Analyze and discuss the ways that Roxane Dunbar Ortiz encourages us to think about settler colonialism, including the ways it shapes national and public memory of conquest and settler violence in the US.

Please spend 200-300 words (per question) answering the following cluster of questions:

Question 1: Settler Colonialism, Erasure, and Public Memory (3 points): Please analyze and discuss the ways that Roxane Dunbar Ortiz encourages us to think about settler colonialism, including the ways it shapes national and public memory of conquest and settler violence in the US. Your response to this question should draw support by analyzing at least two key moments or insights from Dunbar-Ortiz’s text. Some key terms and topics you may want to address include critiques of US historians, the UN definition of genocide, the educational politics of multiculturalism, and/or the role of land theft.

Question 2: Spanish Missionization and Indigenous Resistance in California (1750s-1810): For this question, please analyze and discuss the ways that Spanish missionization affected the lives of California Indigenous people, as well as the ways that Indigenous people resisted domination and enslavement by Spanish colonials. Consider discussing two or more of the following concepts or terms, and use precise examples and insights from the text to develop your discussion. Terms/concepts: Environmental impacts of colonial livestock; death, health, and violence in the missions; Indigenous resistance and/or rebellion; Indigenous life beyond or outside missions.

Question 3: Debora Miranda’s Bad Indians: What stands out to you from Miranda’s speculative account of her ancestors’ life in the missions? How does she challenge conventional ways that Mission history and settlement are thought about and taught in California? As you answer this question, consider analyzing the ways that one or more glossary entry, essay, poem, or nontraditional piece contributes to Miranda’s historical and creative work in this excerpt.

Requirements: 600 words

AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLESJ HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ REVISIONING AMERICAN HISTORY BEACON PRESS BOSTON

BEACON PRESS Boston, Massachusetts www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. © 2014 by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 8 7 6 Beacon Press’s ReVisioning American History series consists of accessibly written books by notable scholars that reconstruct and reinterpret US history from diverse perspectives. This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSUNISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992. Text design and composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services Excerpts from Simon J. Ortiz’s from Sand Creek: Rising in This Heart Which Is Our America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000) are reprinted here with permission. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An indigenous peoples’ history of the United States I Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. pages cm -(ReVisioning American history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8070-0040-3 (hardcover: alk. paper) -ISBN 978-0-8070-0041-0 (ebook) I. Indians of North America-Historiography. 2. Indians of North America-Colonization. 3. Indians, Treatment of­United States-History. 4. United States-Colonization. 5. United States­Race relations. 6. United States-Politics and government. I. Title. E76.8.D86 2014

INTRODUCTION THIS LAND We are here to educate, not forgive. We are here to enlighten, not accuse. -Willie Johns, Brighton Seminole Reservation, Florida Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of America-“from California … to the Gulf Stream waters”-are · interred the bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American Indians. 1 They cry out for their stories to be heard through their de­scendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded and how it came to be as it is today. It should not have happened that the great civilizations of the Western Hemisphere, the very evidence of the Western Hemisphere, were wantonly destroyed, the gradual progress of humanity inter­rupted and set upon a path of greed and destruction. 2 Choices were made that forged that path toward destruction of life itself-the moment in which we now live and die as our planet shrivels, over­heated. To learn and know this history is both a necessity and a responsibility to the ancestors and descendants of all parties. What historian David Chang has written about the land that became Oklahoma applies to the whole United States: “Nation, race, and class converged in land.”3 Everything in US history is about the land-who oversaw and cultivated it, fished its waters, maintained its wildlife; who invaded and stole it; how it became a commod­ity (“real estate”) broken into pieces to be bought and sold on the market. US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, though

2 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States often termed “racist” or “discriminatory,” are rarely depicted as what they are: classic cases of imperialism and a particular form of colonialism-settler colonialism. As anthropologist Patrick Wolfe writes, “The question of genocide is never far from discussions of set­tler colonialism. Land is life-or, at least, land is necessary for life.”4 The history of the United States is a history of settler colonial­ism-the founding of a state based on the ideology of white su­premacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft. Those who seek history with an upbeat ending, a history of redemption and reconciliation, may look around and observe that such a conclusion is not visible, not even in utopian dreams of a better society. Writing US history from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective re­quires rethinking the consensual national narrative. That narrative is wrong or deficient, not in its facts, dates, or details but rather in its essence. Inherent in the myth we’ve been taught is an embrace of settler colonialism and genocide. The myth persists, not for a lack of free speech or poverty of information but rather for an absence of motivation to ask questions that challenge the core of the scripted narrative of the origin story. How might acknowledging the reality of US history work to transform society? That is the central question this book pursues. Teaching Native American studies, I always begin with a sim­ple exercise. I ask students to quickly draw a rough outline of the United States at the time it gained independence from Britain. In­variably most draw the approximate present shape of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific-the continental territory not fully appropriated until a century after independence. What became independent in 1783 were the thirteen British colonies hugging the Atlantic shore. When called on this, students are embarrassed be­cause they know better. I assure them that they are not alone. I call this a Rorschach test of unconscious “manifest destiny,” embedded in the minds of nearly everyone in the United States and around the world. This test reflects the seeming inevitability of US extent and power, its destiny, with an implication that the continent had previ­ously been terra nullius, a land without people. Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” celebrates that the

Introduction: This Land 3 land belongs to everyone, reflecting the unconscious manifest des­tiny we live with. But the extension of the United States from sea to shining sea was the intention and design of the country’s founders. “Free” land was the magnet that attracted European settlers. Many were slave owners who desired limitless land for lucrative cash crops. After the war for independence but preceding the writing of the US Constitution, the Continental Congress produced the Northwest Ordinance. This was the first law of the incipient republic, revealing the motive for those desiring independence. It was the blueprint for gobbling up the British-protected Indian Territory (“Ohio Coun­try”) on the other side of the Appalachians and Alleghenies. Britain had made settlement there illegal with the Proclamation of 1763. In 1801, President Jefferson aptly described the new settler-state’s intentions for horizontal and vertical continental expansion, stating: “However our present interests may restrain us within our own lim­its, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar laws.” This vision of manifest destiny found form a few years later in the Monroe Doctrine, signaling the intention of annexing or domi­nating former Spanish colonial territories in the Americas and the Pa­cific, which would be put into practice during the rest of the century. Origin narratives form the vital core of a people’s unifying iden­tity and of the values that guide them. In the United States, the founding and development of the Anglo-American settler-state in­volves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land. That part of the origin story is supported and reinforced by the Columbus myth and the “Doctrine of Discovery.” According to a series of late-fifteenth-century papal bulls, European nations acquired title to the lands they “discovered” and the Indig­enous inhabitants lost their natural right to that land after Europe­ans arrived and claimed it. 5 As law professor Robert A. Williams observes about the Doctrine of Discovery: Responding to the requirements of a paradoxical age of Re­naissance and Inquisition, the West’s first modern discourses

4 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States of conquest articulated a vision of all humankind united under a rule of law discoverable solely by human reason. Un­fortunately for the American Indian, the West’s first tentative steps towards this noble vision of a Law of Nations contained a mandate for Europe’s subjugation of all peoples whose radi­cal divergence from European-derived norms of right conduct signified their need for conquest and remediation. 6 The Columbus myth suggests that from US independence on­ward, colonial settlers saw themselves as part of a world system of colonization. “Columbia,” the poetic, Latinate name used in refer­ence to the United States from its founding throughout the nine­teenth century, was based on the name of Christopher Columbus. The “Land of Columbus” was-and still is-represented by the im­age of a woman in sculptures and paintings, by institutions such as Columbia University, and by countless place names, including that of the national capital, the District of Columbia. 7 The 1798 hymn “Hail, Columbia” was the early national anthem and is now used whenever the vice president of the United States makes a public ap­pearance, and Columbus Day is still a federal holiday despite Co­lumbus never having set foot on the continent claimed by the United States. Traditionally, historians of the United States hoping to have suc­cessful careers in academia and to author lucrative school textbooks became protectors of this origin myth. With the cultural upheavals in the academic world during the 1960s, engendered by the civil rights movement and student activism, historians came to call for objectivity and fairness in revising interpretations of US history. They warned against moralizing, urging instead a dispassionate and culturally relative approach. Historian Bernard Sheehan, in an influential essay, called for a “cultural conflict” understanding of Native-Euro-American relations in the early United States, writing that this approach “diffuses the locus of guilt.”8 In striving for “bal­ance,” however, historians spouted platitudes: “There were good and bad people on both sides.” “American culture is an amalgama­tion of all its ethnic groups.” “A frontier is a zone of interaction be­tween cultures, not merely advancing European settlements.”

