MISSIONS as developed in Spain's colonial empire have not only
been characterized as frontier institutions, but from their inception they have
been a controversial feature of the Spanish frontier. From Paraguay to New
Mexico and finally north to California, missions implanted Spanish culture and
religion upon native peoples subjected to them. As an alternative to subjugation
and control by force of arms, these institutions attempted to implant concepts
of social order and culture held by the dominant Hispanic society.1 The position
of the Indian within this system was at best ambiguous when measured against the
later issue of freedom versus slavery.
 At Mission San Diego de Alcalá flogging of Indians helped to
instigate an open attack in which Fray Luis Jayme and a blacksmith were killed.
Soldiers were later sent into the hills to try and capture those responsible for
the insurrection |
The roots of the mission system as it developed rest in part
in the unique relationship between state secular and sacerdotal laboriously
developed in Spain. Through peculiarities of Spanish history, religious and
secular became so intertwined as to create an inseparable bond between the two.
The "Reconquista" of the Spanish homeland from Moorish invaders encompassed an
800 year period which terminated only on the eve of Spanish discovery, conquest
and colonization of the New World. The reconquest of the Spanish homeland from
Moorish colonizers was indeed an epic war to recover territory, but because of
obvious religious differences it had the added aspect of a grand religious
crusade. Simultaneously, the Reformation confirmed Spanish Catholicism and made
of the coalescing nation a repository of the "true faith." Spain's orthodoxy won
from the papacy unique privileges and unparalleled control over the Catholic
Church within her borders.2 Thus the splendid burst of energy which propelled
Spain across two oceans and a continent in the century after 1492 was sustained
by both territorial and religious motives.
Missions were cultural and religious vanguards of conquest.
Foundation of missions was controlled by the Crown, their existence was
supported by the royal treasury, and inhabitants were secured by the military.
The primary motive for missionization was not, as in the case of the Encomienda,
exploitation of natives but rather conversion and gradual assimilation into
Hispanic society.3 For this reason, missions had a theoretical lifespan of ten
years within which to accomplish stated goals. In fact no missions were
secularized on the northern frontier during the Spanish period. This was due to
underestimation of the task at hand and frequently a vested interest in economic
exploitation of natives possible within the system. Too often economic
exploitation of native peoples was the strongest foundation of the surrounding
civilian and military society.4
Spanish California sustained a series of missions which
represented in a compressed time frame a close approximation of the ideal
operation of frontier missions. The fifty-two years from 1769 to 1821 witnessed
the beginning, development and golden age of the California missions. Within
this short period the status of native groups within the system can be readily examined.
The communal character directed by a Franciscan priest,
typical of California's missions, was determined primarily by the native peoples
with whom the system operated. The natives of Spain's northwest salient lived in
small, scattered tribal groups with much diversity as to language and social
custom. Communities were critical to the inseparable dual functions of missions,
Christianization and Hispanicization. Spain sent with her New World immigrants
an ancient concept of social order dependent upon communal living. Thus it was
essential that California's Indians be "reduced" into settled and stable
communities where they would become good subjects of the King and children of
God.5 Missionization required a brutally sudden change in cultural patterns and
lifestyle akin in several respects to the forced movement of black people from
Africa to the American South.
Congregation of California natives into missions was
theoretically not forcible. However it was early apparent that alien Christian
doctrines held little attractive power for suspicious natives. Consequently,
neophytes were lured to missions with beads, trinkets, food, clothing and
promises of a better life. Little pressure was applied and likely converts were
encouraged to watch, and eventually to help in building the mission edifice
itself. With more gifts and kindness, skeptical natives were induced to build
their own jacales, or huts, within the mission compound.6
Natives were not irrevocably bound to missions until baptism,
which commonly took place two or three months after instruction in Catholic
doctrine began. Before baptism, neophytes were warned that once they had become
Christians their lives would be restricted to the mission compound.7 The
rationale for this stricture on mobility is clear in light of the mission's
twofold obligation to Christianize and Hispanicize.
