CALIFORNIA, by which I mean the territory of the present
state, was discovered in 1542 by Cabrillo, partly through a series of accidents.
Cabrillo made the first voyage into the North Pacific along the
American shore, an exploration which was set in motion partly due to the death
of his close associate, Alvarado, the conquistador of Guatemala. Cabrillo found
some friendly and some unfriendly natives, and indeed came to his death on one
of the Channel islands off Santa Barbara through the accident of breaking his
leg on going ashore to give assistance to a landing party which was being
attacked by the local people (Heizer 1972). But Cabrillo found no people with
valuable metals; just more poor Indians, and no effort was made to follow up his
discovery. Vizcaíno in 1602 coasted California in search of Monterey Bay, in the
hopes of finding a harbor where the exhausted crews of the Philippine ships
could find relief, presumably at a spot where a colony also would be founded.
But nothing came of this attempt. While Cabrillo did not attempt to colonize, it
may be important to note that he took back to Mexico two young persons of the
Chumash tribe to teach them Spanish. This may indicate some thought that these
two would later be useful in the event of a settlement being established in the
Santa Barbara region.
By 1542, a bare 50 years after Columbus' voyage of discovery,
enough of northern Mexico and the Southwest and the southern Great Plains had
been seen by Spaniards so that they probably knew that north of the zone of the
civilized Aztecs there were only rude and savage barbarians. If this is true, it
could help to account for Spain's disinterest in Alta California for so long
after Cabrillo's voyage. In 1719 Philip V suggested colonization either at San
Diego or Monterey, employing idlers, vagabonds and beggars from Mexico City as
settlers in order to protect the area from pirates operating off the west coast.
The order was never carried out (W. Cook 1973: 44-51). By the late eighteenth
century, however, the Pacific was no
longer a Spanish ocean. The British and French and Russians were colonizing all
over the lot, including the north Pacific, (W. Cook 1973: 44-51) and Spain
decided that it would be good policy to protect the northwestern frontier of
Mexico by settlement and thus affirm its claim of sovereignty which went back to
Cabrillo in 1542. That claim, although supported by repeated performances of the
Act of Sovereignty, rested on pretty slim evidence.
What was needed was some concrete act of settlement to
establish the Spanish claim of ownership to the lands north of Mexico—a need
dramatized by Cook's voyage of 1776 into the North Pacific. In 1765 Visitor
General José de Galvez arrived in Mexico, and three years later with Viceroy
Carlos Francisco de Croix, submitted a plan for the colonization of California.
This in turn was presented to Serra, President of the declining Franciscan
missions of Baja California which recently been taken over from the expelled
Jesuit order. Action came, remarkably quickly in terms of how slowly most things
moved in those days, and in March, 1769, an overland expedition left Mexico
under the command of Fernando Rivera y Moncada, accompanied by Fray Crespi,
while a second contingent departed in May under command of Gaspar de Portolá and
accompanied by Father Serra. By July, they had founded the first of what was to
become by 1823 a chain of 21 missions extending from the initial settlement at
San Diego in the south to Sonoma in the north. Below San Francisco Bay, most of
the missions were directly on the coast, the furthest inland being Soledad, some
30 miles from the shore.
What I propose to discuss here is the theory of the
Franciscan mission system, how it actually operated until its termination in
1834, the Indian reaction to the system, and its effects on the native
population in cultural, psychological and demographic terms. In the eighteenth
century the religious zeal that is illustrated in Lope de Vega's play, San
Diego de Alcalá, was part of official government policy as well as the one
put into action by the acts of the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries. A clear
statement of Spain's official Indian policy is contained in Revilla Gigedo's
instructions to his Secretary, a commissioned frigate Lieutenant, who was
charged with a detailed exploration of the western coast from 56 degrees north
to San Francisco. Natives were to be treated kindly and with fairness in order
to lay "a foundation for friendship perhaps very useful in the future to
religion and the sovereign" (W. Cook 1973: 328-330). The propagation of the
faith was given equal importance to the welfare of the nation. Conversion of the
heathens was a religious duty.
In a sketch from the NOTEBOOKS OF TONAYUCA (c. 1567) a Spaniard is shown beating a Mexican native prisoner soon after the Conquest |
By 1769 the Spanish had had nearly two and a half centuries
of experience in dealing with American Indians, and were therefore prepared for
managing the California Indians who had nothing worth taking, and who fell in
that class of people called "Barbarians." Spanish Indian policy was at heart
that of the obligation to civilize these barbarians (Hutchinson 1969:70-74).
Rather than try to explain this Indian policy in
my own words, I quote my anthropological colleague, Edward Spicer. He says:
"Church and civil officials were in agreement from the start
on what the Indians should be made to accept as fundamental elements of
civilization. It was agreed that Spanish regal authority and law must be the
framework of Indian life. It was also agreed that the setting for these primary
elements of civilization must be town life. In addition, the Indians must be
made to dress in the Spanish manner. . . They must also practice monogamy and
employ formal marriage ceremonies, and they ought to live in adobe or stone
houses. . . Prevailing Spanish opinion, especially among officials at a distance
from the Indians, was that the barbarians lacked law and real authority, that
they had no religion at all or a species of worship which was called idolatry
and was wholly evil. . . that their settlements were not organized communities,
that their sexual lives were unregulated, that their forms of body covering were
not clothing properly so called, and that they lacked houses worthy of human
beings. Thus, the Spanish view in respect to the process of civilizing was not
that they were replacing existing functional institutions and culture traits,
but rather that they were giving the Indians things which the latter did not
have. Lacking government, religion and civilized decencies, the Indians were
being given the opportunity to know these things and should be grateful for
them" (Spicer 1962: 282).
