California Mission
San Miguel Arcángel
775 Mission Street, San Miguel, CA 93451
Native Life
Mission San Miguel was established in the ancestral territory of the Salinan peoples. They continue to live in this area that is now called Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties. Traditionally Salinan people lived in small villages, daily activities included hunting, gathering, preparing, preserving and social interactions. The Salinan maintained peaceful relationships with surrounding tribes for the purposes of trade and often traveled inland to escape seasonal heat, conduct trade, court prospective spouses or visit in laws. Acorn was a food staple, along with wild game, fowl, wild berries, nuts and edible roots. Foods were cooked in specially prepared cooking baskets, which were tightly woven and sealed with tar and pine pitch. Liquids were added to the baskets with hot cooking stones, looped sticks similar to spoons were used to keep stones moving so they did not damage the baskets.
Cultural Impacts
The Spanish attempted to force Indians to assimilate into Spanish culture and give up their traditional way of life. Indians were forced to change their religious beliefs, diet, and daily routines, though many Indians resisted. Missionaries required Indians to study Christianity, Spanish language, and Spanish customs in order to assimilate into Spanish life. California Indians were forbidden from speaking in their native languages, practicing traditional religious ceremonies, and eating traditional foods. Sugar and milk was introduced to the diet of Indians working the missions, leading to tooth decay, life threatening infections, diabetes and other health issues. Within two years of living in the missions, many Indians lost all of their teeth.
Indians also struggled with the livestock and diseases that the Spanish brought to California. Indians used various techniques, like burning small areas of the forest to restore nutrients to the soil, in order to work the land and harvest plants for food and medicine. Cows, goats, pigs, and chickens overgrazed the lands tended by Indians, turning Indian crops into trampled wilderness. Livestock forced native animals to compete for food, throwing the ecosystem out of balance. The Spanish also brought diseases like Measles, Influenza and Small Pox to California. Unlike the Spanish, the native peoples did not have the opportunity to build up natural immunities to these diseases. The introduction of European diseases devastated native populations, wiping out entire villages.
Colonization & Governance
The Spanish plan for governance and maintenance of the missions in California was supposed to be carried out over a ten year period. The plan called for the missionaries to “convert” the Indians to Christianity and “train” them to perform manual labor. After a period of ten years it was anticipated that the Franciscan missionaries would turn their missions over to parish priests and the Indians in the missions would live “assimilated” into Spanish culture in Indian “pueblos” or towns. This ten year plan was actually carried out over the course of fifty years. There were many factors that contributed to things not going as they had planned. There were large scale resistance efforts by California Indian tribes. The rate of disease and death was high among populations of Indians at the missions. Thus the military and church expended vast resources on continual expeditions to “capture” Indians in the regions of California that had thus far been untouched by disease. Additionally, California Indians did not adopt religious practices and Spanish culture in a way that was satisfactory to the church and government authorities. Thus, the Indian people would have to be forced to maintain the lifestyle the Spanish planned to assimilated them to under a colonial authority.
When the mission was founded in 1814, the Salinan population was recorded to be over one thousand people, but by the time that the mission was secularized in 1834 and closed in 1842, only about 150 Salinan people remained.
Father Horra was one of the two original priests at Mission San Miguel Archangel. Although he was not Indian, he stood up for the rights of California Indians in the missions. Father Horra filed a complaint against his partner for mistreating the Indians in the mission, claiming that they were being excessively beaten and in some cases starved. Along with these accusations, he claimed that his partner was not following the model that had been established for running the missions because he let Indians become baptized and still live in their villages and did not teach all of them Spanish. The latter claims suggest that Father Horra was not against the mission system, only the people who were running it. After serving only two months in the mission, the church declared Father Horra insane and sent him back to New Spain.
Resistance
California Indians engaged in widespread resistance to Spanish colonization. Resistance came in many forms. Large scale revolts were organized simultaneously among multiple Indians at several missions. Many individuals and groups attempted to escape. Stock raids were organized with other tribal groups. Others refused to work, attend church services, or bear children fathered by Spanish soldiers. Some groups continued to practice their traditions and ceremonies in secret. Indians were punished by the missionaries for exercising these forms of resistance. Native accounts of punishment describe executions, whippings, shackling, confinement, being made to wear wooden collars with metal hooks and many other forms of physical and psychological humiliation and cruelty.
Secularizations
Mexico won their independence from Spain in 1821 and took control of California. The Mexican government passed laws in 1834 to secularize the missions, meaning that the government took control over the missions away from the priests and gave it to the Indians. The initial plan was for the secularized missions to become Indians towns, or pueblos, and to divide half of the land for the Indians and the other half for the priests. The Indians were also instructed to tend the common area between the two pieces of land. A Mexican government administrator was assigned to each mission to inventory property, livestock and other items of value. Upon the completion of the inventory the official was in charge of distributing the land and valuables to the Indians. Five Indian pueblos were established in total: Flores, Pala, San Dieguito, San Juan Capistrano and San Pasqual.
Many Indians did not receive the lands they were promised and were made to serve Mexican settlers on their ranchos. Settlers and retired soldiers stripped the missions of livestock, supplies and lands and designated Indians as individuals of the lowest social and economic standing. The secularization period is often referred to as the “sacking of the missions” because a majority of the items of value at the missions were seized by corrupt soldiers, government officials, priests, and settlers.
California Indians responded to secularization by accepting it, fleeing, or resisting servitude. About 15,000 Indians experienced secularization at the missions. Some sought refuge from the ranchos by fleeing into the interior of California, while others stayed in pueblos or local Mexican settlements near former mission lands. California Indians who remained near the missions continued to raid livestock and other supplies from the ranchos and fight back against violence perpetuated by the Mexican land owners in certain areas.
General Information
San Miguel Arcangel
CA aboriginal people:
San Miguel was the second mission founded in the land of the Salinan people. The Indians at this mission were historically referred to as Miguelenos.
Current CA Indian tribe(s) in area:
Salinan Tribe of Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties.