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Mission Indians was a term used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of California who lived or grew up in the Spanish mission system in California. Today the term is used to refer to their descendants and to specific, contemporary tribal nations in California.
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Spanish explorers arrived on California's coasts as early as the mid-16th century. In 1769, the first Spanish Franciscan mission was built in San Diego. Local tribes were relocated and conscripted into forced labor on the mission, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. Disease, starvation, excessive physical labor, and torture decimated these tribes. [1] Many were baptized as Catholics by the Franciscan missionaries at the missions.
Mission Indians were from many regional Native American tribes; their members were often relocated together in new mixed groups, and the Spanish named the Indian groups after the responsible mission. For instance, the Payomkowishum were renamed Luiseños , after the Mission San Luis Rey; the Acjachemem were renamed the Juaneños , after the Mission San Juan Capistrano and the Kizh or Kisiannos renamed the Gabrieleño , after the Mission San Gabriel. [2]
The Catholic priests forbade the Indians from practicing their native culture, resulting in the disruption of many tribes' linguistic, spiritual, and cultural practices. With no acquired immunity to the exposure of European diseases (as well as sudden cultural upheaval and lifestyle demands), the population of Mission Indians suffered high mortality and dramatic decreases, especially in the coastal regions; the population was reduced by 90 percent, between 1769 and 1848. [3]
Despite the missionaries' attempts to convert the Indigenous peoples of the missions, often referred to in mission records as "neophytes", they indicated that their attempts at conversion were often unsuccessful. For example, in 1803, twenty-eight years into the mission period, Friar Fermín de Lasuén wrote: [4]
Generally the neophytes have not yet enough affection for Christianity and civilization. Most of them are excessively fond of the mountains, the beach, and of barbarous freedom and independence, so that some show of military force is necessary, lest they by force of arms deny the Faith and law which they have professed. [4]
Abuse persisted after Mexico assumed control of the California missions in 1834. Mexico secularized the missions and transferred (or sold) the lands to other non-Native administrators or owners. Many of the Mission Indians worked on the newly established ranchos, with little improvement in their living conditions. [1]
Around 1906, Alfred L. Kroeber and Constance G. Du Bois, of the University of California, Berkeley, first applied the term "Mission Indians" to southern California Native Americans, as an ethnographic and anthropological label to include those at Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa and south. [5] [6]
On January 12, 1891, the US Congress passed the "An Act for the Relief of the Mission Indians in the State of California". This would further sanction the original grants of the Mexican government to the natives in southern California, and sought to protect their rights, while giving railroad corporations a primary interest. [7]
In 1927, the Sacramento Bureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent Lafayette A. Dorrington was instructed by Assistant Commissioner E. B. Merritt, in Washington D.C., to list the tribes in California from whom Congress had not yet purchased land, and for those lands to be used as reservations. As part of the 1928 the California Indian Jurisdictional Act enrollment, Native Americans were asked to identify their "Tribe or Band". The majority of applicants supplied the name of the mission that they knew their ancestors were associated with. The enrollment was part of a plan to provide reservation lands promised, but never fulfilled by 18 non-ratified treaties made in 1851–1852. [8]
Because of the enrollment applications, and the native American's association with a specific geographical location (often associated with the Catholic missions), the bands of natives became known as the "mission band" of people associated with a Spanish mission. [8] Some bands also occupy trust lands—Indian Reservations—identified under the Mission Indian Agency. The Mission Indian Act of 1891 formed the administrative Bureau of Indian Affairs unit which governs San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Santa Barbara Counties. There is one Chumash reservation in the last county, and more than thirty reservations in the others.
Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Ventura and Orange Counties do not contain any tribal trust lands. However, resident organizations that self-identify as Native American tribes, including self-identified Tongva in the first and Acjachemen in the last county (as well as Coastal Chumash in Santa Barbara County) continue seeking federal tribal recognition by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. There are no state-recognized tribes in California.
Eleven of the southern California reservations were included under the early 20th-century allotment programs, which broke up communal tribal holding, to assign property to individual households, with individual heads of household and tribal members identified lists such as the Dawes Rolls.
The most important reservations include: the Agua Caliente Reservation in Palm Springs, which occupies alternate sections (approx. 640 acres each) with former railroad grant lands that form much of the city; the Morongo Reservation in the San Gorgonio Pass area; and the Pala Reservation which includes San Antonio de Pala Asistencia (Pala Mission) of the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in Pala. These and the tribal governments of fifteen other reservations operate casinos today. The total acreage of the mission group of reservations constitutes approximately 250,000 acres (1,000 km2).
