This paper examines the Spanish mission system in Alta California during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It traces how José de Gálvez and Father Junípero Serra established the first missions beginning in 1769, analyzing Spain's political motivations alongside the Franciscans' religious goals. The paper surveys the growth of twenty-one mission communities, their role in resettling and converting Native populations, and the eventual decline of the system due to falling indigenous populations and rising anti-Spanish sentiment. It concludes with the 1834 secularization decree, which transferred mission lands from Franciscan control to civil authority and converted mission villages into pueblos.
This paper introduces and discusses the Spanish missions in California between 1700 and 1800. Specifically, it examines how the missions were founded, the Spanish motivation to found them, and the eventual secularization of the missions.
One of Spain's traditional methods of conquering a new territory was to establish missions that would bring the "savages" who lived there the "true" faith. Jesuit missionaries traveled with Cortez, and after Spain's domination of Mexico, they established missions across Mexico and into the desert Southwest of what is now the United States. José de Gálvez came from Spain to serve as the "commandancy-general" of the northern area of Mexico. One of his first aims was to expand Spain's influence into Alta California, to gain more land, more converts to Catholicism, and greater world power for Spain. He determined the best way to accomplish this was by adding missions to the already vigorous mission system in Baja California.
At first, the Jesuits founded and manned the missions in Baja, but they were expelled. Father Junípero Serra, a Franciscan monk, was appointed to take over from the Jesuits and manage the missions in Baja. Gálvez urged him to also establish missions in Alta California, which Serra agreed to do — though not for the same reasons as Gálvez, who was hoping to add to his own power and gain prestige with royalty in Spain.
Serra had no such motives. Suddenly, however, he volunteered to accompany the expedition and personally launch the new missions. An opportunity for greater service to his God? Or a subconscious desire to escape the hopelessness of Baja? There is no way to be certain. As one historian notes, "He has been encysted for so long in the Romance of the Missions that reality is dimmed by the amber carapaces of sentiment" (Lavender 38).
Serra has long been known as the father of the missions and of the El Camino Real, the winding path that linked the missions of California together. However, Serra's first task was to command the missions of Baja, rather than expand Spain's influence northward. "The principal objects, as stated by the laws, were to convert the natives and lift them out of their savagery and barbarism to a state of civilization. These were indeed the primary objects of the missionaries themselves, but they were secondary to other factors in the attention of the royal government" (Chapman 151).
The main thrust of Spain's interest was Monterey, midway up the California coastline and a central point for gaining influence in Alta California. Nevertheless, the Spanish recognized the need for supply ports along the way. In 1769, four groups landed in San Diego Bay. Although Monterey remained the main goal, the leaders agreed that the four parties should rendezvous first at San Diego Bay and found a mission and presidio there before pushing farther north. As Lavender explains, "If circumstance allowed, an intermediate station, to be called San Buenaventura, was to be built at some desirable location between the other two" (39).
San Buenaventura was later built near Santa Barbara in 1782, and San Carlos Borromeo was built near Monterey in 1770. "Over the following seventy years, Franciscan missionaries founded twenty-one mission communities and numerous satellite settlements in Alta California" (Jackson 37). Once established, the missions lured nearby natives into the mission communities with gifts such as food, tobacco, and clothing. The converts and the missionaries were the only inhabitants of the mission itself, along with a small contingent of Spanish soldiers left to guard the area. "No Spaniards other than the missionaries, the mission guard, and an occasional civilian official could stop at the mission or reside there" (Chapman 151). The Spanish referred to this practice as congregación — "the resettlement of Indian populations in nucleated settlements" (Jackson 13).
The mission system worked well for Spain and helped establish strongholds throughout California. "Once rooted, the missionary holdings spread rapidly. Within half a century each station's pasture lands sprawled across territory once ranged by several tribelets — a total area, eventually, of some 9 million desirable acres" (Lavender 13).
"Indigenous responses and population decline"
"1834 decree and transfer of mission lands"
The missions of California served a vital purpose for Spain's colonization efforts, even for a few short years. They still stand as a monument to the varied histories of the people that make up the population of the Golden State.
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