Friar Font, an educated, literate and humane missionary, on
his way to Monterey, California, with Anza and the group of colonists in 1775,
saw clearly that the purpose of the expedition was civil—military in intent, but
also records that the patroness of the expedition was the
Virgin of Guadalupe, "the mother and patroness of the Indians and this America."
After visiting the Yuma Indians at the Colorado River crossing, Font wrote in
his diary (Bolton 1931:110-112):
"I might inquire what sin was committed by these Indians and
their ancestors that they should grow up in those remote lands of the north with
such infelicity and unhappiness, in such nakedness and misery, and above all
with such blind ignorance of everything that they do not even know the
transitory conveniences of the earth in order to obtain them; nor how much less,
as it appeared to me from what I was able to learn from them, do they have any
knowledge of the existence of God, but live like beasts, without making use of
reason or discourse, and being distinguished from beasts only by possessing the
bodily or human form, but not by their deeds. Since God created them, his Divine
Majesty knows the high purposes for which He wished them to be born to such
misery, or that they should live so blind. But considering that the mercy of God
is infinite, and that so far as it is His part, He wishes that all men should be
saved, and should come to the knowledge of the eternal truths, therefore I
cannot do less than piously surmise, in favor of those poor Indians, that God
must have some special providence hidden from our curiosity, to the end that
they may be saved, and that not all of them shall be damned."
That statement by Font I take as reflecting the guiding
principle of the missionaries (see also Hutchinson 1969: 50 ff.). That Indians
were a different order of human being is clearly something believed by the
missionaries. They were animals in human form who had to be made truly human by
conversion to the Faith. One could speculate or ruminate on whether the
Franciscan order was being used by the Crown to pacify and exploit the native
populations for its temporal goals of securing land threatened by other European
powers, or whether the Crown did in fact embrace honestly the spiritual values
of the Franciscan order, but this would serve little point. I do not doubt the
sincerity of the missionaries as a group in the remarkable work they attempted
at introducing Spanish colonial civilization in a new and essentially isolated
land and among a completely alien people. Their degree of success and its cost
to the native populations is another matter and this we can examine.
The theory of the mission establishment was first the
reduction of heathenism through conversion; instructing the neophytes in the
doctrine and educating them so that they could be released to follow useful
pursuits in the secular towns or pueblos. Mission lands were to be utilized for
the support of the mission and its people, but were held in trust for the
Indians and would revert to them as owners when the mission had finished its
sacred task. Each mission was allotted two priests. As a rule, one managed
temporal affairs and the other took charge of spiritual matters, though no doubt
each helped the other in his main duties. The missionaries who first established
and supervised the building of the church and other structures, instructed the
converts in religious matters, and oversaw the whole complex operation, were
truly remarkable men. Only men imbued with an indomitable spirit and faith could
have done what they did in these rough frontier outposts where there were so few amenities. It is
small wonder that the strain was too much for a few of them, and they went mad,
or that the pressures were so great that some forgot their vows of celibacy and
contracted syphilis, or took their duties so seriously that they became cruel in
inflicting punishment in their attempts to keep their neophyte populations under
control. Those were human emotions and reactions which I think that we can
understand. The missionaries were, after all, not supermen, and while some of
them are surely subject to criticism, we must be aware that we do so from the
standpoint of being far removed from the reality of life in California in the
late eighteenth century.
The native population of California in 1769 has been
calculated at about 310,000 (S. Cook 1976b: 42-43). Not all of these were
subsequently missionized, though most of them probably felt some of the indirect
effects of the mission program. The direct zone of mission influence was that
running from the Mexican border south of San Diego some 600 miles north to
Sonoma, and extending inland from the Pacific shore from 30 to as much as 60
miles in some spots. This portion of the state, usually referred to as the
Mission Strip, can be divided into three sections: the north, comprising the
eleven missions lying north of Purisima with a land area of about 11,000 square
miles and an original population of about 26,000; the central section comprising
the four Santa Barbara Channel missions with a land area of about 5,000 square
miles and an original population of 18,500; and the southern section including
the missions from San Fernando south whose native population is calculated to
have been at the beginning of missionization 20,000 in a land area of 10,500
square miles. The grand total of persons in 64,500.
There exists a formidable mass of statistical data recorded
at the missions on crop production, baptisms, births, marriages and deaths.
These have been utilized, though not in their totality, by scholars such as
Hubert H. Bancroft, Father Zephyrin Engelhardt, Father Maynard Geiger, J.N.
Bowman (1958) and Sherburne F. Cook (1976) for purposes of securing vital
statistics figures. None of the conclusions reached by these scholars agree in
detail, and indeed they are at times quite different. Taking Cook's figures from
zero population in 1769, the maximum number of mission residents (i.e.
neophytes) of about 21,000 was reached between 1821 and 1824. There were logged
81,000 baptisms and 60,600 deaths. Bancroft (1888: 621) tabulated the death rate
from 1769 to 1834 for children and adults. Children's death rates were two to
four times that of adults. The combined death rate for the 66 years of mission
operation averaged about 7.6 percent; for children the average is 13.3 percent
and for adults 5.9 percent. In certain years disease hit hard as, for example in
1806 when measles swept through many of the missions and elevated the death rate
that year to 17 percent. In 1834, the last year of mission operation, slightly
over 15,000 neophytes were resident in the 21 missions, the most populous being
San Luis Rey with 2848, and the least being San Francisco with 136, the average
being 743. Baptisms had been declining for a full decade; the birthrate in the
missions was in process of a steady decline from 47 per thousand in 1779 to
about 30 per thousand in 1829, the decrease being about 35 percent. Unless
massive conversions could be secured the mission system was doomed to extinction
simply because it was running out of new Indians. There were plenty of fresh
recruits who could have been dragooned into the missions from the native
villages that lay beyond the zone of safe travel, by which I mean the empty
region which had already been drained of its people, brought into the mission
either voluntarily or by force. In the first decades, 1770-1790, baptism was
probably largely voluntary, or at least accomplished with a minimum of physical
force. After 1790 there was increasing fugitivism, which represented a drain on
the neophyte numbers and an increase in force employed in recruiting new
converts. But the military power in California was insufficient to be used
effectively to collect fresh Indians.
The chain of missions had little unity, except that each
shared the same basic purpose. The missions were ill-supplied with necessities
from Mexico, and the operation was subject to many internal strains. Put
briefly, the Franciscan missions in California were ill-equipped, badly managed
places where Indians came to be subject to unaccustomed labor, unsanitary living
conditions, disease, poor food, and a disruption of family ties and accustomed
social relationships. And through these experiences their lives were very often
the cost. Conditions probably need not have been so poor, but with the
government unwilling to provide more, with the priests unable, despite their
herculean efforts, to do better, and with internal disaffection a constant
problem, there was really not much that could be done to ameliorate mission
life. The primary result of the mission system, in human terms, was the huge
waste of life in the very people which the system was intended to aid and to
guide out of savagery into civilization. In the end, of course, it died by
decree through secularization resulting from the anticlerical revolution in
which Mexico achieved its independence. But, regardless, of that, it was
scarcely a viable and self-perpetuating institution because it was nourished on
a continuing fresh supply of human beings which were in increasingly short
supply. To continue to feed the furnace would have required a military force of
much greater power than was available to go further each year into the
unconverted interior and bring back the human fuel. Perhaps that is too flowery,
but I believe it is accurate.
The missions were largely self sufficient, raising their own
food through farming and stockraising. Cloth for dressing the neophytes was
woven of wool in each mission. But the documents from the missions are full of
reports of shortages: one mission with bad crops of wheat or barley would not
have enough food in its warehouses to support its neophytes and would borrow
food from another mission; iron for tools was ever in short supply for forging
into simple farm tools; at times the supply of holy oil was exhausted
and certain church rituals could not be performed.
Although a surgeon was stationed at the capital, Monterey, these men were
usually so untrained as to scarcely be called doctors (Cook 1937). The missions,
in short, were destitute of medical facilities. One of the most serious problems
the missionaries faced was that of essential supplies which came only from
Mexico. Overland communication with Mexico was time consuming, costly, and full
of danger because of the mounted and aggressive tribes which held the
"Apacheria" that had to be crossed (Spicer 1973; McWilliams 1968:53). Each
mission was supported by a grant of 800 pesos drawn from the Pious Fund which
had originally been established by the Jesuits for missionizing efforts and
which was confiscated and turned over to the Franciscans in 1767. The Fund came
from bequests of estates and capital contributed by wealthy individuals. Surplus
productions such as hides, salt, tallow, cloth, grain, furs were sent back to
Mexico on the annual supply ship (which at times failed to make an appearance)
to be sold and the money credited to the Pious Fund. There was some trading,
usually illicit and against regulations, with foreign ships which stopped to
revictual or take on water, and in this way some necessities (iron or finished
tools) and luxuries (e.g. chinaware and liquor) could be obtained. Vancouver
(1801: Vol. III) when he made his first visit to California in 1792 and was
received with great hospitality, repaid the missionaries' kindnesses to him and
his crew with "culinary and table utensils, some bar iron, with a few ornaments
for the decoration of their churches; to which I added one hogshead of wine, and
another of rum," gifts which he later learned "were received as very acceptable
presents." The neophytes presumably shared in this bounty; perhaps not to the
extent of having the wine and rum divided with them, but in being able to admire
the church ornaments and get some exercise with the farm tools forged from the bar iron.
What then was the life experience of the Indian neophyte,
drawn from his native village and into what must have seemed at first a strange
and even perhaps wonderful place, the mission? Let us look at labor, by
which I mean the energy expenditure of the neophytes for the maintenance of the
mission establishment. We have various accounts of the daily routine, and from
these we can generalize that there were from 7 to 8 hours of labor and 2 of
prayer. On Sundays and feast days the period of rest and worship was extended to
4 or 5 hours. Failure to attend church services was punished by being put in the
stocks and/or whipped. Men worked in the fields or on "piece work" such as
making adobe bricks or roof tiles. Women ground barley or wheat into flour on a
metate. La Perouse, the French explorer, in the late 1780s observed at Carmel
Mission that the grinding of seeds on the metate was both "tedious and
laborious," and in an attempt to help caused one of his men to leave a "mill,"
but this contrivance we learn from a later visitor was never used. Perhaps it
did not work well, but it is more likely that its use would have interfered with
the routine of women's duties. Children performed light tasks such as keeping birds out of
the fields and orchards or pulling weeds. Very old persons were exempted from
work, perhaps on the grounds that little was to be gained from making them exert
themselves, and to do so might cause disaffection with their younger relations
who might also be inmates. Pregnant women worked.
The labor demanded of neophytes does not appear to have been
excessively heavy, though some of it would probably be classed as hard work—for
example a man's quota was 40 adobe bricks or 28 roof tiles per day—but we have
to look at the labor demanded and expended in terms of the reaction of
individuals to it. The compulsion to labor and steady work was something new to
the Indian who was unused to forced and continuous energy exertion. Unaccustomed
to this in their own way of life, although capable of extraordinary exertion at
such times as the acorn harvest or salmon run, they reacted by malingering
unless under the eye of an overseer. If this was reported it was considered a
serious infraction of the rules by the priests for the simple reason that the
mission was of necessity self-sufficient, and if production was not maintained
there would not be enough to eat. We can assume that reasoning on these grounds
with a lazy and work-avoiding neophyte made little impression, so the priests
resorted to punishment to secure the essential effort. And, we can assume that
the priests soon learned that if they were lenient with one such offender there
would be others who would follow. What the missionaries failed to instill in
their charges was the moral need to work. Had they succeeded in communicating
this a system better for all would have resulted. Probably they went through the
motions of arguing this, but the idea is not really a simple one to grasp, and
under the manifold difficulties which the mission operation faced this would
merely have been one of many. I think that it cannot have been much fun to have
been a missionary in California two centuries ago, and I am more positive in the
thought that being a neophyte in one of the missions was even less attractive.
