DOCSLIB.ORG

Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769-1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family Author(S): Antonia I

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769-1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family Author(S): Antonia I Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769-1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family Author(s): Antonia I. Castañeda Source: California History, Vol. 76, No. 2/3, Contested Eden: California before the Gold Rush (Summer - Fall, 1997), pp. 230-259 Published by: University of California Press in association with the California Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25161668 Accessed: 22-08-2014 04:04 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and California Historical Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to California History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:04:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 9 Engendering theHistory ofAlta California, 1769-1848 and Gender, Sexuality, theFamily Antonia I. Castafieda The frontier is a fiminal zone ... its interstitial . .For more than subjects, beings. two centuries the North was a for warfare. society organized Ana Maria Alonso1 From 1769, when the first entrada (incursion) of soldiers and priests arrived in Cal to to ifornia extend Spanish colonial hegemony the farthest reaches of the northern women were frontier, and girls the target of sexual violence and brutal attacks. In the San Gabriel on region, for example, soldiers horseback swooped into villages, chased, lassoed, raped, beat, and sometimes killed women.2 As had occurred in successive in cursions new na into territory since the fifteenth century, sexual aggression against tive women was acts among the first recorded of Spanish colonial domination in on Alta California. This political violence effected the bodies ofwomen made colo nial California a land of endemic warfare. This essay examines the gendered and sexualized construction of the colonial or der relations of in to as and power Alta California from 1769 1848 this land passed to to as from Spanish Mexican Euro-American rule. Using gender and sexuality of it women categories analysis, explores how articulated their power, subjectivity, and on identity in the militarized colonial order reigning this remote outpost. In this as as study,gender denotes the social construction ofmasculinity, well of femininity? and thus the social construction of distinctions between male and female. Gender is a more mean also principal realm for the production of general effects of power and as a as ing.Thus, gender is here interpreted relational dimension of colonialism and one an aspect of imperial power matrix within which gender, sexuality, race, class, and to in recent on culture operate. This matrix is brought bear studies gender and colo 230 This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:04:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ENGENDERING HISTORY 231 CaliforniaHistorical Society,FN-3050J. on nialism the northern frontiers of New Spain by historian Ramon Gutierrez and to anthropologist Ana Maria Alonso, who examine the ideology of honor in order theorize and interpret constructions ofmasculinity and femininity within the power relations of colonialism.3 women This chapter examines how indigenous and mestiza (Indo-mestiza and on Afro-mestiza) became subjects of colonial domination in California. It draws as are an studies that view gender and sexuality dimensions of subjectivity that both a "effect of power and technology of rule," and that analyze colonial domination in to relation the construction of subjectivities?meaning forms of personhood, power, on and social positioning. It also focuses female agency, that is, the ways inwhich women manipulated circumstances and used cultural, spiritual, religious, and legal to actions resist patriarchal domination.4 center women Recent interdisciplinary works and other subordinated (subaltern) as use as to groups subjects of history and gender and sexuality categories of analysis to examine broad historical processes. This scholarship seeks find and analyze the subalterns' voices, agency, and identities in the fissures and spaces, the interstices, the events to hidden, masked meanings of and documents.5 Using gender and sexuality structures ex analyze resistance strategies within larger and processes, these studies to plore women's power reshape and refabricate their social identity?to fashion own own own their response, their experience, and their histories. This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:04:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 