Hispanicization implied much more than simple religious instruction. As an
essentially Western faith, Christianity requires an understanding and acceptance
of basic Western values. This includes a chronological concept of history and a
belief in the subservience of nature. Associated moral codes define a system of
social organization and Christianity insists on monogamy and stresses sedentary
living. To California's Franciscan frontiersmen residence in a mission was an
essential ingredient in a recipe whose final product was to be good Christians
and loyal subjects.
Absence, equated with apostasy, was punished swiftly and
certainly. Either soldiers from the escolta, or mission guard, or
soldiers from a presidial company were assigned the task of tracking and
capturing runaways. The result was a whipping administered by a soldier or
mission Indian, sometimes to the point of death.
There were special circumstances in which the restriction
against leaving the mission was relaxed. When supplies ran short, as they
frequently did in the early days, natives were encouraged to leave the missions
in order to forage for themselves and thus relieve the pressure on limited
mission supplies. As natives were Hispanicized they were gradually granted
limited freedom of movement between missions, pueblos and presidios. Permission
was required but it was easily obtained.8
A plethora of rules and regulations guided the daily round of
native activity at the California missions. Indians were assigned living
quarters on the basis of age and marital status. Married couples were housed in
a special compound along with small children. Girls who had passed their eighth
year were housed in the monjerio in which they were confined under lock
and key at night to protect their virtue. The monjerio also served as a
training school in which girls and widows were confined much of the time. This
separation of children from families was justified since at a tender age they
had not fully developed fixed habits and beliefs and thus were more easily
influenced by missionaries. Married couples were considered most difficult to
teach because of ingrained beliefs and lifestyles. Boys and young men slept in
separate quarters but were not locked in at night nor confined to barracks in
the day. They were, of course, restricted to the mission complex at all times.9
It is a simple task to define the theoretical operation of
missions. The rules and regulations designed to produce Christian subjects for
the King were developed over centuries and are a readily available portion of
the historical record. More difficult to ascertain is the day to day treatment
of mission Indians. The Franciscans in California were only dimly aware of the
ideals of human freedom popularized by the Enlightenment, and certainly had
little sympathy for them. They did perceive the challenge to old ways posed by
the enlightened monarchy of Charles III. Physical punishment of neophytes was
therefore a topic infrequently mentioned by missionaries. When the
issue was broached, reactions were defensive.
Infrequent visitors to the California coast are the only
available source of comment by outsiders. These commentaries demand equally
cautious interpretation. All foreign interlopers were intruders upon the Spanish
domain and were rivals for empire. One visitor in particular I judge to have
been relatively objective. In September of 1786 Jean de la Pérouse sailed into
Monterey Bay, the capital of Spanish California. La Pérouse commented favorably
upon the Spanish inhabitants and the climate. Of the missionaries, he observed,
"it is with the most pleasing satisfaction that I speak of the pious and prudent
conduct of these religious men, which so perfectly accords with the object of
their institution."10 The Frenchman was impressed by the sincerity and
hospitality of the missionaries but he found mission theocracy incompatible with
natural rights of man. La Pérouse condemned the mission system which made men
"whose state at present scarcely differs from that of the negro inhabitants of
our colonies, at least in those plantations which are governed with most
mildness and humanity."
This urbane Frenchman shared the goals of the missionaries
but exhorted that they could be achieved by example rather than force. At the
same time he doubted the feasibility of his method. Force was the natural
concomitant of violent cultural change.
La Pérouse left a picture of a highly regularized communal
system in which transgressions of rules made by the Franciscans were swiftly
punished. Indians lived in crude huts and life was carefully regulated by the
ringing of a bell. Discipline ultimately depended upon physical abuse and this
was pointed out by the foreigner.
Corporal punishment is inflicted on the Indians of both sexes
who neglect the exercises of piety, and many sins, which are left in Europe to
the divine justice, are here punished by iron and stocks. And lastly, to
complete the similtude between this and other religious communities, it must be
observed, that the moment an Indian is baptised, the effect is the same as if he
had pronounced a vow for life. If he escape, to reside with his relations in the
independent villages, he is summoned three times to return, and if he refuse,
the missionaries apply to the governor, who sends soldiers to seize him in the
midst of his family, and conduct him to the mission, where he is condemned to
receive a certain number of lashes, with the whip.11
The observant Frenchman went on to describe in more detail
the offenses for which the whip was applied. Form and severity of punishment
were determined by a cacique who was chosen by the Indians from among those whom
the missionaries had not excluded. These elected leaders, La Pérouse claimed,
were simple tools of the Franciscans. Men were publicly whipped to serve as an
example while women were lashed in an enclosed and distant area so their cries
would not be heard by their men. Violations of the stern code of sexual conduct
were punished by putting men in stocks and women in irons.