Introduction: This Land 5 Later, trendy postmodernist studies insisted on Indigenous “agency” under the guise of individual and collective empowerment, making the casualties of colonialism responsible for their own de­mise. Perhaps worst of all, some claimed (and still claim) that the colonizer and colonized experienced an “encounter” and engaged in “dialogue,” thereby masking reality with justifications and ratio­nalizations-in short, apologies for one-sided robbery and murder. In focusing on “cultural change” and “conflict between cultures,” these studies avoid fundamental questions about the formation of the United States and its implications for the present and future. This approach to history allows one to safely put aside present re­sponsibility for continued harm done by that past and the questions of reparations, restitution, and reordering society.9 Multiculturalism became the cutting edge of post-civil-rights­movement US history revisionism. For this scheme to work-and affirm US historical progress-Indigenous nations and communities had to be left out of the picture. As territorially and treaty-based peoples in North America, they did not fit the grid of multicultur­alism but were included by transforming them into an inchoate oppressed racial group, while colonized Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans were dissolved into another such group, variously called “Hispanic” or “Latino.” The multicultural approach empha­sized the “contributions” of individuals from oppressed groups to the country’s assumed greatness. Indigenous peoples were thus cred­ited with corn, beans, buckskin, log cabins, parkas, maple syrup, canoes, hundreds of place names, Thanksgiving, and even the con­cepts of democracy and federalism. But this idea of the gift-giving Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the United States is an insidious smoke screen meant to obscure the fact that the very existence of the country is a result of the looting of an entire continent and its resources. The fundamental unresolved issues of Indigenous lands, treaties, and sovereignty could not but scuttle the premises of multiculturalism. With multiculturalism, manifest destiny won the day. As an example, in 1994, Prentice Hall (part of Pearson Education) pub­lished a new college-level US history textbook, authored by four members of a new generation of revisionist historians. These radical

6 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States social historians are all brilliant scholars with posts in prestigious universities. The book’s title reflects the intent of its authors and publisher: Out of Many: A History of the American People. The ori­gin story of a supposedly unitary nation, albeit now multicultural, remained intact. The original cover design featured a multicolored woven fabric-this image meant to stand in place of the discredited “melting pot.” Inside, facing the title page, was a photograph of a Navajo woman, dressed formally in velvet and adorned with heavy sterling silver and turquoise jewelry. With a traditional Navajo dwelling, a hogan, in the background, the woman was shown kneel­ing in front of a traditional loom, weaving a nearly finished rug. The design? The Stars and Stripes! The authors, upon hearing my objection and explanation that Navajo weavers make their livings off commissioned work that includes the desired design, responded: “But it’s a real photograph.” To the authors’ credit, in the second edition they replaced the cover photograph and removed the Navajo picture inside, although the narrative text remains unchanged. Awareness of the settler-colonialist context of US history writ­ing is essential if one is to avoid the laziness of the default position and the trap of a mythological unconscious belief in manifest des­tiny. The form of colonialism that the Indigenous peoples of North America have experienced was modern from the beginning: the ex­pansion of European corporations, backed by government armies, into foreign areas, with subsequent expropriation of lands and re­sources. Settler colonialism is a genocidal policy. Native nations and communities, while struggling to maintain fundamental values and collectivity, have from the beginning resisted modern colonialism using both defensive and offensive techniques, including the mod­ern forms of armed resistance of national liberation movements and what now is called terrorism. In every instance they have fought for survival as peoples. The objective of US colonialist authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples-not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide as contrasted with premodern instances of extreme violence that did not have the goal of extinction. The United States as a socioeconomic and political entity is a result of this centuries-long and ongoing colonial process.

Introduction: This Land 7 Modern Indigenous nations and communities are societies formed by their resistance to colonialism, through which they have carried their practices and histories. It is breathtaking, but no miracle, that they have survived as peoples. To say that the United States is a colonialist settler-state is not to make an accusation but rather to face historical reality, without which consideration not much in US history makes sense, unless Indigenous peoples are erased. But Indigenous nations, through re­sistance, have survived and bear witness to this history. In the era of worldwide decolonization in the second half of the twentieth cen­tury, the former colonial powers and their intellectual apologists mounted a counterforce, often called neocolonialism, from which multiculturalism and postmodernism emerged. Although much revisionist US history reflects neocolonialist strategy-an attempt to accommodate new realities in order to retain the dominance­neocolonialist methods signal victory for the colonized. Such ap­proaches pry off a lid long kept tightly fastened. One result has been the presence of significant numbers of Indigenous scholars in US universities who are changing the terms of analysis. The main chal­lenge for scholars in revising US history in the context of colonialism is not lack of information, nor is it one of methodology. Certainly difficulties with documentation are no more problematic than they are in any other area of research. Rather, the source of the problems has been the refusal or inability of US historians to comprehend the nature of their own history, US history. The fundamental problem is the absence of the colonial framework. Through economic penetration of Indigenous societies, the Eu­ropean and Euro-American colonial powers created economic de­pendency and imbalance of trade, then incorporated the Indigenous nations into spheres of influence and controlled them indirectly or as protectorates, with indispensable use of Christian missionaries and alcohol. In the case of US settler colonialism, land was the pri­mary commodity. With such obvious indicators of colonialism at work, why should so many interpretations of US political-economic development be convoluted and obscure, avoiding the obvious? To some extent, the twentieth-century emergence of the field of “US

8 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States West” or “Borderlands” history has been forced into an incomplete and flawed settler-colonialist framework. The father of that field of history, Frederick Jackson Turner, confessed as much in 1901: “Our colonial system did not start with the Spanish War [1898]; the U.S. had had a colonial history and policy from the beginning of the Republic; but they have been hidden under the phraseology of ‘inter­state migration’ and ‘territorial organization.”’10 Settler colonialism, as an institution or system, requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals. People do not hand over their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight, and that fight is met with violence. In employing the force necessary to ac­complish its expansionist goals, a colonizing regime institutionalizes violence. The notion that settler-indigenous conflict is an inevitable product of cultural differences and misunderstandings, or that vio­lence was committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer, blurs the nature of the historical processes. Euro-American colonial­ism, an aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency. The term “genocide” was coined following the Shoah, or Ho­locaust, and its prohibition was enshrined in the United Nations convention adopted in 1948: the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention is not retroactive but is applicable to US-Indigenous relations since 1988, when the US Senate ratified it. The terms of the genocide convention are also useful tools for historical analysis of the effects of colonial­ism in any era. In the convention, any one of five acts is considered genocide if “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.11

Introduction: This Land 9 In the 1990s, the term “ethnic cleansing” became a useful descrip­tive term for genocide. US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial pe­riod through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twenty-first century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of In­digenous peoples from their ancestral territories, and removals of Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools. The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebra­tion of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the con­sciousness of US Americans. Settler colonialism is inherently genocidal in terms of the geno­cide convention. In the case of the British North American colo­nies and the United States, not only extermination and removal were practiced but also the disappearing of the prior existence of Indigenous peoples-and this continues to be perpetuated in local histories. Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) historian Jean O’Brien names this practice of writing Indians out of existence “firsting and lasting.” All over the continent, local histories, monuments, and signage nar­rate the story of first settlement: the founder(s), the first school, first dwelling, first everything, as if there had never been occupants who thrived in those places before Euro-Americans. On the other hand, the national narrative tells of “last” Indians or last tribes, such as “the last of the Mohicans,” “Ishi, the last Indian,” and End of the Trail, as a famous sculpture by James Earle Fraser is titled.12 Documented policies of genocide on the part of US administra­tions can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jackso­nian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern California; the post-Civil War era of the so-called Indian wars in the Great Plains; and the 1950s termination period, all of which are discussed in the following chapters. Cases of genocide carried out as policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the oral histories of Indigenous communities. An example from 1873 is typical, with General William T. Sherman writing, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their

