Spanish Missions Research Articles

On the Relative Isolation of a Micronesian Archipelago during the Historic Period: the Palau Case-Study

Contact between Europeans and Pacific Islanders beginning in the early 1500s was both accidental and intentional. Many factors played a role in determining when contacts occurred, but some islands remained virtually isolated from European influence for decades or even centuries. We use Palau as a case-study for examining why this archipelago was free from direct European contact until 1783, despite repeated attempts by the Spanish to reach it from both the Philippines and Guam. As computer simulations and historical records indicate, seasonally-unfavourable winds and currents account for the Spanish difficulty. This inadvertently spared Palauans from early Spanish missionaries, disease, and rapid cultural change. © 2007 The Authors

The Alamo: A Story Bigger than Texas (review)

Reviewed by: The Alamo: A Story Bigger than Texas Dora Guerra "The Alamo: A Story Bigger than Texas." Designed by Drew Patterson Studios, Austin. Permanent exhibit at the Alamo Complex, San Antonio, Texas. Organized and funded by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, with funding from the R. J. and H. C. Kleberg Foundation, the Janis and Barrow Fund, The Disney Corporation, Campbell Foods, USAA, The McCombs Foundation, Mr. Fess Parker, and the Van Meter Trust. "The Alamo: A Story Bigger than Texas" is a new and permanent exhibit in the Long Barrack Museum that was inaugurated on October 5, 2005, in celebration of one hundred years of custodianship by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. With the objective to inform the 2.5 million visitors who come from all over the world each year, Dr. Bruce Winders, Alamo curator and historian, has written a story that takes the events that occurred at the Alamo out of the incidental and [End Page 436] into the greater historical context where they belong. For clarity, he divided the exhibit into five chronological sections: The Spanish period, which includes the Alamo as a mission protected by the military; the Mexican Independence period; the period of colonization from the United States; the Texas Revolution; and the post-revolution period, in which awareness of the important role that the Daughters of the Republic of Texas have played in the rescue, preservation, and custodianship of the Alamo is presented. By means of these chronological sections Winders's story takes visitors along the Alamo's journey from its early beginnings to the present day in a way that does not leave them in doubt about how one period led to the other and about the political reasons that overshadowed and caused the several transitions, transformations and confrontations that took place. For the first time at the Long Barrack Museum the public gets a comprehensive picture of the role that the battle of the Alamo had upon the histories of the United States and of Mexico. It shows how the various pivotal moments influenced the course of their respective histories, and demonstrates how the battle of the Alamo was an important catalyst that forevermore changed the geography and the maps of two nations, and demonstrates that the Alamo's story is indeed "A Story Bigger than Texas." Grants for the project came from foundations that included the R. J. and H. C. Kleberg Foundation, the Janis Barrow Fund, Disney, Campbell Foods, USAA, the McCombs Foundation, Mr. Fess Parker, The Van Meter Trust, plus upwards of 49 percent provided by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, culminating in a budget of $500,000. Drew Patterson, head of Drew Patterson Studios of Austin, was selected to design and install the exhibit. He brought to the project a very respectable cadre of successful achievements. As graphic designer for the new exhibit at the Long Barrack it was his task to take Winders's words and to translate them into a graphic narrative that would engage and inform a public that often comes equipped with only John Wayne's version of what happened at the Alamo, or with no clue at all of its story. Patterson, aided by a crew of experienced and talented associates, successfully achieved the undertaking. Entrance to the building is preceded by a shady, twelve-foot-wide veranda that is created by an arcade typical of Spanish/Moorish architecture that is reminiscent of the building's Spanish mission days. Appropriately, it is here that the story of the Alamo's Spanish period begins to unfold on large enamel text panels that have been mounted on the exterior limestone walls. Alongside there are bright ceiling to floor banners with text that inform visitors of mission days and that throughout the rest of the exhibit also serve to move the viewers from one historical period to another. Inside, the story of the Alamo continues to unfold along the 178-foot length of the building in seamless glass cases filled with original artifacts that give visitors tangible evidence of the societies and of the ways of life of which the Alamo was a part. The artifacts, some of...

Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico (review)

Reviewed by: Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico Cynthia Radding Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico. By Robert C. Galgano. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Pp. 248. Acknowledgments, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0826336485. $32.50, cloth.) Feast of Souls provides a comparative synthesis of the Franciscan mission enterprise in two provinces of the northeastern and northwestern borderlands of New Spain: Florida and New Mexico. The author's purpose is to produce a teaching volume for undergraduate classroom use in accessible language whose protagonists are the indigenous peoples of both regions and the missionaries imbued with the spirit of evangelization in new and largely unknown cultural frontiers. The seventeenth century marks the temporal framework for this study, indeed the formative period of contested hegemony and negotiated colonialism in both of these borderlands. Robert Galgano achieves his purpose, centering his narrative on the religious mission itself, with emphasis on the mixed and often contradictory messages that indigenous neophytes heard and refashioned from the Franciscans' Christian gospel. [End Page 411] Feast of Souls is a slim, eminently readable book divided into six chapters that roughly follow chronological lines through different phases of early contact, conquest, and mission settlement. Galgano addresses the ecological, epidemiological, and sociopolitical impacts of conquest and mission formation, notwithstanding his principal interest in the cultural clashes of the Catholic call to conversion and the disciplines that Franciscans attempted to impose on the Indians' religious and curing practices. He culls important cultural insights from the ethnographic literature for both regions and is attentive to the cultural frameworks that friars and secular Spaniards brought to the Americas from medieval traditions and the Tridentine canons of the early Counter Reformation. The book's strengths lie in the simplicity and clarity of the narrative. He compares the importance of chiefdoms among the Timucuan and Apalachee peoples of Florida with the relative independence of individual pueblos in New Mexico. The presence of the English frontier provided a market and physical refuge for indigenous peoples who fled from the Spanish mission system, but at the same time threatened Indians and Spaniards in Florida with aggressive military invasions during the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War) of the early eighteenth century. Conflict and rebellion came from within New Mexico, in a series of village-level rebellions that culminated in the well-known revolt of 1680, forcing the Spaniards to abandon the province for nearly two decades. Feast of Souls reduces the colonial drama to only a few themes related to the missions and focuses on two separate provinces of the vast northern frontier of New Spain. While the comparisons between Florida and New Mexico support Galgano's main points, the narrative generally ignores concurrent historical processes in the neighboring provinces of Nueva Vizcaya, Coahuila, and Nuevo León. The resulting text seems to float suspended above the complicated tapestry of Spanish dominion in the Americas and viceregal developments in New Spain. Classroom teachers would be well advised to problematize the author's contention that the Crown's only motive for sustaining these provinces was its commitment to Catholic evangelization of Indian souls. Florida belonged to the Caribbean basin, with strategic navigational routes and European rivalries for control of territories, ports, the slave trade, and plantation economies. New Mexico, although on the margins of the mining centers of Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua, and Sonora that fueled the New Spanish economy, was connected to that colonial economy through the camino real de tierra adentro and provided a defensive shield for both real and imagined incursions by British and French traders and military forces. In sum, Feast of Souls offers students an engaging introduction to the history of two regions that illustrate the complexity of ecological, cultural, and geopolitical borderlands in the Americas. Cynthia Radding University of New Mexico Copyright © 2007 The Texas State Historical Association

Style and Resistance in the Seventeenth Century Salinas Province

This paper draws upon James Scott's insights concerning the “public” and “hidden” transcripts of subjugated peoples to investigate Pueblo responses to Spanish colonization in the seventeenth century. We focus on the marked changes that occurred in the decoration of two ceramic wares produced in the Salinas Pueblo region of central New Mexico, and suggest that these changes express one aspect of native resistance to Spanish missionary efforts to eradicate Pueblo religious practices. We document that differences in the impact of missionization between the northern and southern Salinas pueblos led to marked and divergent changes in the ways women decorated glaze and white ware vessels. Women who made glaze ware bowls lived in villages under the direct control of Spanish missionaries, and appear to have deliberately simplified and masked the iconography on their vessels. Women who made white ware jars, however, lived in villages without resident Spanish missionaries. Following Spanish colonization, these women began decorating their vessels with detailed, diverse ritual iconography, apparently in an effort to reinforce, and probably to teach, religious knowledge.

Caught between Rivals: The Spanish-African Maroon Competition for Captive Indian Labor in the Region of Esmeraldas during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

In 1586, the royal audiencia of Quito received a letter from a fugitive African slave written with the aid of an itinerant Spanish missionary. The judges were dismayed by what they read. The African, Alonso de Illescas, head of one of the maroon communities that had been flourishing on the coast of Esmeraldas since 1553, petitioned the court with a proposition and a veiled threat. The proposal implored the judges to honor an earlier promise giving Illescas political authority over Esmeraldas, the coastal province comprising the maroons’ homeland, and to desist in their plans to establish Spanish settlers in the region.

