Rachel Morgan
Midterm Paper
History 473
Journeys: An Analysis of Race, Labor, and Gender Throughout California
Besides there being a multitude of problems throughout the Mission Period, the largest problem would be the spaniards taking advantage of the labor the Native American’s provided. As a race they were seen as the working people for the Spaniards and would be taken advantage of. They observed and promoted the fact that women were for the basis of; intercourse, and to make families, a primarily European way of thinking that followed them through the Rancho Period. Father Boscana in Major Problems in California History described them as “idle and lazy [in their] life, more like that of brutes than that of rational beings, and being ignorant of the arts, they had no employment and profit, with which to busy themselves for using up their time, for they did not cultivate the ground or sow any kind of seed, inasmuch as they subsisted profit with which to busy themselves for using up their tasks and labors were confined to the making of bows and arrows. (page 44)” The father observed the Indians to be peoples who did not work much in their natural state, not close to equivalent to the work ethic the Spaniards forced upon them. The Indians were free spirits who lived by a rhythm of doing what they want, when they wanted. This did not effect them at all until the Spaniards came in and started assimilating and putting the Indians to work. These Indians that Father Boscana encountered were peaceful Indians that were not violent as other tribes were. Yet, during this time they believed that they needed to be subjugated and put into labor.
The Europeans most likely worked under the beliefs that the Indians were only good for the work that the cattle industry provided. In addition, all of this work would prevent them from the ungodly sex that they were having….. (Insert stuff about the previous response paper) During this time period they pushed their beliefs upon the Indians drastically changed what their sex lives were like going forward. They did not choose to change, but rather it was forced upon them and they had to adopt the Catholic way of thinking. QUOTE FROM RESPONSE. However, without the Franciscans, the Indians had forms and standards of marriage that worked for them. Their marriages were “an extremely important institution, governed according to strict rules (Intimate Frontiers 3)” similarity to the Catholic Marriages. However, the Indians did not see premarital sex in such a scrutinus eye as the Catholics, “Premarital sex does not seem to have been regarded as a matter of great importance, so virginity was not a precondition in a respectable mate (IF 3).” The Catholics had to put an end to this within the Indians, they did not have premarital sex because of their religion, and because the Indians would have their religion too, they would not have premarital sex either “Spanish society forbade premarital sex and required marital fidelity (IF5).” We also start to see the inner workings of this in the subjugation of women. During intercourse using the catholic standards, the couple was only allowed to be in the missionary position “other postures were unnatural because they made the woman superior to her husband, thus thwarting God’s universal plan (IF5).” The Catholics would shame the Indians into believing that they were not obeying the will of God when they were having sex for pleasure, and would frankly die and go to hell, something that was supposed to scare them into believing. A hypocritical practice though, because the “Medieval constraints on intimate behavior began to erode in the early modern period, but Catholic proscriptions against what the church defined as unnatural sexual behavior remained a part of canon law when Spain occupied California (IF5)”. Example they were sleeping around. This was not easy to do and the “Catholic priests labored to restrict sexual activity in a world of philanders, concubines, prostitutes, and lovers (If 5)”. They worked to control the women by separating them from the men, in doing this they were taming the “Sexually powerful creatures who could lead men astray (IF5)”. This being stages of colonization really confused the system the Indians had in place and the “missionaries meant to restructure Indian marriage to conform to orthodox Catholic standards of monogamy, permanence, and fidelity, changes in intimate conduct that engendered conflict on the California frontier” (IF8).
To make the Indians their laborers they would have to take them out of their homelands and force them into the missions system. The spaniards used them for labor based on their race, figuring that since they were different than them they would be acceptable workers for the work that they found inappropriate. In California, a History by Kevin Starr “they were being forced from their homelands, brought into the mission system—frequently against their will—and treated as children not yet possessed of full adulthood, not yet genre de razón, people of reason(Starr 41)”. When Father Serra came to California and rounded up the Indians to work the missions, he had other ideas in mind also, “wielding his influence not only to convert Native Americans to Christianity, but also to bolster Spain’s economic and political interests (New York Times).” He boosted the economics of Spain through the work that the Indians did because of the conversion of the missions provided. Making the Indians that stayed in the missions “Those who survived were forced to give up tribal customs and submit to the demands of their Christian overlords — from observing rites like baptism to enduring physical abuse and working conditions that resembled slavery (NYT).” Serra brought Indians in and colonized through the mission. Once Serra founded Carmel Mission, he used it as a “center of cattle and grain production in addition to being [a] hub for the expansion of Catholicism (NYT).” However this colonization came at a price and they were loosing who they were as a people as they came into the mission, both culturally and physically. Culturally they were not a people who labored hard. They had been described as people who were “idle and lazy [in their] life, more like that of brutes than that of rational beings, … they had no employment and profit, with which to busy themselves for using up their time, for they did not cultivate the ground or sow any kind of seed, inasmuch as they subsisted profit with which to busy themselves for using up their tasks and labors were confined to the making of bows and arrows. (page 44)” So being forced to work hard and work the ground is something that they were not used to as a people, and they hated it and as Starr stated in California: A History could “be beaten when they proved recalcitrant to ran away from the missions, as they frequently did, and were recaptured(Starr 41).” Physically they were exposed to diseases that the Spaniards exposed them to. Had they not been exposed their populations would not have taken such a plummet. Many of the Indians “died of shock at their displacement, or of Spanish diseases. The sexual exploitation of Native American females by Spanish soldiers and other men in the colony was especially devastating as a matter of both personal violation and venereal disease (Starr 41).” In conclusion, the Spaniards forced the Indians into labor that they were not accustomed to and began a culture of taking advantage of that would last many years into the future.
Through the Rancho period the Indians were able to have many more rights, but these rights seldom appeared to them. Once the missions dissolved the Indians were supposed to have the ability to own property, and intermarry more freely, and have more rights through Governor Figueroa. But the racializaton that was prevalent in the missions period arose again once Figueroa died and his wishes were not that they were the workers of the land for the Spaniards and Rancheros and only good for sex, but not for marriage because of what they could give them outside of their marriage. Figueroa had good intentions with the Indians, as he became the governor, he advocated for the Indians to have the land that belonged to their ancestors. In California: A History, Kevin Starr explains that “The mission lands… should be secularized in favor in favor of the Indians living on them and not merely for the benefit of arriving colonists (Starr 47)”.