Let us examine the matter of punishment in the missions. In
order to maintain the system against the neophytes' objections or apathy, the
missionaries applied various forms of restriction and complusion to conform to
the rules. All of this ultimately came to rest on individuals in the form of
corporal punishment, and this in turn became the focus of the neophytes'
objections to the missionaries whom they correctly saw as personally
responsible, and to the mission as the institution which was the vehicle.
Punishable offenses were of two main types: 1), criminal, which included murder,
assault, theft, armed robbery, and sex delinquencies such as incest, sodomy,
fornication and rape which were strongly disapproved of by the Church; and, 2),
political (or perhaps better, political-religious), which included fugitivism
(classed as abandonment or renunciation of the faith), the refusal to perform
assigned tasks, conspiracies to incite acts to overthrow the regime, destruction of mission or military
goods or property, physical assult on either missionaries or soldiers.
Cook (1976a: 116-121) has compiled from the mission records a
list of 94 cases of disciplinary action involving 362 persons and covering the
period 1775 to 1831. These were criminal cases and were judged by the military
authorities. Most of these cases in this sample fall in the "political"
category. The sanctions handed down seem severe: 70 percent were flogged with
15, 20, 25, 50, 75 times 3, and 25 times 27 lashes; 57 percent were imprisoned
from one month to 4 years, sometimes at hard labor; and 36 percent were both
flogged and jailed. A few persons received the death sentence for homicide,
conspiracy or robbery. Beyond the official records of punishment we have a
neophyte's autobiographical document dictated in 1890 at Santa Cruz by one
Lorenzo, or Lorenzo Asisara, born at Santa Cruz Mission in 1819. In describing
life in the mission he says, "The Indians at the missions were very severely
treated by the padres, often punished by fifty lashes on the bare back. They
were governed somewhat in the military style, having sergeants, corporals and
overseers, who were Indians, and they reported to the padres any disobedience or
infraction of the rules, and then came the lash without mercy, the women the
same as the men. . . We were always trembling with fear of the lash" (Heizer
1974: 79). Women were punished separately and privately, being flogged by other
women in the female quarters. Public punishment of women caused much unrest
among the men, hence the privacy. Father Tapis in 1800 said of flogging: "They
take this punishment with humility and after suffering it are still as fond of
the fathers as before"—a statement we may doubt, since any strong reaction to
what was considered justifiable punishment would presumably be followed by more.
Attitudes of the missionaries toward punishment were stated by Lasuen when he
wrote, "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." There were instances where priests were charged
with outright brutality, but investigations even when made seem to have led to
no more than a momentary amelioration. The missionaries complained that when
they were ordered to relax punishment the neophytes became correspondingly more
unruly and misbehaving. In each mission were 3 caciques or alcaldes
who were elected by the neophytes subject to the approval of the
missionaries (Phillips 1975: 29-30; Bancroft 1886: 585). La Perouse in 1789
described these functionaries at Carmel as "very passive beings, blind executors
of the wishes of their superiors, and their principal function is to serve as
beadles in the church and to maintain good order and the appearance of devotion
there." Another duty of the alcaldes was to administer the floggings ordered by
the priests. It is obvious that by having Indians punish Indians a certain
amount of hostile reaction would be diverted from the priests. I think that the
record is clear that flogging was very common, and that the priests believed that this was the
only way in which their control could be maintained. Unable to create an esprit
de corps among the neophytes which would make the mission operation one of
cooperation and mutual benefit, the mission became a polarized dual-cultural
institution, and one which had strong resemblances to a penal institution.
Let us examine another social aspect of the mission, that of
sexual and family relations among the neophytes. One of the biggest problems the
priests faced was harmonizing their own theories about sex with native
practices. California Indians were, generally speaking, pretty freethinking
about sex. They did observe everywhere in their original state the institutions
of marriage and divorce (Nelson 1975). Premarital sex was, except in certain
tribes for special reasons, not disapproved of, although my impression is that
it was less prevalent than in the United States in 1976.1 do not think that we
know enough in detail about what went on in the missions between men and women,
but have the impression that in this new situation even the ordinary sexual
restraints may have been relaxed, perhaps due to the stress or pressure of the
new way of life individuals found themselves subject to. The missionaries,
seeing the Indians as being licentious, totally immoral, acting as though they
were mere animals, and practicing no sexual restraints, took the very steps
which we would expect them to have taken. Unmarried women and girls over the age
of nine were locked up at night. Unmarried men were also confined at night in
the hope that this enforced segregation would prevent immoral acts. The records
show that this was not wholly successful, but at the same time it must have had
some of the desired effect. Among the living conditions to which the neophytes
continually objected was that of the barracks they were locked into each night.
They were badly overcrowded. Cook (1976: 90) calculates that the women's night
detention quarters provided a space of 7 by 2 feet per person, barely enough
space to sleep in, and there are numerous reports that they were inadequately
ventilated, unsanitary, and full of filth. The resentment of the inmates can
only be imagined when we know they must have been remembering the freedom of
their life in the native villages.
