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Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California
Saints and Citizens is a bold new excavation of the history of Indigenous people in California in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, showing how the missions became sites of their authority, memory, and identity. Shining a forensic eye on colonial encounters in Chumash, Luiseño, and Yokuts territories, Lisbeth Haas depicts how native painters incorporated their cultural iconography in mission painting and how leaders harnessed new knowledge for control in other ways. Through her portrayal of highly varied societies, she explores the politics of Indigenous citizenship in the independent Mexican nation through events such as the Chumash War of 1824, native emancipation after 1826, and the political pursuit of Indigenous rights and land through 1848.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 1, 2022
This is a really eye-opening book because it opens up the story of California to multiple perspectives, especially indigenous perspectives.
Usually the story of colonial California gets told from the perspective of 1700s Franciscan missionaries exclusively, with the only question being whether they were saints or monsters. In these narratives, indigenous people are impotent victims with no voice, no agency, and no strategies.
As a good history, this book does NOT sugarcoat life in the Missions - hard work, inferior rights, cultural suppression, and the constant threat of arbitrary violence.
And yet, the author delves into how the Missions were not just a site of death and dislocation, but also a site of "indigenous authority, memory, identity, and historical narration" (p. 7). Despite their subaltern status, Native Califorians devised various strategies such as adaptation, resistance, assimilation, and negotiation.
For instance - in the more populous Missions, the colonists were forced to let about half of the neophytes live in their villages outside the Mission; this was both a practical way of expanding resources as well as a recognition that such a huge population cannot be forcibly confined by a few militamen.
Despite violence and disease killing many elders, surviving leaders often preserved some degree of authority even within the Missions. People performed dances and healing rituals, artists still created petroglyphs and even crafted paintings and statues for the Missions. Mission Indians translated the Christian religion into their own languages, depicted Christ and the Saints with their own cultural symbolism, and continued to develop languages and practices. They filed lawsuits, practiced mass demonstration, petitioned the colonial authorities, formed alliances with each other, and occasionally rebelled.
And - more than that - they wrote! Pablo Tac was a Luiseño scribe who wrote a dictionary, translated prayers, and wrote historic and ethnographic information about his community. This even includes illustrations! There were also figures who presented their histories after the American conquest. Aside from these direct accounts from Natives, there are also indirect Native accounts from Spanish sources where Natives often have LOTS to say. This is usually left out of a lot of the California histories that I have read.
To get into the content of the book, the author focuses primarily on three groups:
1) Luiseño: San Luís Rey
2) Chumash: San Luís Obispo, La Purísima, Santa Ynez, Santa Bárbara, San Buenaventura
3) Yokuts: In the San Joaquín Valley immediately East of Chumash territory
The book has 6 chapters:
1) Beginnings of the Spanish-Native interactions
2) Life in early 1800s Spanish Missions
3) Native art, dance, histories, practices - with an emphasis on the underlying thoughts, on changes and innovations, on continuity with the past.
4) The Chumash War - a major rebellion involving collaboration between the Chumash and the Yokuts
5) Mexican "emancipation" and the failure to actually emancipate Indigenous Californians
6) Adaptations during the late Mexican period such as petitioning for individual land grants, resisting relocation, going on trade routes on the Old Spanish Trail.
This was a real eye-opener for me because the author presented the voices and views, lives and agency of Native Californians throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods.
Usually the story of colonial California gets told from the perspective of 1700s Franciscan missionaries exclusively, with the only question being whether they were saints or monsters. In these narratives, indigenous people are impotent victims with no voice, no agency, and no strategies.
As a good history, this book does NOT sugarcoat life in the Missions - hard work, inferior rights, cultural suppression, and the constant threat of arbitrary violence.
And yet, the author delves into how the Missions were not just a site of death and dislocation, but also a site of "indigenous authority, memory, identity, and historical narration" (p. 7). Despite their subaltern status, Native Califorians devised various strategies such as adaptation, resistance, assimilation, and negotiation.
For instance - in the more populous Missions, the colonists were forced to let about half of the neophytes live in their villages outside the Mission; this was both a practical way of expanding resources as well as a recognition that such a huge population cannot be forcibly confined by a few militamen.
Despite violence and disease killing many elders, surviving leaders often preserved some degree of authority even within the Missions. People performed dances and healing rituals, artists still created petroglyphs and even crafted paintings and statues for the Missions. Mission Indians translated the Christian religion into their own languages, depicted Christ and the Saints with their own cultural symbolism, and continued to develop languages and practices. They filed lawsuits, practiced mass demonstration, petitioned the colonial authorities, formed alliances with each other, and occasionally rebelled.
And - more than that - they wrote! Pablo Tac was a Luiseño scribe who wrote a dictionary, translated prayers, and wrote historic and ethnographic information about his community. This even includes illustrations! There were also figures who presented their histories after the American conquest. Aside from these direct accounts from Natives, there are also indirect Native accounts from Spanish sources where Natives often have LOTS to say. This is usually left out of a lot of the California histories that I have read.
To get into the content of the book, the author focuses primarily on three groups:
1) Luiseño: San Luís Rey
2) Chumash: San Luís Obispo, La Purísima, Santa Ynez, Santa Bárbara, San Buenaventura
3) Yokuts: In the San Joaquín Valley immediately East of Chumash territory
The book has 6 chapters:
1) Beginnings of the Spanish-Native interactions
2) Life in early 1800s Spanish Missions
3) Native art, dance, histories, practices - with an emphasis on the underlying thoughts, on changes and innovations, on continuity with the past.
4) The Chumash War - a major rebellion involving collaboration between the Chumash and the Yokuts
5) Mexican "emancipation" and the failure to actually emancipate Indigenous Californians
6) Adaptations during the late Mexican period such as petitioning for individual land grants, resisting relocation, going on trade routes on the Old Spanish Trail.
This was a real eye-opener for me because the author presented the voices and views, lives and agency of Native Californians throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods.
December 15, 2024
I read this after visiting all the California missions. Good for the Native American perspective.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews