Spanish Missions

Spanish Missions in California
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Spanish Missions in California
This is research paper looks into details of the impacts the Spanish missions had on the current California. In order to be able to do this, the paper goes back to history and looks into details the arrival of the Spanish missionaries in California and how they established themselves and intermingled with the native people. It also looks into the history of the native people in California and their way of life before the initial entry of the missionaries. In looking at the historical context, the paper uses different sources in quest of identifying the arrival of the Spanish missions including their challenges and the impacts it had on the region both politically, economically as well as socially. It also details some of the impacts the Spanish missions had to California and its people until the present day.
Consequently, the 16th century was a period where the European countries were determined in discovering new lands and colonize them in order to expand their countries as they had already occupied all the free lands in Europe. This led to the discovery of the New World, America by the Explorers. The Spanish explorer Hernan Cortez had led his country into discovering and conquering of a new land Aztec and named it New Spain, current Mexico (Weber, 2009). After being excited by the new conquering, the King of Spain asked Juan Cabrillo, who had served under Cortez crew, to sail Pacific in search for new rich places for Spain.

This was after Cabrillo had sailed to the west and was not satisfied with the resources in the west.
Cabrillo and his crew left Aztec on June 24, 1542, and three months later discovered the port of Alta California, later named Port of San Diego by Cabrillo’s predecessor Sebastian Vizcaino who took over after Cabrillo’s death. As a result, he had suffered while sailing north of the Pacific. Sebastian had been sent by the King 60 years after the death of Cabrillo since the King had heard rumors that Russia, Portugal, and England had been seen strolling along the coast and he feared that they might occupy the land (Weber, 2009). Sebastian also failed, and years later the King decided to use Missionaries to occupy the land since it would a strategic place where the Spanish ships from Asia would harbor and would favor them trade wise. The reason behind the use of Missions by the king was that the soft approach of the missionaries would be a great tactic to convert the natives into being assimilated to be citizens of Spain (Smith, 2006).
Since Spain had previously conquered Mexico, they had experiences of what to do and what to avoid in order to be able to win the natives, colonize them and take their lands. King Carlos wanted to convert the natives to Christianity under Catholic since Spain was under Catholic. This would make it easier for Spain to convince them to be part of Spanish citizens (Weber, 2009). The Franciscans were given the mandate to take control of the missions while the Jesuits were tasked with controlling the soldiers and missions in the military forts. This was after the King felt that Jesuits were becoming very power and decided to reduce their control by involving the Franciscans who appointed Father Junipero Serra to be their man. By the time of his death in 1759, he had established nine missions in California. By 1823, Spain had established a significant number of missions that were almost 21 in number in both the San Francisco and San Diego Bay (Weber, 2009).
In as much as the Spanish Missions and soldiers had previous experience in colonization, their occupation of California was not a smooth as they had thought. The native people of California were mainly Chumash, soldiers, and Tipai among others had their traditions which they were not ready to give up. They were used to the life of hunting, fishing and gathering (Native American Public Telecommunications, 2006). When the Spanish Missions came in they introduced farming, forcing the natives to work in the farms, look after their lives and other controlled production activities. The Spanish soldiers brutally kidnapped the natives, and they gave them new Spanish names and uniforms. The Christian missionaries refused to respect the local religions and imposed their Christianity on the natives. In addition to that, the natives were offended by the foreigners taking their land and forcing them to work as slaves. The natives also accused the Spaniards to have brought new strange diseases, that is, malaria and smallpox among others that was killing them mercilessly.
By 1779, the locals were fed up and started revolving against the newcomers, the Spaniards. The revolution was first started by the Ipai and Tipai when they decided to burn down the mission post of San Diego. They were, however, suppressed and many of them were killed. The revolutions continued marking deaths of thousands of the indigenous people (Native American Public Telecommunications, 2006).
By 1810, the revolution had spread to New Spain which is the current Mexico. They natives had decided to fight relentlessly for their independence. During the time, the Spain resources were being stretched as they were also at war with France and it was also a period marked by new settlers in California. The cost of maintaining the growing population combined with redirection of the Spain resources on France made it difficult for the missions and the solders to survive as their mother country was gradually withdrawing their support. Unable to support its activities and pay its soldiers, Spain lost the war to the natives in Mexico and 1821 (Native American Public Telecommunications, 2006).
After the independence, the new settlers urged the Spain government to make the neophytes citizens of Spain, a demand which the Spain accepted but they did not enforce the law. This made the neophytes to continue working under the Spanish Missions. In 1826, the Mexican government passed another law which freed the neophytes. Most of them, however, decided not to leave the Missions since it was the only life they knew having stayed and worked there for years. The situations worsen, and the fathers decided to leave with their families and look for greener pastures in other areas so that they could sustain themselves. This is because since they had lost their free labor hunger had crippled their activities. Furthermore, the new settlers also demanded from Spain that they drop the religious missions. The missionaries were divided between the towns and the local Californians. The remaining building and missionary lands were sold to the settlers and the marked the end of missionaries and the beginning of secularization (Weber, 2009).
Simultaneously, having stayed in California and establish their colonialism for more than a century, Spain left a lot of impacts in the state. One of the major impacts is in the population of the native California Indians. The missionaries’ great reduced the number of the native Indians especially the Ohlone from around 300,000 at the beginning of the missions to less than 20,000 by the end of the missions (O’Neill, 1949). This was caused by some factors mainly; mistreatment and subsequent neglect by the Missions. When the Spanish missions arrived, they grabbed the land from the natives and forced them to work as slaves. They mistreated the natives and even introduced whipping to those who ‘misbehaved’ according to their definition of misbehaving. Most of the natives died from mistreatment while others died from hunger. They also contracted diseases such as malaria and smallpox which had come with the Spanish. This was because the natives had not experienced such disease and their bodies had not developed immunity to them, unlike the Spaniards.
When Mexico gained independence, and the Spanish missions started collapsing, the land that they had taken from the native California Indians was divided among the Mexican and the settlers (Smith, 2006). This left the natives as destitute since they had no means to sustain themselves and continually affected their populations as some got absorbed through intermarriages and deaths. There was also the factor of genocide, this where the natives were massacred where they were revolting against the Spanish missions. The Spanish soldiers killed tens of thousands of the California Indians which is another factor that can be said to have contributed to the reduction in population (Smith, 2006). When the settlers came to California, the Spanish law allowed them to indenture the native children who were found on the streets of California. This made the settlers to intentionally kill the parents so that the children could end up as orphans. Therefore, ending up indenturing them as provided for by the law.
Besides, the another impact was the erosion of the native religious religion and culture. The main aim or tactic of Spanish missions in colonizing the new land was by converting of the natives into their Christian religion (Smith, 2006). This was done by all means even by converting the natives into neophytes. Most of them were converted and in as much as it is argued that they were forced to live by the Christian rule, some of the natives were actually genuine, and he embraced the new way of life and religion abandoning their indigenous religion. Also as a result of their land being taken, most of the natives were forced to turn into the Missions and work for them in order to survive. Those who went to work and live in the Missions were forced to convert to Christianity and, therefore, they abandon their religion (Smith, 2006).
When the Spanish government announced freedom of the natives, the neophytes opted to remain in the Missions and serve the new religion since they had already lost their homes and had served the Missions for ages and, therefore, did not have anywhere to go. This further made difficult the restoration of their old religion. Even though the issue of culture is greatly argued against where some believe that the natives retained their culture, it is also evident that the Spanish missions greatly affected their cultural way of life (Heizer, 1978). Before the establishment of the Spanish mission, the natives had their way of life. For example, they mainly survived through hunting, gathering, and fishing. When the Europeans came, they established formal permanent settlements and a different way of earning a living. They introduced farming and pastoralist as well as other economic and social activities (O’Neill, 1949). The natives were forced to work in these formal settlements, something that they had not done before and was not in their culture but they had no say in it but to obey. Even after the collapse of the Spanish missions, the natives, having lost their land never went to their hunting, fishing, and gathering (Heizer, 1978).
Language is also another impact that cannot be ignored. When the Spanish missions arrived in California, they did not have a way of spreading the gospel or a way of communicating with the natives. In order to succeed in their missions, they had to ensure that they a common language and the common language, in this case, was to teach the natives how to communicate in Spanish (Heizer, 1978). The neophytes and others who were interacting with the Spanish missions were forced to learn the Spanish language and were also given Spanish names. This impact is felt until the present day as the California people still speak Spanish and the Spanish names are still evident in California. There is also evidence of many locations under Spanish names such as San Francisco and San Diego among others (Heizer, 1978).
There is also the issue of centralized governance. Before the establishment of the settlements, the natives used to live in harmony but not under central governance. Each tribe in of the native California Indians has its own tribes and clans, and their governance did not go beyond that. When the Spaniards came, they established the formal way of governance through the Missions and treated California as one territory and disregarded the individual tribes. This continued even after the collapse of the missions as they were left in the hands of the central government of Mexico and subsequently under Americans (O’Neill, 1949).
In addition to the above impacts, there was the part of the introduction of farming, crops and farm animals. In as much this can be viewed to have contributed negatively to the erosion of the Spanish culture, it is also a positive impact as there was assurance of continued supply of food and did not have to move from one place to another in search of greener pasture (Smith, 2006). To summarize on the impacts, the positive or the negative impacts are subjective to which perspective it is looked from. For example, if looked from the native Indians side, it had more negative effects than positive ones while if viewed from the Spanish side from both the government and the Spanish Missions, there are more positive impacts than negative ones (Smith, 2006). For instance, from the Spanish and Christianity side of view, the introduction of Christianity which is still practiced today can be concluded as a positive impact, while from the native Californian side of view, who believes in traditional religion, Christianity came to take away their religion from them by an introduction of strange beliefs.
In conclusion, the establishment of the Spanish missions had everlasting effects on the state of California. This can mainly be seen with the low number of the native Indian population, the names of the places, and the historical artifacts among others. The impacts can be both negative and positive depending on the side you decide to look from.
References
BIBLIOGRAPHY O’Neill F. Gordon. (1949). MISSIONS OF SPANISH ERA HAD WIDE INFLUENCE. In C. Monitor, MISSIONS OF SPANISH ERA HAD WIDE INFLUENCE. San Francisco: Stanford University Press.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Heizer, R. F. (1978). Handbook on North American Indians Vol. 8. Washington: Smithsonian Institute.
Native American Public Telecommunications. (2006). Assimilation, Relocation, Genocide. Retrieved December 7, 2016, from Indian Country Diaries: http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/calif.html
Smith, J. (2006). California Missions. California: Mouse Books.
Weber, T. (2009, February 9). Historical Information About the Founding of the California Missions. Retrieved December 2016, from california-missions.org website: http://www.californias-missions.org/history.htm