10 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States extermination, men, women and children … during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.”13 As Patrick Wolfe has noted, the peculiarity of settler colonialism is that the goal is elimination of Indigenous populations in order to make land available to settlers. That project is not limited to government policy, but rather involves all kinds of agencies, voluntary militias, and the settlers themselves acting on their own. 14 In the wake of the US 1950s termination and relocation poli­cies, a pan-Indigenous movement arose in tandem with the power­ful African American civil rights movement and the broad-based social justice and antiwar movements of the 1960s. The Indigenous rights movement succeeded in reversing the US termination pol­icy. However, repression, armed attacks, and legislative attempts to undo treaty rights began again in the late 1970s, giving rise to the international Indigenous movement, which greatly broadened the support for Indigenous sovereignty and territorial rights in the United States. The early twenty-first century has seen increased exploitation of energy resources begetting new pressures on Indigenous lands. Exploitation by the largest corporations, often in collusion with politicians at local, state, and federal levels, and even within some Indigenous governments, could spell a final demise for Indigenous land bases and resources. Strengthening Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination to prevent that result will take general public outrage and demand, which in turn will require that the general population, those descended from settlers and immigrants, know their history and assume responsibility. Resistance to these power­ful corporate forces continues to have profound implications for US socioeconomic and political development and the future. There are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous communities and nations, comprising nearly three million people in the United States. These are the descendants of the fifteen mil­lion original inhabitants of the land, the majority of whom were farmers who lived in towns. The US establishment of a system of

Introduction: This Land 11 Indian reservations stemmed from a long British colonial practice in the Americas. In the era of US treaty-making from independence to 1871, the concept of the reservation was one of the Indigenous nation reserving a narrowed land base from a much larger one in ex­change for US government protection from settlers and the provision of social services. In the late nineteenth century, as Indigenous resis­tance was weakened, the concept of the reservation changed to one of land being carved out of the public domain of the United States as a benevolent gesture, a “gift” to the Indigenous peoples. Rheto­ric changed so that reservations were said to have been “given” or “created” for Indians. With this shift, Indian reservations came to be seen as enclaves within state’ boundaries. Despite the political and economic reality, the impression to many was that Indigenous people were taking a free ride on public domain. Beyond the land bases within the limits of the 310 federally rec­ognized reservations-among 554 Indigenous groups-Indigenous land, water, and resource rights extend to all federally acknowl­edged Indigenous communities within the borders of the United States. This is the case whether “within the original or subsequently acquired territory thereof, and whether within or without the limits of a state,” and includes all allotments as well as rights-of-way run­ning to and from them.15 Not all the federally recognized Indigenous nations have land bases beyond government buildings, and the lands of some Native nations, including those of the Sioux in the Dakotas and Minnesota and the Ojibwes in Minnesota, have been parceled into multiple reservations, while some fifty Indigenous nations that had been removed to Oklahoma were entirely allotted-divided by the federal government into individual Native-owned parcels. Attor­ney Walter R. Echo-Hawk writes: In 1881, Indian landholdings in the United States had plum­meted to 156 million acres. By 1934, only about 50 million acres remained (an area the size of Idaho and Washington) as a result of the General Allotment Act of 1887. During World War II, the government took 500,000 more acres for military use. Over one hundred tribes, bands, and Rancherias

12 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States relinquished their lands under various acts of Congress during the termination era of the 1950s. By 1955, the indigenous land base had shrunk to just 2. 3 percent of its original size. 16 As a result of federal land sales, seizures, and allotments, most reservations are severely fragmented. Each parcel of tribal, trust, and privately held land is a separate enclave under multiple laws and jurisdictions. The Dine (Navajo) Nation has the largest con­temporary contiguous land base among Native nations: nearly six­teen million acres, or nearly twenty-five thousand square miles, the size of West Virginia. Each of twelve other reservations is larger than Rhode Island, which comprises nearly eight hundred thou­sand acres, or twelve hundred square miles, and each of nine other reservations is larger than Delaware, which covers nearly a million and a half acres, or two thousand square miles. Other reservations have land bases of fewer than thirty-two thousand acres, or fifty square miles.17 A number of independent nation-states with seats in the United Nations have less territory and smaller populations than some Indigenous nations of North America. Following World War II, the United States was at war with much of the world, just as it was at war with the Indigenous peoples of North America in the nineteenth century. This was total war, demand­ing that the enemy surrender unconditionally or face annihilation. Perhaps it was inevitable that the earlier wars against Indigenous peoples, if not acknowledged and repudiated, ultimately would in­clude the world. According to the origin narrative, the United States was born of rebellion against oppression-against empire-and thus is the product of the first anticolonial revolution for national liberation. The narrative flows from that fallacy: the broadening and deepening of democracy; the Civil War and the ensuing “second revolution,” which ended slavery; the twentieth-century mission to save Europe from itself-twice; and the ultimately triumphant fight against the scourge of communism, with the United States inheriting the difficult and burdensome task of keeping order in the world. It’s a narrative of progress. The 1960s social revolutions, ignited by the African American liberation movement, complicated the origin nar-

Introduction: This Land 13 rative, but its structure and periodization have been left intact. After the 1960s, historians incorporated women, African Americans, and immigrants as contributors to the commonweal. Indeed, the revised narrative produced the “nation of immigrants” framework, which obscures the US practice of colonization, merging settler colonial­ism with immigration to metropolitan centers during and after the industrial revolution. Native peoples, to the extent that they were in­cluded at all, were renamed “First Americans” and thus themselves cast as distant immigrants. The provincialism and national chauvinism of US history produc­tion make it difficult for effective revisions to gain authority. Schol­ars, both Indigenous and a few non-Indigenous, who attempt to rectify the distortions, are labeled advocates, and their findings are rejected for publication on that basis. Indigenous scholars look to research and thinking that has emerged in the rest of the European­colonized world. To understand the historical and current experi­ences of Indigenous peoples in the United States, these thinkers and writers draw upon and creatively apply the historical materialism of Marxism, the liberation theology of Latin America, Frantz Fanon’s psychosocial analyses of the effects of colonialism on the colonizer and the colonized, and other approaches, including development theory and postmodern theory. While not abandoning insights gained from those sources, due to the “exceptional” nature of US colonialism among nineteenth-century colonial powers, Indigenous scholars and activists are engaged in exploring new approaches. This book claims to be a history of the United States f�om an Indigenous peoples’ perspective but there is no such thing as a col­lective Indigenous peoples’ perspective, just as there is no mono­lithic Asian or European or African peoples’ perspective. This is not a history of the vast civilizations and communities that thrived and survived between the Gulf of Mexico and Canada and between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific. Such histories have been writ­ten, and are being written by historians of Dine, Lakota, Mohawk, Tlingit, Muskogee, Anishinaabe, Lumbee, Inuit, Kiowa, Cherokee, Hopi, and other Indigenous communities and nations that have survived colonial genocide. This book attempts to tell the story of

14 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States the United States as a colonialist settler-state, one that, like colonial­ist European states, crushed and subjugated the original civilizations in the territories it now rules. Indigenous peoples, now in a colonial relationship with the United States, inhabited and thrived for mil­lennia before they were displaced to fragmented reservations and economically decimated. This is a history of the United States.

Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:26:14.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

© 2013 by Deborah A. Miranda All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form orby any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by anyinformation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from Heyday. Parts of this collection have previously been published in slightly different forms in thefollowing: Yellow Medicine Review; News from Native California; Native Bruin; “BadGirls”/”Good Girls”: Women, Sex and Power in the Nineties; Ahani: Indigenous AmericanPoetry; Intertexts; Native Literatures: Generations; and The Zen of La Llorona. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miranda, Deborah A.Bad indians : a tribal memoir / Deborah A. Miranda.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references.97815971423421. Indians of North America–California–History. 2. Indians of North America–California–Missions. 3. Indians, Treatment of–California–History. 4. California–Social conditions. 5.California–Race relations. I. Title.E78.C15M6 2012 305.8009794–dc232012025266 Cover photo: Deborah Miranda, circa 1964, Los Angeles, California. Courtesy of the authorBook Design: Lorraine Rath Printing and Binding: Thomson-Shore, Dexter, MI Orders, inquiries, and correspondence should be addressed to:Heyday P.O. Box 9145, Berkeley, CA 94709 (510) 549-3564, Fax (510) 549-1889 www.heydaybooks.comMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:26:22.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

The End of the World: Missionization1770–1836Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

The Genealogy of Violence, Part ILos Pájarosbased on writings by Junípero Serra, May 1773 and June 1774 Seeing your people come through the fields we noticed a great flock of birds of various and beautifully blended colors such as we had never seen before. We noticed a great flock of birds swooping out of the heavens just ahead such as we had never seen before as if they came to welcome our newly arrived guests. Swooping out of the heavens just ahead six or more soldiers set out together on horseback as if they came to greet their newly acquired hosts Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

in the far distant rancherias even many leagues away. Six or more soldiers set out together on horseback. Both men and women at sight of them took to their heels in the far distant rancherias even many leagues away, fleeing the soldiers, clever as they are at lassoing cows. Both men and women at sight of them took to their heels but the women were caught with Spanish ropes. The soldiers, clever as they are at lassoing cows preyed on the women for their unbridled lust. The women were caught with Spanish ropes Indian men defended their wives—prey for the Spaniards’ unbridled lust—only to be shot down with bullets. The Indian men tried to defend their wives of various and beautifully blended colors only to be shot down with bullets seeing your people come through the fields.Fisher of Menbased on writings by Junípero Serra They are entirely naked, as Adam in the garden before sin. Not for one moment could we notice the least sign of shame. Before long, they will be caught in the apostolic and evangelical net. To God alone be all the honor and glory! I dread to think that such a plentiful harvest, ripe for the reapers, remain untouched. They are entirely naked, as Adam in the garden before sin.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Though I find it hard—a sinner like me—to be left all alone, nearest priest more than eighty leagues away, nothing in between but savages and rough roads, before long they will be caught in the apostolic and evangelical net. More naked people than these cannot be found in the whole world. His Divine Majesty be pleased, in his infinite mercy, give me a holy death; they are entirely naked, as Adam in the garden before sin. When arrows were raining everywhere, I held the Virgin’s picture in one hand, Her Divine Crucified Son in the other. Pray for me as I move amidst dangers from naked and barbarous men. Before long, they will be caught in the apostolic and evangelical net. Those who are to come here put up with hardships for the love of God and the salvation of souls… but to a willing heart all is sweet, amanti suave est. They are naked as Adam in the garden before sin. Before long, they will be caught in the apostolic and evangelical net: such a plentiful harvest, ripe for the reapers.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

My Mission Glossary(excerpts from a very late fourth grade project) For many decades, all California schoolchildren have been required to take partin the “Mission Unit” during their fourth grade year. Because I left Californiaafter kindergarten, I never participated in this rite of passage. Till now.—dmDeby’s missionDeby Miranda, fourth grade pictureAdobe BricksMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Figure 1Recipe: Gather your Indians from the mission. Try to catch them between their regular choresof tending the fields, chasing cattle, cooking, weaving, mandatory prayers, and catechisminstruction.Then you need dirt, water, straw, sometimes horse manure. Make sure it’s good dirt, not toomuch clay or the bricks will crack as they dry. Your Indians might have to haul some dirt in,which could take days, and no mules, a cart if they’re lucky, baskets if not.Tell them to dig a big round basin in the ground, soak it well with water, throw everythingin. That water has to come from someplace. River, spring, rain barrels maybe. Indian womenmake some baskets good as a bucket. Keep some of the men running back and forth for water,while the others jump into the pit and start mixing with their feet. (Shovels are valuable andhard to come by; make sure the iron is not stolen for weapons.) This is where good legs are ablessing. The work keeps their dancing muscles in shape, and they seem to like dirt, aren’tconcerned about the ripe odor.Mission building is smelly business.Now, when it’s all mixed they’ll start the rhythm of scoop and slap. Scoop up that mud, slapit into a wooden form. Pack it in good and tight. Repeat till the form is full, move on to thenext. (Oh—wooden forms. Before beginning, you must assign Indians to cut down trees andmake lumber for the forms, and then make the forms. Few nails to be had, but they’re cleverwith rope and vine once you get the idea across.)Anyhow, as soon as the whole form is full, have the Indios check and see if they can lift itright off those bricks so you can reuse it. In an hour, perhaps a day, the bricks should just standalone, mixed right. Now, if the weather holds you can leave the wet bricks right there, turnthem once in a while, let the air and heat bake them hard. When rain threatens, the Indians mustweave reeds and grasses as they do for their own mats.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Adobe takes three to four weeks to cure. So you want to build up a good supply before youstart building anything like a mission. Dried, each brick weighs about sixty pounds. Stackingone upon the other requires strong Indians, especially when climbing ladders and makeshiftscaffolding.All in all, adobe is cheap—the ingredients free for the taking—but you will certainly gothrough a lot of Indians. More lazy creatures on earth we have never seen.BellsFrom the start, the hollow stones with voices. Made in their own land, hard beyond rock orbone or abalone shell, shaped by hands of unseen beings we thought must be gods.Figure 2. Tom Miranda (my grandfather) at Mission San Miguel campanario, circa 1955Soldiers brought them from the ships, hung them first from trees, then on wooden frames. Atlast, the bells sounded from the campanario in the church itself—after we made it, after webuilt the church.The voice of the bell is the voice of the padres. We try, but we cannot always obey.Bells at dawn, keening. Bells ordering us to prayer; the alcaldes stand over us with cudgelsand long canes, invoke silence. Bells direct us to breakfast, gruel of atole quickly swallowed.Bells tell us to scatter to our work, we women to laundry and looms, grinding corn or acornsor wheat, the gardens, harvesting, storing, preparing, cooking; men to the fields to plow, plant,slaughter cattle, adobe, plaster, tile, paint our designs inside the church.Men work their leather, repair soldiers’ saddles, plait reins or the cords of whips they useon us. Seamstresses cut, stitch, clothe our naked shame. Blacksmiths practice the art of heatedMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

