PROFESSOR HEIZER discusses the theory of the Franciscan
mission system, the actual operation of the system, and its cultural,
psychological, and demographic effects on the native population. He has
accomplished his goals very effectively and I will limit most of my comments to
the third and most central topic—the impact of the missions on the native
society. This will be done by comparing his general conclusions with the
specifics of the demographic, cultural, and psychological effect of
missionization on the native population of the San Diego region.
A general comment that is worth emphasizing is Professor
Heizer's observation about the ethnocentric bias of the Spanish missionaries in
their assumption that in "civilizing" the natives, the Spaniards were filling a
void in the lives of the Indians. This Spanish attitude should be constantly
kept in mind in order to understand the policies and actions of the
missionaries. Given this concept of civilizing the natives, the priests, as the
purveyors of the only true religion, had in their own minds no choice but to
bring as many heathens into the Church as possible.
My first point involves the estimated Indian population prior
to missionization. I am inclined towards a considerable upward revision of the
estimate presented by Professor Heizer for the size of the native population in
the region between Los Angeles and the current Mexican border.1 The revision is
based on a combination of three types of evidence. The most important are the
early historical reports of sizes of Indian villages and accounts of the
presence of large groups of natives along the coast and in inland valleys.2 I
also have taken into consideration a heightened appreciation today of the devastating effects on isolated
populations of diseases borne by the Spaniards. This is dramatically reflected
in the reconstruction of pre-Columbian populations of Central Mexico,
Hispaniola, and Columbia by Professors Sherburne Cook and Woodrow Borah of the
University of California, Berkeley,3 a pattern which can be applied to
California as well. In addition, I am influenced by recent ecological studies
emphasizing the varied food sources of natives in nearby areas, especially of
the Luiseños and of the Cahuillas further inland.4 These studies point to a much
denser population than was previously thought possible, based upon a richer food
supply than we could suspect viewing the landscape as it is today.
I raise this question of the size of the pre-1769 population
in order to suggest that the impact of colonization in the San Diego area was
even more devastating to the survival of its native peoples than Professor
Heizer has indicated. Heizer uses Professor Cook's demographic calculations for
the region extending south from San Fernando Mission in the Los Angeles Basin to
San Diego and the border.5 My own work is concentrated essentially on the area
claimed by the missions of San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey, and San Diego de
Alcalá. My analysis is based on primary evidence in archives, the work of
Raymond White, Lowell Bean, and others in revising upward the plausible
population levels through a reexamination of the ecological base. This is
combined with the suggestions of Henry Dobyn for a "depopulation ratio"
reflecting a predictable contrast of known later populations with the earlier
ones. Later populations were commonly as low as 5 to 10 percent of their
pre-Hispanic numbers.6
From these materials I developed estimates of the San Diego
population before the arrival of the Spaniards ranging from 15,000 to 19,000.7
This contrasts with the Cook estimate used by Professor Heizer, of 20,000
persons for a geographic area double that covered by the three missions in my
analysis. It is a sharp revision of Cook's slight increase of the first
estimates made by Artheur Kroeber back in 1925. He calculated a total of 8,500
for a region roughly the same as the one I have used.8 The larger
estimate of 15,000-19,000 coincides with findings concerning other parts of
California and Mexico which have raised the pre-Hispanic population estimates in those regions.
The participants in this symposium have presented material to
illustrate the cultural contrasts between conquering and conquered peoples,
between European colonizers and the inhabitants of a region feeling for the
first time the impact of the European intrusion. It is important to keep in mind
these differences in analyzing the cultural and psychological effects of Spanish
colonization in Alta California.
For example, Professor Heizer referred to one of the few
instances in which the California Indians reacted to missionization with
concerted violence. He noted that the Diegueños, as the natives of this area
were called by the Spaniards, seemed to have some of the martial
spirit of the Yuman-speaking people along the Colorado River, to whom the
Diegueños were related. The Colorado River Yuman groups were notably warlike in
relations with other tribes as well as in their persistent resistance to Spanish
encroachment on their territory, after an initial period of accepting Spanish settlers.
Certainly the large-scale attack by the Diegueños on the San
Diego Mission in November, 1775, reflects a greater spirit of resistance than
was seen in other groups along the Alta California coast. More specifically,
however, the attack should be viewed as the response to a series of provocations
on the part of the Spanish intruders. The latter did not, of course, record
clearly these causes for this violent reaction on the part of the Indians, since
their preconceptions made it hard for them to recognize provocation as such.
As part of the context it should be noted that the first
attack on the embryonic military and religious establishment six years earlier
in August, 1769, was carried out by a small band identified as "more than
twenty" Indians from the immediate vicinity. Father Junípero Serra indicated in
a report to Viceroy Bucareli that only one village had been involved in this
first skirmish.9 Father Luis Jayme, who was killed in the second Indian attack of
1775, had commented on this earlier attack, which had occurred before he arrived
in San Diego: "No wonder the Indians here were bad when the mission was first
founded. To begin with, they did not know why [the Spaniards] had come unless
they intended to take their lands away from them."10 Only six years later,
perhaps as many as a thousand natives from more than forty villages joined
together to attack the Spaniards, being united in their desire to eliminate
these foreigners forever.11 Provocation must have been substantial.
