A Matter of Interpretation : Volunteers at San Juan’s mission are painstakingly turning Spanish records about the Juaneno Indians into English. The project lends a personal flavor to O.C. history and will ease tracing ancestry. But is it an invasion of privacy?

The Franciscan missionaries who came to San Juan Capistrano to convert the Juaneno Indians to Christianity were religious in their record keeping.

Their records of baptisms, weddings and burials--largely unexplored for two centuries--hold a wealth of information about early Orange County, say the three volunteers who have immersed themselves in them for two years.

The volunteers are translating the records from old Spanish into English, consolidating the information into one index and alphabetizing it by family name.

By putting the pieces together, stories unfold about the Juanenos and the missionaries determined to claim their souls.

Their records show that, in the drive to gain converts, the padres performed wedding ceremonies for girls and boys as young as 10; baptized babies and children whose parents were not converts; and performed back-to-back conversion and wedding ceremonies.

“These archives are one of the unknown treasures of Orange County and California,” said Robert Schafer, a 72-year-old historian who has been studying the mission records. “They are an extremely valuable resource that explains the nature of communities in California back in the 18th Century. We’re learning about the sociology of a community at a time when two cultures were intersecting.”

The documents are, in effect, Orange County’s first official record books. They were started by Father Junipero Serra when he founded the mission in 1776 on the Juanenos’ homeland.

With help from Sarah Estes of Laguna Niguel and Xochitl Sugden of Fountain Valley--Schafer has been deciphering the records. Eventually, they want to have the indexed records available via computer.

Copies of the baptismal, wedding and burial records from all 21 California missions are kept at Mission Santa Barbara--the headquarters of the Franciscan archives. Except for the San Juan Capistrano records, none of these has been translated, according to Father Biasiol Virgilio, the archivist at Mission Santa Barbara.

He said the Orange County project is significant because the documents have “tremendous historical value.”

Charles Bodnar, the archivist at Mission San Juan Capistrano, said he initiated the project because he wanted the records to be more accessible to those interested in tracing their ancestry or gaining a better understanding of Orange County’s original residents and their encounters with the missionaries.

The process of deciphering the padres’ handwriting and translating copies of the records (the leather-bound originals are too fragile to be handled) is slow, painstaking work.

“I have a hunch some of the fathers imbibed too heavily on the ceremonial wine,” Schafer said. “It shows in their handwriting.”

Schafer, who lives in San Clemente, is a former history professor who has been a volunteer docent at the mission since retiring from the University of Michigan-Flint five years ago.

It has taken two years to translate the records from 1776 to 1789, and the index now contains about 1,000 names.

By 1834, when Mexico took over the missions and secularized them, 4,376 baptisms had been recorded, so Schafer and his helpers have a long way to go.

“It’s not easy, but it is fascinating,” said Schafer, whose magnifying glass has become an essential research tool. “These records give life and personality to the people who were living here over 200 years ago.”

The three researchers now know many of the early Juanenos by name--and talk about them as though they were long-lost relatives. They even have T-shirts that read, “I brake for Guillermo Paat,” who they believe was the first mayor in Orange County. (He was first identified as the mission Indians’ alcalde in 1784 and then was mentioned as a witness at many baptisms and weddings.)

Schafer, Estes and Sugden meet weekly to discuss their findings and are eager to share new information about individuals in whom they have taken a special interest.

“If I discover something new,” Sugden said, “I call Bob at home because I can’t wait until the next week to tell him.”

She has a special feeling for three young “fugitive” mothers. The baptismal records show that three men brought babies to the mission to be baptized about the same time in 1787. In each case, the record lists the mother as a fugitive.

The term--which appears often in the records--was used to describe an Indian who had fled the mission. It is evidence of the hardships they endured there, including a tough regimen of religious instruction and manual labor. In addition, the missionaries had no interest in preserving Juaneno customs or culture.

“For some, it must have seemed like the end of the world,” Schafer said.

