and improper sexual behavior; the regular and
frequent imprisoning and cashiering for sexual delinquencies of soldiers who
protected the mission. A litle hard demography can be extracted.
At least 90 of the 154 infants Baegert baptized had died within ten years. The
mission population was stable at 350. This gives the high birth rate of 50 per
thousand; the child mortality rate was well over 600 per thousand. There was no
reserve with which to survive the epidemics that were to come.
