Life in the Mission System

The Spanish government claimed the Pacific coast of North America as a colony in the 1500s but made very little effort to inhabit the territory for two hundred years. In the 1760s Spanish officials feared that Russian settlers might move south into the area known today as California. They launched a new colonization effort to get the Pacific coast securely under Spanish control.

The mission system run by Franciscan friars was crucial to this colonization effort. Missions were small agricultural communities built to house local Indigenous populations while they were educated in the Spanish way of life. The Spanish military forced Indigenous people to move into the missions, where they attended mandatory lessons about the Catholic religion and Spanish agriculture and culture. The Indigenous people in the missions lived and worked in inhumane conditions and were forced to produce goods that would enrich the Spanish. Some Spanish officials viewed the Indigenous people in the missions as slaves.

Indigenous women particularly suffered in the mission system. They were required to give up traditions and agricultural practices that had elevated them to positions of power in their communities. They were the frequent targets of sexual exploitation and forced marriages. Poor living conditions and lack of proper nutrition meant Indigenous women died frequently in childbirth, and the infant mortality rate was high.

The mission system was catastrophic for the Indigenous communities of present-day California. Historians estimate that between 1769 and 1821 nearly a third of the total Indigenous population of the area was lost.

The Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo was founded in Monterey on June 3, 1770. It was the second mission founded in the area and served as the headquarters for the entire mission system of Alta California. In 1771 the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo was moved to the mouth of the Carmel River to protect Indigenous women from abuse by the Spanish soldiers who lived in Monterey. 

This mission targeted the nearby Esselen and Ohlone tribes. Franciscan friars would first convert members of these tribes to Christianity, then force them to move to the mission to live and work.

This drawing was made by a British naval officer who explored the Pacific Coast in the early 1790s. It shows the mission near its peak population of around 900 inhabitants. It also demonstrates the harsh living conditions endured by the Indigenous people forced to live and work there. The buildings in the foreground, as simple as they are, represent the centers of power in the mission. In the background are the rough huts the Esselen and Ohlone were forced to live in. The close quarters promoted the spread of deadly diseases.

• Esselen: One of the tribes that inhabited the region known today as Big Sur, California, at the time of Spanish colonization. Today, members of the Esselen are working to build a cultural center and museum in the Monterey area.
• Franciscan: A person who belonged to the Order of St. Francis, a Catholic religious order famous for its preaching and missionary work.
• friar: A man who was a member of a Catholic religious order.
• mission system: A group of missions founded by Franciscan monks in the Spanish colonies that forced Indigenous people to convert to Catholicism and adopt Spanish agriculture and culture.
• Ohlone: The collective name given to over fifty distinct Indigenous communities who lived in what is today known as Northern California. A number of Ohlone communities still live in the region today.

• Pair this resource with Life Story: Toypurina and Revolution in Art for a larger lesson about the mission system and Indigenous resistance.
• Pair this resource with Life in Encomienda for a lesson about the treatment of Indigenous populations under Spanish colonial rule.
• Read Queen Isabella I’s 1501 Instructions for the New World and then compare them with the treatment of Indigenous people under the mission system.
• Combine this image with The Middle Passage for a lesson on suffering people of color endured for the profit of the Spanish colonies.
• For a larger discussion of differing labor exploitation practices, the lives of those exploited, and why labor exploitation was critical to the development of the North American colonies, pair this resource with any or all of the following: 
  • Life Story: Dennis and Hannah Holland
  • Mortar and Pestle for Pounding Rice
  • Fighting for Freedom in New Amsterdam 
  • Life on the Encomienda
• For a larger discussion of the sexual exploitation of women in the colonial Americas, pair this resource with any or all of the following:
  • Women and the Code Noir
  • Life Story: Marie-Josèphe Angélique
  • Marrying into the New World
  • Legislating Reproduction and Racial Difference
  • Life Story: Dennis and Hannah Holland
  • Life Story: Malintzin (La Malinche)
  • Life Story: Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche
  • The Casket Girls

POWER AND POLITICS

• For resources relating to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, see Nueva York: 1613– 1945.