Educational Methods of the Franciscans in Spanish California

Abstract

The Mission, so fundamental in the transformation of colonial Hispanic America, has been characterized as the “kingpin” in Spain’s New World frontier system. The culminating stage in the evolution of the mission system, as well as the final fling of Spain’s “aggressive-defensive” in America, is to be found in Alta California. For the missionary sons of St. Francis, the achievements of their Fernandinos on our present Southwest Pacific slope constituted a fitting installment in a long series of “spiritual and temporal conquests.” During the sixty-five years between 1769 and 1834, over 80,000 Indians appear to have been baptized by the Franciscans in California. These savages were not only converted to Christianity, but also, in greater or lesser degree, habituated to Christian practices and morality, civilized, agriculturalized, industrialized and Hispanicized. This despite the fact that the California natives were described as a heterogeneous lot of culturally destitute, peripheral peoples, among the most backward and abject of American red men. For the Franciscans, the Gospel and whatsoever might be necessary thereto must be taught to every human creature. The distinguished lineage of mission methods in California may be traced back to the Sierra Gorda and southern Texas, to the plains of Paraguay and the jungles of Brazil, and—still further—to the labors of missionary monks among the rude barbarians of early medieval Europe.