HIST 240 Lecture Notes for 9/18

My apologies for not getting these located here sooner.

HIST 240 Lecture Notes

Date: 9/18/12

By Valerie Slitor

Continued a point made about scurby and asked the question, “Why should you, as a historian, care about scurvy?” The disease, of course, was the result of a long sea voyage.

Then the topic shifted to the Jesuit Expulsion in 1767. New missionaries come in who are more ambitious and want to move North.

Here we get Father Serra. The Catholic church sent these missionaries to convert people into being Spanish citizens… who would then fight for their country. They were to stay near the coast for a few reasons as they started to expand their Mission Strip. Staying near the coast allowed them to be  near ports for food and transport, following the coastline made it harder to get lost in unfamiliar territory, and the indigenous populations were there. The missions are build from San Diego up along the Kings Highway, each within one days walk from the last. They’re not built in order.  

Serra had a 3-pronged approach:

• ·         Missions – Church.

• ·         Presidios – Military. This was strategically placed. There were fewer of these, and they housed guns and a Calvary. There were 4 (San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, SF). Built as much for show as protection.

• ·         Pueblos – Towns, where civil society was to live. Didn’t really work out that way as the population was generally made up of retired military guys who weren’t really want one might call, “civilized.” Least successful of the three models. San Jose, LA, Branciforte.

So how did Serra go about building a mission?

• ·         He’d pick a location.

• ·         He’d get the labor (forced labor if you’ve got it). If the labor were done by indigenous people, Serra saw it as a means towards their salvation.

• ·         Then he'd build (or have labor build) a MASSIVE building that can be seen from really far away that looks so impressive that, surely, curious native people will come to check it out and ask to be let in/educated/saved/converted. Shock and awe.

In terms of building Presidios, there had to be military approval.

There would be a groundbreaking in which the land would be made consecrated… a practice the native people found, “weird.”

Then there was an epidemic. Serra didn’t see this as a total loss as MANY baptisms were performed before people (many of them infants) died. In Serra’s defense, he does regard them as human…

So, the outbreaks continue as the indigenous people are exposed to European diseases against which they have NO defense whatsoever. Mass deaths occur and the missionaries decided that there’s just something systemically and constitutionally wrong with them (that this is an “Indian disease.”) So they bleed a few and baptize the rest. Most deaths that occur in this period are not the result of direct violence but of disease. 

The sexual practices and beliefs of the indigenoius people, “freaked out,” the friars. Sex/nudity/non-bianary gender didn’t fit into their European model. They very quickly stop writing about food and clothing and start really focusing on the sex life of the native people.

A man named Pablo Tac was born in a mission to neophyte parents and died in Rome. He was an ardent convert, raised in Catholicism. The church uses Tac as a voice for this converted, neophyte population. They send him to Mexico City to talk to the people there. He writes a history of his people’s history in Spanish and the account is, obviously, very pro-church. “This was the day the priest came to save us from being heathens,” he writes. He views, and perpetuates the European belief that, his people are children who need a father to save them and protect them.