Vasali Turkanoff, a Russian captive, was a more rabid
detractor of the mission system and bitterly criticized the treatment accorded
Indians at the missions. He was particularly incensed by the harsh
punishments inflicted upon mission runaways when captured. Typically the Fathers
and a squad of soldiers went in pursuit. Turkanoff claimed that when the
deserters returned:
They were all bound with rawhide ropes, and some were
bleeding from wounds, and some children were tied to their mothers. The next day
we saw some terrible things. Some of the runaway men were tied to sticks and
beaten with straps. One chief was taken out to the open field and a young calf
which had just died was skinned and the chief was sewed into the skin while it
was yet warm. He was kept tied to a stake all day, but he died soon and they
kept his corpse tied up.12
Turkanoff's lurid description may be inaccurate in detail but
numerous sources confirm vicious maltreatment toward apostates.
While criticisms leveled at mission management by outsiders
were apt to be less than sympathetic, defenses of the missions by the
Franciscans were written with an eye to justification. In 1797 Padre Antonio de
la Concepción Hora, who had come to California the same year, was sent back to
Mexico by President Fermín Francisco de Lasuén on charges of insanity. Back at
the College of San Fernando, Hora addressed a memorial to the viceroy in which
he made serious charges against the California missionaries of cruelty and
mismanagement. The final result was a lucid defense of the mission system of
Alta California penned by Father-President Lasuén in 1800 and 1801. This report
is the most eloquent and complete defense in existence.13
If indeed by slavery we mean an almost total restriction of
personal freedom, Lasuén's defense is the system's condemnation. Corporal
punishment was indeed an important feature of mission routine. At Santa Barbara
Mission stocks had been used to discipline women since the date of its
foundation. Women, Lasuén granted, were flogged as well when they deserved it.
Indians were imprisoned for desertion although the missions had no jails as
such. Females were locked in compartments reserved for unmarried girls while men
were confined in kitchens or other workrooms. Twenty-one lashes with the whip
was the arbitrary limit placed upon punishment.14
Commandants of the presidios were also asked to report on
punishments used at the missions and their descriptions were at variance with
Lasuén's. Uniformly they maintained that from 15 to 50 lashes were the norm
although a novenary of twenty-five lashes per day for nine days was sometimes
applied. Stocks, shackles and hobbles were also applied to neophytes accused of
neglect of work or religious duties, overstaying leave of absence, sexual
offenses, thefts and quarreling.15
Lasuén's ultimate defense of the system which he served rested upon the
defective character of the natives. The Father President's refutation included a
scathing indictment of the very people whom he served.
Here are aborigines whom we are teaching to be men, people of
vicious and ferocious habits who know no law but force. . .
They are a people without education, without government,
religion or respect for authority, and they shamelessly pursue without restraint
whatever their brutal appetites suggest to them.
Their inclination to lewdness and theft is on a par with
their love for the mountains. Such is the character of the men we are required
to correct, and whose crimes we must punish.16
Barbarous and fierce people need punishments and penalties
which differ from those applied to cultured and the civilized people, the
argument ran. Despite punishments the recalcitrant Indians continued their
transgressions. This in turn, Lasuén continued, "presupposes a mind that is more
perverted and more obstinate in evil."17 At this point punishment by necessity
was more severe.
The California Mission Indians were illiterate and therefore
unable to express in written form their own feelings toward the system to which
they were subjected. It is, consequently, only indirectly that we, two hundred
years removed, can decipher their thoughts. A record of Indian behavior under
the mission regimen does provide historians with some clue. Active and passive
resistance to the regimen was commonplace and clearly suggests many Indians
resided at Missions under duress rather than by choice.