Among the social practices generated, at least in part, by
such confinement was homosexuality and sodomy, and perhaps as well the
increasing practice by married neophyte women of abortion and infanticide. The
reason usually given, though we cannot be certain now that it was the main one,
was that the women did this in order to remain good looking and not lose their
husbands. Or, as seems more probable to me, there were no advantages whatever to
having children, especially if they were to grow up only to become another
chattel of the mission. Abortion and infanticide, in short, may have been one
form of protest. Since male and female neophytes were permitted, and even
encouraged to marry, many of them did so. Each couple was permitted to live in a
separate house within the mission compound or just outside it, and were
allowed to keep chickens which must have aided considerably in providing
adequate food in the form of eggs, so there were decided advantages in marrying.
Divorce of such couples was strictly prohibited by the priests, who to their
credit often worked to reconcile disaffected couples, but there were no doubt
many couples who did not get along well. If so, it is certain that there
occurred some wife-trading, or perhaps better and more technically, adultery,
(Ruíz 1811; Argüello 1811 (?); Olivera 1822), and that pregnancies resulting
from these liaisons were the cause of abortion and infanticide. But that is the
merest speculation on my part.
On the whole the matter of sex relations in the missions was
badly handled by the missionaries. The birth rate fell steadily until the end,
and the measures used to keep unmarried persons separate caused unrest and
disaffection and led to severe punishment of persons who broke the rules. The
regulations worked against renewal of the steadily-diminishing human crop. The
problem of replacing persons was similar in some ways to that which plagued the
slaveowners in the antebellum American South. It is possible that the
missionaries justified, and continued, their restrictive regime over the sexual
practices of their wards because they assumed that there was an unlimited supply
of unconverted heathen, or gentiles, which could be dragooned and brought to the
missions. But, as realists, they also knew that this method of augmentation was
becoming increasingly more difficult to carry out with success, and in the end,
bound by their doctrinal beliefs they continued to insist upon these while
knowing that they were among the causes of the progressive deterioration of the
mission in which each served.
Let us look next at the problem of food and nutrition in the
mission. The Indians in their original state are best described as omnivorous.
They dug roots and bulbs, collected many kinds of small seeds, gathered and
stored acorns where the oaks grew, fished, collected mollusks, and hunted large
and small game. The aboriginal diet was varied and adequate, and instances in
the ethnographic record of famines or long periods of food shortage are rare.
Neophytes rose at dawn, listened to mass, had breakfast of barley mush, lunch of
a mush of barley, peas and beans, and dinner (after divine service) of barley
mush again. Depending upon the supply and the inclinations of the priests there
was some meat from the mission herds. Reports vary as to the number of cattle
killed and distributed, but in general it seems to have been not large. If food
ran short in the mission, as it did not infrequently due to bad crops, the
neophytes were sent into the country to collect what they could for their
sustenance. Father Payeras in 1821 wrote to Sola from San Francisco mission that
"for the last three or four months the neophytes have had nothing to eat."
Whether neophytes actually starved to death in any mission is to be doubted, but
at the same time it is clear that they were at times on very short and
inadequate rations. S.F. Cook (1976a: 47) has calculated that the average mission
convert got about 2000 calories of energy in his daily food. This is enough to
sustain life, but sub-optimum for good health. The conclusion is that
physiological resistance to disease resulting from an inadequate diet was an
important cause in making them susceptible to infection, a situation made worse
by the lack of sanitation and the natural lack of immunity to
European-introduced complaints. Cook (Op. cit.: 50) concludes that "the Indians
as a whole lived continuously on the verge of clinical deficiency." We cannot
ignore the probability that at least in some of the missions there was daily
foraging for wild foods or vegetables while at work or from the mission gardens.
On the whole, if we except occasional years of bad crops, it seems that one of
the more successful elements of the California mission system was in providing a
regular if minimal supply of food.
We turn now to examine two matters of the direct reaction of
the Indian neophytes in the mission to the system. Up to this point I have been
talking about the effect or impact of the system in terms of food, punishment,
labor, sex relations and the like to which, of course, the individual Indian
reacted, but over which he had little control, and about which he could do
little by his own volition. The California Indians, with the exception of the
Yuman speaking tribes who held the territory from the coast at San Diego
eastward to the Colorado River (these were the Diegueño, Kamia and Yuma) were
notably unaggressive and pacific peoples. They might engage in what
anthropologists call war, but perhaps better as feuds which amounted to little
more than a dangerous sport (James and Graziani 1975). But the tribes I just
mentioned by name had a different attitude about conflict; they were, as part of
their cultural pattern and outlook on life, imbued with a martial spirit. They
were tough and aggressive, and they engaged in war because that pursuit had,
through historical development, in some manner become an activity of value, not
only to persons who engaged in it but also as redounding to the spiritual
benefit of the tribe. This attitude was most pronounced among the tribes of the
Colorado River, but it seems to have been present to some degree among the
Diegueno on the west. We have a good illustration of this in the fate of the
Colorado River mission founded among the Yumas in 1779 by Father Garces who had
earlier visited them and found them friendly. The site was on the west, or
California, bank of the Colorado just below where the Gila River enters. There
were soldiers attached to the mission, and some local converts, but there was
also some trouble, and less than two years later, in 1781, the Yumas attacked
and burned the mission, killed the two missionaries and the neophytes, and
destroyed the two churches then a-building. Garces and his companion became
martyrs to the Faith, which probably they had always hoped for, and the
redoubtable Fages shortly afterward marched east with a military company and
killed off a lot of Yuma citizens with guns. There, Spanish honor being avenged,
the matter remained. No attempt was ever made to rebuild the missions, probably because the Spanish
knew whom they were dealing with. A second instance also involves Yuman speaking
people—the Diegueños. The mission at San Diego was the first to be established.
