doc241 - Schoenherr Home Page in Sunny Chula Vista

income outside their pay. The chief officer was the commandant. Discipline was severe.
The old Spanish Articles of War prescribed the death penalty for so many trivial offenses
that, as another writer has remarked, it was really astonishing that any soldier could escape
execution. There is no record of any military executions at San Diego, however,
except of Indians.
The principal duties of the soldiers were to garrison the forts, to stand guard at
the missions, to care for the horses and cattle, and to carry dispatches. Both officers
and men had usually a little time at their disposal, which they were allowed to employ in
providing for their families. Some were shoemakers, others, tailors or woodcutters; but
after the first few years most of them seem to have given their leisure hours to agri-
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[Rough Plan of Presidio Hill]
culture. The pay was small and subject to many vexatious deductions. Supplies were
brought by ship from Mexico and the cost was deducted from the men's pay.
The military establishment on Presidio Hill was always the weakest in the department.
The rude earthworks thrown up in July, 1769, grew but slowly. In August there
seem to have been but four soldiers able to assist in repelling the first Indian attack. But
when Perez returned, in the following March, good
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use was made of the time. The temporary stockade was completed and two bronze
cannon mounted, one pointing toward the harbor, the other toward the Indian village.
Houses of wood, rushes, tule, and adobe were constructed. Three years later four thousand
adobe bricks had been made and some stones collected for use in foundations. A
foundation had also been laid for a church ninety feet long, but work upon this building
had been suspended because of delay in the arrival of the supply ship.
When the mission establishment was removed up the river all buildings at the
Presidio, except two rooms reserved for the use of visiting friars and for the storage of
mission supplies, were given up to the military. In September of this year there was
some trouble with troops which had been sent up from Sinaloa. The following year, at
the time of the destruction of the mission, related in a previous chapter, the force at the
Presidio consisted of a corporal and ten men. In the panic caused by this tragedy, all the
stores and families at the Presidio were hastily removed to the old friars' house, the roof
of that building was covered with earth to prevent its being set on fire, and the time of
waiting for the arrival of reinforcements was spent in fear and trembling.
The work of collecting stones to be used in laying the foundations for the new
adobe wall to replace the wooden stockade was begun in 1778 and the construction of
the wall soon followed. The population of the Presidio was then about one hundred and
twenty-five. Small parties of soldiers arrived and departed, and some effort was expended
in attempts to find improved routes of travel through the country. In 1782, the
old church within the presidial enclosure was burned. Two years later, the regulations
required the presidial force to consist of five corporals and forty-six soldiers, six men being
always on guard at the Mission.