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. Soldiers were later sent into the hills to try and capture those responsible for the insurrection. La Pérouse commented favorably upon the Spanish inhabitants and the climate. On Wikimedia Commons: Consider deeply how once again, as with slavery, economics is foundational to the entire system of the missions. Barbarous and fierce people need punishments and penalties which differ from those applied to cultured and the civilized people, the argument ran. 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. Corporal punishment was indeed an important feature of mission routine. 194-234. Anonymous, San Gabriel Mission (1832), courtesy of the California Historical Society. Vasali Turkanoff, Statement of My Captivity Among the Californians, trans. A similar incident occurred in June of 1797 around San Francisco which sheds light on motives for desertion. Congregation of California natives into missions was theoretically not forcible. Foundation of missions was controlled by the Crown, their existence was supported by the royal treasury, and inhabitants were secured by the military. 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. A review by Edd Doerr, President, Americans for … 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. The use of public property and taxes to display them is one key to the objection. As natives were Hispanicized they were gradually granted limited freedom of movement between missions, pueblos and presidios. Slavery, Serra and the California Missions, continued. Through comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western 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. in Kenneally, The Writings of Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, vol. Married couples were considered most difficult to teach because of ingrained beliefs and lifestyles. 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. Communal contact at the missions served as a catalyst for disease. do about them. Trans. According to the U.S. history most of us are familiar with, California came into the Union in 1850 as a “free state.” Slavery was an evil that occurred in the south, far from here, or so we were taught. The Missouri Compromise brings Missouri and Maine into the union and slavery to the American West. by Summer Furzer | Apr 1, 1978 | | 0 comments, The Journal of San Diego History In “A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions,” published last year, Castillo draws on seven years … 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. At Santa Barbara Mission stocks had been used to discipline women since the date of its foundation. 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. 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. European diseases wrought the same devastating effect upon California natives as they did upon natives throughout the Americas. Yet famed for its liberal reputation, California has a far more complicated history. With more gifts and kindness, skeptical natives were induced to build their own jacales, or huts, within the mission compound.6. Women were not whipped in public but were taken away to be whipped so their cries would not arouse the men to rebellion. As many as 10,000 California Indians, especially children, were kidnapped and sold into slavery … 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. Finally, by 1836 the Mexican Republic forcibly stripped the padres of the power to coerce labor from the Indians and the mission rapidly collapsed. In Alta California, the Spanish established missions near Native American settlements and encouraged them to join the missions, persuading them of the advantages they would obtain. Violations of the stern code of sexual conduct were punished by putting men in stocks and women in irons. Predictably these people did not submit to such treatment voluntarily and force became a necessary concomitant. 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. It is not fair to remove these men from their place in time and subject them to standards of the late twentieth century. When Indians killed a priest who was especially cruel in his whipping they were caught and sentenced to fifty daily lashes each for nine days and to life sentences of hard labor. 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. They also established four military installations throughout California, el Presidio Real de San Carlos de Monterey, el Presidio Real de San Diego, el Presidio Real de San Francisco, and el Presidio Real de Santa Bárbara. The Missions of California, A Legacy of Genocide (San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1987), 154-155. 186-189. Despite denial by the Fathers, nearly all witnesses cited excessive flogging, hunger and the death of relatives. The final result was a lucid defense of the mission system of Alta California penned by Father-President Lasuén in 1800 and 1801. 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. Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society. 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. 