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Two Unknown Manuscripts Belonging to Early California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Charles J. G. Maximin Piette
Charles J. G. Maximin Piette*
Affiliation:
Washington, D. C.
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Extract

In a preceding article we have tried to draw a provisional list of the diarios describing the voyages of exploration and the life of the pioneers of Upper California during the period covering the years 1769 to 1784. We should now like to introduce two new documents which have hitherto been unknown. They bring to a fitting completion the list of Crespi’s diarios, first by adding a sensational new item; and, secondly, by giving us a new transcript of the five diarios up to 1772, which is decidedly superior to the copy of Palou-Figueroa, either in manuscript or in the México and San Francisco editions. Furthermore, as a result of this discovery, we can infallibly re-assemble the complete text of Serra’s original Diario, which has been missing until today.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1947 , pp. 91 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1947

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References

1 AGI. Seville. Leg. 104-6-17.

2 Biblioteca del Museo Nacional. See the two small volumes in which Father Verger kept a copy of his correspondence.

3 Herbert E. Bolton, Crespi Missionary Explorer, 1769–1774, Berkeley, 1927, p. 3. By the way such a guess as “Possibly Father Crespi never completed his diary” is excluded by the final declaration of Palou in the Vida at the end of chapter XXI. Here are the last words: “…Ségun se advierte en el Diario del Padre Crespi.” Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. The same mention is repeated in the following chapter XXIII: “El Padre Crespi en su Diario del segundo viaje de la expedición de tierra al Puerto de Monterrey, dice en el día 24 de mayo—como puede ver en él el Lector—lo siguiente: “Como a las tres leguas de andar, llegamos a la una del día a las Lagunas de agua salada de la Punta de Pinos de la parte del Nordeste, donde en el primer viaje se puso segunda Cruz…” There is no doubt Palou had the “complete” diary.

4 Besides, Palou, like Serra also, had a poor opinion of the content of Crespi’s and Peña’s diarios giving the details of the maritime expedition toward Alaska, in 1774. Palou drew up a summary in about 15 pages of these two accounts, and Serra notes, in his letter at the time to the Father Guardian, that it is entirely sufficient to read this report in order to know the interesting events of that voyage of discovery, which he considered disappointing. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Palou did not think it worth while to have this diary of the ocean voyage recopied in the volume of the Community archives.