bjgreen
By Betsy J. Green
100 years ago, folks were remembering that April 21 marks the founding of Santa Barbara’s Presidio back in 1782. On this date, “Father Serra arrived here and blessed and consecrated the district and preached a sermon. The royal standard of Spain was unfurled.”
This year, there will be festivities at the Presidio today (Saturday, April 27, 2019) to mark this day.
This early diagram, which shows the layout of the Presidio, is a bit confusing because the south side of the fort is at the top of the map. The notation “110 varas cuadradas” means 110 square varas. A vara is 33.33 inches. (Image: History of the City of Santa Barbara, California, from its discovery to our own days. Written in Spanish by Rev. Juan Caballeria y Collell and translated by Edmund Burke, 1892)
Betsy’s Way Back When book — 1918 — is now available in local bookstores and at Amazon.com. This is the fifth book in her series of the history of Santa Barbara, one year at a time. Learn more at
Thanks to a recent wi-fi outage (Cox Comm, sometimes I really hate you), I had to read a book. I chose to read “Santa Barbara’s Royal Ranchos” by Walker Tompkins. Then, online, a couple days later, I somehow (a mystery to me) came across “Mission Santa Barbara, 1782 1965 By Maynard Geiger.” =========(https://archive.org/stream/MissionSantaBarbara17821965ByMaynardGeiger/Mission%20Santa%20Barbara,%201782-1965%20by%20Maynard%20Geiger_djvu.txt)====== Between the book and the paper by Geiger (a California Missions historian), I was brought to tears reading about how the Spaniards and Friars and white land grabbers tormented and abused and killed off the Chumash from Ventura all the way up to Cojo. The Spanish soldiers in particular were horrible to the native Chumash. Of course, both Tompkins’ book and Geiger’s paper (Geiger was a Friar/Roman Catholic) virtually whitewash (a most appropriate word here) what was done to the native peoples. I can’t even think about the Santa Barbara Mission now or The Presidio without feeling stricken to the heart over the dehumanization and decimation of the Chumash that took place. I grew up here and am ashamed to admit that I never before fully grasped the extent and horror of the genocide, deliberate or not, wrought upon the indigenous people in our part of California.
The Presidio should never have been reconstructed. It should never be held in esteem. Do we really honor the Atlantic Wall? The fort was an occupation force stronghold. There was no cultural or community benefit for the natives. It exists today (despite its originally very short tenure) only to attract tourists and to facilitate myth building stories justifying European behavior.
Shhh. We prefer to “white” wash history around here. Its much better to think of the natives as savages and the actual savages as saints… Let’s not talk about historical truth, it will make the kids scared. Besides, its an old building and as everyone knows, any building older than 40 years is the most important thing in the community and must be saved at all costs!