Life in the Spanish Missions
The Spanish Missions in the United States, steeped in both controversy and romanticism, have long shaped our understanding of the Spanish colonial legacy. While history highlights the indigenous struggle for independence across the Americas, with tribes often reverting to their ancestral ways while incorporating Christian practices, the lasting influence of the Spanish cannot be denied.
The missions served multiple purposes. They were centers for religious conversion, acculturation, economic activity, vocational training, and even defense. In some cases, missionaries ventured into native communities, such as those of the Pueblos in New Mexico. In other instances, individual Native Americans voluntarily sought conversion, acculturation, and service within the mission system.
Upon entering a mission, converts were expected to remain until fully integrated into the congregation. However, complete conversion of individuals, let alone entire tribes or pueblos, was rare. Although tradition holds that missionaries never forced anyone into a mission, departure was often restricted once inside. Runaways were frequently tracked down and returned. Moreover, those who resisted the missionaries or perceived them as threats to their culture, beliefs, and spirituality were deemed enemies.
Missionaries led lives of piety and austerity, facing constant danger and apprehension. They labored alongside their Native American charges in the missions, farmlands, and ranches. Responsible for the welfare of those under their care, they were often the first to rise and the last to retire, ensuring the safety and well-being of their community. These were hardy frontiersmen who believed that the discipline they imposed on converts was for their own benefit.
In 1659, Franciscan friars in New Mexico recounted their experiences:
"The religious of this kingdom, sire, who live by themselves in a convent without the enjoyment of company from his brothers, countrymen, and relatives have no other conveniences. [They live] daily at great risk from enemies and even the Christian [Indians], who for one word of reprehension about their views take their lives."
Their isolation was evident in the long distances they traveled between convents, often "ten, twenty, and thirty leagues one way to the next convent and more for the return trip." Their sole "stipend, alms, subvention or collection money at the altar, which they received, came to one hundred and fifty pesos, which the king gives every year to each priest."
Missionaries owed allegiance to both the Church and the State. While they genuinely sought to do God’s work, they also served as agents of the State, tasked with pacifying regions, especially those rich in minerals or other valuable resources. Pacification would open the land to settlers and investors. These settlers, including farmers and ranchers, provided food for miners extracting tin, iron, copper, salt, mercury, and other essential resources to enrich the State, support trade, bolster economic stability, and finance wars in Europe. Missions contributed foodstuffs produced by converts to these endeavors. Thus, religious conversion, acculturation, and vocational training served the interests of both Church and State, pacifying areas for economic, settlement, and military purposes, while Christianized citizens emerged to serve both entities.
The lives of Native Americans in the missions were highly regimented. They were expected to convert to Christianity and learn about their new faith through catechism and religious instruction. They were also expected to learn Spanish and sing or chant hymns in Latin. They served the friars as laborers, cooks, herders, gardeners, acolytes, sacristans, and porters. The friars enforced obedience, and the mission guard administered whippings as punishment for disobedience. The Native Americans were expected to adopt new cultural norms, customs, traditions, behaviors, and obedience to Church and State. The calendar of holy days, adherence to Spanish law, and cultural taboos regarding bigamy, concubinage, and sorcery exposed them to new ways of life. The Ten Commandments and the Laws of the Indies further reinforced strict obedience. Baptism marked the first step in a convert’s commitment to a new way of life. Finally, mission Indians were expected to learn a new vocation or trade that would make them loyal and productive citizens of the State.
Missionaries kept busy throughout their long days, offering their work as a small sacrifice to God. Most belonged to mendicant orders, which, unlike Jesuits, took a vow of poverty. They typically lived by begging, but in the Americas, the Crown granted each one a yearly stipend to purchase needed goods. In the missions, they served as teachers, instructing natives about Christian doctrine and teaching them to read, write, sing, and play musical instruments. Missionaries also taught their charges trades such as shoemaking, tailoring, husbandry, herding, blacksmithing, carpentry, and masonry. They also taught about the holy sacraments while they served as administrators who found time to fast and perform other spiritual exercises or say their own prayers throughout the day – including praying the Mass, Matins at midnight, and observing other holy hours.
Frequent rebellions shook the missions of northern New Spain throughout Texas, New Mexico, Pimería Alta (northern Sonora, Mexico, and southern Arizona), and California. These revolts often resulted in the deaths of missionaries and settlers, as well as the capture and execution of rebel leaders. The oldest missions in New Mexico and present-day Chihuahua, Mexico, were the first to experience the pressures of rebellion. From 1599-1604, when tribes of the Sierra Madres spontaneously rebelled against colonial rule and missionary demands, to the planned revolts by the Tepehuans in 1618, the Pueblos of New Mexico in 1680, and the Tarahumara in 1691, a string of rebellions spread throughout northern New Spain.
The missions were not solely responsible for these uprisings. Beginning in 1598 in New Mexico, colonial policies commonly in effect throughout the Spanish empire troubled the economically strapped Pueblo people. Although the friars protested them, the Spaniards imposed two dreaded feudalistic institutions on the Pueblos, which would eventually become focal points for rebellion. The first was the encomienda, which called for a tribute to be collected from the Pueblos. The second institution was the repartimiento, which required the head of household who could not pay tribute to work in labor. In most cases following revolts, the missions were reestablished with a renewed respect for native values and without the encomienda and repartimiento.
With more enlightened policies in the 18th century, rebellions subsided. Although religious conformity was their goal, the friars often settled for imperfectly converted Christian Indians who practiced the old ways in their pueblos and attended mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. Life in the Spanish missions reshaped indigenous cultures throughout the Americas well into the present. As an arm of the State, the mission institution ended with Latin America’s struggle for independence against Spain. Supported by histories, scholarly studies, and romanticized legends, the legacy of the missions survives today in historic places that illustrate an important part of our national story.