Open revolt is, of course, the most obvious reaction to real
or imagined oppression. In October of 1775 gentile and Christian Indians acted
in concert to destroy Mission San Diego. Flogging of Indians at San Diego
apparently precipitated the attack although abuses over a period of time had
built up resentment. Fray Luis Jayme and a blacksmith were killed, the
carpenter and a number of soldiers of the mission guard were wounded. Squads of
soldiers were sent into the hills to surprise and capture renegades with some
success. At least nine Christian rebels were captured and imprisoned at San
Diego. The insurgents were held in shackles and chains for a year while a fit
punishment was discussed. Several Indians received near mortal lashings but all
were eventually released at the request of their Franciscan mentors.18
The revolt at San Diego was the only organized outbreak of
its kind. However, throughout the mission period rumors of revolt never ceased
and a number of destructive fires were thought to be the work of malcontents.
Meanwhile more discreet means of striking at the regime were practiced. In late
1800 three fathers became mysteriously ill and a rumor circulated suggesting an
Indian from Mission San Miguel had poisoned them. The priests gradually
recovered and Father President Lasuén assumed the affair was at an end. Father
Francisco Pujol was sent to San Miguel as a replacement and immediately became
stricken with the same illness as the others. The priest's condition soon became
critical and he suffered excruciating pain, convulsions and spasms. After an
autopsy Lasuén reluctantly reported, "It is now public knowledge, and
there is no room for doubt, that the missionary died of poisoning."19
Another means of resistance to missionization was escape. Desertion was not
an occasional occurrence but rather a persistent problem. Records enumerating
apostates were not kept. Consequently only an approximation can be arrived at by
comparing population increase with the difference between baptisms and deaths
for a stated period.20 The result is a figure varying somewhere between 5
and 10 percent. This number includes only those fugitives who were able to
successfully elude constant pursuit. A much greater percentage made aborted
attempts at escape. Absent Indians were hunted down by other mission Indians,
soldiers, or a combination of both. Escapees in concert with non-mission natives
frequently made violent and sometimes successful resistance to recapture.
Truancy became so common that it was customary to send presidial soldiers after
the fugitives at stated intervals and round up as many as possible at one time
to be sent back to their respective missions. Disaster was sometimes the result
of these expeditions.
In March of 1795 Father Antonio Dante directed fourteen Christian Indians to
cross the bay from Mission San Francisco in search of runaways. The expedition
was attacked by a band and only seven escaped. A similar incident occurred in
June of 1797 around San Francisco which sheds light on motives for desertion.
After one abortive attempt to capture renegades, Governor Diego de Borica
organized an expedition to attack the rancheria located across the bay and to
capture head men and deserters. In the ensuing fight two soldiers were wounded
and seven natives killed. Eighty-three Christians and seven gentiles were
captured and taken to Mission San José. In August nine captives were tried and
found guilty. They were subsequently sentenced by Borica to receive from
twenty-five to seventy-five lashes and to work in shackles at the presidio from
two months to a year.21
In this and subsequent testimony efforts were made to determine causes for
desertion. Despite denial by the Fathers, nearly all witnesses cited excessive
flogging, hunger and the death of relatives. One native named Tiburcio claimed
he had been flogged for crying at the death of his wife and child. Another,
Magin was put in the stocks when he was ill. Claudio was beaten by the Alcalde
with a stick and forced to work when ill, while José Manuel was struck with a
bludgeon. Liberato fled to escape dying of hunger as his mother, two brothers
and three nephews had done. Oloton was flogged for ignoring his wife after she
had sinned with a vaquero. The witnesses went on to catalog other abuses
although hunger was cited as the most prevalent reason.22
The European civilization of which the Franciscans were the purveyors
contributed in other ways to the destruction of the first Californians. European
diseases wrought the same devastating effect upon California natives as they did
upon natives throughout the Americas. Communal contact at the missions served as
a catalyst for disease.