metal, beating until the acceptable shape emerges. Vaqueros herd and skin the cattle for thehides the Spaniards love so, swimming in blood day after day till Indian skins smell like deathtoo.Bells for midday meal. Atole again. Bells return us to our labors, bells demand prayers orinstruction in prayer, bells determine evening meal, maybe posole with meat. Bells give uspermission to sleep.Once, the bells hung silent. The padres told us to put all else aside, join in gathering a greattide of sardines. Oh, what pleasure while we brought in that slippery harvest! For many dayswe waded in the surf with our baskets, salty water bathing us of dust and blood, sun claimingour bare backs. We sang lusty songs out beyond the padres’ hearing; I heard laughter all aroundme as the young unmarried men and women, separated in day by work and at night by lock andkey, exchanged more than looks. We ate sardines fresh, we roasted them in coals, wrapped inseaweed, we hung them over the fire, their rich fat dripping onto embers.Some of us caught as much as ten barrels, but when the barrels ran out and still the sardinescame, we showed the padres how to open the sardines, remove the spines, put them to dry inthe sun. This, they gave away to anyone who asked, having no way to store such bounty, andthat was right, and never would have happened, we thought, if the bells still spoke.On holy day, we left the sardines in peace, went hunting for nests of seabirds that live in therocks. We passed that day camping on the beach, small groups of us, each with its fire, roastingand eating what we had caught. Friends rested together, gossiping; daughters normallysequestered in the monjerio leaned against their mothers contentedly; children ate their fill,slept on the warm sand with bones still tight in their fists. Our souls swam gratefully intodream, whole and unbroken. The padres stood to one side, watched, laughed to see us at suchease.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Figure 3Next day, we woke to bells. The voice of the bell is the voice of the padres. We try, but wecannot always obey.DisciplineDue to their animal-like natures, California Indians often made mistakes or misbehaved evenwhen they had been told the rules. Records left behind tell us how the Indians lied, stole,cheated on their spouses, killed their own babies, ran away from the missions, tried to avoidtheir work, practiced pagan witchcraft, gambled, or snuck off to gather or hunt extra food fortheir families without getting permission from the padres first.Figure 4Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Like good fathers everywhere, the padres believed in firm discipline and consequences;usually this meant flogging (another word for “whipping”), but sometimes other kinds ofcorporal punishment were used as needed. As Padre Lasuén (who took over for Padre Serra aspresident at San Carlos) wrote sensibly, “It is evident that a nation which is barbarous,ferocious and ignorant requires more frequent punishment than a nation which is cultured,educated and of gentle and moderate customs.”Luckily, the Spaniards had already had experience with taming wild Indians in Mexico andin parts of South America, such as Peru. A very smart Peruvian Indian named Felipe GuamanPoma de Ayala learned how to read and write, and in 1615 he began to write a long letter tothe king of Spain.In fact, it was so long that it took Guaman Poma thirty years to write! Poma used Spanish(although he made many mistakes) and, when he didn’t know the Spanish word for something,used Indian dialects written with Spanish letters. He told the king about Peruvian and Andeanhistory, culture, and experiences with Spaniards.In his letter, Poma provided a little catalog of Spanish punishments for Indians that includedflogging (first being tied to a llama or post), hanging upside down, and being put in the stocks.The Peruvian wanted the king to take action against what he felt were unreasonably harshpunishments experienced by Indians who worked in gold and silver mines.Although Guaman Poma spent most of his life researching and constructing this letter, it waslost for centuries and never reached the king. However, the traditions of firm discipline livedon. Franciscan fathers used these and other disciplinary actions to help civilize CaliforniaIndians and turn them into good Christians and loyal Spanish subjects. Below are briefMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

explanation of the most commonly practiced punishments in our California missions: flogging,whipping with the cat-o’-nine tails, hobbling with the corma, and beating with the cudgel.Figure 5. FloggingFloggingAlso known in Spanish as azotes (stripes), floggings were usually administered by alcaldes(Indian leaders appointed by priests or, later, voted into office by Indians) or soldiers, andsometimes by the padres personally. Although correspondence between padres and the Crownspecified a limit of twenty-five blows per Indian for each broken rule, records from thepadres’ diaries and other records indicate that some Indians received as many as one hundredtwenty-five blows at one time. Those must have been very bad Indians, as the padres did notwant to injure the Indians but teach them to behave. It is a common falsehood that any Indianwas ever beaten to death by a padre.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Figure 6. Cat-o’-nine tailsCat-o’-Nine TailsA whip, usually made of cow or horse hide, with nine knotted lines, invented in and usedthroughout Europe and by pirates for various crimes. There are stories that steel balls or barbsof wires would be added to the ends of the lines to give them more striking force. The whipsmight be oiled and wiped clean in between floggings but in that time and place, the Spaniardshad no concept of bacteria and germs. They had no way of knowing that the cat-o’-nine tailswas a breeding ground for disease and pestilence, or that the sores on Indians’ bodies wouldbecome badly infected. Honest.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Figure 7. CormaCormaA hobbling device for misbehaving neophytes. Developed first for use on livestock, such ashorses, who required some movement to graze but might run away if left completelyunshackled. Steven Hackel, a mission scholar, reports in his book Children of Coyote, “Theapparatus, which closed around the prisoner’s feet, was formed of two pieces of wood hingedtogether, twenty-four inches long and about ten inches wide. Rags were placed around theprisoner’s feet to prevent abrasions and permanent injury…the corma could be used to punishIndians and allow them to perform simple tasks, such as cleaning wheat or grinding corn…[aMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

visitor to the missions] thought the corma especially appropriate to chastise Indian womenwho were guilty of adultery or other serious faults” (no doubt because the corma forced thewearer to keep his/her legs together). Similar to the stocks but portable, the corma allowed theIndians to continue being productive members of the mission even when having to learn alesson about obedience.CudgelWooden club used to strike quickly; alcaldes, soldiers, and sometimes padres carried thesewith them for spontaneous corrections throughout their day. The alcaldes used these duringservices in church to remind the Indians to be quiet, to pay attention, and to stay awake. Alonger cudgel or cane was useful during Mass because the alcalde could reach far into a crowdwithout having to move very much.Figure 8. CudgelMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Figure 9. Carmel Mission, circa 1882MissionMassive Conversion Factory centered around a furnace constructed of flesh, bones, blood,grief, and pristine land and watersheds, and dependent on a continuing fresh supply of humanbeings, specifically Indian, which were in increasingly short supply. Run by a well-meaningEuropean religious order (see PADRE) convinced that they were doing the work of theirSupreme Deity, aka God, a mission was meant to suck in Indigenous peoples (see NEOFITO),strip them of religion, language, and culture, and melt them down into generic workers instilledwith Catholicism, Spanish values, and freshly overhauled, tuned-up souls. These reconditionedsouls (now called “converts”) were to be spewed out the back end of the Conversion Factoryin about ten years, by which time they would be expected to perform the basic functions ofservice to both earthly king and Supreme Deity, gladly forsaking their previous lives.However, much as in any religious cult, production of converts involved a radical kind ofbrainwashing, more euphemistically called reeducation.Unexpected physical and psychological resistance to conversion (rebellion, murder, self-destructive behaviors, chronic depression, and a catastrophically low birth rate) by Indigenouspeoples as well as unforeseen biological reactions to the introduction of European foods,plants and animals, diseases (measles, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, alcoholism,suppressed immune systems) led to extension after extension of the initial deadline. Shovelingin more Indians from distant communities to replace the fallen was only a temporary solution.Result: 80 percent of California Indians dead in a sixty-year period. In the words ofanthropologist and historian Robert Heizer, “The Franciscan missions in California were ill-equipped, badly managed places…To continue to feed the furnace would have required a[Spanish] military force of much greater power than was available to go further each year intothe unconverted interior and bring back the human fuel.” Despite Heizer’s appraisal, therecords of the missions themselves illustrate that even an endless supply of fresh Indianswould not have changed the death rate, but merely prolonged the closing down of the factory.The bottom line is that individual missions were successful only for the missionaries, whoMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

spent their lives secure in the belief that they served their Supreme Deity faithfully and haddone no wrong. Lesson learned: always know the limitations imposed by fuel availability.Neofito (Neophyte)1. A religious convert; a newly baptized Indian, or Indio; a subhuman, animal-like beingfrom the region where a mission was being established, judged to be desperately in needof Spanish religion and discipline in order to earn a soul, become human, be saved fromeverlasting damnation. Like very young children, Indians lived by instinct and desire, notknowing what was best for them. Priests regarded themselves in loco parentis, fatherlyoverseers with the responsibility to instruct and guide in both temporal and spiritualmatters. This state of childlike existence continued for the life of the neofita, who, evenshould she live to be one hundred years old and have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, was never legally an adult and so could not leave the mission withoutwritten permission. Nor could she own land. Officially emancipated in 1836 by Mexico,declared citizens of the United States in 1924, are we grown up yet?2. They are born among the mountains and in the ravines like savages, feeding on wildseeds, and are without either agriculture or arts. In their pagan state the Indians…mated after the fashion of animals. Their superstitions are as numerous as they areridiculous and are difficult to understand.Figure 10. “Inhabitants of California”3. Indigenous human beings who were loved to death by the Franciscan fathers. TheIndians… possess in a heroic degree, in eminent fashion, only the virtue of obedience…They cease to operate by themselves as if they were a corpse, neither more nor less. Itis certain that a gardener, though he knew his business very well, would plant avegetable in the ground upside down if the father commanded him. When themissionary desires to punish them all that is necessary is to order them to prepareMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