232 ENGENDERING HISTORY GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND OPPOSING IDEOLOGIES Little is known about native systems of gender and sexuality inCalifornia at the time of the invasion.6 it is were an Spanish Nevertheless, clear that indigenous practices tithetical to a inwhich patriarchal ideology gender hierarchy, male domination, and were the exclusive mar heterosexuality organizing principles of desire, sexuality, and the riage, family. In the European order, until passage of the Bourbon Reforms in the late canon con eighteenth century, Roman Catholic ideology and law,which the as base and a ceptualized body vile, imposed regime of sexual repression that tied to canon sexuality morality7 While law regulated marriage and the sociosexual life, of the civil law the physical body, regulated body politic and controlled family law, inheritance and reinforcing property rights and strengthening the patriarchal fam In this woman was as ily. ideology, conceptualized in opposition to, and the posses sion man. Woman's as of, reproductive capacity, the vehicle for the production of heirs and the transference of was as legitimate private property, defined the single most source of her value. law women as important Spanish defined sexual beings and delineated their sexual lives through the institution of indissoluble, monogamous And canon law the marriage. although upheld principle that marriage required the consent of both was not to. parties, that principle always adhered Sexual in was to a intercourse, theory, confined marriage, sacrament intended for the of procreation children, for companionship, and for the containment of lust. Woman's to mar sexuality had be controlled through virginity before monogamous and after in order to ensure riage fidelity legitimate transference of the patrimony. By of status ex regularizing inheritance and property,marriage institutionalized the legal of women's change bodies. The family, the sociopolitical organization within which or these transactions occurred, reproduced the hierarchical, male-dominated social der. The cultural to Spanish idiom of honor?the ideology of personal subordination familial at concerns?held the larger patriarchal edifice together the fundamental unit of the family and family relationships. was a Gender key dimension of honor, which defined the value accorded to both the individual was person (personhood) and the family. Thus, ideal social conduct defined and differed to by gender according appropriate male and female qualities on on own and roles.Women's honor centered their sexuality, and their and their family's control of it.Men's honor and ideal conduct centered on their conquest and as as on domination of others, including women, well protection, which in cluded the honor of protecting (sexual reputation) females in the family.These gen an dered qualities of honor maintained the patrimony and perpetuated honored across was image of the self and family time. The result extreme sexual oppression of women a and double standard of sexual behavior. Individuals possessed individ ual honor, and families possessed collective honor. This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:04:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions f / *<cV, jtoona o>#ht *'JtJgft''aiVT4 ****** Jh*? *?**^^ V A page dated April 1781 from the San Carlos Borromeo "First Book ofMatrimony," in as as which Fray Junipero Serra recorded marriages of neophytes, well of Spanish soldiers, performed in themission church.The ceremony of Christian marriage, with its attendant of social and sexual relations between men and was imperatives appropriate women, part on of the complex pattern ofHispanic life that the Franciscans imposed the California Indians, thereby radically reshaping traditional native society.Courtesy California Historical Society/TitleInsurance and Trust Photo Collection, University ofSouthern California. This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:04:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 234 ENGENDERING HISTORY Systems of gender and sexuality among indigenous peoples, in contrast, generally as not conceptualized females and males complementary, opposed, principles.8 was not a was Woman derivative of man, sexuality not repressed, and both gender were and sexual systems relatively fluid.With variations, native systems included gender parallelism, matriarchal sociopolitical organization, and matrilineal forms au of reckoning and descent. Within these diverse cultures, women's power and one or more thority could derive from elements: the culture's basic
Load more

Recommended publications