Caught between Rivals: The Spanish-African Maroon Competition for Captive Indian Labor in the Region of Esmeraldas during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

In 1586, the royal audiencia of Quito received a letter from a fugitive African slave written with the aid of an itinerant Spanish missionary. The judges were dismayed by what they read. The African, Alonso de Illescas, head of one of the maroon communities that had been flourishing on the coast of Esmeraldas since 1553, petitioned the court with a proposition and a veiled threat. The proposal implored the judges to honor an earlier promise giving Illescas political authority over Esmeraldas, the coastal province comprising the maroons’ homeland, and to desist in their plans to establish Spanish settlers in the region.

Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico (review)

Reviewed by: Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico John H. Hann Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico. By Robert C. Galgano. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 212. $32.50.) This relatively brief work of 188 pages of text and notes provides a glimpse of the results of the meetings between Indians and Spaniards in those two diverse areas in the seventeenth century. The inspiration that led to this study was its author's conviction that the historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists who have studied the peoples of the two disparate regions over the last half century or so, in studying specific cultures, have missed "the bigger comparative picture that leads to greater insights and reveals new patterns."Galgano also believes that earlier scholars have failed "to explain the dynamic variations of Spanish colonization schemes" and "to see broader designs in the negotiated coexistence between natives and newcomers." Galgano defined his "pedagogical goal" as "to emphasize the central roles Indians played, and their reactions to Spanish missionization in Florida and New Mexico."He claimed to have designed his work "as an accessible history especially for undergraduate use."In the same vein he also explained:"Though I am most interested in natives' views, the Spanish perspective is equally important."He has succeeded in achieving these latter goals. But he has given relatively little attention to his more ambitious ones of presenting "the bigger comparative picture"and "dynamic variations of Spanish colonization schemes"and "broader designs in the negotiated coexistence." This book grew out of a paper the author gave at a meeting of graduate students who were attending a summer archaeological field school at the College of William and Mary under the auspices of the Omohundro Institute of American History and Culture and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Professor James Axtell apparently was the director of that field school. For some time since then Galgano has taught at both the College of William and Mary and James Madison University. The author identified himself as a historian. [End Page 347] In the preparation of this work, the author claimed to have done research at both the University of Florida's P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History and at the University of New Mexico's Zimmerman Library. But, the author's cited fonts indicate that his book is based largely on secondary sources or on primary ones that have been published. In that sense his work is derivative as it is based almost exclusively on the published work of other scholars rather than on unpublished primary sources. However, his "Selected Bibliography," as he termed it, indicates that he did research in the manuscripts of the Jeannette Thurber Connor Papers, the Woodbury Lowery Collection, and the Stetson Collection for the Florida portion of his narrative and in the France Vintor Scholes Collection of the University of New Mexico for the section devoted to that region. But there is scant reflection of that documentary research in his thirty-one pages of "Notes"concerning his sources. In a hasty perusal, I found only one citation from the Stetson Collection and one from the Connor Collection. His inclusion of those manuscript collections in his bibliography appears to be more "window dressing" than a reflection of reality. Nonetheless, he has done a workmanlike job of extracting information from his sources to present a very readable and enlightening account of the Indians' and Spaniards' seventeenth-century encounters in both Florida and New Mexico. Galgano observes that considerably more is known about Florida's original native peoples because of the wealth of documentation that has survived for it while much of the documentation for New Mexico perished during the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. Toward the end of his introductory chapter on page 31 Galgano makes a somewhat puzzling observation. In it he notes that, "In the process of re-Christianization Spain became intimately associated with the Christian Church and later the Roman Catholic Church."The period that he was discussing was the Moorish period. Some elaboration seems to have been called for on the nature of the distinction...

Barbaros: Spaniards and their savages in the Age of Enlightenment

Two centuries after Cortes and Pizarro seized the Aztec and Inca empires, Spain's conquest of America remained unfinished. Indians retained control over most of the lands in Spain's American empire. Mounted on horseback, savvy about European ways and often possessing firearms, independent Indians continued to find new ways to resist subjugation by Spanish soldiers and conversion by Spanish missionaries. In this panoramic study, David Weber explains how late eighteenth-century Spanish administrators tried to fashion a more enlightened policy toward the people they called barbaros, or 'savages'. Even Spain's most powerful monarchs failed, however, to enforce a consistent, well-reasoned policy toward Indians. At one extreme, powerful independent Indians forced Spaniards to seek peace, acknowledge autonomous tribal governments and recognise the existence of tribal lands, fulfilling the Crown's oft-stated wish to use 'gentle' means in dealing with Indians. At the other extreme the Crown abandoned its principles, authorising bloody wars on Indians when Spanish officers believed they could defeat them. Power, says Weber, more than the power of ideas, determined how Spaniards treated 'savages' in the Age of Enlightenment.

