From Jack Williams:

The appearance of recent comments involving a
reiteration of outdated and erroneous claims and
criticisms of the Franciscans in California have
compelled me to respond.

1) There is unequivocal evidence that coercion by
Iberians played little, if any, part in the
particulars of the San Diego region. In fact, San
Diego Mission was never even a reducción (that
is to say, the population was never removed to a
settlement at the site). Instead, most of the
neophytes from this settlement lived in traditional
villages (without any Iberian or other mission
supervision). Many of these communities had a
combination of Christian and non-Christian
populations. In fact, many of the neophytes who died
(and perhaps it should be noted that Indians
would have died even without the presence of
newcomers), are described in terms of the
indigenous communities where they continued to live.
Some Christians are even noted to have
been cremated in the burial register (a custom that
suggests the non-Christians of the community
played an intimate part in their funerals). The
overwhelming majority of neophytes of San Diego
Mission did not live at the site, let alone sleep in
any kind of locked dormitories. Perhaps as much
as two-thirds of the people who lived in the area
assigned by modern ethnographers to the
Kumyaay, had nothing to do with the mission. These
Indian communities were interspersed
throughout the San Diego Presidio District. Some of
the non-Christian communities persisted well
into the 20th century. Similar circumstances prevailed
in the short-lived Iberian settlements found
among the Quechan people living along the Colorado
River. The natives’ successful destruction
of these settlements, and their victory over Iberian
forces during the prolonged attempt to
conquer them during the decade that followed, should
bring into question any claims that Spain
could easily achieve, through military means alone,
the subjugation of a region like modern San
Diego County.

2) The Spanish government was quite willing to conquer
Indians and coerce them to do their
bidding. However, the bottom line for colonial Alta
California is that the Iberian military presence
was simply too weak to have achieved this objective.
The situation was hardly unique.
Throughout most of the northern frontier, native
peoples developed complex interdependencies
with the colonists, and the colonial government, where
certain aspects of native lifeways were
changed as compromises that met the invaders’
expectations. More often then not, the
missionaries were the diplomat-agents that negotiated
these compromises. In exchange for trade
goods, knowledge, and political alliances, the native
people undertook behaviors that included the
adoption of Christianity, and a willingness to provide
military aid. This second aspect of the
mission system in Alta California was far more
important to the government than Christianity
(something that the Franciscans deeply resented). The
truth was that California’s defense against a
foreign invasion was almost entirely dependent on
mission auxiliaries. Enslaved Indians living in
prison camps would have hardly provided an effective
fighting force.

3) The Spanish Crown was unquestionably looking to
benefit from the California colony. They
were happy to exploit Indians in order to gratify
their desires. However, the Franciscans’ agenda,
and that of the crown were not one and the same. The
truth was that the world of Europe was
headed on a collision course with the native peoples
of Alta California. By the middle of the 18th
century, the only question was which of the European
powers would seize control. Sadly, the
introduction of Old World diseases, technology, and
vices, was not an issue. The more
fundamental question was the future of these peoples.
Would they be simply annihilated or would
they be incorporated into some new kind of social
system?

4) As a community, the Franciscans were committed to
serving the poor and spreading their
religion. One can certainly question the morality of
any attempts to convert another person to
one’s own belief. However, it is absurd, and unfair,
to characterize the men who gave their lives
to improving the world they lived in, as brutal
murderers. They believed that the Indian people
had a right to a future as vassals of a benevolent
king and God. If this belief, and the missionaries’
actions, were misguided, their genuine fervor to do
good was nonetheless valid. To me, it is an
extraordinary thing when anyone gives up their life to
achieve something that benefits other
people. Serra and the other Father Presidents
conceived of building a kind of “heaven on earth.”
They failed. However, the fact that they had the
courage to even conceive of such an objective, in
the context of the violence, racism, and hatred, that
surrounded them, is a testimony of something
quite extraordinary. It is beyond the ability of
researchers to rationally account for such
phenomenon. However, it is foolish to deny that it is
a relevant factor in the development of the
region.

5) The mission system was designed to replace extant
native lifeways with one that corresponded
more closely with those of Europeans. However, the
structure of this transformation aimed not a
producing slaves, or killing Indians, but rather on
creating vassals (not citizens - a concept that is
quite different from vassalage). The missionaries
envisioned future Indian communities with
distinct traditions that were politically integrated
along the lines of Iberian urban entities. A new
kind of Indian political leadership would assume
control over local matters. The new community
identities were associated with individual missions
(thus producing Luisenos, Fernandinos,
Dieguenos, etc.). That these new “republicas de
Indios” had validity to the Indian people is
evidenced in the identification and social bonds of
marriage and association that can be recognized
during the later mission period and the era that
followed secularization. The native people who
were drawn into the missions, both through their
traditional political leaders and as individuals,
creatively manipulated the Iberian program to gain
benefits. In short, a new kind of native
community emerged that had continuities with both the
pre-contact and Ibero-American cultures.
The situation was certainly more complicated than
either the view that the natives enthusiastically
abandoned their old ways, or that they were forced to
convert at the tip of a sword.

6) Claims that Indian people (or the majority of
Indian people) were forced into the California
missions need to be supported by specific evidence
from primary documents and archaeology. A
lot of rhetoric has been offered by mission critics
(see comments at the end of this posting).
However, efforts to produce substantiation of such
claims have simply not been forthcoming.

7) Finally, there is no moral justification for the
missions in terms of broader issues of human
rights. Spain simply asserted a claim. The missions
played a part in the program for colonization.
However, the entire discussion of this sort seems to
me to fall outside of scholarship. It seems to
me that it is a peculiar thing that the same people
who assert the immorality of European conquest
are often more than willing to paper over Native
American cultural characteristics and behaviors
that are inconsistent with their progressive values.
There are too many people who advocate a
stance of cultural relativism for traits such as
native family violence, military aggression,
cannibalism, sexual exploitation, and human sacrifice,
who vehemently attack the idea of
European expansion and its Christian ideological
components. The truth is that there was much to
criticize, and to celebrate, found in all human
cultures. A particular hatred for Europeans (and
their civilization) is no more responsible than a
particular hatred for Asians, Africans, or Native
Americans.

In the end, one has to ask what motivates ongoing
attacks on the California missionaries in light
of the rapidly accumulating evidence of  recent
scholarship. Even some of the harshest critics of
the missions, in areas that were subjected to the most
overwhelming changes and depopulation
(such as that which occurred in the San Francisco Bay
Area), now recognize that claims of forced
conversions were simply wrong. For example, people
with no interest in embracing a positive
view of the missions, such as Randal Miliken, have had
to deny the validity of an older generation
of critics (such as Sherbourne Cook), who simply
failed to accurately translate the documents
they were studying. It is also obvious that these
early revisionists jumped to conclusions based on
feelings that were inspired by their own prejudices.

The reality of the mission experience within
California was diverse. It clearly had tragic
consequences for many Native Peoples. However, in all
that diversity of native experiences, the
oversimplified rhetoric that howls at the singular
evil character of the Iberian Christians, and
which often echoes modern sentiments of political
correctness, simply does not ring true. During
the second half of the 20th century the revisionists
that were inclined to make such attacks had an
opportunity to put forth evidence to support their
ideas. Their attempts to do so have been
unconvincing.

Jack S. Williams


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