themselves and they receive the strokes. The other virtues they do not know.4. Bestias. Lazy. Meek. Submissive. Humble. Timid. Docile. Obedient. Superstitious.Stupid. Ignorant. Children.5. Feliciano María Quittit. Martina Josefa Tutuan. Santiago Ferriol Tocayo Maxya.Cunegunda María Malaxet. Juan Damansceno Yjaschan. María Nicolasa Yaccash. YginiaMaría Yunisyunis. Fructuoso de Jesús Cholom. Diodora María Mihausom. My ancestors.Figure 11. Franciscan missionariesPadre“The neophyte community was like one great family, at the head of whichstood the padre… To him the Indians looked for everything concerning theirbodies as well as their souls. He was their guide and their protector.”—Zephyrin EnglehardtThe padre baptized us, gave us names and godparents; he taught us our catechism, officiated atour first communion, posted our marriage banns, performed our weddings, baptized our babies,administered last rites, listened to our confessions; he punished us when we prayed to thewrong god or tired of our wives or husbands.He taught us to sing (our own songs were ugly), he taught us to speak (our own languageswere nonsensical), he made us wear clothes (our bodies were shameful), he gave us wheat andthe plow (our seeds and acorns were fit only for animals).Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Yes, that padre, he was everything to us Indians. At the giving end of a whip, he taught us tocare for and kill cattle, work fields of wheat and corn and barley, make adobe walls for ourown prisons, build the church, the monjerio, storerooms—promised it all to us if we wouldjust grow up, pray hard enough, forget enough.But it all went to Spain, to Rome, to Mexico, into the pockets of merchants, smugglers,priests, dishonest administrators and finally the cruel Americans. Nothing left for the childrenthe padre had worked so hard to civilize, poor savages pulled from the fires of certain Hell.He was our shepherd, we were his beloved and abused flock; now the fields are eaten down tothe earth, we claw the earth yet even the roots are withered, and the shepherd has gone away.But we are pagans no more! Now we are Christian vaqueros, Christian housekeepers,Christian blacksmiths and shoemakers and laundry women and wet nurses and handymen—none of us paid with more than a meal or a shirt or a pair of discarded boots, but Christians.Poor Christians, drunken Christians, meek targets for forty-niners crazed by goldlust orranchers hungry for land. We are homeless Christians, starving Christians, diseased andlandless Christians; we are Christian slaves bought and sold in newspapers, on auction blocksin San Francisco, Los Angeles, one hundred dollars for a likely girl, fifty dollars for an able-bodied boy, free to whoever bails the old men out of jail: every one of us baptized by thepadre, our primitive souls snatched from this Hell our bodies cannot escape, we are Christian,we are Catholic, we are saved by the padres and for that, Jesus Christ, we must be grateful.A Few Corrections to My Daughter’s Coloring BookMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Dear VicentaMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

“Vicenta Gutierrez, sister of ‘The Blonde’ Gutierrez, when [she was] a girl wentto confession one evening during Lent, and Father Real wanted her, to grab herover there in the church. And next day there was no trace of the padre there, andhe was never seen again. He probably fled on horseback in the night. Some saidhe fled to Spain. He was a Spaniard. He grabbed the girl and screwed her. Thegirl went running to her house, saying the padre had grabbed her.”—IsabelMeadowsDear Vicenta,Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

I’m sorry, because I don’t know what to tell you. I could try to be funny and say, “Hey, guessthat priest gave up celibacy for Lent, huh?” Or I could go for the crude wink, “I know what yougave up, honey!” That’s how I’ve learned to deal with it. That’s how I talk about whathappened to me as a kid. I mean, it happens all the time, right? It’s not just that we’re women;we’re Indian women…poor Indian women. The statistics on that are predictable. Thirty-fourpercent of us raped; one in three! And ninety percent of the rapists are non-Indian.Well, I shouldn’t complain. Those are stats from my day and age. For you, it’s probablymore like 100 percent. I’ve read the testimonies, the as-told-to stories. Funny thing, that. Noone believes what you say. Or cares. Until over a century has passed and the damn guy is deadand buried and safe in his cozy little mission graveyard.Now it’s all legitimate research, figuring out how women survived the missions, how manyrapes, how many self-induced abortions, how many infanticides, the Native medicines for birthcontrol, the ravages of syphilis that caused sterility, and worse. Scholars write dissertations,sexual violence against colonized women is a real field of study, and what happened in thedark confessional or between the pews is suddenly outrageous, a weapon of colonization, not ashameful wound.That Chumash guy, Fernando Librado—the one famous for providing J. P. Harrington withall that old-time information, even how to build a tomol from nothing? You can find thosedirections on the Internet now. On websites for children, fourth graders studying the missions,looking for Indian words, how to grind acorns. He’s a hero. He saved a culture from amnesia.That’s what they tell the kids.Fernando remembered a whole lot more than recipes, though. Even when no one elselistened to him, Harrington wrote it down. The old Indios used to say, “That man would writedown the Indian directions for scratching your ass,” and it was true! Vicenta, here’s whatFernando told:The priest had an appointed hour to go there. When he got to the nunnery[monjerio] all were in bed in the big dormitory. The priest would pass by thebed of the superior [maestra] and tap her on the shoulder, and she wouldcommence singing. All of the girls would join in…when the singing was goingon, the priest would have time to select the girl he wanted, carry out hisdesires…in this way the priest had sex with all of them, from the superior all theway down the line…the priest’s will was law. Indians would lie right down ifthe priest said so.Guess we won’t be teaching that to the fourth graders any time soon.(It happened to me way before fourth grade.)Vicenta, I keep thinking of how you ran home, telling everyone what had happened. I have toMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

tell you, girl, that was brave. I didn’t tell for years and years.And the priests were gods then, even though by the time that padre came to Carmel, they’dbeen dumped first by Spain, and then by Mexico. They still had the power. Even if you told,and you did, who would believe you? Who would care? Who would give you justice?Nobody. Carmel was a ragtag bunch of mixed-blood Indians trying to survive, fighting overfood, the very young and the very old the only ones left who hadn’t died or gone off tocelebrate their “emancipation” by working as maids or vaqueros at the ranchos. What couldthey do? The priests had all the power. They always did. It seemed as if they always would.Isabel didn’t forget you, though. One hundred years after the padre raped you in the church,Isabel told your story to Harrington. She told it like it happened yesterday. And she was mad.She used Spanish and a brutal English to make sure Harrington understood. Vicenta, she usedthe priest’s name. “Padre Real.”And she used your name. She made certain we knew which family you belonged to,connected you with your brother.Isabel told that story like it happened to her, or to her daughter. She told that story like shecould bring down the wrath of God just by finding the right words.Maybe she did, Vicenta. By not following the rules, the rules that said we don’t talk aboutthis stuff, we don’t name names, we don’t tell outsiders. Maybe she figured, “What’s left tolose?” Everyone was telling her that extinction was right around the corner, and it sure as hellfelt like it. So why not tell the whole story? Why just tell the stuff they can analyze in amonograph, simplify for their children when they learn about the exotic animals that used tolive here?“If we’re going out,” she might’ve thought, “we’re going out with some guts!”Isabel says Padre Real was gone the next morning. Maybe even gone back to Spain. Thatwas wishful thinking. He left Carmel, all right, but he didn’t go very far. Right around that time,historical records say, Father Real moved his home base from Carmel Mission to the chapel inMonterey, and from there to Mission Santa Cruz, where he tried to sell the church’s landillegally as the Americans came flooding into the country. And then—he just vanishes from therecord. Poof. Nothing.Erasure is a bitch, isn’t it?Vicenta, I don’t know if the fact that your story survives, that Isabel’s angry words fight foryour dignity and honor, really brings any kind of justice to you. Not the kind of hands-on justiceI’d like, anyhow. When the Indians at Mission Santa Cruz killed their priest—a man known forhis use of metal-tipped whips and thumbscrews—they made sure to rip off his testicles, too.Now, those were some Indians who listened to the “eye for an eye” part of the Bible prettygood.But the scribblings of an obsessed white man trying to record the memories of an agingIndian woman attempting to tell the story of an Indian girl’s rape one hundred years before—Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