The Newest New World

Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet, eds. Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. xi + 368 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). James Horn. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005. xi + 289 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper) It is easy to imagine that many American historians will feel an urge either to shrug their shoulders or to roll their eyes when hearing of the publication of two new books with "Jamestown" in their titles. Over the past few years, the place which John Smith called "a misery, a ruine, a death, a hell" has seemed inescapable. In March 2004, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture sponsored a four-day conference on the subject of "The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624," at which no fewer than sixty-five scholars presented papers, nearly all of which dealt at least in part with Jamestown. Historical and tourism organizations throughout coastal Virginia have committed to an ambitious program of events to celebrate "America's 400th Anniversary," and state residents can apply for commemorative license plates, spend state quarters featuring an image of the three ships of the initial English expedition, and reap the benefits of transit improvements around the newly named "Jamestown corridor." Even the local multiplex has jumped upon this bandwagon, with heartthrob actor Colin Farrell donning John Smith's doublet and boots in Terrence Malick's The New World. But it would be a considerable shame should historians of colonial America and the Atlantic choose to pass by either of these volumes, as both rise far beyond quadricentennial hype and provide a host of insights, not only about the Jamestown venture itself but also about the wider political, social, and cultural world in which that venture was carried out. James Horn seizes the reader's attention within the opening lines of A Land as God Made It. Rather than beginning his account of the colony with the all-too-familiar narrative of the arrival in 1607 of the Susan Constant, the [End Page 150] Godspeed, and the Discovery in the Chesapeake Bay, or with a discussion of the "lost colony" of Roanoke, Horn announces that "the English were not the first Europeans to discover Virginia" (p. 1). In the summer of 1561, a Spanish ship was driven by storms into the Bay. Proceeding inland, the Spaniards anchored along a river in order to gather supplies and repair their vessel, and there, on the banks of what may have been the Chickahominy, they encountered a small group of Indians, two of whom apparently agreed to board the ship and sail back to Europe with its crew. One of these two, Paquiqueneo, was given the name of Don Luis de Velasco, under which title he was presented at Philip II's court in Madrid. Anxious to return to his homeland, Don Luis sailed to Mexico, where he accepted the Christian faith and spent several years living amongst Dominican friars. Expressing a desire to establish a mission among his own people, Don Luis gained the support of the governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and in 1570, accompanied by dozen Jesuits, he at last returned to his home. Once resettled among his people, Don Luis soon turned his back upon the missionaries, who struggled to survive a harsh winter, and in February 1571 the apostate and his supporters attacked the mission, killing all but one of its residents. An enraged Menendez dispatched an expedition against his former comrade; unable to find Don Luis, he settled for unleashing a "chastisement" upon the Indians before returning to Florida. But although the Spanish mission met a quick and brutal end, in Horn's view it cast a long shadow over future relations between Europeans and Virginia Indians. Menendez's attack acquainted the Indians with...

Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions

In Converting California, James A. Sandos adds his interpretive touch to the literature on California missions, with the intent of providing a corrective to what he sees as a skewed, polarized historiography that favors the study of “material culture” over religion and worldview. In both cases, his categorization tends toward reductionism: scholars are either “Christophilic triumphalists” or “Christophobic nihilists,” or their explanations derive from seemingly mutually exclusive religious or material factors. What Sandos means by material culture is not entirely clear, since his use of the term goes beyond its anthropological context to include ethnohistories that consider political, economic, social, demographic, and ecological factors. Yet one could argue that ethnohistorical work by scholars such as Robert H. Jackson and Steven Hackel do not ignore religion and worldview in their analyses of mission interactions.Sandos proposes to complement ethnohistory with “theohistory,” an approach that will elucidate a “fundamentally religious struggle” (p. xvii – xviii). To get at “theohistory” of both Indians and Franciscans, Sandos draws on ethnographies and a history of the missions by Luiseño native Pablo Tac, along with printed Franciscan sources and biographies of Junípero Serra. He weaves a lively narrative, spiced with anecdotes, that analyzes the purpose and efficacy of missions as instruments for conversion and of social control, indigenous cultures at contact, Franciscan evangelization tactics (especially of the father-presidents of the California missions Junípero Serra and Fermín Francisco Lasuén), Franciscan conflicts with civil and military officials, the relationship between cultural practices and the spread of disease, and indigenous resistance as manifested in uprisings and more mundane forms.Sandos’s panorama mixes familiar interpretations with new conjecture and exploration on topics such as Serra’s worldview, the effects of disease, the impact of missionization on women, the role of music, and access to hallucinogens as a factor in cultural persistence. Protracted discussions of the use of flogging for discipline seem directed at unraveling or defusing an issue that has complicated the process of Junípero Serra’s canonization. Although Sandos does not deny that coercion was a part of the evangelical and colonizing processes, he challenges the characterization of missions as forms of slavery (he prefers debt peonage), of rape as an instrument of Spanish policy, and of the Franciscan mission enterprise as a form of genocide.In some cases (for example, in the explanation of the connections between music, language learning, and social status), Sandos’s historiographical twists are inventive and provocative. In other cases (for example, in the primacy accorded to syphilis in demographic decline), Sandos fails to convince by ignoring published demographic evidence to the contrary. His discussion of the primary influences on Serra’s thought (St. Francis of Assisi, Duns Scotus, and María de Agreda) is original, but perhaps incomplete, given the lack of reference to a rich body of literature (e.g., Robert Ricard, John Phelan, Georges Baudot) on the beliefs, millennial and otherwise, of New World Franciscans over time. The characterization of Serra’s mentality as “medieval” lacks nuance.There are other cases where the author’s seeming unfamiliarity with colonial Spanish American historiography threatens to belie his analysis or question its originality: for example, in the discussions of secularization, Bourbon/Enlightenment influences, indigenous resistance, and gender issues. This is especially true in the case of the recent fine-grained histories of the mission enterprise on the northern and southern frontiers of Spain’s empire, such as those by Cynthia Radding, James Saeger, and Barbara Ganson. Attention to these analyses could have provided a comparative dimension to enhance Sandos’s final assessment of conversion and the California missions. Yet despite its curious parochialism, Sandos’s book offers a valuable overview of the cultural and religious worldviews and conflicts that divided California Indians and Franciscans in this late colonial Spanish mission enterprise.

Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farm Workers, 1769-1913 (review)

Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913. By Richard Steven Street. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Pp. xxv, 904. Illustrations. Paper, $29.95.)Farmworkers in California play a prominent role in some of the more noteworthy literature of the twentieth century. The Grapes of WratKs Tom Joad and his family, for instance, remind us of the painful, seemingly endless suffering of migrant workers. But Joad's story also demonstrates that he was part of a broader community of migrant workers who lived in the Hoovervilles, shantytowns, and drainage ditches that characterized rural California at the time. In Beasts of the Field, the first of his three-volume history of farmworkers, Richard Steven Street describes the story of agricultural migrant workers in California from roughly the 176Os through 1913 to uncover how California farmworkers became a class before the Joads took to the road.Street divides his narrative into six roughly chronological categories. He begins by explaining the colonial and preindustrial infancy of the Spanish missions throughout the region that became California to demonstrate how Spanish officials relied on Indians' labor to make the land productive. By the early nineteenth century, officials had virtually enslaved these laborers by shackling and imprisoning them to keep them in line. To gain greater control of native field hands in the 184Os, farm owners and legislators resorted to passing oppressive laws that turned free, native workers into indentured servants. Growers exploited these workers horribly, fed them little, and provided insufficient housing. Not surprisingly, native workers died at astonishingly high rates, forcing growers to search for new laborers. Bindlemen, who carried their belongings in a bundle strapped to their backs, filled that void. For roughly twenty years, bindlemen choked on dust and dodged hazardous machines nearly continuously from late spring through late fall to bring in crops such as wheat, a job that grew more dangerous as growers began mechanizing production. Bindlemen eventually sought higher wages and safer working conditions, and Chinese immigrants began taking their place.Chinese workers soon dominated the labor pool, particularly after completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 when now-unemployed Chinese workers flooded the agricultural labor market. But the influx of these workers sparked intense racism among white Californians. While lower-sort whites attacked Chinese workers for taking low pay, state and national officials codified anti-Chinese animosity by passing a series of laws designed to restrict workers' movements and to reduce immigration. Despite these racist attacks, Chinese laborers continued to carve out a place for themselves in the fields of California. They did so in part because bosses and growers defended Chinese workers for working hard and accepting low wages, lower in fact than most whites. That said, growers tried to replace Chinese workers with school-aged children. The plan backfired, and Chinese immigrants dominated agricultural labor until the early twentieth century, when their population declined as a result of immigration restrictions and low replacement by natural increase.As the number of Chinese declined, Japanese immigrants filled the open jobs. In many respects, Japanese workers faced the same hardships faced by their Chinese and Indian predecessors-poor pay, unscrupulous employers, bad food, inadequate housing, long hours, dangerous work, and racism. …

STEVEN J. OATIS. A Colonial Complex: South Carolina's Frontiers in the Era of the Yamasee War, 1680-1730. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2004. Pp. 399.$65.00

The Yamasee War was one of a series of revolts and wars in the colonial South. It began with the Guale revolt of 1576, the first of a number of rebellions in the Spanish mission system in Florida. Next came revolts in the English sphere: Opechancanough's uprising in Virginia in 1622 and again in 1644; the Tuscarora War in North Carolina in 1711–1712; the Yamasee War in the lower South in 1715–1716; and finally the Natchez uprising in French Louisiana in 1729. In all of these revolts, the Native peoples planned in secret, launching surprise attacks that killed dozens or hundreds of people, and all ended in defeat for the perpetrators. The Yamasee War was unusual in that it included the participation, at varying levels of commitment, of Native societies across a wide swath of the South, and it had a powerful transforming effect on both the Carolina Colony and the Natives.

The 1906 earthquake and a century of progress in understanding earthquakes and their hazards

Our knowledge of the earliest historic earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay area comes from Spanish mission records, dating back to the founding of Mission Dolores in San Francisco in 1776. The Padres reported on earthquakes damaging their missions, but this record becomes spotty with secularization beginning in the 1830s. After the Gold Rush, numerous newspapers around the region provided excellent coverage. The historical records indicate that the latter two-thirds of the nineteenth century was a period of intense seismic activity throughout the greater San Francisco Bay area (Fig. 1). In fact, 18 magnitude 6.0 or larger earthquakes occurred in the

Eastenders Go West: English Sparrows, Immigrants, and the Nature of Fear

The Tortilla Curtain (1995), a novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle, juxtaposes the existence of southern California's affluent whites and non-white underclass by relating the stories of two couples whose lives become irrevocably entangled following a fateful automobile accident. The period flavour derives from racial tensions that culminated in the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and the passage, two years later, of Proposition 187, a package of prohibitive measures to curb the influx of “undocumented” immigrants from Mexico. Delaney Mossbacher, the book's main character, is a freelance nature writer with orthodox liberal views – a caricatured Sierra Club member. He contributes a monthly, Annie Dillard-esque nature column (“Pilgrim at Topanga Creek”) to an outdoor magazine. He lives in an upscale hilltop community designed in impeccable Spanish mission style – the product of white flight – apparently safe from the Mexican hordes that have broken through the border (the brittle “tortilla curtain” of the novel's title) and are overrunning the flatlands.

Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913

Written by one of America's preeminent labor historians, this book is the definitive account of one of the most spectacular, captivating, complex and strangely neglected stories in Western history-the emergence of migratory farmworkers and the development of California agriculture. Street has systematically worked his way through a mountain of archival materials-more than 500 manuscript collections, scattered in 22 states, including Spain and Mexico-to follow the farmworker story from its beginnings on Spanish missions into the second decade of the twentieth century. The result is a comprehensive tour de force. Scene by scene, the epic narrative clarifies and breathes new life into a controversial and instructive saga long surrounded by myth, conjecture, and scholarly neglect. With its panoramic view spanning 144 years and moving from the US-Mexico border to Oregon, Beasts of the Field reveals diverse patterns of life and labor in the fields that varied among different crops, regions, time periods, and racial and ethic groups. Enormous in scope, packed with surprising twists and turns, and devastating in impact, this compelling, revelatory work of American social history will inform generations to come of the history of California and the nation.

The Bioarchaeology of Identity in Spanish Colonial Florida: Social and Evolutionary Transformation before, during, and after Demographic Collapse

In this article, I consider the effects of Spanish missionization on indigenous identity and biological interaction patterns. Odontometric data were recorded for 26 skeletal samples dating to three time periods: precontact (C.E. 1200–1400), early mission (C.E. 1600–1650), and late mission (C.E. 1650–1700). Population genetic analyses generated estimates of regional genetic variation (FST) and intersample genetic distances. Genetic variation during the precontact period was limited despite documented linguistic and cultural variation. Variation increased during the early mission period, indicating a decline in between‐group interaction despite inclusion within a single colonial sociopolitical framework. During the late mission period, variation declined significantly, indicating a dramatic reduction in between‐group variability consistent with genetic drift and gene flow between communities. I discuss these results in terms of archaeological and historical models of postcolonial transformation and suggest an emerging polyethnic community was resident in La Florida preceding the subsequent diaspora caused by burgeoning European military conflict in eastern North America.

“Bringing Them under Subjection”: California's Tejón Indian Reservation and Beyond, 1852–1864

“Bringing Them under Subjection,” along with Indians and Intruders in Central California, 1769–1849 (1993) and Indians and Indian Agents: The Origins of the Reservation System in California, 1849 –1852 (1997), completes this author's three-volume, century-long history of the San Joaquin Valley. George Harwood Phillips writes of the Indian residents' experience with “relocation, dislocation, and subjection” and details how they “underwent cultural, economic, political, and demographic transformation of staggering proportions” (p. 251). This volume goes well beyond the confines of the Sebastian Military Reserve (Thejón Reservation) to include most of the San Joaquin Valley of central California, especially the Tulare Valley, home to the Thejoneños and the Tu lareños. Former neophytes from coastal missions, they fled to the foot of the Tehachapi Mountains near Tejón Pass and intermarried with local groups. Their way of life, like that of all California Indians, was disrupted by the gold rush. Commissioners were sent to negotiate treaties, seven of which were signed by residents of the San Joaquin Valley. But strong opposition from white Californians led to Senate rejection of the treaties. Therefore Edward F. Beale, newly appointed California superintendent of Indian affairs, had to find “some way to subjugate the Indians of California without the use of treaties” (p. 73). Opposed to removal, Beale, hoping to reintroduce a version of the Spanish mission, proposed military reserves where the Indians, supervised by a few soldiers, could support themselves by their own labor. He failed to see “the irony in creating a new ‘mission’ in the interior for Indians who had fled the old ones along the coast” (p. 260).

:Unlocking the Past: Celebrating Historical Archaeology in North America

Unlocking the Past: Celebrating Historical Archaeology in North America. LU ANN DE CUNZO and JOHN H. JAMESON, JR. (eds.). University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2005. x + 255 pp., illus., biblio., index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8130-2796-9. Reviewed by Thomas E. Beaman Jr., RPA It is often said that history is a series of stories well told. If this is true, Lu Ann De Cunzo and John H. Jameson Jr. have assembled a volume that lauds historical archaeology as a fresh source of historical tales to tell. Published by the University Press of Florida with the Society for Historical Archaeology, Unlocking the Past assembles an impressive collection of 30 archaeologists and their research that well illustrates the depth and diversity of modern North American historical archaeology. The material contained within will likely be familiar to many professional archaeologists, as the vast majority has previously appeared in an array of journal articles, numerous technical reports, and even a few popular monographs. Its reuse here is in a jargonfree format of easily accessible, topical summaries that makes this volume highly usable for students, the public and uninitiated historians as a general primer on the contributions historical archaeology can make to the study of the past. In her introduction, De Cunzo advocates archaeology as a means to education through the thrill of discovery. As described, her first experience with finding artifacts mirrors that of many youths (including many who are now professional archaeologists), that of hunting for arrowheads in agricultural fields with a family friend: I cared only about discovering those bits of stone that lie scattered on the ground. Someone had shaped them into tools centuries ago and then broken them and thrown them away (p. 1). De Cunzo continues with this autobiographical trek through her educational journey of discoveries with John Cotter and James Deetz, and through the work of Kathleen Deagan and many others. This theme is carried through the volume by the contributing authors, many of whom also share their excitement in discovery. Unlocking the Past is broken down into six thematic sections, each of which is accompanied by a brief introduction by De Cunzo. The first section, Cultures in Contact, presents case studies of how different cultures persisted and often evolved in the postcontact era of European colonialism, all of which are often noted as absent, underrepresented, or prejudiced in traditional histories. Chapters include reflections on sixteenth-century Spanish missions in Florida (Jerald T. Milanich), postcontact forensic changes in native populations (Clark Spencer Larson), colonowares pots as products of creolized Africans (Leland Ferguson), a multicultural society of three ethnicities in nineteenth-century Florida (Terranee Weik), and social and economic status among Asian immigrants (Roberta Greenwood). Next, Challenging and Changing Environments explores different examples of how colonial settlers adapted to unfamiliar environments. One of the outstanding contributions in this volume is William Fitzhugh's review of the material evidence for two unsuccessful early settlement attempts in the Canadian Arctic, by Vikings in the eleventh century, and in 1578 by English colonists under Martin Frobisher. Also included in this section are chapters on late-seventeenth-century Jamestown (Andrew Edwards), the underwater discovery and excavation of La Salle's wrecked ship La Belle (James Bruseth), and isolated western miners (Scott Baxter and Rebecca Allen). Even with continuous use, in many urban areas the past well survives beneath the present exterior. Building Cities provides four examples of how archaeologists have effectively worked with community leaders, planners, preservationists, and cadres of volunteers and students to unlock the urban past in Quebec City (William Moss), New York City (Diana diZerega Wall and Nan Rothschild), Alexandria, Virginia (Pamela Cressey), Charleston, South Carolina (Martha Zierden), and West Oakland, California (De Cunzo and Mary Praetzellis). …

Spanish colonial effects on Native American mating structure and genetic variability in northern and central Florida: Evidence from Apalachee and western Timucua

Standard population genetic analyses are implemented for a series of precontact and contact period samples from central and northern Florida to investigate changes in genetic variability and population affinity coincident with the establishment of Spanish missions during the 17th century. Estimates of F(ST) based on odontometric data indicate limited heterogeneity for the Apalachee samples, suggestive of some degree of within-group endogamy for this ethnic group prior to contact. This corresponds well with ethnohistoric reconstructions indicating that Apalachee were populous, partially linguistically isolated from its neighbors, and involved in persistent cycles of warfare with neighboring groups. Estimates of extralocal gene flow for the Apalachee samples indicate limited initial changes in the mating structure of these populations. After 1650, however, extralocal gene flow increases, consistent with evidence for dramatic population movements throughout northern Florida and increased Spanish presence in the province, particularly at the mission of San Luis. Inclusion of non-Apalachee outgroups does not increase estimates of genetic heterogeneity, as was expected based on ethnohistoric data. The pattern of genetic distances suggests a biological division between north and south Florida population groups, consistent with archaeological and ethnohistoric data, and similarly indicates some distinction between precontact and postcontact local groups. Differential extralocal gene flow experienced by pre-1650 Apalachee and Timucua populations suggests localized mission experience. The Apalachee, with large, dense populations, experienced limited initial changes in genetic diversity or mating structure. However, after 1650 they were apparently involved in a much more expansive mating network that may have included Spaniards and immigrant Native American groups to the region. These results are in contrast to the mission experience of the Guale Indians of the Georgia coast.

"The Indians Generally Love Their Wives and Children": Native American Marriage and Sexual Practices in Missions San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Jose

Fornication, wrote Fathers Magin Catala and Jose Viader in 1814, ranked among most dominant vices of the at Mission Santa Clara, near the San Francisco Bay in Alta California.1 Other missionaries agreed. dominant vices of the wrote Fathers Narciso Duran and Buenaventura Fortuny from nearby Mission San Jose, those which are prohibited in the fifth, sixth, seventh and the first part of the eighth commandments of the holy law of God.2 Those commandments enjoined believers to refrain from murder, fornication, theft, and lying. Of the sixteen missions responded to the question, Which vices are the most dominant among them and in which sex?, thirteen mentioned impurity, unchastity, incontinence, lust, or fornication.3 Clearly, to the missionaries, sexual immorality was a major problem. But how did the Central Californians themselves perceive their sexual conduct? By reinterpreting the missionaries' reports about Native Americans' marriage and sexuality in Missions San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Jose in the light of anthropological evidence on Central Californian Indians, I argue what the missionaries saw as the sexual immorality of Catholic Indians, the Central Californians themselves likely interpreted as legitimate sexual behavior. Before the Spanish arrived, many small tribelets occupied the San Francisco Bay area. They spoke dialects of five mutually unintelligible languages: Costanoan, Bay Miwok, Coast Miwok, Patwin, and Wappo. Anthropologists and historians believe these tribelets were culturally similar, though geography and ecology caused some differences between tribelets in different areas. Tribelets interacted regularly, creating social, political, and economic ties bound them to their neighbors.4 For the Spanish crown, the Alta California missions were an inexpensive means of establishing a physical presence in lands claimed by the Spanish crown, thus discouraging incursions by the British, Americans, and Russians. Missions San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Jose were among the last of the missions to be founded, beginning in 1776, 1777, and 1797, respectively. As they founded missions, the Spanish also established military outposts and civil settlements, the latter often inhabited by soldiers and, occasionally, their families. Men formed the overwhelming majority of the early settlers in Alta California. The first president of the California missions, Junipero Serra, urged the government to send more families to live in the region, so that the Indians, who until now have been very surprised to see all the men without any women, see there are also marriages among Christians.5 In the San Francisco Bay area, the Hispanic colonists built the San Francisco presidio in 1776 and settled the town of San Jose in 1777. Fourteen families lived in San Jose, nine of them headed by soldiers.6 The settlements grew slowly; by 1810, according to the historian of California Hubert Howe Bancroft, the Hispanic population of the Bay Area remained under five hundred.7 Scholars studying the Spanish missions in Aha California disagree-sometimes vehemently-about whether the mission system was helpful or harmful to the Native American population of the area. Yet whether they see the missions as an oppressive regime designed to destroy Native American cultures or as the most effective means of protecting Indians from the deleterious effects of Spanish invasion, scholars rarely question the ideological dominance of Catholicism within the mission walls. Scholars who see the mission system in a positive light tend to follow the missionaries' own understanding of the missions as islands of Catholicism in a sea of traditional Indian religion.8 On the other side of the debate, scholars who see the missions as oppressive institutions have tended to be interested in Native American resistance to the mission system. They have focused their research on physical resistance, primarily in the forms of armed conflict and fugitivism. …