The Juanenos were drawn to the mission by offers of food and other inducements--or brought by force. Those who fled and later returned or were apprehended by Spanish soldiers were subject to severe punishment, including whippings, imprisonment and hard labor.

Among those who may have endured those consequences was Lucas Maria Supi. He was baptized in 1781 at the age of 28 and, a year later, married Valerie Tajam. When their son, Fidel, was born in 1785, Lucas was listed as a fugitive. When Valerie gave birth to another son three years later, Lucas was named as the father--but no longer listed as a fugitive.

Glimpses of a young woman named Praxedes are among those woven into the records.

In 1779, she was baptized and married the same day--at age 15. A year later, she gave birth to a son. Three years later, her husband--who also had been baptized--died at Rancho Santa Margarita from an arrow wound. Within months, Praxedes married another man who had converted to Christianity.

She disappears from the records until 1789, when she brought her 2 1/2-year-old son to the mission to be baptized. The records identify her at this point as a fugitive, and the child’s father, Tapac, as “pagan.” Praxedes later had another child with Tapac.

Among the converts who appear often in the records is Anastasia, a woman listed as godmother to many mission Indians. In a 1786 entry, when a mother threatened to kill her newborn daughter, a padre baptized the child and turned her over to Anastasia to raise. Burial records show that the baby died three months later. The cause of death is not given, but many of the mission Indians died young, often because they had no immunity to illnesses Europeans brought to America--including measles, small pox and influenza.

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While many see a legacy of information and insight emerging from the records, not everyone supports the project.

David Belardes, a Juaneno leader, considers it an unnecessary intrusion on the privacy of the people’s lives documented in the mission records.

“Why are they invading our privacy?” he asked, when told about the project. He said the records are filled with accounts of out-of-wedlock births and other matters descendants might prefer to keep private. “These are our family histories. [These records] are nobody’s business but ours.”

Schafer disagrees, saying it’s important for historians to have access to such records.

“We all are the product of our past, whether we know it or not,” he said. “We don’t know exactly how we got the way we are, but the past has that story, and it’s the job of historians to dig it out and tell people.”

Helen McMullen, president of the Indian Council in San Juan Capistrano, doesn’t share Belardes’ objection to the project. She said there are a number of people interested in tracing their Indian ancestry who would appreciate being able to use an English version of the mission records.

Archivist Bodnar points out that the records are already available, by appointment, to anyone interested in tracing their family history or in conducting historical research.

He said the project will make those records more useful to those trying to establish their Indian ancestry and thus become recognized as members of the Juaneno tribe.

Dorson Zunie, a tribal operations officer in the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Sacramento office, said individuals could be eligible for federal benefits--such as college scholarships and vocational training programs--if they can show evidence of Indian ancestry.

The Juaneno tribe, which is seeking federal recognition that would qualify it for funds to offer cultural programs and health services, has 2,000 members, about 500 of whom live in San Juan Capistrano.

“We’re doing this project so that the information will be available at the punch of a button,” Bodnar said.

Belardes said many of the Juanenos’ descendants have already traced their ancestry, using the 1928 Indian rolls available through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Many, though, including Belardes, have also made use of the mission records.

When historical information is more easily accessible, broader understanding becomes possible, Schafer said.

For example, the indexed mission records can be used to examine how patterns--such as age of marriage, childbirth and death--were influenced by the presence of the missionaries.

Schafer--who has taught English, American, Chinese, Japanese and European history and has done extensive research on 17th- and 18th-Century England--said the mission records are invaluable for studying the demographics of the community.

Hoping eventually to publish the consolidated index, Schafer would like to have more volunteers to help speed the project.

Estes, who has worked alongside Schafer on the project, said the work is tedious but also rewarding. “It’s fascinating to be this close to history. It enriches my life.”

Ultimately, the impact is very emotional, Estes said.

“I find myself attaching a lot of personal feelings to the people we’re reading about, wondering what they must have felt at different times in their history. . . . When a child dies and I know who the parents are, I feel the loss they must have felt.

“I feel connected to these people.”