These tribes were associated with the following missions, asisténcias, and estáncias:
In northern California, specific tribes are associated geographically with certain missions. [8]
Current mission Indian tribes include the following in southern California:
Current Mission Indian tribes north of the present day ones listed above, in the Los Angeles Basin, Central Coast, Salinas Valley, Monterey Bay, and San Francisco Bay Areas, also were identified with the local mission of their Indian Reductions in those regions.[ citation needed ]
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The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans, are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of related languages. The Ohlone languages make up a sub-family of the Utian language family. Older proposals place Utian within the Penutian language phylum, while newer proposals group it as Yok-Utian.
The Cahuilla, also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California. Their original territory encompassed about 2,400 square miles (6,200 km2). The traditional Cahuilla territory was near the geographic center of Southern California. It was bounded to the north by the San Bernardino Mountains, to the south by Borrego Springs and the Chocolate Mountains, to the east by the Colorado Desert, and to the west by the San Jacinto Plain and the eastern slopes of the Palomar Mountains.
The Kumeyaay, also known as 'Iipai-Tiipai or by the historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the United States. They are an indigenous people of California.
The San Antonio de Pala Asistencia, or the "Pala Mission", was founded on June 13, 1816, as an asistencia or "sub-mission" to Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, some twenty miles inland upstream from the latter mission on the San Luis Rey River. Pala Mission was part of the Spanish missions, asistencias, and estancias system in Las Californias—Alta California. Today it is located in the Pala Indian Reservation located in northern San Diego County, with the official name of Mission San Antonio de Pala. It is the only historic mission facility still serving a Mission Indian tribe.
The Las Flores Estancia was established in 1823 as an estancia ("station"). It was part of the Spanish missions, asistencias, and estancias system in Las Californias—Alta California. Las Flores Estancia was situated approximately halfway between Mission San Luis Rey de Francia and Mission San Juan Capistrano. It is located near Bell Canyon on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base ten miles south of the City of San Clemente in northern San Diego County, California. The estancia is also home to the architecturally significant National Historic Landmark Las Flores Adobe, completed in 1868.
The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an Indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles (80 km) from the present-day southern part of Los Angeles County to the northern part of San Diego County, and inland 30 miles (48 km). In the Luiseño language, the people call themselves Payómkawichum, meaning "People of the West." After the establishment of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, "the Payómkawichum began to be called San Luiseños, and later, just Luiseños by Spanish missionaries due to their proximity to this San Luis Rey mission.
The Cupeño are a Native American tribe of Southern California.
Pablo de la Portilla was a soldier and pioneer in nineteenth-century California.
The Serrano are an Indigenous people of California. Their autonyms are Taaqtam meaning "people", Maarrênga’yam meaning "people from Morongo", and Yuhaaviatam meaning "people of the pines."
The Pala Indian Reservation is located in the middle of San Luis Rey River Valley in northern San Diego County, California, east of the community of Fallbrook, and has been assigned feature ID 272502.
The Campo Indian Reservation is home to the Campo Band of Diegueño Mission Indians, also known as the Campo Kumeyaay Nation, a federally recognized tribe of Kumeyaay people in the southern Laguna Mountains, in eastern San Diego County, California. The reservation was founded in 1893 and is 16,512 acres (66.82 km2).
The Tamien people are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone (Costanoan) people groups of Native Americans who live in Northern California. The Tamien traditionally lived throughout the Santa Clara Valley. The use of the name Tamien is on record as early as 1777; it comes from the Ohlone name for the location of the first Mission Santa Clara on the Guadalupe River. Father Pena mentioned in a letter to Junipero Serra that the area around the mission was called Thamien by the native people. The missionary fathers erected the mission on January 17, 1777, at the native village of So-co-is-u-ka.
The Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians is a federally recognized tribe of Luiseño people, headquartered in Riverside County, California. On June 18, 1883, the Soboba Reservation was established by the United States government in San Jacinto. There are five other federally recognized tribes of Luiseño people in southern California.
The Mesa Grande Band of Diegueño Mission Indians of the Mesa Grande Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Kumeyaay Indians, who are sometimes known as Mission Indians.
The Manzanita Band of Diegueño Mission Indians of the Manzanita Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Kumeyaay Indians, who are sometimes known as part of the Mission Indians.
The La Posta Band of Diegueño Mission Indians of the La Posta Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of the Kumeyaay Indians, who are sometimes known as Mission Indians.
The Ewiiaapaayp Band of Kumeyaay Indians, formerly known as the Cuyapaipe Community of Diegueño Mission Indians of the Cuyapaipe Reservation, is a federally recognized tribe of Kumeyaay Indians, who are sometimes known as Mission Indians, located in San Diego County, California. "Ewiiaapaayp" is Kumeyaay for "leaning rock," a prominent feature on the reservation.
The Pechanga Band of Indians, also known as Payómkawichum, stand as 1 of 6 federally recognized tribes of Luiseño Indians, currently located in Riverside County, California. The modern understanding of the tribe, Pechanga, meaning "the place where water drips," comes from the displacement of the tribe during their eviction from Temecula in 1875, resulting in movement towards a secluded valley near a spring called Pecháa'a.
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