From Ahogado to Zorrillo: external causes of mortality in the California missions

Abstract

In recent decades, the literature on virgin soil epidemics has dominated scholarly discussions of Indian population decline in colonial America. Illness and disease – and the high mortality and low fertility that accompanied them – go a long way towards explaining the dramatic decline of the Indian population in Alta California after Spanish colonization began in 1769. But, there are myriad other factors that contributed to Indian depopulation in Spanish and Mexican California, and these have largely escaped the study of historians. Death cause information listed in the burial registers of the California missions and now available through the Early California Population Project suggests that Indian population decline in California before 1850 was accelerated by external factors, such as acts of violence, natural disasters, dangers associated with animals and insects, as well as work- and transportation-related mishaps. These external factors do not in themselves explain Indian population decline, but they add considerably to our understanding of life and death in early California and by extension other corners of colonial America, and they give us a richer understanding of how Indians lived, worked, died, and even prayed in Spanish and Mexican California.