Spanish missions in California

[14] Governor José Joaquín de Arrillaga approved the plan the following year; however, an outbreak of sarampión (measles) killing some 200 Tongva people coupled with a scarcity of land for agriculture and potable water left the success of such a venture in doubt, so no effort to found an island mission was ever made.

[citation needed] In addition to the presidio (royal fort) and pueblo (town), the misión was one of the three major agencies employed by the Spanish sovereign to extend its borders and consolidate its colonial territories.

[17] The Spanish Californians had never strayed from the coast when establishing their settlements; Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad was located farthest inland, being only some thirty miles (48 kilometers) from the shore.

To sustain a mission, the padres required converted Native Americans, called neophytes, to cultivate crops and tend livestock in the volume needed to support a fair-sized establishment.

The founding of a mission followed longstanding rules and procedures; the paperwork involved required months, sometimes years of correspondence, and demanded the attention of virtually every level of the bureaucracy.

Once empowered to erect a mission in a given area, the men assigned to it chose a specific site that featured a good water supply, plenty of wood for fires and building materials, and ample fields for grazing herds and raising crops.

The majority of mission sanctuaries were oriented on a roughly east–west axis to take the best advantage of the sun's position for interior illumination; the exact alignment depended on the geographic features of the particular site.

Some fanciful accounts regarding the construction of the missions claimed that tunnels were incorporated in the design, to be used as a means of emergency egress in the event of attack; however, no historical evidence (written or physical) has ever been uncovered to support these assertions.

[19][notes 2] The Alta California missions, known as reductions (reducciones) or congregations (congregaciones), were settlements founded by the Spanish colonizers of the New World with the purpose of totally assimilating indigenous populations into European culture and the Catholic religion.

Indians were congregated around the mission proper through forced resettlement, in which the Spanish "reduced" them from what they perceived to be a free "undisciplined'" state with the ambition of converting them into "civilized" members of colonial society.

Sixty-seven missionaries died at their posts (two as martyrs: Padres Luis Jayme and Andrés Quintana), while the remainder returned to Europe due to illness, or upon completing their ten-year service commitment.

The women were committed to dressmaking, knitting, weaving, embroidering, laundering, and cooking, while some of the stronger girls ground flour or carried adobe bricks (weighing 55 lb, or 25 kg each) to the men engaged in building.

They were taught to build adobe houses, tan leather hides, shear sheep, weave rugs and clothing from wool, make ropes, soap, paint, and other useful duties.

[48] When Native Women attempted to abort their unborn children – which they had conceived as a byproduct of rape, the Friars would have them beaten, chained in iron, shaved, and stipulated to stand in-front of the altar each mass with a decorated wooden newborn.

[48] This trend of violence was due to the Franciscans' desire for a greater Hispanicized population in Alta California, both for protection against a foreign invasion and for a labor force to benefit the Spanish Empire.

The grazing-overgrazing problems were also recognized by the Spaniards, who periodically had extermination parties cull and kill thousands of excess livestock, when herd populations grew beyond their control or the land's capacity.

Workers in the carpintería (carpentry shop) used crude methods to shape beams, lintels, and other structural elements; more skilled artisans carved doors, furniture, and wooden implements.

[citation needed] Prior to the establishment of the missions, the native peoples knew only how to utilize bone, seashells, stone, and wood for building, tool making, weapons, and so forth.

During his circumnavigation of the world, Drake anchored in a harbor just north of present-day San Francisco, California, establishing friendly relations with the Coastal Miwok and claiming the territory for Queen Elizabeth I.

[75][notes 20] Visitador General José de Gálvez engaged the Franciscans, under the leadership of Friar Junípero Serra, to take charge of those outposts on March 12, 1768.

"[notes 23] A French privateer sailing under the flag of Argentina, Pirata Buchar (as Bouchard was known to the locals) worked his way down the California coast, conducting raids on the installations at Monterey, Santa Barbara, and San Juan Capistrano, with limited success.

[94] By 1819, Spain decided to limit its "reach" in the New World to Northern California due to the costs involved in sustaining these remote outposts; the northernmost settlement therefore is Mission San Francisco Solano, founded in Sonoma in 1823.

[100] All Indians within the military districts of San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Monterey who were found qualified were freed from missionary rule and made eligible to become Mexican citizens.

[101][102][notes 29] By 1830, even the neophyte populations themselves appeared confident in their own abilities to operate the mission ranches and farms independently; the padres, however, doubted the capabilities of their charges in this regard.

[103] Accelerating immigration, both Mexican and foreign, increased pressure on the Alta California government to seize the mission properties and dispossess the natives in accordance with Echeandía's directive.

[110][notes 31] The Act also provided for the colonization of both Alta and Baja California, the expenses of this latter move to be borne by the proceeds gained from the sale of the mission property to private interests.

In 1895, journalist and historian Charles Fletcher Lummis criticized the Act and its results, saying: Disestablishment—a polite term for robbery—by Mexico (rather than by native Californians misrepresenting the Mexican government) in 1834, was the death blow of the mission system.

One writer, Gregory Orfalea, estimates that pre-contact population was reduced by 33 percent during Spanish and Mexican rule, mostly through introduction of European diseases, but much more after the United States takeover in 1848.

[122] Some modern anthropologists cite a cultural bias on the part of the missionaries that blinded them to the natives' plight and caused them to develop strong negative opinions of the California Indians.

[citation needed] In 1875 American illustrator Henry Chapman Ford began visiting each of the twenty-one mission sites, where he created a historically important portfolio of watercolors, oils, and etchings.

The locations of the 21 Franciscan missions in Alta California .
A view of Mission San Juan Capistrano . At left is the façade of the first adobe church with its added espadaña ; behind the campanario , or "bell wall" is the "Sacred Garden." The Mission has earned a reputation as the "Loveliest of the Franciscan Ruins." [ 1 ]
Mission San Luis Rey de Francia , circa 1910. This mission is architecturally distinctive because of the strong Moorish lines exhibited.
The Missionaries as They Came and Went. Franciscans of the California missions donned gray habits , in contrast to the brown that is typically worn today. [ 15 ]
A drawing of Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo prepared by Captain George Vancouver depicts the grounds as they appeared in November 1792. From A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World.
An illustration depicts the death of the Rev. Luís Jayme by angry locals at Mission San Diego de Alcalá , November 4, 1775. [ 20 ] The independence uprising was the first of a dozen similar incidents that took place in Alta California during the Mission Period; however, most rebellions tended to be localized and short-lived due to the Spaniards' superior weaponry (native resistance more often took the form of non-cooperation (in forced labor), return to their homelands (desertion of forced relocation), and raids on mission livestock). [ 21 ] [ 22 ] [ notes 3 ] [ 23 ] [ notes 4 ]
Georg von Langsdorff, an early visitor to California, sketched a group of Costeño dancers at Mission San José in 1806. "The hair of these people is very coarse, thick, and stands erect; in some it is powdered with down feathers," Langsdorff noted. "Their bodies are fantastically painted with charcoal dust, red clay, and chalk. The foremost dancer is ornamented all over with down feathers, which gives him a monkey-like appearance; the hindermost has had the whimsical idea of painting his body to imitate the uniform of a Spanish soldier, with his boots, stockings, breeches, and upper garments." [ 30 ]
" Ya Viene El Alba " ("The Dawn Already Comes"), typical of the hymns sung at the missions. [ 40 ]
A view of the Catalan forges at Mission San Juan Capistrano, the oldest existing facilities ( circa 1790s) of their kind in the State of California. The sign at the lower right-hand corner proclaims the site as being "...part of Orange County's first industrial complex."
Natives utilize a primitive plow to prepare a field for planting near Mission San Diego de Alcalá.
Mission Santa Barbara's lavandería was constructed by Chumash neophytes around 1806.
The first recorded baptisms in Alta California were performed in " The Canyon of the Little Christians ." [ 78 ]
Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada violated ecclesiastical asylum at Mission San Diego de Alcalá on March 26, 1776, when he forcibly removed a 'neophyte' in direct defiance of the padres . Missionary Pedro Font later described the scene: "...Rivera entered the chapel with drawn sword...con la espada desnuda en la mano." Rivera y Moncada was subsequently excommunicated from the Catholic Church for his actions. [ 82 ]
Pablo Tac , who lived at Mission San Luis Rey in the 1820s and 1830s, penned this drawing depicting two young men wearing skirts of twine and feathers with feather decorations on their heads, rattles in their hands, and (perhaps) painted decorations on their bodies. [ 90 ]
Illuminated choir missals on display at Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in 1913. [ 116 ]
Hugo Reid , an outspoken critic of the mission system and its effects on the native populations, at Rancho Santa Anita circa 1850.
Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo , established in 1770, was the headquarters of the Californian mission system from 1797 until 1833.
El Presidio Real de Santa Bárbara
A view of the restored Mission San Juan Bautista and its three-bell campanario ("bell wall") in 2004.
The courtyard of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, with California's oldest pepper tree ( Schinus molle ), planted in 1830, visible through the arch. [ 153 ]
Misión San Juan de Capistrano by Henry Chapman Ford, 1880. The work depicts the rear of the "Great Stone Church" and part of the mission's campo santo .