In one of the more moving essays, Deborah Miranda of Esselen / Chumash responds to a fourth grader named Sonora who wants to know if the Indians liked the missions and if the priests were good. Miranda writes that although some Indians believe the missions brought them Catholicism and agriculture, others insist that anything that kills about 80 percent of your people can’t be all that good.

Miranda explains to Sonora that once the Franciscans baptized the Indians, they refused to let them leave the missions. Nor could their family members visit them unless they were baptized. Girls under seven were locked up in dirty rooms at the missions (called monjerios) and got sick from the lack of sanitation. Meanwhile their parents were forced to work on the mission’s farms.

The Indians were beaten frequently for not obeying the rules of the missions, for reverting to their native religious practices, gathering wild food, hunting, or visiting their families.

Moreover, the friars made changes to the Indian’s diet, supplanting it with European foods that weakened their immune systems and made them prey to diseases such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis.

The mission system, Miranda explains to Sonora, was a disaster. The Indian population was decimated because of European diseases, and the Indians lost their land, their religion, their language and their communities. And after the mission period ended in 1833, the remaining land was taken over by non-Indians and later by Anglo settlers who arrived with the Gold Rush.

via With the Serra Canonization: Franciscans need to apologize for mistreating the Mission Indians | La Prensa San Diego.