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Mission Indians was a term used to refer to theIndigenous peoples of California who lived or grew up in theSpanish mission system in California. Today the term is used to refer to their descendants and to specific, contemporary tribal nations in California.
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Spanish explorers arrived on California's coasts as early as the mid-16th century. In 1769, the first SpanishFranciscan mission was built inSan Diego. Local tribes were relocated and conscripted into forced labor on the mission, stretching from San Diego toSan Francisco. Disease, starvation, excessive physical labor, and torture decimated these tribes.[1] Many werebaptized asCatholics by theFranciscan missionaries at the missions.
Mission Indians were from many regionalNative American tribes; their members were often relocated together in new mixed groups, and the Spanish named the Indian groups after the responsible mission. For instance, thePayomkowishum were renamedLuiseños, after theMission San Luis Rey; theAcjachemem were renamed theJuaneños, after theMission San Juan Capistrano and theKizh or Kisiannos renamed theGabrieleño, after theMission San Gabriel.[2]
The Catholic priests forbade the Indians from practicing their native culture, resulting in the disruption of many tribes' linguistic, spiritual, andcultural practices. With no acquiredimmunity to the exposure of European diseases (as well as sudden cultural upheaval and lifestyle demands), thepopulation of Mission Indians suffered high mortality and dramatic decreases, especially in the coastal regions; the population was reduced by 90 percent, between 1769 and 1848.[3]
Despite the missionaries' attempts to convert the Indigenous peoples of the missions, often referred to in mission records as "neophytes", they indicated that their attempts at conversion were often unsuccessful. For example, in 1803, twenty-eight years into the mission period, FriarFermín de Lasuén wrote:[4]
Generally the neophytes have not yet enough affection for Christianity and civilization. Most of them are excessively fond of the mountains, the beach, and of barbarous freedom and independence, so that some show of military force is necessary, lest they by force of arms deny the Faith and law which they have professed.[4]
Abuse persisted after Mexico assumed control of the California missions in 1834. Mexicosecularized the missions and transferred (or sold) the lands to other non-Native administrators or owners. Many of the Mission Indians worked on the newly establishedranchos, with little improvement in their living conditions.[1]
Around 1906,Alfred L. Kroeber and Constance G. Du Bois, of theUniversity of California, Berkeley, first applied the term "Mission Indians" to southern California Native Americans, as anethnographic andanthropological label to include those atMission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa and south.[5][6]
On January 12, 1891, the US Congress passed the"An Act for the Relief of the Mission Indians in the State of California". This would further sanction the original grants of the Mexican government to the natives in southern California, and sought to protect their rights, while giving railroad corporations a primary interest.[7]
In 1927, the SacramentoBureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent Lafayette A. Dorrington was instructed by Assistant Commissioner E. B. Merritt, in Washington D.C., to list the tribes in California from whom Congress had not yet purchased land, and for those lands to be used as reservations. As part of the 1928 theCalifornia Indian Jurisdictional Act enrollment, Native Americans were asked to identify their "Tribe or Band". The majority of applicants supplied the name of the mission that they knew their ancestors were associated with. The enrollment was part of a plan to provide reservation lands promised, but never fulfilled by 18 non-ratified treaties made in 1851–1852.[8]
Because of the enrollment applications, and the native American's association with a specific geographical location (often associated with the Catholic missions), the bands of natives became known as the "mission band" of people associated with a Spanish mission.[8] Some bands also occupy trust lands—Indian Reservations—identified under the Mission Indian Agency. TheMission Indian Act of 1891 formed the administrativeBureau of Indian Affairs unit which governsSan Diego,Riverside,San Bernardino, andSanta Barbara Counties. There is oneChumash reservation in the last county, and more than thirty reservations in the others.
Los Angeles,San Luis Obispo,Ventura andOrange Counties do not contain any tribal trust lands. However, resident organizations that self-identify as Native American tribes, including self-identifiedTongva in the first andAcjachemen in the last county (as well as Coastal Chumash in Santa Barbara County) continue seeking federal tribal recognition by theBureau of Indian Affairs. There are no state-recognized tribes in California.
Eleven of the southern California reservations were included under the early 20th-century allotment programs, which broke up communal tribal holding, to assign property to individual households, with individual heads of household and tribal members identified lists such as theDawes Rolls.
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The most important reservations include: the Agua Caliente Reservation inPalm Springs, which occupies alternate sections (approx. 640 acres each) with former railroad grant lands that form much of the city; the Morongo Reservation in theSan Gorgonio Pass area; and the Pala Reservation which includesSan Antonio de Pala Asistencia (Pala Mission) of theMission San Luis Rey de Francia inPala. These and the tribal governments of fifteen other reservations operate casinos today. The total acreage of the mission group of reservations constitutes approximately 250,000 acres (1,000 km2).
These tribes were associated with the following missions, asisténcias, and estáncias:
In northern California, specific tribes are associated geographically with certain missions.[8]
Current mission Indian tribes include the following in southern California:
Current Mission Indiantribes north of the present day ones listed above, in theLos Angeles Basin,Central Coast,Salinas Valley,Monterey Bay, andSan Francisco Bay Areas, also were identified with the local mission of theirIndian Reductions in those regions.[citation needed]
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