May 19, 2022
The actual occurrences and treatment of Indigenous people are incredibly different from the narrative told in Californian education.
According to the Native American Heritage Commission (NAHC), Spain originally authorized the conversion to Christianity of Indigenous people. The final goal was to give control of the missions to the Indigenous people.
“Politically, the goal was to create colonies of Native peoples in service of the Spanish crown, but self-governing colonies never formed in great part because of the extremely high death rates,” said Jonathan Cordero, the Executive Director of the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone.
Treatment of Native peoples was harsh. According to Tatiana Irwin, professor of history at the College of San Mateo, other European countries compared this treatment to additional forced labor.
“European powers coming to California compared the way the padres and soldiers were treating the California Indians to forced labor on sugar plantations in the Caribbean,” Irwin said.
Mission Santa Clara describes harsh punishments used at the mission, such as rescinding food, punishments to the body, and imprisonment. According to “The California Missions Were Far From Faultless” by Francis F. Guest, punishment also included whipping, which often caused severe injury, disembowelment, hanging, and castration.
“Physical punishment was used in the resocialization process by the Spanish,” Cordero said. “This punishment was not normal for Native peoples, and they experienced it as abuse.”
According to Frederick Gaines, the chair of Ethnic Studies at the College of San Mateo, Junipero Serra took inspiration from the punishments from the Spanish Inquisition and often beat himself.
“[Serra] was brutal,” Gaines said. “He believed in torturing people when they did not convert, so they brought that perspective to the ‘New World’ [of] you break the man, you save the soul.”
Many devices found at the missions were similar to or the same as those used during the Spanish Inquisition, including cats of nine tails, clubs, and devices that would mutilate the body. According to Cordero and Gaines, Indigenous women would also experience sexual assault and punishment for engaging in sexual acts. Gaines also mentioned how different forms of erasure of Indigenous culture eventually led to genocide.
“Part of colonization is you must commit epistemicide, erase their way of knowing,” Gaines said. “You must [then] commit linguicide, erasing their language or condemning them for speaking their language, which leads to genocide.”
Outside of punishment, the conditions Indigenous people lived in were harsh. The Spaniards demanded large amounts of labor from the Indigenous people that resided in the missions.
“If you look at the work [the Spaniards] were asking [Indigenous people] to do, a lot of this was hard labor; they were constructing missions,” Irwin said. “They were also doing most of the work growing food for the Spanish.”
Demanding work and punishment were among the hardships the Indigenous people faced directly from the conquistadores but they were not the only difficulties. Along with colonization and abuse, the Spaniards brought a multitude of diseases with them to which the Indigenous communities were not immune.
The Native American Heritage commission states that diseases brought to California by the Spanish included measles, smallpox, syphilis, and chickenpox. The uncleanly state of the missions and colonial population centers also contributed to the decline of the general population.
Conquistadores used several methods of attracting the Indigenous population to the missions. According to “Sifting the Evidence: Perceptions of Life at the Ohlone (Costanoan) Missions of Alta California” by Russell K. Skowronek, the first Ohlone to join the missions were given gifts such as cloth, ribbons, and beads.
Widespread disease across the Indigenous population also gave cause for joining the missions, as they provided an alternative to a severe climate. However, Indigenous people did not only join the missions of their own accord. Often, the Spanish captured them to create a congregation, taking them away from their lives and forcing them into the missions.
“Colonization contributed to the loss of culture, language, tribal organizations, leadership structures, and land,” Cordero said. “The lack of continuity in leadership and tribal organization makes California Indians ineligible for federal recognition.”
The social structure followed a caste system in the missions, following social classification and then racial classification. According to “Native Persistence: Marriage, Social Structure, Political Leadership, and Intertribal Relations at Mission Dolores, 1777–1800” by Cordero, the structure followed a social ranking of European versus non-European.
“Indigenous people were always at the bottom of the social structure,” Cordero said.
Typically, the darker the color of someone’s skin, the lower they were in this structure.
Ultimately, the treatment of Native people was abusive, and it doesn’t fit the narrative that Californian schools teach during class field trips or the infamous mission project many students built during fourth grade.
“There were about 80,000 California Indians forced into the California missions from 1769 to 1834. Of those people, 78% died,” Cordero said. “So roughly three-quarters of all the California Indians brought into the California mission system or forced into the California mission system died an untimely death. How is that a model of success?”
