The Canonization Of Father Junipero Frances Analysis

The arriving of Spanish conquerors changed the peaceful life of Indians living in what today is known as California. They had to deal with many atrocities committed by the Spanish soldiers, but especially with the rape of the female population, because “Sexual assaults against native women began shortly after the funding of

The missions even encouraged it, offering Spanish men money and land in exchange for helping to unite the two cultures. However, although the men had no issue with bedding the Indian women, an insignificant percentage of them were willing to marry those women. The Spanish viewed the Indians as inferior and saw them as heathens that engaged in polygyny and homosexuality among other abhorrent acts. The missionaries especially frowned upon the berdaches that acted like and were treated as women, shaming and punishing them. In their attempts to “culture” the Indians, they created enemies of an otherwise peaceful people. The Spaniards engaged in what Father Junipero Serra referred to as a “plague of immorality”, raping Indian women out of stress and fear. The Mission of San Diego was destroyed by the Indians largely due to these acts, but only after the Indian population had been reduced to a fraction of what it was previously by diseases that had run rampant in their cramped living spaces in the Mission. The missionaries legitimately thought that they were saving these poor heathens, but in their ignorance they destroyed a

The Spanish and New England colonies from 1492 to 1700 were significantly similar in terms of treatment of indigenous people. Admittedly, there was a difference in the treatment of indigenous people. The Spanish conquistadors used forced labor through the encomienda system, while the New England colonists did not have forced labor systems. This difference between the treatment happend because the Spanish ran large plantations and needed manual labor, while the New England colonists survived on subsistence farming and had no need for extra labor from the Indians. On the other hand there was a similarity in the forced conversions of the Indians to a Christian faith. This similarity occurred because The Roman Catholic Church saw the Indians as people who were in need of saving and insisted that the Indians

Convinced of the superiority of Catholicism to all other religions, Spain insisted that the primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from heathenism and prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism. The aim was neither to exterminate nor to remove the Indians, but to transform them into obedient Christian subjects of the crown. To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the Americas were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be organized to extract gold and silver that would enrich their mother country. Las Casas’ writings and the abuses they exposed contributed to the spread of the Black Legend-the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. This would provide of a potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominance in the New World.

The Natives resisted colonization after just a short time living and working at the Missions. There were a few deadly rebellions conducted by the Native Americans. They destroyed Mission property and even threatened to kill priests. The most infamous attack occurred in San Diego. On November 4, 1775, hundreds of men completely destroyed the Cuiamac Rancheria Mission of San Diego. The men also killed three Hispanics, including the Father, Padre Jaime (Sandos, 92). In addition, in 1824, another great Indian rebellion in California occurred at the Missions of Barbara. A large

The third tenet was known as the relocation process which included reservations, boarding schools, colonies, and homesteads this process was to control American Indian communities. It was about imposing military, political, economic, and social power of the Native American Indians. Stereotype all American Indians as nomadic wanderers, thinly scattered across the landscape not land owners. Conquest of a continent and power over Native nations. Catholic churches were built on the foundations of ceremonial building grounds. Farming communities where natives had to do hard labor. Spanish control of goals these goals were achieved by gathering Native people under the control of Spanish priests, backed by the military power of the presidios. At first Natives were allowed to live in traditional dwellings within the mission but eventually replaced these structures with “permanent adobe housing units . . .” that offered a greater degree of control over converts. The housing was overcrowded, unsanitary barracks that separated men from woman, parents from children, and “wild” from

When Jesus Came, The Corn Mothers Went Away gives an in-depth history of the Pueblo Indians before and after the Spanish conquest. It describes the forced changes the Spanish brought to the Indians, and also the changes brought to the Spaniards who came to “civilize” the Indians. The author's thesis is that the Pueblo Indians and other Indians were treated cruelly by the Spanish, who justified their crime by claiming they were civilizing an

In Age of Expansion, Spain sent conquistadors to take over new land to gain gold, spread the word of God, and bring glory to Spain. During this conquest, the Spaniards acted very rude to the natives of the New World and saw themselves as highly superior. These first travels were led by Cortez, who made it very clear that they were the ones in charge. In an excerpt from document 1, the Spanish tell the Indians that they must “agree to let the Christian priests preach to you” or else the Spanish would take them as slaves or kill them.

