San Diego's Connection To Junipero Serra

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I am Maureen Cavanaugh. The legacy of Junipero Serra depends largely on who you ask. He founded the first missions in California the very first here in San Diego. His goal was to convert the native people of California and teach the skills needed by the colonial government. Many historians paint him as a villain who dispensed harsh discipline and adopted a patronizing attitude towards Native Americans. Others say that considering the attitudes of his time, Father Serra actually fought for better treatment of Indians under colonial rule. A new biography takes on this controversial subject. It's been written by my guest, Gregory Orfalea. Welcome to the show. That is set the scene, remind us how the establishment of those missions went hand-in-hand with Spanish colonization in California. GREGORY ORFALEA: The Spaniards came up from Baja with Father Serra with the Franciscan Fathers and came to San Diego in 1769. There were four prongs to the exploration tour ships and twelve men, and Serra was on land. When he saw the mass of the two ships in the harbor, he fell on his knees approaching the bay and so there were sailors and soldiers on the boats and when they got to San Diego many of them had scurvy and many were very sick. One historian has said that the first institution in San Diego is not a church but a hospital or even a morgue. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What was Father Serra's mission as he traveled to all the California from Mexico? They came not alone but there was a four-point approach and the military was a part of it, what was his goal of the time? GREGORY ORFALEA: His goal was spiritual, he saw the Indians as possessing a soul and unlike many colonial powers in the East, he felt that in some ways the Indians he saw in Baja were better and became better Christians than the Spaniards themselves. He spoke about this in his letters and he was very much about the task of spreading Christianity. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: When he came to San Diego he was not a young man? GREGORY ORFALEA: He was thirty-six when he came to Veracruz, and he was already middle-aged by eighteenth century standards, and add eighteen years to that he was fifty-four. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Here he established the first mission in all to California here in San Diego, how many missions did he get established? GREGORY ORFALEA: He established night and he thought he had done a tenth in Santa Barbara, and you can see it in the Santa Barbara archives today that he established a commission but the commandante said no. Indians were powerful there and Spain was worried for security. He was disappointed that he did not do number ten but he did nine. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You call his arrival in San Diego a pivotal point in his story, why? GREGORY ORFALEA: The radical mercy. There were two attacks in San Diego by the Indians. One in 1769 and one in 1775. Some members of the Presidio went to San Juan and left San Diego threadbare. There was a second attack which I call the second attack of San Diego, people were killed and one priest who was a good friend of father Serra. He was very troubled and he wrote the viceroy and demanded that they all be released. In the wake of the second major Indian uprising in California, Serra sat down December 15, 1775 to write a letter to the viceroy. At the case of these conquests, if they were to kill me let them be pardoned. To prevent Indians from killing others, that the Indians protect us a better fashion than they did the deceased padre. Let them live so they can be saved because that is the purpose of our coming here. That is a gospel of love. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You spent part of your journey talking to Native Americans at the time of colonization, with the defending their land? GREGORY ORFALEA: Absolutely, Indians were in their own country many times. According to Serra they were borrowing the area and they need to give the Indians room and he defended them. Not only in California but in Mexico when the settlers encroached on the land. He clashed often with both the military in California and the governor over the question of Indian rights. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Anyone who visits one of his missions, they are struck by the amount of work that was apparently done there. What kind of industry to place in these missions? GREGORY ORFALEA: Anything from making tiles ñ and there is an old wives tale that Indians made tile by shaping clay over their legs. In fact they shaped the clay over logs. Often they brought artisans of from Mexico to teach Indian skills such as farming implanting although they already had some skills themselves. They had already harvested some things but the Spanish taught them how to use cattle to pull and to ride horses. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Was the whole idea of commissions and the conversion of the native population, was that part of the strategy of colonizing by the military? Making the population docile and be able to be integrated to Spanish rule? GREGORY ORFALEA: I think so, to the Spaniards it was sort of a humane conquest. But this was tragic because many thousands of Indians died. I do not think father Serra is long enough to see that, he died in 1784. The worst of the epidemic did not really take root until 1790 to the 1800s. About fifty years later there were still 150,000 Indians, but when Americans came in for the gold rush in 1848, within twelve years it went from 150,000 Indians to 30,000. The vast majority and the precipitous decline occurred during the Americans, not the Spaniards. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Another issue is although he showed kindness towards Native Americans, there was an overarching patronizing attitude towards people who lived here, they were viewed largely of children weren't they? GREGORY ORFALEA: I think patronizing is too harsh for father Serra. He got into a clash with the governor over treatment of the Indians and he was criticizing Serra for floggings, and that was the flaw and that was for him, discipline for a community that had duties to each other. But it was wrong and a violation of the fifth command. At the same time, the governor said to refer to the Spanish as people of reason. Father Serra came back to him and said that the Indians have no reason? In a way he defended Indians as being the equal of Spaniards. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You have taken on a biography of a very complex man, one thing that struck me about the man of these times, he had a sort of self penitence where he whipped himself and burned himself to motivate conversions, I am wondering how you make sense of that. GREGORY ORFALEA: That is 300 years ago, that is not the way that we look at things today, the Catholic Church long ago felt this mortification of the flesh was wrong and stopped it, and the penitential self flogging was meant at the time to imitate the suffering of Christ. We know that there's a big difference between Christ's putting up with it and actually doing it regularly as they order stand in the eighteenth century and even up through the nineteenth century, it is hard for us to evaluate it and there are historians talking about the notion of presentism, to evaluate the past with present standards. To us it is aberrant and violent, but for father Serra he did it in a way to follow the model of Christ. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What is it that you would like people to take away from this book? GREGORY ORFALEA: Radical mercy. I think that what happened in San Diego was a pivotal moment. These could of gone very differently. He could've said to execute them and that is what the government wanted. To execute the rebels. He said no and we cannot do that in our justification here is based on saving their souls, and if we just run through California and just suppress them physically, this is what the Spaniards did previously. I think he had learned something, that this is not how you convert people. That kind of attitude causes the thing you are trying to fight, such as anger and rebellion. Maybe we can take this idea of radical mercy and forgiveness. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I want to let people know that Gregory will be bringing his book and reading it tonight at a book signing tonight La Jolla. Thank you for coming in.