Franciscan Missions In Alta California Summary

The French and the Spanish both had a great impact on the Native Americans hundreds of years ago. The Spanish arrived at Alta California where they planned to establish 21 missions along the coast from San Diego to Santa Rosa. Their main goal was to convert Native Californians into Catholic peasants. On the other hand, the French were eager to colonize the northern country. The French wanted the beavers’ valuable fur, but the Indians were much better at hunting them down than they were at it. This worked out well, since it gave the Indians something to trade with the settlers who desired the beaver fur. In the two articles, one entitled Franciscan Missions in Alta California, by Kent G. Lightfoot, and the other entitled The Fur Trade and New France to 1676 (Prologue), by Claiborne A. Skinner, each author is able to describe what life was like in these missions/ports during this time period.

In the article Franciscan Missions in Alta California, Lightfoot affirms how these 21 missions along the coast were strategically placed so that those sailing past could sleep in a village about every third day.

These Franciscans were very systematic when it came to placing each building in order to create a substantial enculturation mechanism. Lightfoot states, “The mission complexes were self-contained agrarian communities encompassing a complex infrastructure of religious buildings, craft shops, storage facilities, dormitories, aqueducts, and structures for processing grains, fruits, and meat” (Lightfoot, 80). However, outside of these churches and conventos was where the Indian neophytes lived and worked. Those that came were required to be laborers in craft production as well as agriculture; they were the missions’ economic

machines.
The padres required these neophytes to be on a strict schedule. Their days consisted of work, meals, and many prayers. For breakfast and dinner they ate atole and for lunch they would eat pozole; in other words, each of their meals was a type of soup. Neophytes would work anywhere from four to nine hours a day, depending on which Padre was in charge of them. Everybody was required to work; even young children would scare birds away in the fields. Although, they all received about 92 days off per year, this included Sundays and Feast Days. Sadly, Lightfoot also states, “The padres employed a variety of coercive measures, including solitary confinement, whippings, stocks, and leg chains, to punish neophytes for infractions against the work schedule and moral code (Lightfoot, 60). About an hour after supper, the Padres would lock up any children over the age of about seven, any young unmarried women, and any married women whose husbands were gone. With the recruitment assigned by Serra of young men from San Blas, intermarriage between Hispanic and Indian neophytes was encouraged.
The northern country was full of rivers, lakes, and forests. In 1608 the northern country began to take its shape. Champlain stated,
I had the work of our quarters continued, which was composed of three buildings of two stories. Each one was three fathoms long, and two and a half wide, with a fine cellar six feet deep…There were also ditches, fifteen feet wide and six deep. On the other side of the ditches I constructed several spurs which enclosed a part of the dwelling, at the points where we placed our cannon (Skinner, 3).
By 1609, it had been about 75 years total that fabrics as well as iron goods, from the coastal people, were traded upriver to the Great Lakes. People would travel by canoe, that is, until the Indians invented the birchbark canoe. This canoe had a higher freeboard that gave Indians the right to cautiously ply the lakes. In addition, the birchbark canoe allowed hunters to be able to travel farther as well as foster in trade for extravagant commodities such as: mica, tobacco, shells, and copper. It turns out that the beaver fur constituted of 75 percent of the colony’s exports.
Since there were so little women (seven men to one women) and the labor was too much for one man without a wife and children, men had two options: marry an Indian woman or head back home. Unfortunately, the Regiment de Carignan-Salières added to this matter. After the peace of 1667, men were offered the choice of either remaining in the colony or returning home. As a result, 400 decided to stay and 100 decided to go to garrison.
In the end, there were some similarities as well as some differences between the Spanish and the French’s way of colonizing California and the northern country. They both created a system in which they had a self-supporting economy. Also, they each gave each other something that the other wanted. In the first article (Franciscan Missions in Alta California), the Indians may not have been treated exactly fairly, but they were still given three meals a day as well as a place to live, but they did all of the work for the Spanish in the missions. In the second article (The Fur Trade and New France to 1676), the Indians did most of the hunting for the French, and the French gave the Indians items that they wanted in return. One other similarity was the fact that there were intermarriages in both cases, whether it was between the Hispanics and the Indians or the French and the Indians. Though, the Indians were treated differently when compared to how the Spanish and the French treated them. Not to mention, the Indians had different jobs in California than they did in the northern country and worked for different items in return.