Which then forced the natives to totally convert over to Catholicism. The death toll was so high that in one place there were over 100 natives living in a town, by 1700 there was only 19 that remained(DN-Life in the

Reasons are quiet clear. It was a fight for freedom from tyranny, persecution, and unjust taxation. The Pueblo people were live in the position of under control by the Spanish. Especially, they lived under the system of encomienda, which they have to contribute a portion of their agricultural to a common storehouse for use by their own poor and their native religious.  The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 — also known as Pope's Rebellion — was an uprising of most of the Pueblo Indians against the Spanish colonizers in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, present day New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt killed 400 Spanish and drove the remaining 2,000 settlers out of the province. Twelve years later the Spanish returned and were able to reoccupy New Mexico with little

Thus, New Spain and New France’s main problems dealt with their men having sexual relations with the Native American women. The main problem for New Spain was the continuous sexual assaults against the Native American women. The men of New Spain were soldiers helping Franciscans convert Native Americans, residing in now a days California, to Christianity (“Father Luis Jayme” 36). The reasons for the sexual assaults are due to the differences in sexual culture. Europeans follow a patriarchal system and therefore the female is inferior and often viewed as property to the male in the European culture (Castaneda 54-55). The soldiers viewed the women as someone beneath them. Another big difference is that the soldiers used “rape...as an act of domination, an act of power” while Native American warriors by no means had an sexual relations of the enemy women (Castaneda 53). Rape was viewed as an act of power because the men defiled the women, which in turn demonstrated to the Native American men that their women or “property” could easily be taken from them or at least this was the view of the soldiers. As stated by Theda Perdue, “Spaniards seized women as they seized other spoils of war” (40). Thus by sexually assaulting the women the soldiers were fulfilling their duty to control the land and the Native Americans, while the Franciscans attempted to convert the Native

For more than 300 years, since the days of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Government, an attempt of genocide of the Native American Indian has existed. From mass brutal murders and destruction by Spanish and American armies, to self-annihilation through suicide, homicide, and alcohol induced deaths brought about because of failed internal colonialism and white racial framing. Early Explores used Indigenous inhabitants upon first arriving to the America’s to survive the New World and once they adapted, internal colonialism began with attempts to convert the Indians to Christianity, repressing their values and way of life, forcing them into slavery, and nearly exterminating an entire culture from existence.

Once an individual decided to join there was no turning back. Genocide of California Indians written by Steve Talbot explains that when joined the men and the women separated with the men “confined to coffin-like rooms with barely enough space to lie down” (Talbolt, 140). The worse part was the there was no escaping the mission. Escaping was not an option if you tried to escape you were beaten or shot by the soldiers. Living at the mission required never-ending laborious work. “Indian neophytes were forced to construct mission buildings, heard cattle, work the fields, and wait on the mission priest” (140). This demonstrates that the American Indians did not have an enjoyable experience in the missions, they were expected to work laboriously for little to no pay. Talbot goes on to compare the missionary system to slavery because of the free labor of the Natives. He claims that the mission systems acted as part of cultural genocide because many more than half of the individuals that were placed in the mission system did not make it out alive. The major reason for this was

During the 1680s the search for gold had ended and the hopes of the Spaniards striking rich had also ended. The goals of obtaining riches was something not easily forgotten by the Spaniards, so the Pueblo Indians were the answer to the Spaniards’ get rich quick scheme. The Indians were forced to work by the Spaniards so they could avoid doing work of their own, stripping away the Indians freedom that they had before. Religion came to be an issue during this process because the Indians were not given the freedom to practice their own religion and the Spaniard’s religion caused ill treatment to the Indians. The Indians lack of religious and individual freedom led to the violence and discontent to the Spaniards authorities, missionaries, and villages causing the Pueblo Revolt.

The purpose of canonization is when the church decides that a person that has passed away is a saint. For example, Father Serra is in the person that Pope Francis declared a saint, because all the missionary work he has done before he passed. Pope Francis declared him a saint on American soil. Serra travel through Spain to Mexico spreading the word to all the natives. He established missionaries along the coast of California. "In evangelizing Native Americans, Father Serra inaugurated the Mission system in California, whose rule was also strategic in Spains quest of colonization – they became an instrument of control that helped cement the countries hold in the territory."