Founded by Portolá's expedition on July 16, 1769 it attracted some interest by
the local natives who were looking not for conversion but Spanish goods,
especially cloth. Through the natives' effort to commit theft a fight broke out
on August 16, just two months later, and there were a few dead and more wounded.
No converts offered themselves for over a year, but finally the mission was
built and there were some sixty converts. Then, on November 4,1775 in the night,
a strong force of Diegueños said to have numbered from 800 to 1000, recruited
from nearby villages and perhaps (though uncertainly) including some of the
recently converted neophytes, attacked the mission, killing one priest, a
blacksmith and a carpenter (DeThoma 1899; Bolton 1931: 199-208; Bancroft 1886).
Father Serra, the President of the Missions, is reported to have said at Carmel
when he heard of the destruction of the mission, "God be thanked; now the soil
is watered; now will the reduction of the Diegueños be complete." An adobe
church was later built at San Diego in 1780 and conversions followed. True,
there were some minor attacks or mission revolts elsewhere, but these two were
the most determined and effective, and they were committed by the two
missionized tribes which ethnographers could have predicted.
In the missions to the north of San Diego the maximal
individual response was fugitivism—simply running away from the mission when it
became unbearable to the individual. Organized revolts within the mission, or
arranged beforehand with the help of villagers who were not yet converted, did
not occur. As a corporate group, the bodies of neophytes were either disinclined
to organize resistance movements, or were incapable of doing so. Possibly there
were too many informers among the neophyte populations, which had been drawn
from numerous villages, and perhaps also personal differences between individual
neophytes, to make it possible to successfully organize and keep secret such
plots. The 1824 revolt seems to have been spontaneous, arising as a reaction to
the brutal flogging of a neophyte at Santa Ynez Mission. Word of the flogging
spread to Purisima Mission whose neophytes went on the rampage and as well to
Santa Barbara from which 453 neophytes decamped. Since the revolt was
unpremeditated, it seems that tension in these Channel missions must have been
at the spark point (Geiger 1970; Stickel and Cooper 1969). No Spaniards, either
soldiers or priests, were killed, and the main effort by the neophytes was to
escape. Hundreds left for the Tulare region; many were recaptured and returned
to their missions; punishment was heavy, and things then proceeded pretty much
as usual. One group of the 1824 fugitives, grown to number seven or eight
hundred, was seen and described by Zenas Leonard as living in a village in
Walker Pass, still in possession of "several of the images they pilfered from
the church," growing crops, having horses, and engaged at times with trading with ships
on the coast. Throughout the whole of the mission period of some 65 years there
were repeated alarms at one mission or the other of alleged or attempted revolts
or rebellions (e.g. Arrillaga 1806, Santa Clara; Borica 1796, Santa Cruz;
Gutierrez 1835, San Luis Rey; Figueroa 1833, San Diego; Neve, 177, Soledad;
Fages, 1785, San Gabriel, for which see also Temple 1958). How much basis there
was for these reports is uncertain, but one gets the impression that the Spanish
intelligence network was good, and also that they were apprehensive.
Running away from the mission was a maximal response to
intolerable conditions, and fugitivism was a very important matter to the
priests. It depleted the labor supply, and unless runaways were brought back and
severely punished they served as an encouragement for others to do the same. In
addition, fugitives were automatically classed as apostates and thus suggested
to the missionaries that they had failed in their holy duty. Every successful
fugitive who cast off the religion which he had entered into only proved to the
priests that Christianity was not the moral force they believed it to be.
Successful fugitives also constituted a threat to the security of the missions
because they could inform the gentiles of what life was really like in the
mission and thus make it more difficult to entice them into conversion. From
1769 to 1831 no fewer than 3400 neophytes became successful, permanent
fugitives. As early as 1800 proposals were made for an inland chain of missions,
especially for the San Joaquin Valley, and these became increasingly urgent as
time went on not only as a means of increasing the harvest of pagan souls, but
also as a protection for the coastal missions which were subject to armed forays
by mounted tribes in the valley (Beattie 1928; Heizer 1941a). Cook (1976a:61)
calculates that ten percent of the neophyte population during the mission period
became fugitives, and this was a serious matter to the missionaries. They
reacted to this threat by sending out military parties who rounded up baptized
persons who had escaped, severely punished the people in the villages where they
had taken refuge, captured by force and brought back to the mission gentiles
encountered on such expeditions, and meted out strong punishment to captured
fugitives (Cook 1960, 1962). In short, when moral suasion failed, force was applied.
While conditions existing at one mission and date may not
represent the situation at others, let me cite the answers some of the
recaptured 23 neophytes who ran away from San Francisco in 1797 gave to the
question of why they became fugitives. It is a sufficiently large number to
sample the reasons for neophyte discontent. One said it was because he wept over
the death of his wife and child and was ordered flogged on five occasions by
Father Danti. Another because he was sick. Another because his wife and one son
died. One gave as his reason because he was hungry and put in the stocks when he
was ill. One neophyte gave as his only reason homesickness. Another because
his wife, one son and two brothers had died
in the mission. One did so because his wife and son were fugitives and because
he was continually being beaten. Another because the "alcalde" beat him all the
time and he was made to work while he was sick. One simply because he was given
a blow with a club. One because he was beaten when he wept for a dead brother.
One said he did so in order to see his mother. One because his mother, two
brothers and three nephews had died in the mission, all of hunger, and he ran
away so that he would not also die. One because his wife sinned with a settler
and the priest beat him for not taking care of her. The rest are similar, and
mention either lack of food, deaths of loved ones or harsh punishment. More than
any record I know this particular one (Argüello 1797) with its simple and stark
statements seems to bring home the fear and misery that must have been
experienced by perhaps tens or scores of thousands of missionized natives.
