The last resident missionary at San Luis Rey was Padre Zalvidea, who died early in 1846.
From this date the decline of the Mission was very rapid. In 1826, the Indian population was 2,869 and in 1846 it scarcely numbered 400. After the death of Padre Zalvidea the poor Indians were like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. They dispersed in every direction, a prey of poverty, disease, and death.
[Illustration: The Pala Campanile After Rebuilding in 1916.]
[Illustration: A Pala Basket-Maker at Work.]
[Illustration: The Interior of Pala Chapel After the Restoration.]
[Illustration: The Ruins of the Pala Campanile, After Its Fall in January, 1916.]
The Pala outpost shared the fate of the mother mission, San Luis Rey. It became a prey to the elements and to vandalism. It was soon a ruin, uninhabited and unhabitable. Even the water ditch, not being kept in repair, soon became useless. Thus matters stood until the United States decided to remove the Indians living on Warner's Ranch to Pala.
Longevity used to be quite common among the Pala and other Indians. To attain the age of a hundred years was nothing uncommon, and some lived to be a hundred and fifty and even more years old. A short time ago Leona Ardilla died at Temecula, which, like Pala, used to be a part of the Mission of San Luis Rey. Leona was computed to be fully 113 years old. She well remembered Padre Peyri,--_el buena padre_, she called him,--and could tell definitely of his going away, of the Indians following him to San Diego, and their grief that they could not bring him back. Often have I heard her tell the story of the eviction of the Indians from San Pasqual, as described in _Ramona_, and the struggle her people had for the necessities of life after that disastrous event.
Of gentle disposition, uncomplaining regarding the many and great wrongs done her people by the white man, she lived a simple Indian life, eating her porridge of _weewish_, the _bellota_ of the Spanish, that is, acorn. This was for years her staple food. She ate it as she worked on her baskets, with the prayers on her lips which were taught her by Padre Peyri.
Though deaf and nearly blind for over 20 years, Leona sat daily in the open with some boughs at her back, the primitive, unroofed break-wind described as the only habitation of many of the Indians at the advent of the spiritual _conquistadores_ of California. There, in the shade of her kish, she sat and wove baskets. A few days before she died she tried to finish a basket which had been begun over a month before, but her death intervened and it remains unfinished.