Steven W. Hackel > Quotes

“Some 310,000 Indians lived within the boundaries of the present state in 1769. Approximately 60,000 lived in the coastal region between San Diego and San Francisco where Serra hoped to establish a series of missions.84 The Luiseño and then the Acjachemen resided to the immediate north of the Kumeyaay. The Gabrielino occupied the coastal plain of Los Angeles, the Chumash inhabited an expanse from Malibu to San Luis Obispo, the Yokuts lived in the Central Valley, and the Salinan and Ohlone settled the central coast between Santa Barbara and the Golden Gate. The Pomo, Coast Miwok, Wappo, Patwin, and Eastern Miwok lived in the regions immediately north and east of the San Francisco Bay Area.85 Although Alta California successfully supported a large human population, it was hardly disease-free. Even before the Spaniards arrived, a wide variety of infections were common, all of which led to high mortality”
― Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California's Founding Father

“Serra, no matter how emblematic he was, though, was also replete with tensions and ironies, even paradoxes. He stated that he was always obedient to his superiors, but as he grew in stature and seniority, he did largely as he pleased, with few checks on his own authority and actions beyond the narrow confines of his own order and mission. He believed in the nearly absolute powers of the Church yet lived at a time when the Bourbon state was consolidating its authority over that institution. He had a domineering personality but was bereft of an individual self: he was opinionated, strong-willed, determined, and passionately devoted to his life’s work but was typical of his age in that he had no real identity of his own beyond his order. As a deeply religious Catholic of the eighteenth century, he fervently distrusted his own intuition or inner voice, and he chose to follow his God’s will as best he could discern it. Finally, and”
― Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California's Founding Father