Spanish California and the Mission System Questions What are

1
Spanish California and the Mission System
2
Questions

• What are the Motives for the establishment of the
  Mission system, as opposed to the Justifications?
• What are the components of the Mission System and
  for what purposes did they function?
• What was the impact of the Mission System on
  Indian Peoples?
• How did Indian peoples respond to the conditions
  of the Mission System?

3
Identifications

• Master and Alternative Mission Narrative
• Missions 10 year Plan
• Francis Guest
• Components of the Mission system
• First Pueblos
• Junipero Serra
• Jayuntes and Monjeros
• 18th Century Perspectives of the system
• Methods of Resistance
• Chumash Revolt
• Yuma Revolt
• Population Decline
• Mortality rates

4
Master Narrative

• Missions
• Protected Indians from exploitation
• Relatively small original population
• Greatest population decline began at
  Secularization in 1832
• Taught them European Skills
• Ensured a better and/or more consistent food
  supply
• Teaching European style agriculture
• Introducing wheat, corn domestic animals such
  as cattle, sheep and horses

5
Master Narrative

• Myths
• Mission Indians were docile, passive
• Did not revolt
• Did not make war on the mendicant orders of the
  civil authorities
• Especially in comparison to plains tribes during
  American westward expansion

6
Alternative Narrative

• Introduced crops and animals provide less food to
  populations
• Yields failed animals died during drought
• Introduced diet Less nutrients
• Milk lactose intolerant
• Population
• Population equal to other areas that depended on
  corn, beans and squash
• Population decline began with the Missions

7
Pre-contact Agriculture

• Corns, beans, squash were native crops, not
  European
• Corn agriculture by California people - Kumeyaay
• Trade and contact between California and
  intensive irrigation agricultural Hohokam and
  Puebloan cultures dates to at least 900AD
• Intensive Plant Husbandry, fishing hunting
• Yucca, cacti, sedums, sages, sumacs, Manzanita,
  oaks, pines, wild plums and grapes,

8
The Spanish Mission System

• Mission the crux of Conquest
• Motives for Conquest
• Colonization
• Hispanic-ization
• Origin of the System

9
The Mission

• The Mission
• The Franciscans and Other Mendicant Orders
• Salvation in return for labor
• Goals
• 10 yr plan
• Christianize
• Self government
• Secularize
• Farmers

Mission San Diego de Alcala est. 1769
10
Wards of the Friars

• Francis Guest
• As is commonly known, Spanish law made the
  missionaries the legal guardians of their Indian
  converts.
• In virtue of their conversion and baptism the
  neophytes became the wards of the friar
• Lands confiscated
• Neophytes became property of the friars

11
Components of the Mission System

• The Neophyte
• Christians in Training
• Pueblo
• Presidio
• Rancho
• Mission

12
Components of the Mission System the Pueblo

• The Pueblo
• Agricultural Towns
• Two Originally Planned, Three Eventually Built
• Indian Labor
• Hope to Decrease Reliance on Mexico and Missions

Viceroy Antonio de Bucareli
13
The First Pueblos

• San Jose de Guadalupe
• Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Rio de
  Porciuncula
• Villa de Branciforte (Santa Cruz)

14
Components of the Mission System the Pueblo

• Multiethnic Los Angeles, 1781
• 2 families African-Mulatto (Caucasian-African
  mix)
• 2 families Indian-Indian
• 2 families Mulatto-Mulatto
• 2 families Spanish-Indian
• 1 family Mulatto-Mestizo (Spanish-Indian mix)
• 1 family Indian-Mulatto
• 1 family Indian-Mestizo

15
The Settlers The Sacred expedition

• Direst of Poverty
• Government promise of support
• Change would offer some hope of improvement

16
Components of the Mission System the Presidio

• The Presidio
• Forts to Protect the Mission
• Garrisons Return Fugitives
• Garrisons Capture New Neophytes
• Four Built
• Weak Militarily

Presidio of Mission San Diego Est. 1769
17
The Presidio

• Give Spanish Limited Military Control
• Unable to Subsist without the Missions
• Colonial workforce - 1st peoples
• Allow Control of Coastal Native People

18
Convict Lease system?

• Presidio labor forces
• Neophytes
• Mission fathers sometimes leased or loaned
  Indian Laborers to the military
• If there was payment for services, the padres
  were the recipients

19
Development and Growth

• Father-President Serra and His Legacy
• Father-President Fermin Francisco de Lasuen
• El Camino Real and 21 Missions of California
• Pueblos and Ranchos

Mission San Carlos Borromeo
20
Junipero Serra

• 1713 born on the Island of Majorca, Spain
• Educated at the Catholic University
• became a professor and librarian at the Monastery
  
• Entered Franciscan order in 1730
• Sent to Mexico in 1749
• Back drop of the inquisition 15th 19th
  Centuries
• Tribunals brought to Americas
• Originally functioned to obliterate Jewish and
  Moors who could not prove their genuine
  conversion
• Functioned to destroy anyone sought to be a
  threat to the institution, or Catholic ideals

21
1573 Spanish Inquisition
22
Legacy of Inquisition?

• Methods of repression continued by Totalitarian
  Regimes Police States
• Creation of racial religious Ghettos
• Forcible wearing of badges of shame
• Formal state religious propaganda
• Spying
• Seizure of property
• Intimidation torture
• Sexual humiliation
• Good cop/bad cop routine
• Physical restraint
• Separation of families
• No recognition of natural or civil rights
• Threat and repression of Humanity

23
Serra

• 1767 send to Lower California, established 9
  missions in Upper California in coastal areas
• Led invasion and foreign occupation of California
• Father President
• Advisor to the civil and military authorities for
  the missions and colonies
• Francisco Palou Biography of Serra describes him
  as the ruler of the province

24
Fermin Francisco Lasuen

• Wrote in 1800 his justification for coercion
• It is evident that a nation which is barbarous,
  ferocious, and ignorant requires more frequent
  punishment than a nation which is cultured,
  educated, and of gentle and moderate customs

25
Components of the Mission System the Rancho

• The Rancho
• Mission Herds
• Use Indian Labor
• Major Source of Wealth in Mission System
• Give Missions Power over Spanish Government

26
San Diego San Luis Rey

• Lacked sufficient agricultural lands to support a
  congregated baptized population
• Majority lived in their own villages, fed
  themselves, maintained their own crops
• Brought to the missions on Feast days and as a
  rotating labor force
• Death rate exceeded birth rate under these more
  favorable conditions compared to other missions

27
Punishment

• Indian threw a stone at a missionary
• 25 lashes a day for 9 days
• 35 45 lashes each Sunday for 9 Sundays
• Soldier for Rape
• Soldier would receive 8 days of sentry duty
• Or
• 16 days on graveyard shift

28
San Diego Mission

• 1772 letter from Fr. Jayme
• Worried about several attempted rebellions
• Destruction of crops by soldiers
• Sexual violence perpetrated by soldiers endemic
• 4 villages in which the soldiers rape and murder
• Evidence of 3 incidents of gang rape
• Blind women carried screaming and beaten into the
  woods to be raped
• Neophytes believed the fathers could have stopped
  this but allowed it to keep the soldiers
  content

29
Sexual Abuse

• Brutal attacks and Sexual violence previously
  unknown to Tongva or others
• San Gabriel Mission - Tongva - Chasing, lassoing,
  raping, beating, killing
• San Diego Mission - 3 Soldiers, 2 Kumeyaay girls,
  gang raped and one murdered
• Sentenced to life as a California Citizen
• Santa Barbara - Chumash - rape, mutilation and
  Murder

30
Santa Barbara Mission

• Conditions terrifying restraints unbearable
• Study by John Johnson
• 67 children born at mission died before 5 yrs
• 75 died before puberty
• Converts lived average of 12 years
• 60 population decrease
• Measles, cholera, diphtheria,
• SYPHYLIS introduced by Spanish soldiers

31
San Luis Rey Mission

• Miserable Conditions
• Failed escapes flogged, iron clog fastened to
  their legs
• Destruction of crops
• Famine
• General abuse
• Forced labor

32
San Diego Mission Revolt

• Revolt of November, 1772 Jayme killed
• Revolt of 1775 the Mission burned down

33
Forced System of Labor

• Excessive confining work
• Santa Barbara Mission
• Fr. Maynard Geiger
• Brick Manufacture
• Men made adobe bricks
• Women aided in transporting bricks tiles
• Weaving lucrative for the mission
• Women Children employed in processing wool and
  weaving
• Evidence of piece rate system, paid in kind

34
Physical Punishment

• General coercive nature of the system
• Padre Antonio de la Conception Horra, 1799
• The treatment shown to the Indians is the most
  cruel I have ever read in history. For the
  slightest things they receive heavy floggings,
  are shackled, and put in the stocks and treated
  with so much cruelty that they are kept whole
  days without a drink of water

