Excerpt of Zorro by Isabel Allende
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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.
From Zorro by Isabel Allende. Copyright © 2005 by Isabel Allende. English-language
copyright © HarperCollins Publishers.
