Editing Spanish missions in California (section)

===Franciscan violence against the native population===
The Franciscan arrival to Alta California came with a wave of torture, rape, and murder towards the native population of California.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}} Native Californians, attracted to the Missions by the promise of food and gifts,{{citation needed|date=July 2023}} were forcibly prevented from leaving. Any who attempted to escape was usually given a severe beating and put in shackles. Any form of Native rebellion was met with force due to numerical disadvantage facing the Franciscans.<ref name=guardian2015/>

When Native Women attempted to abort their unborn children – which they had conceived as a byproduct of rape, the Friars would have them beaten, chained in iron, shaved, and stipulated to stand in-front of the altar each mass with a decorated wooden newborn.<ref name=guardian2015>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/23/pope-francis-junipero-serra-sainthood-washington-california|title=Junípero Serra's brutal story in spotlight as pope prepares for canonisation|website=[[TheGuardian.com]]|date=23 September 2015}}</ref>

This trend of violence was due to the Franciscans' desire for a greater Hispanicized population in Alta California, both for protection against a foreign invasion and for a labor force to benefit the Spanish Empire. As a result, a higher emphasis of Native reproduction was a duty taken on by the Spanish Fransicans. Tejana born feminist historian Antonia Castañeda wrote about the treatment that would occur in Mission Santa Cruz:<ref name="Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769–1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family">{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25161668.pdf|jstor=25161668|last1=Castañeda|first1=Antonia I.|title=Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769–1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family|journal=California History|year=1997|volume=76|issue=2/3|pages=230–259|doi=10.2307/25161668}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|Father Olbes at Mission Santa Cruz ordered an infertile couple to have sexual intercourse in his presence because he did not believe they could not have children. The couple refused, but Olbes forcibly inspected the man's penis to learn 'whether or not it was in good order' and tried to inspect the woman's genitalia. She refused, fought with him, and tried to bite him. Olbes ordered that she be tied by the hands, and given fifty lashes, shackled, and locked up in the ''monjerío'' (women's dormitory). He then had a monigote made and commanded that she "treat the doll as though it were a child and carry it in the presence of everyone for nine days." While the woman was beaten and her sexuality demeaned, the husband, who had been intimate with another woman, was ridiculed and humiliated. A set of cow horns was tied to his head with leather thongs, thereby converting him into a cuckold, and he was herded to daily Mass in cow horns and fetters.}}

Franciscan Priests would also forbid any form of native culture in the Mission system. This would include but not be limited to, songs, dances, and ceremonies. They objectified the destruction of any form of morality, ideology or personality that characterized the Native life.
Women, in particular, would face a higher degree of punishment. Those who did not comply with the Missions demands would be labeled a witch, dehumanizing them for further violence.

University of Chicago Professor Ramon Guttiriez wrote:<ref name="Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769–1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family"/>{{rp|701}}

{{Blockquote|One can interpret the whole history of the persecution of Indian women as witches ... as a struggle over [these] competing ways of defining the body and of regulating procreation as the church endeavored to constrain the expression of desire within boundaries that clerics defined proper and acceptable.}}