Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (review)

James A. Sandos set a formidable task for himself in writing this new treatment of a well-furrowed subject, Franciscan missionization in Alta California, 1769–1830's. His stated intent is to reconcile the two prevailing but opposing interpretative views of the mission era: "the pro- and anti-Franciscan" schools of thought. The former has been dubbed "Christophilic Triumphalist" by David J. Weber: "'self-sacrificing priests of the Christian God selflessly devoted . . . to bringing the spiritual truth and uplift to benighted savages.'" The latter school, which "has emerged over the past fifty years," Sandos labels "Christophobic Nihilist" (p. xiii). To complete his new synthetic approach, the author introduces a new interpretative element, "theohistory," a combination of theology and history as a complement to accepted ethnohistory (p. xvi).

The net result is a book that fascinates and frustrates, since it literally oscillates between the two polarized theses. But it appears that more weight is given to the negative aspects of Franciscan missionary activities as seen from the Nihilist perspective. To the author's credit, however, he repudiates those critics' charges that the missionaries enslaved Indians and instituted a policy of genocide.

Sandos' primary target throughout is Junípero Serra. The friar is castigated for inscribing on "the theological clean slate of California . . . his well ordered understanding of the medieval world. In 'these last centuries' before the Apocalypse, Serra would build a model of a primitive Christian church, a community of Indians and Franciscans clustered in their mission settlements learning and teaching Christian doctrine, preparing themselves for the return of Christ" (p. 79). Serra's medieval views, according to the author, were derived from his devotion to the life of St. Francis Solano (1549–1610), the famed Franciscan missionary who died in Peru, the philosophy and theology of the Scot Franciscan, John Duns Scotus (1263–1308), and the mystical writings of the Franciscan nun, María de Jesús de Ágreda (1602–1665), noted for her four-volume The Mystical City of God (1670), which expositated the concept of the Virgin Mary's "Immaculate Conception." Serra is taken to task for adherence to the Scholastic theological view of the egocentric structure of the universe in face of the sixteenth-century Copernican heliocentric system. Serra's repudiation of the latter proves his medieval outlook in all things.

The frustrating elements in Sandos' book are argumentative. However, he has an excellent chapter on venereal disease, which is well detailed in respect to syphilis, but slights the impact of gonorrhea on the birth rate. Nor does the chapter detail the problem of native lack of sanitation and sanitary habits. One of the widespread health problems was skin disease. To the credit of the government and the friars, smallpox never appeared in Spanish California. Quarantine was well understood in respect to some contagious diseases. And the author does not blame the friars for not understanding the spread of contagious diseases, other than to fault them for forcing young and unmarried women to sleep in confined quarters. Friars are also condemned for their lack of understanding of miscarriages; yet by Spanish fiat, a dying, pregnant woman's child had to be saved by caesarean operation. About a dozen were performed in California, but no infant survived the procedure.

If one is to fully understand Franciscans as missionaries, one has to have knowledge of the Rule of the Order of Friars Minor, as well as the formation of vocations as a postulant, novice, and to be professed. Furthermore, a knowledge of the curriculum in priestly training should be surveyed. Equally important, the role of the College of San Fernando in Mexico City in preparing friars, both assigned and volunteers, for their missionary labors should be examined. How is it that Serra and some of his confreres were highly successful in the Sierra Gorda missions, yet are condemned for their California activities? One element was surely the lack of a common language in Alta California, for in the Sierra...