  • California's Legal Heritage
    California’s Legal Heritage n the eve of California’s statehood, numerous Spanish Civil Law Tradition Odebates raged among the drafters of its consti- tution. One argument centered upon the proposed o understand the historic roots of the legal tradi- retention of civil law principles inherited from Spain Ttion that California brought with it to statehood and Mexico, which offered community property rights in 1850, we must go back to Visigothic Spain. The not conferred by the common law. Delegates for and Visigoths famously sacked Rome in 410 CE after years against the incorporation of civil law elements into of war, but then became allies of the Romans against California’s common law future used dramatic, fiery the Vandal and Suevian tribes. They were rewarded language to make their cases, with parties on both with the right to establish their kingdom in Roman sides taking opportunities to deride the “barbarous territories of Southern France (Gallia) and Spain (His- principles of the early ages.” Though invoked for dra- pania). By the late fifth century, the Visigoths achieved ma, such statements were surprisingly accurate. The complete independence from Rome, and King Euric civil law tradition in question was one that in fact de- established a code of law for the Visigothic nation. rived from the time when the Visigoths, one of the This was the first codification of Germanic customary so-called “barbarian” tribes, invaded and won Spanish law, but it also incorporated principles of Roman law. territory from a waning Roman Empire. This feat set Euric’s son and successor, Alaric, ordered a separate in motion a trajectory that would take the Spanish law code of law known as the Lex Romana Visigothorum from Europe to all parts of Spanish America, eventu- for the Hispanic Romans living under Visigothic rule.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evolution of Political Practices in Mexican Alta California and the Rise of the Diputados Emmanuelle Perez Tisserant
    The Evolution of Political Practices in Mexican Alta California and the Rise of the Diputados Emmanuelle Perez Tisserant To cite this version: Emmanuelle Perez Tisserant. The Evolution of Political Practices in Mexican Alta California and the Rise of the Diputados. California History, University of California Press, 2014, 91 (1), pp.72-73. halshs-01828418 HAL Id: halshs-01828418 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01828418 Submitted on 3 Jul 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. The Evolution of Political Practices in Mexican Alta California and the Rise of the Diputados Author(s): Emmanuelle Perez Source: California History, Vol. 91, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 72-73 Published by: University of California Press in association with the California Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ch.2014.91.1.72 . Accessed: 10/05/2014 16:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive.
    [Show full text]
  • The Colorado Magazine
    THE COLORADO MAGAZINE Published by The State Historical and Natural History Society of Colorado Devoted to the Interests of the Society, Colorado, and the West Copyrighted 1924 by the State Historical and Natural History Society of Colorado. VOL. Denver, Colorado, November, 1924 NO. 7 Spanish Expeditions Into Colorado:f. By Alfred Barnaby Thomas, M. A., Berkeley, California. I. INTRODUCTION We customarily associate Spanish explorations in the West with New Mexico, with Texas, with Arizona, or with California, but not with Colorado. Yet Spaniards in the eighteenth century were well acquainted with large portions of the region now com­ prised in that state. Local historians of Colorado often err by pushing the clock too far back, and asserting that Coronado, Oriate, and other sixteenth century conquistadores entered the state. On the other hand, they fail to mention several important expeditions which at a later date did enter the confines of the state. An Outpost of New Mexico.-The Colorado region in Span­ ish days was a frontier of New Mexico. Santa Fe was the base for Colorado as San Agustin was for Georgia. Three interests especially spurred the New Mexicans to make long journeys northward to the Platte River, to the upper Arkansas in central Colorado, and to the Dolores, Uncomphagre, Gunnison, and Grand Rivers on the western borders. These interests were Indians, French intruders, and rumored mines. After 1673 reports of Frenchmen in the Pawnee country constantly worried officials at Santa Fe. Frequently tales of gold and sil'ver were wafted southward to sensitive Spanish ears at the New Mexico capital.