Native peoples who are under great pressure often develop
messianic cults. Many of these are known among American Indians, including the
1870 Ghost Dance. Such cults, in which a person receives a vision through which
he becomes the prophet, could very well have arisen in any of the California
missions, but only one instance is reported—that in 1801 among the Chumash
(Heizer 1941b) which was immediately suppressed. The priests worked very hard to
stamp out the native religious beliefs and practices since these were classed as
idolatry, and in the process they may have nipped a number of such movements in
the bud. But we also know that shamanistic practices, curing ceremonies, and
ritual dancing were surreptitiously maintained among the neophytes (see, for
example, Bancroft 1888: 215—a Santa Clara neophyte practicing shamanism;
Echeandia 1829—medicine dances at Santa Ynez; Heizer 1970: 75-76—sorcerers in
the Chumash missions). There is also the interesting account of an old shaman
named Atswen, a neophyte at San Antonio Mission, who claimed to have the power
to produce rain. During a great drought, the Padre put Atswen in the mission
jail, saying he would keep him there until it rained. After a bit of plea
bargaining and some high jinks, it is reported that Atswen did make it
rain (Mason 1912: 195). The story, if true, only proves that at least this
Franciscan missionary also believed in the Devil, and in witchcraft, and in the
ability of the Indians under his control to deal with the occult and the powers of darkness.
The neophyte in the mission was, in fact, a slave. By
agreeing to conversion he gave up his freedom and became completely subject for
the rest of his life to the rule of the mission priests. The theory that as
neophytes became educated they would be released to populate the pueblos (of
which there were three: Los Angeles, San Jose and Branciforte) the civil towns
with municipal governments, was never effectively put into practice (Garr 1972).
The Indians were not taught how to become effective free citizens, and in 1834
when the missions were secularized by decree (Hutchinson 1969; Servin 1965)
the mission lands and property were not
distributed to the Indians according to plan, but rather the lands were
preempted by Mexicans, the missions fell into disrepair, the livestock herds
were stolen, and the former neophytes either became vagabonds, or attached
themselves as peons to Mexican rancheros, or went back into the interior to
re-learn, as it were, how to be real Indians again (S. Cook 1976a: 197-254;
Heizer 1941). Since secularization was inevitable after Mexican independence,
why did not the missionaries use that interval of over a decade to try to
prepare the neophytes for the day of manumission? It all adds up to the failure
of the mission system to carry out in practice what it believed in theory. In
1796 Governor Borica in a letter noted that the missions were supposed to
function for ten years and then be turned over to the clergy and said, "but
those of New California will not reach the goal in ten centuries; the reason,
God knows, and men know something about it." One move which could have been
taken and was discussed from time to time (Goycoechea 1796; Lasuen 1802) was
leaving Indians in their rancherias after baptism. This was practiced up to 1779
at San Diego out of necessity because there were no accommodations for neophytes
and insufficient food for them (Fages 1787). It was argued (e.g. Lasuen 1802)
that the natives would revert to their former barbarous customs and forget their
catechisms. Surely there would have been problems in such a program, but with
hard work and some luck it might have turned out better than in the missions
which were not much better than detention homes.
I see the mission system as rigid, inflexible, stabilized and
unchanging, and aimed only at its own perpetuation. It never developed beyond
minimal, and always tenuous, self-sufficiency. It was conceived as a
dual-culture institution and it remained that way. That is probably the main
reason for the failure of the missionaries to instill a sense of independence
and initiative in the converts. The Indian neophytes were little more than an
energy source which cost nothing to acquire and nothing to maintain—they were an
expendable resource. If the mission system had been progressive; if the priests
(and the Mission Presidents) had been able to learn from observation and
experience, and thus allow changes to occur which would have been accommodations
to problems of managing the neophyte populations, then there could have
developed an operation which would have become more humane, and more consistent
with doctrinal theory. But, like most established institutions which become
locked into the straitjacket of their procedures, there was no adjustment of any
moment, and the system was probably doomed to failure because it consumed
Indians faster than they could be produced. There was a kind of Olympian
reprieve for the Franciscans in secularization which intervened and shut down
their California mission operation before it destroyed itself. The cost of the
mission system is something beyond calculation in terms of human lives which
were spent. It functioned in a not very enlightened age, and in California
it was central to the first association of
Europeans and its considerable native populations. All over the Americas,
regardless of who the settlers were—English, French or Spanish—this first
contact led to catastrophic declines of numbers of native people. If we accept
the figure of about 300,000 Native Californians living at the moment of first
settlement in 1769, probably only about 150,000 were alive in 1834 when the
missions were disestablished. Diseases introduced by Europeans to which the
native peoples had no resistance were probably the primary factor in this
catastrophic decimation (Cook 1939, 1976a: 13ff). It was the same over all of
North and South America, and was therefore the unintentional result of the
meeting of Old and New World peoples. In 1846, the year in which California was
seized from Mexico, there were according to Cook (1976b: 44) about 150,000
Indians in the state. Most of these lived east of the former Mission Strip where
they were beyond Spanish and Mexican reach. The Gold Rush and American
settlement was even more devastating than Spanish colonization. By 1855, ten
years later, that population of 150,000 had been reduced to 50,000, one cause
being disease, but homicide was the greatest factor in this reduction. So the
near disappearance of the Indians of California appears to have been inevitable
in the sense that it did not make much difference which group of whites, whether
Spanish, Mexican or Anglo-American were dominant.
NOTES
Argüello, J.
1797. Relación, San Francisco, August 12. California Archives, Provincial
State Papers, Vol. XVI: 74.
1811(?) Causa Criminal. San Diego, August 14.