There were signals that such an attack was imminent, but the
Spanish missionaries misinterpreted or did not heed them. Four native Christians
had warned the missionaries at different times in previous weeks that a large
group of Indians was planning to attack the Spanish establishments, but each
time the fathers threatened them with punishment for telling "such lies." José
María, a Diegueño interpreter who had tried twice to alert them, expressed
plaintively the dilemma of the mission Indians: "Fear of the gentiles
[non-Christian Indians] obliged them to tell . . . [of the attack], and fear of
the lash forced them to be silent."12
A contributing cause to the Indian hostility may have been a
program of mass baptisms the Franciscans initiated at San Diego Mission in July
of 1775, some months before the November attack. The number of natives brought
into the Church reached three hundred in three months, bringing the total for
the San Diego Mission to nearly 500 baptisms at the time of the attack. A record
of this sudden acceleration in conversions can be found in The Book of Baptisms
one of the missionaries wrote to replace the original, which had been
destroyed in the burning of the mission during
the attack. He related that two extra priests were at the mission in the months
preceding the attack, in addition to the two regularly assigned there. They were
at San Diego while awaiting the opening of San Juan Capistrano Mission a little
further up the coast. As the priest reported in the Book of Baptisms, the
religious divided the Indians to be baptized into four groups by age and sex,
that is, men, women, girls, and boys. Each of the four priests present baptized
the converts of one group, presumably in order to accomplish their task more
efficiently.13
The last and most numerous group of baptisms early in October
was not accomplished at the mission but in one of the nearby native villages
just northeast of the mission, in a valley the Spaniards called San Luis.14
Although the missionary gave no explanation, it probably was more convenient to
take the religious rites to the Indians because of the large numbers rather than
try to bring all of them into the new mission church in Mission Valley.
Interestingly, the recently baptized chief of that village where the baptism of
Diegueños from other villages as well as his own was performed, whom the
missionaries had christened Luis, was later one of the leaders in the attack
against the mission. This Luis of the Valle de San Luis conducted himself with
great pride and almost disdain for the Spaniards during his interrogation after
the attack. He had seen his people subjected to the incursions of unruly
soldiers who raped the women, invasions by grazing livestock, and the
punishments of military officials and a zealous missionary.15
Sometime in the weeks before the attack, as related by the
Indian convert named José María, the Indians from one of the villages of the
Valle de San Luis had been dancing, "according to their native custom." When the
priests learned of this, the Christians from the mission who had taken part were
whipped as punishment for participation in the pagan rites. The people of the
village became angry, according to the witness, and went into the back country
to join a group of dissidents who had left the mission early in October. The
villagers wanted to get the help of this dissident group in uniting the people
of all the surrounding villages to attack and kill the priests and soldiers.16
I believe these details are of interest, because the
resistance they depict was indeed rare in Alta California. The natives seldom
had the element of surprise on their side. In fact, its rarity pointed up one of
the greatest advantages the Spaniards had: they knew why they were there. The
Diegueños seem to have had a better idea than most of the other native groups
what those motives were.
NOTES
1. Lucy Killea, "Colonial Foundations of Land Use and
Society in San Diego, 1769-1846," Ph.D. Dissertation, UCSD, 1975, pp. 99-119.
2. Ibid., pp. 111-118, Appendix 1, pp. 391-393.
3. The Aboriginal Population of Central Mexico on the
Eve of the Spanish Conquest, Ibero-Americana 45 (1963); Essays in
Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1971), Vol. I.
4. Raymond C. White, Luiseño Social Organization,
University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnography,
Vol. 48, No. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), and Lowell
John Bean, Mukat's People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.)
5. Killea, "Colonial Foundations," pp. 79-80.
6. White, Luiseño Social Organization, pp. 110, 117;
Bean, Mukat's People, pp. 68-82; Henry F. Dobyns, "Estimating
Aboriginal American Population: An Appraisal of Techniques with a New
Hemispheric Estimate," Current Anthropology, VII (October, 1966), 395-449.
7. Killea, "Colonial Foundations," table on p. 119.
8. Arthur L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of
California (Berkeley: University of California, 1925), p. 883.
9. Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra,
Trans, annot. by Antonine Tibesar (Washington, D.C.; Academy of American
Franciscan History, 1955), Vol. I, 151, 369.
10. Luis Jayme, Letter of Luis jayme, O.F.M. San Diego,
October 17, 1772, trans., ed. by Maynard Geiger (Los Angeles: Dawson's
Book Shop, 1970), p. 40.
11. José Francisco de Ortega, "Dilixencias sobre el
alzamiento o sublebación quel el dia cinco de noviembre hube, a la una de la
noche, en la misión de San Diego en el año de 1775," MS, 1775, The Doheny
Memorial Library (St. John's Seminary), Camarillo, California, a copy of which
is in the California Room, San Diego Public Library. A copy of Ortega's report
of the uprising also has been published in Diario del capitán comandate
Fernando de Rivera y Moncada: con un apéndice documental, ed. and annot.
by Ernest J. Burrus (Madrid: Ediciones José Porrua Turanzas, 1967), II,
429-81. A chronology of the events before and after the attack based on
Ortega's official report is given in Killea, "Colonial Foundations," pp. 394-404.
12. Rivera y Moncada, Diario, II, 460.
13. San Diego Mission Records, "Libro primero de los
bautismos," MS, Diocese of San Diego, microfilm reel No. 65.
14. Ibid., pp. 20-24.
15. Rivera y Moncada, Diario, II, 447-56.
16. Ibid., p. 450.