can this change the world?Maybe nothing can bring you justice after all this time, Vicenta. That’s probably too much toask. I hope for the basics: I hope someone was there for you when you ran home. Someone tohold you. Someone to help you clean yourself up. Someone who comforted you after thenightmares. I hope nobody told you it was your fault. I hope some old lady cussed out FatherReal in front of the gossips.And if no one did any of that for you, I hold onto this: Isabel remembered your story, and shetold it to Harrington, and he told it to me, and I’m telling it to everyone I can find.You told first.Maybe that’s why Isabel felt, of all the stories she knew about violation and invasion andloss, your story was the one to tell Harrington. She was proud of you. She respected you forrefusing to shut up. She liked that you weren’t a good Mission Indian. Maybe she even thoughtfuture Indian women could learn from you.That 34 percent hasn’t gone away since I started this letter.Vicenta. If that was your name, the padre should have been more careful about giving it toyou. Even in Spanish, it means “conquers.”Not conquered.Nimasianexelpasaleki.Isabel MeadowsMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Isabel Meadows in Washington, DC, circa 1934The daughter of Loreta, granddaughter of María Ygnacia, great-granddaughter of LupicinaFrancisca Unegte, great-great-granddaughter of Celedonia Josefa Usari was born in CarmelValley in July 1846, the same month that the American flag was raised over Monterey’s CustomHouse. A child of a former whaler from England, James Meadows, and Loreta Onésimo, amember of a local Indian family, Isabel was a speaker of Rumsien Ohlone and Esselen, bothlanguages of the Monterey coastal region. In the 1930s, Isabel became “a primary informant”of Smithsonian ethnologist J. P. Harrington. In her eighties, she accompanied Harrington toWashington, DC, for five years to continue their work on Carmel/ Monterey/Big Sur culturesand languages; she died there in 1939.Isabel never married and did not leave behind any direct descendants. We are related bymarriage: Jacinto, one of her half-brothers through her mother’s first marriage, married mygreat-great-great-grandmother Sacramento Cantua. Isabel also vouched for the Indian blood ofmany of my relatives on their 1928 BIA applications, using her thumbprint as “mark,” orsignature.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Meadows knew she was a valuable resource to Harrington; he returned to her again andagain, pleaded with her to work with no one else, snapped up the bits and pieces of culturalinformation and language she fed him. But in between the language lessons and Coyote storiesHarrington was after, Isabel snuck in the stories she wanted to salvage: her own privateproject, a memorial, and a charmstone of hope for future generations.I see Vicenta’s story as a precursor to modern Native Literature, a stepping-stone betweenoral literacy and written literature. The women of her community heard and remembered herstory, but how could it survive beyond their lifetimes? Isabel seemed to understand that in aperilous time, Vicenta’s narrative had to enter into that written realm, leave the community ofIndian women in order to return to us someday—as it turns out, almost two hundred years afterit happened. To me, this means that Isabel herself knew the power of story, and believed in oursurvival—in the future, there would be Indian women who would need this story! I regard thefield notes that J. P. Harrington took while working with Isabel Meadows as her body of work:her engagement in the creative use of words, literacy, and empowerment on behalf of hercommunity.Isabel’s story also serves as a teaching device for contemporary California Indian women—for me, my sisters, our daughters. Isabel and Vicenta’s story passed down through CaliforniaIndian women to California Indian women is as potent as any coming-of-age ceremony, asmedicinal as any gathering of women’s herbs, as healing as any grandmother’s caress of afevered forehead. Through the vehicle of this field note we are engaged in a very Indigenouspractice: that of storytelling as education, as thought-experiment, as community action to right awrong, as resistance to representation as victim. Isabel preserves and praises Vicenta’s braveact and exhorts women of her generation, and the women who will one day read Harrington’snotes, to claim that kind of self-awareness. We are valuable human beings, she tells otherNative women: our bodies are sacred, and we have a right to speak out against violence andviolation.Notes, Isabel Meadows speaking to Smithsonian ethnologist J. P. Harrington, 1935, aboutmy great-great-great-great-great aunt Estéfana Real’s son Victor, born March 1846Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Isabel [consultant]Mar. 1934Estéfana Real had many husbands. Her children had many fathers—they werejoteras, the old ladies before. IsabelMar. [19]37understands “joteras” above to mean that the old women were very macho. Butno, the real reason Isabel used “jotera” in 34 was because Estéfana had a son,Victor Acedo, who was a joto. The old lady Estéfana never said nothing, or shedidn’t know, maybe, that her son, Victor, was a joto. This was why in ’34 Isabelspoke of Estéfana as very macho, she had a son who was a joto.Harrington R73:282 BCousins(for Victor)Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

We dressed in skirts of tule or deerskin, worked hard, side by side with our sisters: gatheringand pounding acorns with pestles into the bedrock slabs, weaving tight baskets and caring forthe sick child or wandering toddler. We shared secrets about men, stories about lovers,remedies for broken hearts.Our sisters opened the way for the next generation, gave birth to the tribe’s future with eachsqualling, hungry voice; it was dangerous work, but they had charms of creation inscribed intheir spirits and flesh. We midwifed the dead, carried each body tenderly from this world tothe next without risking contamination; always in two worlds at once, poised between, we keptour balance on those slippery paths between life and death.Then the soldiers came, the priests came, christened us joyas, jewels, laughing at how ourtribes treated us—sodomites, nefando pecados, mujerados—as treasures. Treasures? Theycalled us monsters. Joya was a joke. But we had other names before that: aqi, coia, cuit,uluqui, endearments only the ancestors remember.In the missions, we were stripped bare, whipped, made to sweep the plaza for days, pointedat, cursed. “In the south, we fed your kind to our dogs,” soldiers grinned, and stroked the headsof their mastiffs.Worst of all, threatened with beatings, our own husbands disowned us, children grew to fearus, and our sisters, oh, our sisters turned us away.Some of us fled into the mountains, died alone. Some found new homes in bands not yetcaptured by soldiers or starvation, tried to forget the violations. Some of us, unable to escapethe missions, hid amongst the men, passed as just men, tried to whisper our knowledge to afew survivors, pass on the negotiations with death which life requires.We weren’t trying to save ourselves. We were trying to save the world.But we disappeared, murdered or heartbroken, and the end of the world came anyway.When all of the burying baskets and digging sticks were burnt, when only the shameremained with its stench of fear, we became jotos. When our names were forgotten, ourresponsibilities forgotten, when we lost the gift of swimming in that liquid space between lifeand death, we became jotos. Our families despised us, old women gossiped about us. If ourmothers fought to protect us, they were called joteras. If our names were recorded by history,it was only to reiterate our sins. If our bodies survived, our spirits were poisoned by ignoranceand grief.How strange it is, now, to hear young voices calling to us. Calling out names we have notheard since the baptismal font in the mission yard, names like Coutesi, Liuixucat, Yautaya,recorded alongside armafrodita, joya, amugereado. Who remembers us? Who pulls us,forgotten, from beneath melted adobe and groomed golf courses and asphalted freeways, asksfor our help, rekindles the work of our lives? Who takes up the task of weaving soul to body,carrying the dead from one world to the next, who bears the two halves of spirit in the wholevessel of one body?Where have you been? Why have you waited so long? How did you ever find us, buriedMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

under words like joto, like joya, under whips and lies? And what do you call us now?Never mind, little ones. Never mind. You are here now, at last. Come close. Listen. We haveso much work to do.Miranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