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching the Anza Trail a Five-Day Curriculum for Grades Three and Four in California and Arizona
    Teaching the Anza Trail A Five-Day Curriculum for Grades Three and Four in California and Arizona Produced: 2005, File updated: 2017 National Park Service Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail nps.gov/juba 1 Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Supporting Agencies and Individuals: ................................................................................................... 8 Curriculum Standards Applicable to the Anza Trail Lesson Plan .............................................................. 9 California - Social Science...................................................................................................................... 9 Arizona - Social Science ....................................................................................................................... 10 FOCUS: Arizona ................................................................................................................................... 10 The Second Anza Expedition ................................................................................................................... 11 Program Summary .............................................................................................................................. 11 History and
    [Show full text]
  • The California Mission Music Collection an Inventory of Holdings at the American Music Research Center
    The California mission music collection An inventory of holdings at the American Music Research Center American Music Research Center, University of Colorado at Boulder The California mission music collection Descriptive summary Title California mission music collection Date(s) Identification COU-AMRC-16 Creator(s) Ray, Mary Dominic, Sister, O.P., 1913-1994 Repository The American Music Research Center University of Colorado at Boulder 288 UCB Boulder, CO 80309 Location Housed in the American Music Research Center Physical Description 5 linear feet (6 boxes) Scope and Contents Materials related to the early California missions, from the Sister Mary Dominic Ray Library. Portions pertaining to the research, teaching, and preparation for Sister Mary’s book Gloria Dei have been brought together in this collection. Many of the materials in Series I and II are photographic copies of original documents held by other institutions. Includes articles and related writings relevant to the missions. Administrative Information Arrangement Arranged by topic. Access Open Publication Rights All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the American Music Research Center. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], California mission music collection, University of Colorado, Boulder - Page 2 - The California mission music collection Index Terms Access points related to this collection: Personal names Ray, Mary Dominic, Sister, O.P., 1913-1994 Corporate names American Music Research Center Subject headings Church music -- Catholic Church American Music Research Center (Sister Mary Collection) Missions -- California Brief History of California Missions Between 1769 and 1834 Spanish-speaking Franciscan missionaries established and maintained a number of missions in the land Spanish and Mexican officials called Alta California.
    [Show full text]
  • Rancho San Julian: a Family Ranching Tradition
    WWW.PARAGONFOUNDATION.ORG 46 BY MARILYN FISHER MARILYN BY Tradition RanchingA Family Rancho San Julian: From apoem titled From waiting with clean hands andshining hands clean with waiting men sitting around on the bunkhouse the on around men sitting faces for the clang of the supper bell.” supper ofthe clang the for faces “Work is over for the day. From the the From day. the isover for “Work Looking up from my book, Iseethe book, frommy up Looking step and benches against the wall the against step and benches old adobe kitchen smoke and the andthe smoke kitchen adobe old , En El Rancho El , En de San Julian by Inez de la Guerra Dibblee Guerra dela Inez by good odor of roasting beef. ofroasting good odor All photography and artwork courtesy W. Dibblee Hoyt Rancho San Julian – Family History CENIC CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY ONE winds its way through the golden grassy hills, fertile valleys Sand rocky arroyos at the foot of the Coastal Santa Ynez Mountains north of Santa Barbara, California. Rancho San Julian lies here, where Pacific slopes give way to rich pasture lands bathed in ocean breezes. Here the early Spanish settlers in search of gold found instead a golden land of endless grasses and rich soils. For miles, the expansive grazing lands of San Julian give way to wide expanses marked with barbed wire fences and weathered posts. Black Angus cattle dot the golden hills that rise and fall on their way to the ocean. This is the legacy of San Julian. Like braided buttons along a rawhide rein, the lineal generations at Rancho San Julian perpetuate one of the oldest ranching traditions in the history of this region.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mexican American War and Its Effects
    1 The Mexican-American War and its Effects Justin GaVette History 499 Senior Thesis Primary Reader: Professor Rector Secondary Reader: Professor Jensen May 16, 2005 2 During the 19th century the United States acquired a huge portion of land through the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). President James Polk wished to acquire California by peaceful means, so he sent American envoy John Slidell to Mexico in 1845 to negotiate the sale of Texas, New Mexico, and California for no more than $25 million. This mission failed, so Polk sent General Zachary Taylor across the Rio Grande.1 Mexico saw the crossing of the Nueces River by Taylor’s troops as an act of war so Mexican troops were ordered to cross the Rio Grande. President Polk saw this as aggression towards the US and he declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1846 with the vote of 173-14 in Congress and 42-2 in the Senate both in favor of the war,2 thus starting the Mexican-American War.3 The war was waged for two years and the Americans did not cease hostilities until Mexico ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo under US terms. The treaty was signed on February 2, 1848 and the US Senate amended then ratified it 4 by a vote of 38-14. 1 Jesse S. Reeves, “The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo,” The American Historical Review 10, no. 2 (1905): 311. 2 Maria del Rosario Rodríguez Díaz, Mexicos Vision of Manifest Destiny During the 1847 War,” Journal of Popular Culture 35, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 44.