Provincial State Papers, Benicia Military, Vol. 49: 82-85. Bancroft Library.
Arrillaga, J.J.
1806. Letter to the Commandant of San Francisco, July 17. California
Archives, Provincial Records, Vol. 12, p. 266. Bancroft Library.
Bancroft, H.H.
1886. History of California. Vol. I, 1542-1800. The History Co., San
Francisco. 1888. California Pastoral. San Francisco.
Beattie, G.W.
1928. Spanish Plans for an Inland Chain of Missions. Historical Society
of Southern California 24: 243-264.
Bolton, H.E.
1931. Font's Complete Diary. University of California Press.
Borica, D.
1796. Letter to Amador, Monterey, March 2. California Archives,
Provincial Records, Vol. 5, p. 180. Bancroft Library.
Bowman, J.N.
1958. The Resident Neophytes (Existentes) of the California Missions.
Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 40: 138-148.
Cook, S.F.
1937. The Monterey Surgeons During the Spanish Period in California.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 5: 43-72.
1939. Smallpox in Spanish and Mexican
California, 1770-1845. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 7: 153-191.
1960. Colonial Expeditions to the Interior of
California: Central Valley, 1780-1820. University of California Anthropological Records 16: 239-292.
1962. Expeditions to the Interior of California: Central Valley, 1820-1840.
University of California Anthropological Records 20:151-214.
1976a. The Conflict Between the California Indians and White Civilization.
University of California Press (Reprinting of 6 monographs originally published 1940-1943).
1976b. The Population of the California Indian, 1769-1970.
University of California Press.
Cook, W.L.
1973. Flood Tide of Empire: Spain and the Pacific
Northwest, 1543-1819. Yale University Press.
De Thoma, F.
1899. The First Martyr: a Chapter in the History of San
Diego. Land of Sunshine 10: 126-130.
Echeandia, J.M.
1829. Causa Criminal, San Diego, April 23. California
Archives, Provincial State Papers, Benicia Military, Vol. 66, p. 69. Bancroft Library.
Fages, P.
1785. Borrador. California Archives, Provincial Records, Vol. 2, p. 131.
Bancroft Library.
1787. Informe. California Archives, Provincial State
Papers, Mission Collection, Vol. I: 129. Bancroft Library.
Figueroa, J.
1833. Causa Criminal, Monterey, November 22. California
Archives, Provincial State Papers, Benicia Military Vol. 75, p. 5. Bancroft Library.
Garr, D.
1972. Planning, Politics and Plunder: the Missions and
Indian Pueblos of Hispanic California. Southern California Quarterly 54: 291-312.
Geiger, M.
1970. Fray Antonio Ripoli's Description of the Chumash
Revolt at Santa Barbara in 1824. Southern California Quarterly 52: 345-364.
Goycoechea, F.
1796. Report to Borica on Rancherias Along the Santa
Barbara Channel. Santa Barbara, March 12. California Archives, Provincial
State Papers, Missions Vol. II: 95. Bancroft Library.
Gutierrez, N.
1835. Causa Criminal, Monterey, November 5. California Archives, Provincial
State Papers, Benicia Military, Vol. 80, p. 13. Bancroft Library.
Heizer, R.F.
1941a. The Direct-Historical Approach in California Archaeology. American Antiquity 2:98-122.
1941b. A Californian Messianic Movement of 1801 Among the
Chumash. American Anthropologist 43: 128-129.
1970. More J.P. Harrington Notes on Ventureño
Chumash Basketry and Culture. Contributions of the Archaeological Research Facility 9: 59-77.
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
1972. California's Oldest
Historical Relic? Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
1974. The Costanoan Indians. California History
Center, De Anza College, Local History Studies Vol. 18. Cupertino.
Hutchinson, C.A.
1969. Frontier Settlement in California. Yale University Press.
James, S.R. and S. Graziani
1975. California Indian Warfare. Contributions of the
Archaeological Research Facility No. 23: 47-109. Department of Anthropology,
University of California, Berkeley.
Lasuen, F.
1802. Report to Fr. Jose Gasob, Guardian, on the
Inconvenience of Leaving Indians in their Rancherias after Baptism. Santa
Clara, June 16. California Archives, Provincial State Papers, Vol. XVIII:
269. Bancroft Library.
McWilliams, C.
1968. North From Mexico. Greenwood Press, New York.
Mason, J.A.
1912. Ethnology of the Salinan Indians. University of
California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 10: 97-240.
Nelson, K.
1975. Marriage and Divorce Practices in Native
California. Archaeological Research Facility, Department of Anthropology,
University of California, Berkeley.
Neve, F.
1777. Letter to Viceroy, Monterey, June 3. California
Archives, Provincial Records, Vol. 1, p. 60. Bancroft Library.
Olivera, A.
1822. Causa Criminal. San Buenaventura, June 2.
Provincial State Papers, Benicia Military, Vol. 53: 64-67. Bancroft Library.
Phillips, G.H.
1975. Chiefs and Challengers. University of California Press.
Ruíz, M.
1811.Causa Criminal. San Diego, November 9. Provincial
State Papers, Benicia Military, Vol. 49: 7-8. Bancroft Library.
Servin, M.P.
1965. The Secularization of the California Missions: a
Reappraisal. Southern California Quarterly 47: 133-149.
Spicer, E.H.
1962. Cycles of Conquest. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Stickel, E.G. and A.D. Cooper
1969. The Chumash Revolt of 1824: a Case for an
Anthropological Application of Feedback Theory. Archaeological Survey Annual
Report for 1969, Vol. II: 5-22. University of California, Los Angeles.
Temple, T.W.
1958. Toypurina, the Witch, and the Indian Uprising at
San Gabriel. Southwest Museum Masterkey 32: 136-152.