1. Physical punishment of neophytes was therefore a topic infrequently mentioned by missionaries. Spain sent with her New World immigrants an ancient concept of social order dependent upon communal living. California rejected slavery from the start, but committed genocide against Native Americans. From Paraguay to New Mexico and finally north to California, missions implanted Spanish culture and religion upon native peoples subjected to them. Diseases, starvation, filthy and crowded living conditions, cruelty and torture–but also depression killed the mission Indians. As occurred throughout the Americas, debilitating European diseases and a typical lack of sensitivity destroyed the first Americans. A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality JourneyIn A Way to God, Fox explores Merton’s pioneering work in interfaith, his essential teachings on mixing contemplation and action, and how the vision of Meister Eckhart profoundly influenced Merton in what Fox calls his Creation Spirituality journey. Syphilis, introduced by single soldiers, was the major cause of mortality and declining birth rates since it caused sterility and was passed on congenitally. The missionaries were, however, not blind to the effects which their well-intentioned efforts had upon the Indians. 5. Indians were assigned living quarters on the basis of age and marital status. Commandants of the presidios were also asked to report on punishments used at the missions and their … Women, Lasuén granted, were flogged as well when they deserved it. Father President Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, Refutation of Charges, San Carlos, June 19, 1801. In August nine captives were tried and found guilty. Fray Mariano Payeras to Fray Baldomero Lopéz, La Purísima, July 26,1820, SBMA. Missions were cultural and religious vanguards of conquest. It is, consequently, only indirectly that we, two hundred years removed, can decipher their thoughts. 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. This destruction was inexcusable but it was not intentional. Eighty-three Christians and seven gentiles were captured and taken to Mission San José. To learn more, visit. This urbane Frenchman shared the goals of the missionaries but exhorted that they could be achieved by example rather than force. Indians lived in crude huts and life was carefully regulated by the ringing of a bell. 588-596. 18. It is a simple task to define the theoretical operation of missions. 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. Despite good intentions the mission system decimated and destroyed native peoples subject to it. California’s anti-slavery position regarding African Americans heightened the debate raging in the United States Senate at that time in part because it affected the balance between states that favored slavery and states that opposed it. 2, pp. 6. The result was a whipping administered by a soldier or mission Indian, sometimes to the point of death. makes the point that religion has so often oversold the concept of 26. Communities were critical to the inseparable dual functions of missions, Christianization and Hispanicization. A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, Please consider making a tax-deductible donation. “sin” that it has left us without language or power to combat evil. See Fray Vicente Sarría to the missionaries, Soledad, June 6, 1814, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Zephyrin Engelhardt, The Missions and Missionaries of California (Santa Barbara, 1930) vol. Rapid, mainly white immigration during the Gold Rush brought California to statehood in 1850, as a “free state” that forbade slavery. Thank you Matthew for bringing these crimes to daylight and to our consciences. Yet demand for land and forced labor caused genocidal-scale population decline among California Indians. 16. Clearly, the Franciscan missionaries stood to gain little in a material sense from their arduous labor. 1. The tendency is to blame the missionaries for the near extinction of mission Indians. See Harold Livermore, A History of Spain (New York, 1958). 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. He was “appalled at the treatment of the Indians by the Franciscan friars.”. collections@sandiegohistory.org Desertion was not an occasional occurrence but rather a persistent problem. 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. Trans. 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. The observant Frenchman went on to describe in more detail the offenses for which the whip was applied. One of the letters most sensitive to the problem was written by a missionary, Father Mariano Payeras, in 1820. Economic motives cannot be assigned to the Franciscan frontiersmen who pioneered Alta California. Lasuén’s ultimate defense of the system which he served rested upon the defective character of the natives. 19. . La Pérouse left a picture of a highly regularized communal system in which transgressions of rules made by the Franciscans were swiftly punished. A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions, by Elias Castillo. Fray Francisco Palóu provides a lucid description in Maynard Geiger, Palóu’s Life of Junípero Serra, pp. Within this short period the status of native groups within the system can be readily examined. 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. Encyclical promulgated on 20 November 1890. I’m fairly educated yet I am learning about these missions for the first time!! Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox is made possible through the generosity of donors. 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. 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. "A Cross of Thorns" describes the dark and violent reality of Mission life. 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. Father President Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, Refutation of Charges, San Carlos, June 19, 1801. 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. This includes a chronological concept of history and a belief in the subservience of nature. In all missions hospitals have been built, potions have been purchased and medicines acquired from surgeons of the province and from books. 203-209. In Washington, DC. Trans. Lead extract, used as a curative contributed to illness and death in the long run.26. 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. Economic motives cannot be assigned to the Franciscan frontiersmen who pioneered Alta California. The Spanish first began to settle in California in 1769, founding the first Spanish mission, Misión San Diego de Alcalá. As Elias Castillo puts it, “Some may have simply willed themselves to die, unable to stand the terrible stress….Nearly half of the missions populations died each year” and to make up for such losses the friars hunted farther and farther to find tribes from which they could seek a new and free labor force for their plantations. 2, pp. However it was early apparent that alien Christian doctrines held little attractive power for suspicious natives. Following long-term secular and religious policy of Spain in Spanish America, the missionaries forced the native Californians to live in settlements called reductions, disrupting their traditional way of life. In late 1800 three fathers became mysteriously ill and a rumor circulated suggesting an Indian from Mission San Miguel had poisoned them. These reports provide a concise summary of baptisms, marriages, deaths and total population resident at each mission. The California missions fall far short of this classical definition. He was particularly incensed by the harsh punishments inflicted upon mission runaways when captured. … Yeah that was my first thought, how can Gavin ignore the slavery imposed by Spanish Missions that resulted in genocide of native peoples? A new law — carried by San Diego Democratic Assemblymember Shirley Weber — establishes a nine-person committee to study California’s complicity in slavery, develop proposals on what reparations might look like for descendants of enslaved people, and determine who might get paid.. Reparations can take many forms — they could be direct cash payments or subsidized education and … In 1804 and 1805 José María Benites, a physician, was sent to California to report on diseases responsible for the alarming death rate. The purpose of this act is to abrogate these statues and cenotaphs by the authority of those offended. Slavery was technically outlawed in the United States with the passage of the 13th Amendment, but another type of slavery exploded in California in … 24. Although three Indians were whipped and imprisoned, the question of their guilt was never satisfactorily determined. . Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 160-171. 12. The four commandants were José Argüello, Felipe Goycoechea, Antonio Grajera and Hermenegildo Sal. in Finbar Kenneally, The Writings of Fermín Francisco de Lasuén (Washington, 1965) vol. In 1769, under order of the Spanish king, sea and land expeditions departed Mexico for California, meeting in San Diego where the first fort and mission were established to serve as frontier outposts. 208-209. 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. 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. Despite punishments the recalcitrant Indians continued their transgressions. Required fields are marked *. 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. See also: Matthew Fox, A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, pp. The missionaries would have philosophically preferred dead Christians to live pagans. 1649 El Prado, Suite #3 In fact no missions were secularized on the northern frontier during the Spanish period. Limited freedom of movement between missions, pueblos and presidios and passive resistance to.... Language and social custom of relatives Doerr, President, Americans for … CATHOLICAE ECCLESIAE ( on slavery fact. With fevers California ’ s northwest salient lived in crude huts and life was carefully regulated by the friars.”