    [Show full text]
  • Los Días Pasados
    Kropp_Text.qxd 11/9/05 11:25 AM Page 19 chapter 1 Los Días Pasados Tales from Nineteenth-Century California The genesis of Anglo fascination with the Spanish pasts of Southern California arguably was the publication of Ramona in 1884. Helen Hunt Jackson’s melodramatic romance about an Indian Cinderella painted the region’s past as a sublime historical narrative—tragic, breathtaking, luxurious, and intimate. Readers were enthralled. Ramona became the most famous fiction work about Southern Califor- nia and a national bestseller, inspiring countless fans to visit the book’s picturesque setting. In the 1880s and 1890s California tourists carried their copies of Ramona along with their Baedeker travel guides. With the New Englander Jackson as a guide, wealthy easterners spent many a winter tramping up and down the landscape looking for the sites and characters of the story.1 With the onslaught of these Ramona seekers, the transformation of Southern California’s memory began. The romance-starved Americans from the East set about resurrecting the forgotten past and refashioning Southern California’s history and land- scape. Or so goes the conventional wisdom.2 However potent, Ramona was neither the first attempt to romanti- cize Southern California nor the last word on the region. Anglos did not have the first claim on an idyllic vision of the Spanish past, nor was this past an abandoned idea they suddenly rediscovered. In fact, Jackson herself relied upon earlier retellings by Californios, whose own ideal- ized construction of los días pasados, bygone days, was an altered inter- pretation of the past.3 These Spanish speakers’ nostalgia for pregringo 19 Kropp_Text.qxd 11/9/05 11:25 AM Page 20 20 Locating the Past times was itself a response to witnessing their own decline and dispos- session since the loss of the Mexican-American War, with Anglos treat- ing their presence and past on the land largely as obstacles to onrushing progress.
    [Show full text]
  • Political History of Nevada: Chapter 3
    Political History of Nevada Chapter 3 Historical and Political Data 91 CHAPTER 3: HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL DATA Historical and Political Data: Territorial Governments Through Statehood Reviewed and Updated by ART PALMER Former Research Director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB) and Former Director of the LCB GUY ROCHA Former Nevada State Archivist ROBERT E. ERICKSON Former Research Director of the LCB In the beginning, the region now occupied by the State of Nevada was held by Data Historical the Goshute, Mojave, Paiute, Shoshone and Washoe Indians and claimed by the Spanish Empire until the early 1800s. Th e northern extent of the Spanish claim was defi ned as the 42nd parallel in the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 between the United States and Spain. Th is north latitude line serves currently as Nevada’s northern boundary with Oregon and Idaho. Spanish explorations into this region have never been documented clearly enough to establish any European party constituting the earliest expedition into Nevada. If in fact there was some penetration, it must have been by the Spanish in the southernmost portion of our state, possibly as early as 1776. In 1821 Mexico won its war of independence from Spain and gained control over all the former Spanish territory in the area of what is now our “South-West.” Spain had done nothing to occupy or control what is now Nevada, a vast region virtually “terra incognita,” having no permanent non-Indian population and considered barren, arid and inhospitable. Quite understandably, the Spanish concentrated on settlements and nominal control in the more accessible and better-known coastal regions of the Californias and New Mexico.
    [Show full text]
  • Dr. Katherine G. Morrissey / Department' of History STATEMENT by AUTHOR
    SOME KIND OF METTLE: ENTREPRENEURIAL WOMEN OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Myers, Danielle Marie Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 23/09/2021 14:18:01 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/192549 "SOME KIND OF METTLE:' ENTREPRENECIRlAL WOMEN OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH BY DAN IELLE MARIE MYERS A Thesis Submitted to The Honors College In Partial Fu@llrnentof the Bachelor's degree With Honors in History THE UNIVERSfTY Of ARIZONA May 2009 Dr. Katherine G. Morrissey / Department' of History STATEMENT BY AUTHOR I hereby grant to the University of Arizona Library the nonexclusive worldwide right to reproduce and distribute my thesis and abstract (herein, the *licensed materials"), in whole or in part, in any and all media of distribution and in any format in existence now or developed in the future. represent and warrant to the University of Arizona that the licensed materials are my original work, that I am the sole owner of all rights in and to the licensed materials, and that none of the licensed materials irrfringe or violate the rights of others. I furher representthat I have obtained all necessary rights to permit the University of Arizona library to reproduce and distribute any nanpublic third party software necessary to aocess, display, run, or print my thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • How California Was Won: Race, Citizenship, and the Colonial Roots of California, 1846 – 1879
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 How California Was Won: Race, Citizenship, And The Colonial Roots Of California, 1846 – 1879 Camille Alexandrite Suárez University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Suárez, Camille Alexandrite, "How California Was Won: Race, Citizenship, And The Colonial Roots Of California, 1846 – 1879" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3491. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3491 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3491 For more information, please contact [email protected]. How California Was Won: Race, Citizenship, And The Colonial Roots Of California, 1846 – 1879 Abstract The construction of California as an American state was a colonial project premised upon Indigenous removal, state-supported land dispossession, the perpetuation of unfree labor systems and legal, race- based discrimination alongside successful Anglo-American settlement. This dissertation, entitled “How the West was Won: Race, Citizenship, and the Colonial Roots of California, 1849 - 1879” argues that the incorporation of California and its diverse peoples into the U.S. depended on processes of colonization that produced and justified an adaptable acialr hierarchy that protected white privilege and supported a racially-exclusive conception of citizenship. In the first section, I trace how the California Constitution and federal and state legislation violated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This legal system empowered Anglo-American migrants seeking territorial, political, and economic control of the region by allowing for the dispossession of Californio and Indigenous communities and legal discrimination against Californio, Indigenous, Black, and Chinese persons.
    [Show full text]
  • Franciscan Missions in Alta California
    Franciscan Missions in Alta California CALLEY HART The Franciscan mission system in Alta California was developed as a way for both the Catholic Church to spread the word of God and the Spanish Crown to assert possession of California. Franciscan missionaries hoped to spread Catholicism and convert the ‘heathen’ natives to a Catholic peasant class. These missionaries were encouraged by Spain, who hoped to claim Alta California with a minimum amount of capita l and labor. Franciscan missionaries sought to bring California’s native people civilization, agriculture, and a generally ‘better’ way of life. However, the indigenous people were in no need of Spanish help; they already possessed complex political structures, a creation mythology belief system, multiple languages, and abundant natural resources which eliminated a need for organized agriculture. Yet these missions came to dominate the cultural history of California, bringing diseases and drastic lifestyle changes that nearly completely decimated the indigenous people. Between 1770 and 1900 the native population in the California in the mission areas declined from about 310,000 to 20,000.i The killing of the native people and their culture was minimized for decades by European scholars and more specifically the Catholic Church, but the truth can no longer be ignored. Despite good intentions, the missionaries brought nothing but hardships to the people of California and thousands died as a direct result of the creation of the mission system. Romanticizing the Missions Since their founding, the missions of Alta California were seen in a romantic light by the innocent and primarily European observer. There is the easily conjured vision of a perfect community, “where friars kept the Indians working in the mission fields, tried to protect their charges from the nefarious influences of outsiders,”ii which much of the initia l literature and historiography on the topic does little to dispute and in fact encourages.
    [Show full text]