In 1804 and 1805 José María Benites, a physician, was sent to California to
report on diseases responsible for the alarming death rate. Benites pointed to
the most serious causes including dysentery, fevers, pleurisy, the humid and
cold climate, pneumonia, viruses but most importantly, syphilis23 In 1806,
a Russian visitor, the Baron Von Langsdorf commented upon the sad state of
medical knowledge in Alta California. Mission Indians were without medical
assistance and were often attacked with fevers. Further, he observed:
It is very possible, that in their former mode of life they were rarely ill,
but the great change in their habits, the different kind of nourishment they now
take, their being constrained to labor much more constantly than before, with
other circumstances, may have operated powerfully upon their constitutions.24
Despite concern and good intentions disease ran rampant. Epidemics
periodically decimated the population. In 1806-1807 a deadly epidemic
of Another measles and dysentery ravaged the Indians and in the words of
Father Mariano Payeras it "has cleaned out the missions and filled the
cemeteries."25
A letter written by Father Mariano Payeras to Father
Baldomero Lopéz, Guardian of the College of San Fernando, in which he
echoed a plea for medication for syphilitic neophytes suggests that venereal
disease was a prime cause for debilitation of neophytes. Syphilis, introduced by
single soldiers, was the major cause of mortality and declining birth rates
since it caused sterility and was passed on congenitally. Lead extract, used as
a curative contributed to illness and death in the long run.26
The tendency is to blame the missionaries for the near
extinction of mission Indians. The missionaries were, however, not blind to the
effects which their well-intentioned efforts had upon the Indians. One of the
letters most sensitive to the problem was written by a missionary, Father
Mariano Payeras, in 1820.
The Indian population is declining. They live well free but
as soon as we reduce them to a Christian and community life they decline in
health, they fatten, sicken and die. Women are particularly affected. It is the
sorrowful experience of 51 years that Indians live poorly in the missions. Even
when healthy the women lose fertility and their sterility is not apparent
in annual reports because in most areas of the province gentiles are still being
baptized, one is confused with the other and the total always increases.
In all missions hospitals have been built, potions have been
purchased and medicines acquired from surgeons of the province and from books.
The best curanderos and curanderas have been procured. In all, it
forms a somber calculation of diminution. The population decline is made more
notable since in twenty-four years I have known only two epidemics, that of 1801
and the measles of 1806.27
Despite good intentions the mission system decimated and
destroyed native peoples subject to it.
Slavery, in the usual sense of the word, implies economic
exploitation of the enslaved for the benefit of the slaveowner. The California
missions fall far short of this classical definition. Economic motives cannot be
assigned to the Franciscan frontiersmen who pioneered Alta California. Clearly,
the Franciscan missionaries stood to gain little in a material sense from their
arduous labor. None of the missionaries could lay claim even to the cassock
which he wore. Missions were far from luxurious, and although food became
plentiful all imported items were in short supply. No man entered the California
mission field to live a life of ease or to acquire a fortune.28
Despite the absence of motivation for personal gain the
missions nevertheless destroyed those people they had been sent to save. This
destruction was inexcusable but it was not intentional. The missionaries would
have philosophically preferred dead Christians to live pagans. It is not fair to
remove these men from their place in time and subject them to standards of the
late twentieth century. The Franciscans saw themselves as agents for salvation
in the next world, not this. As occurred throughout the Americas,
debilitating European diseases and a typical lack
of sensitivity destroyed the first Americans. The regimentation, organized labor
and extreme paternalism of the missions resulted in despondency and weakening of desire to live.
The missions were not agents of intentional enslavement, but rather rapid and
therefore violent social and cultural change. The results were people wrenched
from home, tradition and family, subjugated to an alien culture and
contradictory values. Predictably these people did not submit to such treatment
voluntarily and force became a necessary concomitant. The result in many cases
was slavery in fact although not in intent. The principle emerges that decent
people whose motives as judged by their own standards are excellent, have
frequently violated other people who live by different standards.
NOTES
1. The most succinct analysis of the role of the frontier
mission is contained in Herbert E. Bolton, "The Mission as a Frontier
Institution in the Spanish American Colonies," American Historical Review,
23 (1917), pp. 42-61.
2. See Harold Livermore, A History of Spain (New York, 1958).
3. For a contemporary expression of the dual role of the
California missions see Patentes e Ynstrucciones dados a los Empleados de la
Expedicción maritima de Monterrey, José de Gálvez, Puerto de la Paz, December
6, 1768, Archivo General de Indias, Guadalajara 416.
