Children of coyote, missionaries of Saint Francis
Subtitle: Indian-Spanish relations in colonial California, 1769-1850
By: Steven W. Hackel.
Contributors: Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture.
Publisher: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press; The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 496
Subjects: Franciscans -- Missions -- California -- Monterey Peninsula -- History.; Mission San Carlos Borromeo (Carmel, Calif.) -- History.; Indians of North America -- California -- Monterey Peninsula -- History.; Indians of North America -- First contact with Europeans -- California -- Monterey Peninsula.; Indians of North America -- Missions -- California -- Monterey Peninsula.; Spain -- Colonies -- America.; California -- Relations -- Mexico.; Mexico -- Relations -- California.
Description: Publisher description: Recovering lost voices and exploring issues intimate and institutional, this sweeping examination of Spanish California illuminates Indian struggles against a confining colonial order and amidst harrowing depopulation. To capture the enormous challenges Indians confronted, Steven W. Hackel integrates textual and quantitative sources and weaves together analyses of disease and depopulation, marriage and sexuality, crime and punishment, and religious, economic, and political change. As colonization reduced their numbers and remade California, Indians congregated in missions, where they forged communities under Franciscan oversight. Yet missions proved disastrously unhealthful and coercive, as Franciscans sought control over Indians' beliefs and instituted unfamiliar systems of labor and punishment. Even so, remnants of Indian groups still survived when Mexican officials ended Franciscan rule in the 1830s. Many regained land and found strength in ancestral cultures that predated the Spaniards' arrival. At this study's heart are the dynamic interactions in and around Mission San Carlos Borromeo between Monterey region Indians (the Children of Coyote) and Spanish missionaries, soldiers, and settlers. Hackel places these local developments in the context of the California mission system and draws comparisons between California and other areas of the Spanish Borderlands and colonial America. Concentrating on the experiences of the Costanoan and Esselen peoples during the colonial period, Children of Coyote concludes with an epilogue that carries the story of their survival to the present day.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.