I have been thinking about how today’s historians have influenced peoples’ thoughts about past historical events. I would like to say what my opinion is about this historical revisions. This might be called pseudohistory, which, according to this link:
“Writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman see pseudohistory as “the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes.””
In 1992 the U.S.A was preparing to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering America in October. Decades before then history had treated Columbus as a hero. But before 1992 Columbus had been changed to a villain who had brought European diseases to America, which killed many native Americans, who had no resistance to these diseases. White man brought alcoholic drinks, which the Injuns abused. The white man’s ways were forced upon the ‘Injuns’, and when they fought back, white men branded them as savages. Columbus was blamed for starting this, even though he was an explorer, not a settler.
As a result of the backlash against Columbus, the 500th celebration was subdued. Someone once said, ‘Columbus didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t know where he was when he got there, and he did it all on borrowed money.’
Here is another article about St. Serra.
The author said in this article that in California “the missions were coercive religious forced labor camps.”
Religious? Obviously.
Camps? Were all of the natives living in a camp? Inside of the Mission? With guards around to prevent them from escaping to ‘freedom’? I’m not sure all of those were true.
My thought is that is that instead of living a subsistence life at the whim of mother nature, with feasts or famines depending on the weather, the natives could live an organized life with some planning, to get them through the famine years. Was this what kept them from escaping? Possibly.
Coercive? Were they forced to learn to practice the Church’s religion? It came with the missions.
What other things were the natives coerced into doing? Forced labor? Well, they had to contribute to the productivity of the Mission; if you don’t, you and others will end up starving to death (at that time, there were no other sources of food). The Mission was like a commune, where everyone had to contribute. The zanjero was a very important person, for without water, you couldn’t grow your food.
The natives were coerced by the mission into learning the Spanish language. Were they coerced into not using their native language? I don’t know. I do know that in order to teach natives how to farm, the missionaries had to talk to the natives and the natives had to understand what the missionaries said.
A lot can be read from those few words ‘coercive religious forced labor camps.’ I am certain that before the missions, the natives had to live on the land, enduring hardships, drought, famine, disease. I am not certain that living in a mission was worse than living on the land.
A friend, Ted, commented this on FB (used with his permission).
