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Spanish Missions

Spanish missions were settlements established in the New World and run by priests and other religious authorities with the dual goal of prospering from the local natural resources and “civilizing” the Indian populations. Missions, many of which were fortified by battalions of troops and operated ranches, mines, and other commercial concerns, were established throughout much of what is now the United States, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Founded by Franciscan, Jesuit, and Dominican missionaries, they were instrumental in the history of America's Hispanic population, relationships with the Indian population, and introducing European livestock and plants to the continent.

Start of the Mission Era

Where the Spanish landed, missionaries followed, though in regions such as Georgia and the Carolinas, the missions they founded were abandoned when the lands were ceded to British control. In the 16th century, Franciscans founded missions along the Atlantic coast in those regions and along the Gulf Coast in Florida. The first missions in what is now New Mexico followed, beginning in 1598.

The presence of the French inspired the building of missions on the Texas coast, with many established by 1716. The establishment of missions in California beginning in 1769 was similarly established by territorial concerns, as Spain wanted to strengthen its claims on the Pacific coast, which it felt were threatened by the presence of Russian and British settlers in the northwest.

Indian encampments were kept close to the missions so that missionaries could both oversee their labor and instruct them in the Catholic faith. The proximity exposed Native Americans to European diseases for which they had no immunity, which in some cases had disastrous results. A 1640 epidemic, for instance, wiped out 3,000 Indians living near missions in New Mexico.

End of the Mission Era

Missions were intended as temporary endeavors: Institutions would convert and educate an Indian population, which could then join Spanish colonial society. Having served their purpose, the missions were intended to become secularized and turned into regular Spanish communities without priestly rule. During secularization, the common lands of the mission would be redistributed to the local Indians, now Spanish citizens, in the form of land grants. In the 1830s, Mexican governor Jose Maria de Echeandia began the process of secularizing the missions in the California districts of Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Monterrey. The local missionaries protested that the native populace was not equipped for self-sufficiency in Spanish communities yet, and indeed some mission communities were heavily dependent on resources imported by the mission government, despite the goal of self-sufficiency. This was the norm in Baja California, for instance.

Further, the secularization process had been formulated based on experiences with tribes that were already sedentary, while nomadic tribes like the Apaches and Comanches had proven less amenable to conversion. Secularization continued regardless, and in California many former mission lands were converted to ranchos, with land grants issued to their inhabitants. By the middle of the 19th century, the mission period had come to a close. In the 1840s, just before the region entered into American control, many California mission lands that had been transferred to Indian control were sold from beneath them by Governor Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California. Pico himself purchased the Mission San Fernando Rey de España in what is now the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles.

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