4. See Fray Vicente Sarría to the missionaries, Soledad,
June 6, 1814, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
5. The reduction process was not necessary where missions
were located among sedentary people. In New Mexico, for example, the
Franciscans simply superimposed missions upon pre-existing native communities.
The reduction procedure was more successful from a missionary standpoint,
since it required not only religious conversion but also complete cultural change.
6. Zephyrin Engelhardt, The Missions and Missionaries of California
(Santa Barbara, 1930) vol. II, p. 269.
7. Ibid., p. 285.
8. Maynard Geiger, Palóu's Life of junípero Serra (Washington, D.C., 1955), pp. 75-76.
9. Father President Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, Refutation of Charges, San
Carlos, June 19, 1801. Trans. in Finbar Kenneally, The Writings of Fermín Francisco
de Lasuén (Washington, 1965) vol. 2, pp. 194-234.
10. Jean F. G. De la Pérouse, A
Voyage Round the World Performed in the Years 1785, 1786, 1787 and
1788 by the Bousole and Astrolabe (New York, 1968) vol. 1, p. 442.
11.Ibid., p. 448.
12. Vasali Turkanoff, Statement of My
Captivity Among the Californians, trans. by Ivan Petroff
(Los Angeles, 1953), p. 14.
13. Father President Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, Refutation
of Charges, San Carlos, June 19, 1801. Trans. in Kenneally, The Writings of
Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, vol. 2, pp. 194-234.
14. Ibid.
15. The four commandants were José Argüello, Felipe
Goycoechea, Antonio Grajera and Hermenegildo Sal. Summations of their reports
are contained in Hubert H. Bancroft, History of California (San
Francisco, 1886) vol. I, pp. 588-596.
16. Father President Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, Refutation
of Charges, San Carlos, June 19, 1801. Trans. in Kenneally, The Writings of
Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, vol. 2, pp. 194-234.
17. Ibid.
18. Many sources discuss the San Diego Revolt. See Fray
Vicente Fuster to Fray Junípero Serra, San Diego, November 28, 1775. Trans. in
Antonine Tibesar, The Writings of Junípero Serra, (Washington, 1956)
vol. 2, pp. 449-458. Fuster was a missionary at San Diego and left us an
eyewitness account. Fray Francisco Palóu provides a lucid description in
Maynard Geiger, Palóu's Life of Junípero Serra, pp. 160-171.
19. See Fermín Francisco de Lasuén to Fray José Gasol, San
Carlos, December 29, 1800. Trans. in Kenneally, The Writings of Fermín
Francisco de Lasuén, vol. 2, pp. 177-179. Also Lasuén to Fray José Gasol,
San Carlos, March 30, 1801, Ibid., pp. 186-189. Although three Indians
were whipped and imprisoned, the question of their guilt was never
satisfactorily determined.
20. Each year the Father President of the missions
submitted a report titled "General State of the Missions of New California."
These reports are available for each year with the exception of 1789 in the
Santa Barbara Mission Archives. These reports provide a concise summary of
baptisms, marriages, deaths and total population resident at each mission.
21. Hubert H. Bancroft, History of California, vol. 1, p. 709.
22. 1bid., p.711 fn.
23. Expediente on diseases of the Indians by José María
Benites, Monterey, January 1, 1805, Santa Barbara Mission Archives (SBMA).
24. G. V. Von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various
Parts of the World During the Years 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806 and 1807
(London, 1814), pp. 208-209.
25. Fray Mariano Payeras to Fray Josef Viñals, La Purísima,
July 2, 1806, Archivo General de la Nación. Historia de Mexico, Primera Serie, tomo 2.
26. Fray Mariano Payeras to Fray Baldomero Lopéz, La Purísima, July 26,1820, SBMA.
27. Fray Mariano Payeras to the College of San Fernando, La
Purísima, February 2, 1820, Engelhardt Transcript, SBMA.
28. For a vivid illustration of Franciscan poverty in
California see Fray Francisco Palóu to Fray Rafael Verger, San Carlos,
November 2, 1773, Archivo del Museo Nacional, Documentos Relativos a los
Misiones de Californias, II.