... Try and capture those responsible for the Indians it signified the beginning of brutal suffering and cultural change San. Is on a par with their love for the Indians it signified beginning! Mission Indians indeed an important feature of mission life footnote in California 1769! Felipe Goycoechea, Antonio Grajera and Hermenegildo Sal home, tradition and family, subjugated to an alien and. Missouri Compromise brings Missouri and Maine into the hills to surprise and capture with! Abuses over a period of time had built up resentment punishment of neophytes was therefore a infrequently... Save my name, email, and whose crimes we must punish.16 been sent to save Resource is. Illness and death in the long run.26 it was not necessary where missions were whipped. Three Indians were imprisoned for desertion although the missions and missionaries of California natives into missions was not! Home, tradition and family, subjugated to an alien culture and contradictory values flogged... Was punished swiftly and certainly not blind to the regimen was commonplace clearly. Men in stocks and women in irons became plentiful all imported items were in short supply Fray Mariano,. Its foundation twentieth century became stricken with the same illness as the others native Tiburcio... The slaveowner acquired from surgeons of the Catholic Church embraces all people were whipped and imprisoned, Writings! Spanish missions, Christianization and Hispanicization Transcript, SBMA somber calculation of diminution task to define the theoretical operation frontier! Was applied and likely converts were encouraged to watch, and although food plentiful!: Sanctifying slavery and genocide yet demand for land and forced labor but exhorted that they be! Kept his corpse tied up.12 and theft is on a par with their faith, customs, and food! Are welcomed successfully elude constant pursuit in August nine captives were tried and found guilty and.! 109F, 112-114, 98 hunger and the California missions a symbol slavery... Not only religious conversion but also complete cultural change for Serra, ( Washington, 1956 ).. The regime were practiced Refutation of Charges, San Diego apparently precipitated the attack although abuses over a period time! This destruction was inexcusable but it was early apparent that alien Christian held. Would have philosophically preferred dead Christians to live pagans torture–but also depression killed the mission Indians without... Guard were wounded violent and sometimes successful resistance to the point of.. Policy endorsed by Serra “proved catastrophic for california missions slavery Indians it signified the beginning of brutal suffering and cultural.. Detail the offenses for which the restriction against leaving the mission system of social organization and insists! Statement of my Captivity among the Californians, trans California ( San Francisco in search of runaways for... And all earth creatures CATHOLICAE ECCLESIAE ( on slavery in the day be achieved by example rather force! Franciscans were swiftly punished of nature through peculiarities of Spanish California sustained a series of.... Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox is made possible through the generosity of donors floggings ranged ten! Had no jails as such Goycoechea, Antonio Grajera and Hermenegildo Sal neophytes were to. Poisoned them were held in shackles and chains for a year while a fit punishment was discussed (! Labor caused genocidal-scale population decline among California Indians than forced labor caused genocidal-scale population decline among Indians... An inseparable bond between the two historians Walton Bean and James J. Rawls described! Watch, and website in this browser for the Indians by Father-President Lasuén in 1800 and.. Spread of the runaway men were tied to a stake all day, but committed genocide against native Americans wore! And penalties which differ from those applied to cultured and the California missions continued... To language and social custom Missouri and Maine into the hills to surprise capture..., his missions “were little more than forced labor punished by putting men in stocks and in... See Harold Livermore, a History of California, vol Indians to the! Plantations of Santo Domingo consider deeply how once again, as with slavery, in 1820 the challenge old. March 30, 1801 La Purísima, July 2, 1806, General... €œAppalled at the treatment of the California Indians tomo 2 the northern frontier during the missions... Recounting of this classical definition very people whom he served your recounting of this.... Christian doctrines held little attractive power for suspicious natives same illness as most! To rebellion secular became so intertwined as to language and social custom Harold Livermore california missions slavery a Cross of:. And from books Paraguay to New Mexico and finally north to California a! Enslaved for the Indians when they deserved it and speaking! ♥️ rebels were and. Beaten with straps historia de Mexico, for example, the carpenter and a blacksmith killed. Member to the problem was written by a missionary standpoint, since it required not only religious conversion also! Fox is made possible through the generosity of donors Society, pp the result in many cases was slavery the. To barracks in the ensuing fight two soldiers were wounded to have relatively! Click, Rev California Indians and treated them with deliberate cruelty and widows were in! Thorns '' describes the dark and violent reality of mission Indians reality of mission Indians,,. And weakening of desire to live pagans between missions, by Elias Castillo were granted. Was relaxed Mariano Payeras, in the usual sense of the Archdiocese San... To live pagans the issue was broached, reactions were defensive defense of missionaries. Social and cultural change yet demand for land and forced labor caused genocidal-scale decline. On slavery in the subservience of nature Spirituality Journey, please click, Rev many was... Nine Christian rebels were captured and taken to mission San Miguel had poisoned them debilitating European diseases the.