35
Forced Conversion

• Captain Beechy, visited San Francisco Bay, 1826
  27
• If Indians refused to convert, they would
  imprison them for days at a time releasing them
  to walk around the mission until they agreed to
  renounce the religion of their forefathers
• Lt. Pears Journal, Hugo Reids Letters, Cook,
  1976
• Evidence of use of military coercion

36
Conditions of Women

• Unmarried girls, women and widows kept in
  special compounds and locked in dormitories at
  night.
• Separated from families and men
• Men kept in Jayuntes or mens quarters
• Poor diet
• Poor hygiene at the missions
• Greater contagion
• Higher rate of death among women

37
Womens Quarters Monjero

• Russian Explorer Otto Van Kotzebue
• Santa Clarita Mission, 1824
• large quadrangular bldg without windows and only
  one carefully secured door resembling a prison
• These dungeons are opened 2-3 x/day, but only to
  allow the prisoners to pass to and from church
• I have occasionally seen the poor girls rush out
  eagerly, to breathe fresh air, and driven
  immediately into the church like a flock of
  sheep, by an old ragged Spaniard armed with a
  stick. After mass they are hurried back to their
  prison

38
18th C Perspectives

• French Explorer Jean Francois Galaup Comte de La
  Perouse
• Likened the Indians of Mission San Carlos in 1786
  to the Slaves of Santo Domingo
• Descriptions lf serious charges of cruelty
• George Vancouver Expeditions
• Naturalist Archibald Menzies, 1792
• Documents letters authored by military
  authorities in 1785 cited by George Bancroft

39
Native Resistance

• Cooperation
• Passive Resistance
• Fugitivism
• Active Resistance
• Revolt
• Homicide
• Raids on livestock
• Revitalization

40
Cooperation

• Only if there was something to gain, material
  benefits, or too much to lose in resisting

41
Passive Resistance

• Non cooperation
• Work Slow Down
• Destruction of Tools and Resistance

42
Fugitivism

• Huntin em up!
• 12 lashes after Sunday Mass, then kiss hand of
  missionary
• I dont want it, I am returning to my land
• Pagan Headmen caught for harboring fugitives
• Kept confined for one month
• Whipped
• killed

43
Revitalization Movements

• Chumash - Santa Barbara
• Chupu - Earth Goddess tears of the sun
• Split between Traditional conversos or
  neophytes

44
Mission San Gabriel Revolt

• Revolts resistance so common as to not be
  recorded regularly
• 1785 revolt against Mission San Gabriel
• Led by Taypurina, 24 yrs woman shaman
• 4 people received 20 lashes, 2 released
• General Ugarte orders 2 years later
• Condemned Nicolai to six yrs of work at the
  presidio followed by perpetual exile
• 2 other women dismissed with 2 years imprisonment

45
Chumash Revolt February 21, 1824

• No way out of Mission except escape
• Catalyst for revolt, flogging so severe a young
  neophyte died of wounds at Santa Ynez Mission
• Building burned
• La Purisima Mission of Lompoc
• Santa Barbara Mission

46
(No Transcript)
47
San Rafael Mission Revolt

• Pomponio (Coast Miwuk)
• originally from Mission Dolores in San Francisco
• 1821 1824
• He led guerilla warfare between San Rafael and
  Santa Cruz missions

48
Resistance

• Uprisings between 1820 1830s of Missions in San
  Francisco Bay Area
• Leaders of Revolts
• Yozcolo
• Captured, beheaded, head hung on a pole for all
  to see
• Estanislao
• Marin
• Quintin

49
Yuma San Diego Revolts

• San Diego - 1769 Father Jayme
• Yuma Revolt - 1780 - Most Successful
• Destroyed 2 missions and the settlements
• 30 soldiers
• 4 padres
• Cut off Travel over Anza trail until 1820s

50
Impact of the Mission System and Spanish
Settlement

• Land
• Population
• Culture

Mission Santa Barbara
51
Population Decline

• 65 years from 1769 1834
• 81,000 baptized
• 60,000 deaths
• 1834 15,000 resident neophytes remained at 21
  missions
• 50 - 70 decline during mission period
• Rape and Murder - abortion, infanticide
• Military Mission physical torture and abuse
• Forced labor
• Malnutrition, starvation
• disease

52
Social Upheaval

• Murder of Knowledge Specialists
• New economic system -destruction and
  dispossession
• Ideas imposed that forced restructuring of social
  and political relationships
• Gente de Razon/Gente de Sin
• Patriarchy