Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (review)

For two decades anthropologists in California, chiefly John Johnson and Randall Milliken, have been compiling databases from each of the twenty-one Franciscan missions on birth/baptism, death, and marriages. Milliken gave Steven Hackel his preliminary data from what is popularly known as Carmel Mission, more accurately Mission San Carlos, the headquarters for mission founder Junípero Serra and many of Serra's successors. Hackel has added to the initial data and done something no one else has been able to do: he has reconstituted families over time so that he can follow people throughout the colonial and early national era. "Family reconstitution," Hackel observes, "involves linking individuals' burial records to their baptism records, children's baptism records to their parents' marriage records, and parents' marriage records back to their own baptism and burial records. In essence, it is the creation of life histories for families. In the years between 1770 and 1850, the Franciscans recorded the deaths of more than 2,300 San Carlos Indians. Of these, more than 95 percent have been matched to their corresponding baptismal record" (p. 452). This approach, familiar to students of European demographic history but previously unavailable in the Americas, gives Hackel new insight into life at Carmel Mission. Four decades ago Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History, III (University of California Press, 1971) concluded that their attempts to do family reconstitution had failed because of the confusing overlapping of surnames and the inability to document illegitimate births. Both of those deficiencies Hackel now can correct through his study of the mission registers. Children of Coyote convincingly demonstrates Hackel's central argument of convergence between many Spanish practices and Indian customs at the missions—such as continuing the power of existing chiefs in newly elected mission offices—while also permitting him to note divergences. Scholars interested in Spanish Colonialism and missionization will find this part of Hackel's work original, important, and indispensable. But the book is not only about one mission.

Perhaps publisher pressure has forced Children of Coyote to attempt to be two books simultaneously: the first, the close study of Carmel Mission; the second, an attempted generalization to all of the missions. Hackel's data clearly show, however, that the very detailed examination of records that make the Carmel Mission study such a success needs to be replicated at the other twenty sites before the kinds of generalizations he wants to make will carry weight. This is a book for the demographer and student of populations; those interested in the spiritual struggle between natives and missionaries that was the centerpiece of Franciscan evangelization and colonization efforts will need to look elsewhere.