Early California Reconsidered by Sandos and Sandos

Posted: November 23, 2025 | Author: helytimes | Filed under: Uncategorized |Leave a comment

Up in Santa Barbara, we rode hotel bikes up carless State Street, past the beautiful US Bankruptcy Court, turned right on Mission, and one last uphill to the rose garden, and the Old Mission.

Queen of the Missions. We didn’t even go inside, just to the gift shop.

When I saw this book I had to have it. These guys on the cover! I had to know everything about them.

Turns out an entire opening page of dense print is devoted to the origin of this drawing.

This much reproduced image of Indians at Mission San José in 1806 has been encrusted with misinformation and half-truths that need correction.

It begins.

It is frequently described as being done by Georg H. von Langsdorff, a German physician who sailed with the expedition lead by a founder of the Russian American Company, Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov that ventured into Alta California in 1806. The painting has been attributed to Wilhelm Gortlief Tilesius von Tilenau, and appears to have been done in a studio in Europe based upon field sketches as the geographic setting is European romantic and nothing at all like California.

Satisfied.

This is interesting:

When the Spanish arrived in California in 1769, the grasslands and oak savannah that comprised much of Mission San José’s outreach area “were already supporting presumably at carrying capacity levels, great herds of elk, pronghorn, deer, and bighorn sheep.”‘ To this abundance were added cattle, sheep, horses, mules, donkeys, pigs, and chickens. The ensuing competition for sweet native grasses favored the newly arrived animals. They, in turn, replaced native plants with introduced coarse grasses and seeds from Europe.

Moreover, the Spanish forbade Indians the annual burning by which they managed local seeds and grasses. The San José plain (also called a valley) lay thirteen miles north of the mission. It was eight miles in diameter and by 1828 the mission grazed nine thousand head of cattle and ten thousand sheep during the summer then moved the herds and flocks to Mount Diablo for winter care.? Mission cattle and sheep contributed to “overgrazing that eliminated native plant populations, favored alien annuals, and caused erosion.” Hunting and fur trapping by outsiders added to mammalian decline.

Together, these environmental changes altered intra-tribal relations in the interior. The dwindling food supplies, coupled with ensuing cultural decline, contributed to ranchería collapse. In this climate, mission entry emerged as a serious alternative to remaining in place. When the American Jedediah Smith traversed the San Joaquín River (he called it the Peticutry) in early March 1827, he wrote, “Since I struck the Peticutry I had seen but few Indians. The greater part of those that once resided here (as Ihave… been told) gone into the Missions of St Joseph [San José] and Santa Clara.”* Smith was travelling through Yokuts territory to the east of Mission San José, yet according to his diary, many of the Indians he encountered were Plains Miwok-speaking Muquelemes from the north who were poaching food and material resources from the vacated lands. The poaching created further tensions and animosities when neophyte Yokuts returned to their former tribal areas in the employ of the missions while on paseos (priestly approved passes) or as fugitives.

Furthermore, the California Mission chain faced an uncertain future as the uneven transition from Spanish to Mexican political control during the 182os brought with it a new demand for secularization, the abolition of the mission system. Soldiers and settlers favored secularization as it would open mission lands to them, providing the opportunity to carve great estates tended by newly freed Indian labor. Franciscans opposed secularization.

Well yeah they would wouldn’t they?

The diseases we know about, and human violence, but I hadn’t really thought of other invasive species like the cow, co-genociders even if they had no ill intent and were prisoners themselves. .

Despite the uncertain future of the mission system, Franciscans, Mission Indians, and Mexican troops continued to press the Spiritual Conquest, combining forces to send out groups to proselytize gentiles and return mission runaways. These expeditions were led by Mexican soldiers using armed neophyte auxiliaries to aid in the task of finding and returning the fugitives.

Gentiles who did not surrender runaway neophytes were frequently severely punished. In some instances, gentiles were rounded up and brought back to the mission by force along with the runaways.

Yikes. Five hundred years after Saint Francis,

people are violently rounding up other people in his name.

The California missions were once considered romantic. I wonder if they’ll someday be considered something more like antebellum plantations. On the other hand the architecture is appealing, and seems to suit California. History: mixed bag!

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