New Mexico Historical Review Volume 52 Number 1 Article 4 1-1-1977 The Making of Spanish Indian Policy on the Northwest Coast Christon I. Archer Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmhr Recommended Citation Archer, Christon I.. "The Making of Spanish Indian Policy on the Northwest Coast." New Mexico Historical Review 52, 1 (2021). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmhr/vol52/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Historical Review by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. 45 THE MAKING OF SPANISH INDIAN POLICY ON THE NORTHWEST COAST CHRISTON I. ARCHER DURING the second half of the eighteenth century, the Spanish empire in North America underwent a most remarkable period of expansion. While frontier colonizing and missionizing projects had not ceased even in the doldrums of the seventeenth century, limitations of manpower and financial resources prevented incor poration' of continental expanses which had attracted the earlier explorers. Spain had developed a unique settlement system, the mission-presidio, which served to draw Indians into a sedentary life and to prepare th~m for conversion to Christianity. Although this system was not always successful with the warlike and no madic plains Indians, the experience of the Jesuits and the Fran ciscans in the Californias tended to confirm accepted theories. In an effort to secure the northern approaches to New Spain, it was quite natural that the mission-presidio should be.