Genealogy of Violence, Part IIMy little brother loses a tooth during a rough wrestling session with our forty-five-year-oldbear of a father. Blood spills out of Little Al’s round mouth, a lower tooth hangs, comes out inhis hand when he reaches up. He is frightened by the sudden hole in his gums, the brightwarning color of his spit, the sudden jolt that reverberates from lower jaw through his smallbody.Parents love their children extremely. They seek every kind of way to feed them.They would rather suffer want themselves than to see their children in need.—Mission San DiegoOur father scoffs, pushes his small four-year-old son, says, “Aw, it’s just a damn tooth, comeon, no crying.” I’m sitting at the kitchen table, trying to finish a report on Pearl Harbor for myeighth grade social studies class. I’m totally absorbed in proving the stunning (to me) fact thatFranklin Roosevelt knew about and in fact encouraged American vulnerability to Japanese“sneak” attacks, but something in the tone of my brother’s voice snakes into my gut and wakesme out of my academic fog. Our father’s voice is harsher now, making fun of the tears. “Ay,little baby, only babies cry! Are you a baby?”When it concerns the children…their parents love them to such an extent that wemight say they are their little idols.—Mission San GabrielThere is a chasm between these two male Mirandas, a chasm that shouldn’t be there—bothso brown, so Indian, so dear to me. I rise from the kitchen table where I am working, rise sofast that my chair, with its torn plastic covering and raw metal feet, tips over behind me,crashes to the linoleum floor of our trailer. “No, Daddy, no!” Little Al sobs, “I sorry, I sorry,”and there is the horrifying sound of a belt buckle being flipped open, the clinks of metal onmetal, the dull ziiiiipp! of a leather belt being pulled angrily through the hard denim loops ofmy father’s Levis.Toward their children they show an extravagant love whom they do not chastise.Nor have they ever chastised them but allow them to do whatever they please.We know now, however, that some are beginning to chastise and educate themdue to the instructions they are receiving.—Mission San Miguel“You want something to cry about? You want the belt?” our father yells, embarrassed by hisMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

cowardly son, this son he waited half a lifetime to have, this son who carries on the familyname as none of his seven sisters can, this son whose tears break every rule my father everlearned about surviving in this world. Before I can take the ten steps from kitchen to livingroom, my father has seized my little brother by his plump arm, swung him around across the lapthat should be comfort, should be home, should be refuge, and is swinging the doubled beltwith such force that the air protests; the arc of my father’s arm is following a trajectory I knowtoo well, the arc of leather, sharp edges of cured hide, instrument of punishment coming fromtwo hundred years out of the past in a movement so ancient, so much a part of our familyhistory that it has touched every single one of us in an unbroken chain from the first padre orthe first soldado at the mission to the bared back of the first Indian neophyte, heathen, pagan,savage, who displeased or offended the Spanish Crown’s representatives.They likewise love their children; in fact, it can be said that this love is soexcessive that it is a vice, for the majority lack the courage to punish theirchildren’s wrongdoings and knavery.—Mission San AntonioFlogging. Whipping. Belt. Whatever you call it, this beating, this punishment, is as much apart of our inheritance, our legacy, our culture, as any bowl of acorn mush, any wild salmonfillet, pilillis fried and dipped in cinnamon and sugar, cactus fruit in a basket. More thananything else we brought with us out of the missions, we carry the violence we were givenalong with baptism, confession, last rites. More than our black hair, brown eyes, various huesof brown skin flecked with black beauty marks, our short stubby fingers, our wide feet andpalms, our sweet voices and tendency to sing, to dance, to make music and tell stories.In this trailer in the woods, just outside a small town called Kent in Washington State,hundreds of miles from California, where the three of us were each born, my father’s arm risesand falls in an old, savage rhythm learned from strangers who came with whips and attackdogs, taught us how to raise our children.Some parents who are a little better instructed punish their children as theydeserve while others denounce them to the missionary fathers or to the alcaldes.—Mission San AntonioMiranda, Deborah A.. Bad Indians : A Tribal Memoir, Heyday, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=5606136.Created from sjsu on 2023-08-28 19:25:24.Copyright © 2016. Heyday. All rights reserved.

National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox American Beginnings: The European Presence in North America, 1492-1690 REQUERIMIENTO ___________ 1510 REQUIREMENT: PRONOUNCEMENT TO BE READ BY SPANISH CONQUERORS TO DEFEATED INDIANS * The Requerimiento [Requirement] was written in 1510 by the Council of Castile to be read aloud as an ultimatum to conquered Indians in the Americas. It asserted the religious authority of the Roman Catholic pope over the entire earth, and the political authority of Spain over the Americas (except Brazil) from the 1493 papal bull that divided the western hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. It demanded that the conquered peoples accept Spanish rule and Christian preaching or risk subjugation, enslavement, and death. Often the Requerimiento was read in Latin to the Indians with no interpreters present, or even delivered from shipboard to an empty beach, revealing its prime purpose as self-justification for the Spanish invaders. On the part of the King, Don Fernando, and of Doña Juana, his daughter, Queen of Castile and León, subduers of the barbarous nations, we their servants notify and make known to you, as best we can, that the Lord our God, Living and Eternal, created the Heaven and the Earth, and one man and one woman, of whom you and we, all the men of the world, were and are descendants, and all those who came after us. But, on account of the multitude which has sprung from this man and woman in the five thousand years since the world was created, it was necessary that some men should go one way and some another, and that they should be divided into many kingdoms and provinces, for in one alone they could not be sustained. Of all these nations God our Lord gave charge to one man, called St. Peter, that he should be Lord and Superior of all the men in the world, that all should obey him, and that he should be the head of the whole human race, wherever men should live, and under whatever law, sect, or belief they should be; and he gave him the world for his kingdom and jurisdiction. And he commanded him to place his seat in Rome as the spot most fitting to rule the world from; but also he permitted him to have his seat in any other part of the world, and to judge and govern all Christians, Moors [Muslims], Jews, Gentiles, and all other sects. This man was called Pope, as if to say, Admirable Great Father and Governor of men. The men who lived in that time obeyed that St. Peter and took him for Lord, King, and Superior of the universe; so also they have regarded the others who after him have been elected to the pontificate, and so has it been continued even till now and will continue till the end of the world. One of these Pontiffs [popes] who succeeded that St. Peter as Lord of the world, in the dignity and seat which I have before mentioned, made donation of these isles and Tierra-firme to the aforesaid King and Queen and to their successors, our lords, with all that there are in these territories, as is contained in certain writings which passed upon the subject as aforesaid, which you can see if you wish. So their Highnesses are kings and lords of these islands and land of Tierra-firme by virtue of this donation: and some islands, and indeed almost all those to whom this has been notified, have received and religious justification for global authority of the Roman Catholic Church St. Peter: one of the twelve Apostles of Christ; considered the first pope of the Roman Catholic Church pontificate: papacy; leader of the Roman Catholic Church political justification for Spain’s authority in the Americas Tierra-firme: continent, “firm land” [Sp.] * National Humanities Center, 2006/2011: nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/. Complete image credits at nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/ imagecredits.htm.

National Humanities Center  Council of Castile (Spain), Requerimiento, 1510 2 served their Highnesses, as lords and kings, in the way that subjects ought to do, with good will, without any resistance, immediately, without delay, when they were informed of the aforesaid facts. And also they received and obeyed the priests whom their Highnesses sent to preach to them and to teach them our Holy Faith; and all these, of their own free will, without any reward or condition, have become Christians, and are so, and their Highnesses have joyfully and benignantly received them, and also have commanded them to be treated as their subjects and vassals; and you too are held and obliged to do the same. Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings of these islands and this Tierra-firme by virtue of the said donation, and that you consent and give place that these religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid. If you do so, you will do well, and that which you are obliged to do to their Highnesses, and we in their name shall receive you in all love and charity, and shall leave you, your wives, and your children, and your lands, free without servitude, that you may do with them and with yourselves freely that which you like and think best, and they shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, as almost all the inhabitants of the rest of the islands have done. And, besides this, their Highnesses award you many privileges and exemptions and will grant you many benefits. But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us. And that we have said this to you and made this Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us his testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should be witnesses of this Requisition. Images: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Permission request in process. – Virgin of Quito, second half of 18th century, after a model by Bernardo Legarda (active 1731–73), Ecuadoran (Quito), wood, polychromed and gilded (detail). – Standing Angel, 18th century, Ecuadoran (Quito), wood, polychromed and gilded (detail). claim that other conquered peoples have readily submitted to Spanish rule and Christian teaching; that “you too are held and obliged to do the same” consequences of submitting to Spanish rule: freedom from enslavement and forced conversion, and “many privileges and exemptions” consequences of resisting Spanish rule: war, enslavement, forced conversion, and “all the mischief and damage that we can [do]” consequences of resistance “are your fault”

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