The Varieties of Religious Experience: Baptized Indians at Mission San Francisco de Asís, 1776–1821

Abstract

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceBaptized Indians at Mission San Francisco de Asís, 1776–1821 Quincy D. Newell (bio) On March 2, 1811, seventeen Coast Miwok–speaking Indians from the Omiomi tribelet accepted baptism at Mission San Francisco de Asís, the Spanish Catholic mission located on the northern end of the San Francisco peninsula in Alta California.1 Among the seventeen were Juniqueme and his pregnant wife, Guallec, one of several couples who solemnized their marriages by participating in a Catholic wedding ceremony following their baptisms.2 The couple's child, Ynocencio, was born some four months later. When he was ten days old, Ynocencio, too, was baptized at the mission.3 Yet the beginning and ending of Ynocencio's life occurred outside Mission San Francisco. On both occasions his parents were on paseo, a trip away from the mission authorized by the Franciscan priests. Paseos were common among Indians baptized at Mission San Francisco: Indians went on these journeys in order to harvest acorns and other wild foods, to hunt and fish, and to visit friends and family outside the mission. In this case the location of Ynocencio's birth, given in his baptismal record as "the other shore of the port," suggests that his parents were visiting their home village, located across the bay from the mission.4 They may have taken Ynocencio to the same place to die when he fell ill shortly after his second birthday.5 As Ynocencio's story reveals, baptized Bay Area Indians' responses to the Catholicism the Franciscan missionaries preached were far from uniform. While some Indians appear to have conformed their lives thoroughly to the priests' religion, the actions of others—like Ynocencio's parents—expressed a great deal of ambivalence. Like Ynocencio's parents, many Indians chose to situate important life events, including [End Page 412] birth and death, outside the confines of Mission San Francisco. In fact, at least 19 percent of the just over six thousand Bay Area Indians listed in Mission San Francisco's book of baptisms from Mission San Francisco's founding in 1776 until the end of the Spanish colonial period in 1821 were born outside the mission to previously baptized parents or died outside the mission.6 Of the over six hundred Bay Area Indians baptized at Mission San Francisco who died outside the mission by the end of 1821, about one-fifth did so at another Catholic mission—usually San José, San Francisco Solano, or San Rafael—where they had been empadronados, or incorporated into the mission population. More than twice that—just over 50 percent—died outside any mission or other colonial institution. While some of these Indians died while on mission errands, many died "in their lands," as the priests frequently wrote in the death records. Less frequently but still with some regularity, baptized Indians gave birth to children outside the mission. At least 4 percent of the Bay Area Indians baptized at Mission San Francisco were born to baptized parents who were away from the mission. Many of these parents, like Ynocencio's parents, were on paseo. Others had left the mission without a priest's permission and were designated as huidos, or runaways, in the mission registers. Most frequently, however, the priests recorded no explanation for why the births occurred elsewhere. The stories of these births and deaths outside the mission demonstrate that Bay Area Indians' responses to Catholicism varied widely. Rather than a space in which Indians found their lives forced into the Catholic mold that the Franciscans promoted, Mission San Francisco was a place in which Indians and priests expressed and accommodated a range of positions regarding the reach and authority of Catholicism in the San Francisco Bay Area. For Indians baptized at Mission San Francisco, birth and death could often be anticipated: except those that resulted in premature births or spontaneous abortions, pregnancies followed a known timetable. Likewise, disease and old age often provided ample time to prepare for death. Therefore, Indians often had the ability to choose where they wanted to situate both events, and evidence from Mission San Francisco's baptismal and death registers indicates that in many cases Indians had the...