A California Mission

Fray Juniper Serra

Today is the feast of Blessed Junipero Serra, founder of the California missions. The Fresno Bee has an interesting article about the finding of a mission artifact at San Gabriel Mission.

Regarding the work of the Mission Indians, the lead archaeologist comments: "Most modern historians consider it to be forced labor." 

In CTP's soon-to-be-published high school American history book, this misconception is corrected: 

The Indians were not forced onto the missions, but invited; once they came and were baptized, however, they were under the authority of the missionaries and forbidden to leave. The missionaries not only taught the Indians the Catholic faith but various crafts, the art of farming, and cattle raising. The missionaries treated the Indians as children, with the aim to educate and train them so that mission pueblo and farms could eventually be turned over to them, and the missionaries replaced with secular priests. (Chapter 7, Lands of Hope and Promise: A History of North America)

It was the missionaries' experience that if the newly baptized and newly catechized Indians were allowed to live outside the mission, they soon fell back under the influence of the shamans or medicine men, who controlled them with fear and predictions of disaster for abandoning their old worship. There were also unscrupulous Spaniards, especially soldiers, who would take advantage of unprotected Indians, subjecting them to literal slavery.The Franciscan Friars saw themselves as true protectors of the Indians, both spiritually and physically, and formed the mission rules for the perceived good of their "spiritual children."

Remember: Tomorrow is the last day of the Textbook Giveaway. There is still time to enter.