One of the few coherent national policies implemented along the frontier was the disbanding of the mission system, a process known as secularization. Control of mission chapels was transferred from state-supported religious orders to parish priests. Mission Indians were legally entitled to mission livestock and farm and ranch land. Any surplus land was transferred to others.
Secularization occurred for several reasons. Enlightenment notions of racial equality conflicted with the reality of having distinct religious and social communities established specifically for the indigenous population. The government had a vested interest in disbanding missions since neophytes would not only become tax-paying citizens but support their parish priests, relieving the government of that responsibility. In California, officials saw the missions as an obstacle to economic development since they had a near monopoly over indigenous labor and land on the coastal strip. Without access to land and labor, settlers would not come. Policy makers felt that removing Indians from mission tutelage would promote individual responsibility and initiative. Finally, many policy makers supported secularization since they wanted to transfer the lands held by missions to non-Indian hands.6
Secularization of the Texas missions began before Mexico’s independence. San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) was inventoried and disbanded in 1793. The San Antonio missions were fully secularized by 1823—1824. The city government distributed mission lands to a host of eager petitioners. The chapels themselves remained church property, but priests no longer used them for religious services. The last Texas mission, Nuestra Senora del Refugio, north of present-day Corpus Christi, struggled along until 1829, when its goods were finally auctioned off.7
In California, secularization proceeded at a much slower pace since the mission played a vital role in the California economy. Governor Jose Maria Echeandia even refused to enforce the Spanish expulsion laws, since twenty-five of the twenty-eight padres in California were Spanish-born Franciscans. He argued that their departure would not only ruin the missions but if the missions ceased producing food as a result, “the rest of the inhabitants and the troops would perish.”8
When secularization began in earnest in the 1830s, few California Indians received legal title to the land they had worked. Protests by former neophytes went unheeded. Mission San Gabriel provides a typical example. In 1834, Bernardo Yorba, the son of the colonial grantee of Rancho Santiago de Santa Anna, petitioned for a grant of property adjoining his ranch. A priest protested that the land belonged to Indians of San Gabriel. The Los Angeles town council ignored the priest and lauded Yorba as an exemplary citizen who was one of the most industrious people in California. Its members then declared that he had every right to the property.9
Secular administrators whose sympathies lay with Hispanic ranchers desirous of increasing their holdings frequently thwarted Indian access to California mission land to which they were legally entitled. This left Indians with the options of rejoining Indians living in interior valleys, moving to Hispanic cattle ranches, or establishing themselves in emerging towns, where they would be landless and impoverished. The majority, who had not assimilated the cultural patterns of coastal Hispanic society, chose a return to a semi-nomadic Indian way of life. A few Indians, especially those born in the missions, remained as a part of Hispanic society.10
In California, the availability of land and cheap Indian labor from recently secularized missions gave rise to a class of nouveau riche cattle barons. Despite federal legislation to the contrary, Hispanic Californians gained control of the land and cattle of disbanded missions. The appropriation of additional land occupied by heathen Indians added to Hispanic ranch holdings. Ninety-three of these California ranches measured in excess of 24,700 acres. In 1839, Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado tried to check what nearly every writer has termed the “plunder” of the mission, but it was too late. “All is destruction, all is misery, humiliation, and despair,” wrote one padre in 1840.11
World History
