Zorro
By ISABEL ALLENDE
Chapter One
Let us begin at the beginning, at an event
without which Diego de la Vega would not have been born. It happened in Alta
California, in the San Gabriel mission in the year 1790 of Our Lord. At that
time the mission was under the charge of Padre Mendoza, a Franciscan who had
the shoulders of a woodcutter and a much younger appearance than his forty
well-lived years warranted. He was energetic and commanding, and the most
difficult part of his ministry was to emulate the humility and sweet nature of
Saint Francis of Assisi. There were other Franciscan friars in the region
supervising the twenty-three missions and preaching the word of Christ among a
multitude of Indians from the Chumash, Shoshone, and other tribes who were not
always overly cordial in welcoming them. The natives of the coast of California
had a network of trade and commerce that had functioned for thousands of years.
Their surroundings were very rich in natural resources, and the tribes
developed different specialties. The Spanish were impressed with the Chumash
economy, so complex that it could be compared to that of China. The Indians had
a monetary system based on shells, and they regularly organized fairs that
served as an opportunity to exchange goods as well as contract marriages.
Those native peoples were confounded by the
mystery of the crucified man the whites worshipped, and they could not
understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world
in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another. In the paradise of the
Christians, they might take their ease on a cloud and strum a harp with the
angels, but the truth was that in the afterworld most would rather hunt bears
with their ancestors in the land of the Great Spirit. Another thing they could
not understand was why the foreigners planted a flag in the ground, marked off
imaginary lines, claimed that area as theirs, and then took offense if anyone
came onto it in pursuit of a deer. The concept that you could possess land was
as unfathomable to them as that of dividing up the sea. When Padre Mendoza
received news that several tribes led by a warrior wearing a wolf's head had
risen up against the whites, he sent up prayers for the victims, but he was not
overly worried; he was sure that San Gabriel would be safe. Being a communicant
of his mission was a privilege, as demonstrated by the number of native
families that sought his protection in exchange for being baptized, and who
happily stayed on beneath his roof. The padre had never had to call on soldiers
to "recruit" converts. He attributed the recent insurrection, the
first in Alta California, to abuses inflicted by Spanish troops and to the
severity of his fellow missionaries. The many small local tribes had different
customs and communicated using a system of signing. They had never banded
together for any reason other than trade, and certainly not in a common war.
According to Padre Mendoza, those poor creatures were innocent lambs of God who
sinned out of ignorance, not vice. If they were rebelling against the
colonizers, they must have good reason.
Father Mendoza worked tirelessly, elbow to
elbow with the Indians, in the fields, tanning hides, and grinding corn. In the
evenings, when everyone else was resting, he treated injuries from minor
accidents or pulled a rotted tooth. In addition, he taught the catechism
classes and arithmetic, to enable the neophytes, as the baptized Indians were
called, to count hides, candles, corn, and cows, but no reading or writing,
which was learning that had no practical application in that place. At night he
made wine, kept accounts, wrote in his notebooks, and prayed. By dawn he was
ringing the church bell to call people to mass, and after morning rites he
supervised breakfast with a watchful eye, so no one would go without food. For
these reasons - and not an excess of self-confidence or vanity - he was
convinced that the rebelling tribes would not attack his mission. However, when
the bad news continued to arrive for several weeks, he finally paid attention.
He sent a pair of his most loyal scouts to find out what was happening in other
parts of the region; in no time at all they had located the warring Indians and
gathered a full report, owing to the fact that they were received as brothers
by the very Indians they were sent to spy on. They returned and told the
missionary that a hero who had emerged from the depths of the forest and was
possessed by the spirit of a wolf had succeeded in uniting several tribes;
their goal was to drive the Spanish from the lands of their Indian ancestors,
where they had always been free to hunt. The rebels lacked a clear strategy;
they simply attacked missions and towns on the impulse of the moment, burning
whatever lay in their path, and then disappearing as quickly as they had come.
They filled out their ranks by recruiting neophytes who had not gone soft from
the prolonged humiliation of serving whites. The scouts added that this Chief
Gray Wolf had his eye on San Gabriel, not because of any particular quarrel
with Padre Mendoza, whom he had nothing against, but because of the location of
the good father's mission. In view of this information, the missionary had to
take measures. He was not disposed to lose the fruit of his labor of years, and
even less disposed to have his neophytes spirited away. Once they left the
mission, his Indians would fall prey to sin and return to living like savages,
he wrote in a message he sent to Captain Alejandro de la Vega, asking for immediate
aid. He feared the worst, he added, because the rebels were very near by; they
could attack at any moment, and he could not defend himself without adequate
military reinforcements. He sent identical missives to the Presidio in San
Diego, entrusted to two swift horsemen using different routes, so if one were
intercepted the other would reach the fort. . . .
Excerpted from Zorro by Isabel Allende Excerpted by
permission. All rights reserved.
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