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While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!

 

 

 

Mission Indians of California

Mission Indians of California. The first settlements in California were not made until more than a century after the earliest colonization of the peninsula of Lower California. The mission of San Diego, founded in 1769, was the first permanent white settlement within the limits of the present state; it was followed by 20 other Franciscan missions, founded at intervals until the year 1823 in the region between San Diego and San Francisco bay and just north of the latter. With very few exceptions the Indians of this territory were brought under the influence of the missionaries with comparatively little difficulty, and more by persuasion than by the use of force. There is scarcely a record of any resistance or rebellion on the part of the natives resulting in the loss of life of even a single Spaniard at any of the missions except at San Diego, where there occurred an insignificant outbreak a few years after the foundation.
     The influence of the missions was probably greater temporally than spiritually. The Indians were taught and compelled to work at agricultural pursuits and to some extent even at trades. Discipline, while not severe, was rigid; refusal to work was met by deprivation of food, and absence from church or tardiness there, by corporal punishments and confinement. Consequently the Indians, while often displaying touch personal affection for the missionaries themselves, were always inclined to be recalcitrant toward the system, which amounted to little else than beneficent servitude. There were many attempts at escape from the missions. Generally these were fruitless, both on account of the presence of a few soldiers at each mission and through the aid given these by other Indians more under the fathers' influence. The Indians at each mission lived at and about it, often in houses of native type and construction, but were dependent for most of their food directly on the authorities. They consisted of the tribes of the region in which the mission was founded and of more distant tribes, generally from the interior. In some cases these were easily induced to settle at the mission and to subject themselves to its discipline and routine, the neophytes afterward acting as agents to bring in their wilder brethren.
     The number of Indians at each mission varied from a few hundred to two or three thousand. There were thus in many cases settlements of considerable size; they possessed large herds of cattle and sheep and controlled many square miles of land. Theoretically this wealth was all the property of the Indians, held in trust for then by the Franciscan fathers. In 1834 the Mexican government, against the protests of the missionaries, secularized the missions. By this step the property of the missions was divided among the Indians, and they were free from the restraint and authority of their former masters. In a very few years, as might have been expected and as was predicted by the fathers, the Indians had been either deprived of their lands and property or had squandered them, and were living in a hopeless condition. Their numbers decreased rapidly, so that today in the region between San Francisco and Santa Barbara there are probably fewer than 50 Indians. In southern California the decrease has been less rapid, and there are still about 3,000 of what are known as Mission Indians; these are, however, all of Shoshonean or Yuman stock. The decrease of population began even during the mission period, and it is probable that the deaths exceeded the births at the missions from the first, though during the earlier years the population was maintained or even increased by accessions from unconverted tribes. At the time of secularization, in 1834, the population of many missions was less than a decade earlier. The total number of baptisms during the 65 years of mission activity was about 90,000, and the population in the territory subject to mission influence may be estimated as having been at any one time from 35,000 to 45,000. At this proportion the population of the entire state, before settlement by the whites, would have been at least 100,000, and was probably much greater. See California, Indians of, with accompanying map, also Missions; Population

Additional Mission Resources

The books presented are for their historical value only and are not the opinions of the Webmasters of the site.
 
Handbook of American Indians, 1906

Indian Missions of the United States

 


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