Editing Spanish missions in California (section)

=== Mission labor ===
At least 90,000 [[Indigenous peoples of California|Indigenous peoples]] were kept in well-guarded mission compounds throughout the state as ''de facto'' [[Slavery|slaves]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lorenzo Asisara (b. 1819) |url=https://www.learner.org/series/american-passages-a-literary-survey/slavery-and-freedom/lorenzo-asisara-b-1819/ |access-date=2023-01-09 |website=Annenberg Learner |language=en-US |quote=Between 1770 and 1834 over 90,000 California Indians (a third of the pre-contact population) were enslaved within the Franciscan missions.}}</ref> The policy of the Franciscans was to keep them constantly occupied. Bells were vitally important to daily life at any mission. The bells were rung at mealtimes, to call the Mission residents to work and to religious services, during births and funerals, to signal the approach of a ship or returning missionary, and at other times; novices were instructed in the intricate rituals associated with the ringing the mission bells. The daily routine began with sunrise [[Mass (liturgy)|Mass]] and morning [[prayers]], followed by instruction of the natives in the teachings of the [[Roman Catholic]] faith. After a breakfast of ''[[atole]]'', the able-bodied men and women were assigned their tasks for the day. The women were committed to dressmaking, knitting, weaving, embroidering, laundering, and cooking, while some of the stronger girls ground flour or carried adobe bricks (weighing 55 [[Kilogram|lb]], or 25&nbsp;kg each) to the men engaged in building. The men worked a variety of jobs, having learned from the missionaries how to plow, sow, irrigate, cultivate, reap, thresh, and glean. They were taught to build adobe houses, tan leather hides, shear sheep, weave rugs and clothing from wool, make ropes, soap, paint, and other useful duties.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}}

[[File:Spanish Morning Hymn.png|thumb|"''Ya Viene El Alba''" ("The Dawn Already Comes"), typical of the hymns sung at the missions.<ref>Engelhardt 1922, p. 30</ref>]]

The work day was six hours, interrupted by dinner (lunch) around 11:00&nbsp;a.m. and a two-hour ''siesta'', and ended with evening prayers and the [[rosary]], supper, and social activities. About 90 days out of each year were designated as religious or civil holidays, free from [[Manual labour|manual labor]]. The labor organization of the missions resembled a slave plantation in many respects.<ref>Bennett 1897b, p. 156</ref><ref group=notes>Bennett: "The system had singularly failed in its purposes. It was the design of the Spanish government to have the missions educate, elevate, civilize, the Indians into citizens. When this was done, citizenship should be extended them and the missions should be dissolved as having served their purpose...[instead] the priests returned them projects of conversion, schemes of faith, which they never comprehended...He [the Indian] became a slave; the mission was a plantation; the friar was a taskmaster."</ref> Foreigners who visited the missions remarked at how the priests' control over the Indians appeared excessive, but necessary given the white men's isolation and numeric disadvantage.<ref name="Bennett 1897b, p. 158">Bennett 1897b, p. 158</ref><ref group=notes>Bennett: "In 1825 [[Luís Antonio Argüello|Governor Argüello]] wrote that the slavery of the Indians at the missions was bestial...[[José Figueroa|Governor Figueroa]] declared that the missions were <nowiki>'</nowiki>entrenchments of monastic despotism<nowiki>'</nowiki>..."</ref> Subsequently, the Missions operated under strict and harsh conditions; A 'light' punishment would've been considered 25 lashings (azotes).<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/224684|doi = 10.1353/sex.2007.0070|title = Conjugal Violence, Sex, Sin, and Murder in the Mission Communities of Alta California|year = 2007|last1 = McCormack|first1 = Brian T.|journal = Journal of the History of Sexuality|volume = 16|issue = 3|pages = 391–415|pmid = 19256092|s2cid = 36532399}}</ref> Indians were not paid wages as they were not considered free laborers and, as a result, the missions were able to profit from the goods produced by the [[Mission Indians]] to the detriment of the other Spanish and Mexican settlers of the time who could not compete economically with the advantage of the mission system.<ref>Bennett 1897b, p. 160: "The fathers claimed all the land in California in trust for the Indians, yet the Indians received no visible benefit from the trust."</ref>

The Franciscans began to send neophytes to work as servants of Spanish soldiers in the [[presidio]]s. Each presidio was provided with land, el rancho del rey, which served as a pasture for the presidio livestock and as a source of food for the soldiers. Theoretically the soldiers were supposed to work on this land themselves but within a few years the neophytes were doing all the work on the presidio farm and, in addition, were serving domestics for the soldiers. While the fiction prevailed that neophytes were to receive wages for their work, no attempt was made to collect the wages for these services after 1790. It is recorded that the neophytes performed the work "under unmitigated compulsion."<ref name="cogweb.ucla.edu"/>

In recent years, much debate has arisen about the priests' treatment of the Indians during the Mission period, and many believe that the California mission system is directly responsible for the decline of the native cultures.<ref name="Bennett 1897b, p. 158"/><ref group=notes>Bennett: "It cannot be said that the mission system made the Indians more able to sustain themselves in civilization than it had found them...Upon the whole it may be said that this mission experiment was a failure."</ref> From the perspective of the Spanish priest, their efforts were a well-meaning attempt to improve the lives of the heathen natives.<ref>Lippy, p. 47</ref><ref group=notes>Lippy: "A matter of debate in reflecting on the role of Spanish missions concerns the degree to which the Spanish colonial regimes regarded the work of the priests as a legitimate religious enterprise and the degree to which it was viewed as a 'frontier institution,' part of a colonial defense program. That is, were Spanish motives based on a desire to promote conversion or on a desire to have religious missions serve as a buffer to protect the main colonial settlements and an aid in controlling the Indians?"</ref><ref name="Bennett 1897a, p. 10"/><ref group=notes>Bennett: The missions in effect served as "...the [[citadel]]s of the theocracy which was planted in California by Spain, under which its wild inhabitants were subjected, which stood as their guardians, civil and religious, and whose duty it was to elevate them and make them acceptable as citizens and Spanish subjects...it remained for the Spanish priests to undertake to preserve the Indian and seek to make his existence compatible with higher civilization."</ref>

{{blockquote|The missionaries of California were by-and-large well-meaning, devoted men...[whose] attitudes toward the Indians ranged from genuine (if paternalistic) affection to wrathful disgust. They were ill-equipped—nor did most truly desire—to understand complex and radically different Native American customs. Using European standards, they condemned the Indians for living in a "wilderness," for worshipping false gods or no God at all, and for having no written laws, standing armies, forts, or churches.<ref>Paddison, p. xiv</ref>}}