Mission Indians - History

History

Spanish explorers arrived on California's coasts as early as the mid-16th century. In 1769 the first Spanish Franciscan mission was built in San Diego. Local tribes were relocated and conscripted into forced labor on the mission, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. Disease, starvation, over work, and torture decimated these tribes. Many were forcibly converted and baptized as Roman Catholics by the Franciscan missionaries at the missions.

Mission Indians were from many Californian Native American tribes that were relocated together in new mixed groups and renamed after the responsible mission. For instance the Payomkowishum were renamed "Luiseños" after the Mission San Luis Rey and the Acjachemem were renamed the "Juaneños" after the Mission San Juan Capistrano. The Catholic priests forbade the Indians from practicing their native culture, resulting in the disruption of many tribes' linguistic, spiritual, and cultural practices. With no immunity to European diseases, and changed cultural and lifestyle demands, the population of Native American Mission Indians significantly decreased during the mission period and after.

Mexico gained control of Californian missions in 1834 and abuse persisted, but the missions were soon secularized and lands were transferred to non-Native administrators. Many of the Mission Indians then worked on the newly-established ranchos, with little improvement in their conditions.

The term "Mission Indians" was initially applied to Southern California Native Americans as an ethnographic and anthropological label around 1906 by Alfred L. Kroeber and Constance G. Du Bois at the University of California, Berkeley at Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa and south. Today it is also sometimes used for Northern California Native Americans to include populations at the eleven Northern California missions, Mission San Miguel Arcángel and north.