University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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Mhe Indians have left the streams of the valley. The Mission Bell no longer calls Spanish soldiers and Franciscan priests to worship. Rather, on week days, the Mission Bell sounds simultaneously with a nearby factory whistle. Two hundred years ago the natives called this place Thamien. In 1777 Fray Francisco Palou led a band of Spanish soldiers and their families here, and they quickly assembled a mission of mud and logs and named it Santa Clara, after St. Clare of Assisi. Seventy years later Jesuits Michael Accoiti and John Nobili, who had wandered through the streets of San Francisco to scout the possibility of launching a Jesuit ministry in gold rush California, came to the quiet cloisters of Mission Santa Clara. They converted the Franciscan mission into a school for local young Catholic men. Although they did not realize it at the time, Accoiti and Nobili had founded the first institution of higher learning in California. Today we enjoy the fruit of their labor at the University of Santa Clara. [1] What would those two Jesuits say of their college if they were to see it now? Imagine them walking through the Mission Gardens. Are there men and women out here with hardly any clothes on, Michael, or are my eyes deceiving meP No, John, I see them too. What is that they are throwing back and forth r ' It looks like a plate to me. Well, at least some of them have their books with them. Look at that fellow there, hie ' s reading a Bible. But John, it ' s the King James version! The two Jesuits continue walking until they