Hispanic California Revisited: Essays by Francis F. Guest, O.F.M. ed. by Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS509 have, despite all the controversy, allows Americans to participate in public and religious affairs as free citizens. With access to the public square, it is up to Christians and the adherents of other religious communities to talk sense and convincingly about the American condition on behalf of liberty, justice, domestic tranquUity, and the general welfare for a "more perfect union," to use words of the Preamble of the Constitution. James H. Smylie Union Theological Seminary Richmond, Virginia Hispanic California Revisited: Essays by Francis F. Guest, O.F.M. Edited and with an introduction by Doyce B. Nunis,Jr. (Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Mission Archive Library. 1996. Pp. xix, 20-389) This volume, published by the major research center for California mission history, presents eight essays by the former director ofthe center. Four ofthe articles are concerned largely with secular Ufe in California, and these occupy about a third of the space in the book.The others are focused on the missions, more specificaUy on a defense of the Franciscans and their efforts to convert the native people. The briefest of the secular history essays describes the service of the Leather Jacket Soldiers during the first twenty years of Spanish occupation, and attempts to use conflicting payroUs to establish an accurate roster of those who served. Of more general interest is a longer essay on municipal government in Spanish California. With a third essay about the establishment of the Villa of Branciforte and another on local poUtics, the author creates a picture ofthe tensions that arose between the towns, the missionaries, and the mUitary commanders . Written more than twenty years ago, these three articles reflect the state of scholarly research in California history before the advent of the postmodern , deconstructionist view of mission history. In about 1980 the emphasis Ln California history shifted. It became popular to accuse the missionaries of all sorts ofcrimes and delinquencies, ranging from bad table manners to genocide. Most such charges came from people who had little or no familiarity with the manuscript sources and, as it later turned out, not much concern for the truth. Much of these deconstructionist histories is based on the seriously-flawed statistical studies of Sherburne Friend Cooke, who wrote and taught at the University of California. In time, the criticisms became part of a general attack on Junípero Serra in particular and the Catholic Church in general. In the four concluding articles Father Guest has taken up the various accusations of the deconstructionists and has searched the records to see whether they are true or false. In his study of"Cultural Perspectives on California Mission 510BOOK REVIEWS Life" Father Guest examines health and sanitation, discipline, and cultural change at the missions. A second article, "Junípero Serra and the Indians," defends the religious ideaUsm of the great missionary and his companions.A third article on "Discipline in California Mission life" concludes that discipline at the California missions was mUd, about what might be expected in simUar institutions anywhere in the world at the time. "The missions," writes Father Guest, "need to be viewed as expressions of Spanish reUgious culture" (p. 295).The final article, "The California Missions Were Far from Faultless," deals with such topics as the ethnocentrism of the missionaries and the persistence of superstition among the converts. As in the other essays, Father Guest concludes that many ofthe criticisms ofthe missions are based on isolated incidents, taken out of context.Answering the accusation that the Indian converts did not reaUy accept Christianity, Father Guest describes the obvious fervor ofthe Indian Christians . In one particularly long quotation from the death register for Mission Santa Cruz, the missionary priest recaUed the saintly Ufe of a young woman name Antonina in terms that bear repeating: "She busied herself with common and ordinary chores to which her lot in life had assigned her, doing them with aU the perfection possible for her, doing them for God,which is what perfection consists in" (p. 371). AU of the articles are based on thorough research Ln the original sources, most of which are avaUable at the Santa Barbara Mission Archive library. The prose style is clear and concise.The page...