A Cross of Thorns. The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions. Author: Elias Castillo.

On September 25, 1988, Pope John Paul II beatified Father Junipero Serra, the founder and first administrator of California’s mission system in 1769. Beatification is a major step towards declaring someone a saint. Immediately there was an outcry of protest, writing and testimony, by many Native Americans and civil rights activists who recognized that Serra had enslaved, tortured and killed, thousands of coastal natives, “facilitating the destruction of their culture” (Castillo, p.201). Elias Castillo was one of the critics who maintained pressure on the Vatican by presenting a record of Serra’s inhumanity. A Cross of Thorns, Castillo’s indictment of Serra, was published in February of 2015. In September of that year Pope Francis (often hailed as the most socially progressive Pope regarding human rights) canonized Serra.

Castillo’s book is a straightforward chronology of Serra’s role, along with that of the Spanish missions, in the conquest, persecution and destruction of native cultures. Castillo takes a bit too long getting to the incarceration and forced labor of Native Americans within the missions. He spends fully a quarter of the book chronicling Spain’s actions towards native people from 1492 to 1769; moves on to describe the history of missionary activity from 1492 to 1769; then provides a history of Native Americans from their migration across the Bering Straits 14,000 years ago until their contact with the Spanish. This is much like someone who is protesting against the Keystone Pipeline explaining first how fossil fuels evolved.

When he does finally arrive in 1769, Castillo provides an immense quantity of archeological and documentary evidence to describe Serra’s internment facilities. Incarceration was achieved through a mixture of military force, false promises of material gain or food, and offers of baptism without explaining that those who submitted became wards of the Catholic Church. Children were especially vulnerable. Once parents were baptized, the entire family was moved into a labor enclave. When children reached the age of ten, they were separated from their nuclear family, moved into a sex-segregated dormitory and considered laborers (Castillo, pp. 118-119). Castillo provides testimony from visitors who describe “how similar the missions were to slave plantations…everything…brought to our recollection a plantation at Santo Domingo…the resemblance is so perfect that we have seen both men and women in irons, and others in stocks. Lastly, the noise of the whip” (Castillo, p. 109).

Beatings were a routine part of life. This punishment was instituted by “Padre Junipero Serra…who advocated that only by using ‘blows’ and holding them captives in those compounds could the Indians in the missions be civilized” (Castillo, Preface page 1). “In his letters, Serra described the Indians’ gods as ‘demonic’…he wrote that only Catholicism could save the Indians from evil, believing that punishment was important to rid the demons from their souls. For this reason, natives were lashed regularly, sometimes so severely that death followed” (Castillo, p. x).

Severe beatings were not the only reason for native deaths. Castillo employs the medical research of Randall Milliken and Shelburne Cook, whose separate studies on health conditions explain high mortality rates. Milliken’s research showed that “native people were being introduced to diseases that came from everywhere in the world” due to mission trading with many European nations and “through the medium of the yearly visits of supply ships from Mexico. These new diseases thrived not only because the population was immunologically unprotected, but also because of the crowding and squalor that existed in mission communities” (Castillo, p. 139). Diet also had an impact on mortality. A study comparing skeletal remains between mission and pre-Hispanic coastal natives reveals that “the diet forced on the mission Indians by the friars was inferior nutritionally when compared to the diet enjoyed by Indians prior to the establishment of the missions” (Castillo, p. 154). This combination of factors resulted in the unusual circumstance where “more Indians died than were born annually” (Castillo, p. 2). According to Cook, “from 1779 to 1833, the year the missions were effectively dissolved, there were 29,100 births and a staggering 62,600 deaths…40,000 could be considered natural mortality, leaving 22,600 to be accounted for as due to the negative effect of mission life” (Castillo, pp. 139-140).

So how did Saint Serra respond to the mounting death toll? “Rather than express grief over the deaths, Serra rejoiced. And, according to his biographer and close friend, Friar Francisco Palou, Serra frequently proclaimed ‘Thanks be to God that by now there is not a mission that does not have sons in heaven’…even the many deaths of Indian children did not faze Serra’s dark joy. In a report dated July 24, 1775, to Friar Francisco Pangua, his Franciscan superior…Serra wrote…‘the spiritual side of the missions is developing happily…there are simultaneously two harvests, at one time, one for wheat, and of a plague among the children, who are dying” (Castillo, p. 82).

When looking back at the cruelty of an individual in the past, one is always in danger of judging them according to modern standards. Were Serra’s actions considered cruel for his time? Castillo, who is aware of this question, uses the testimony of over 100 of Serra’s contemporaries who were horrified at the treatment of Native Americans. Significantly, the author employs the observations of Serra’s fellow Spanish clergy and government officials who concur that the system was inhumane, even for its time. But even if those of Serra’s century had fully accepted the enslavement and violence of his forced labor facilities, should it be acceptable to us? The Turkish government in 1915 looked upon the Armenian population in their country as fit only for annihilation. Does that make the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians acceptable?

Regardless of the judgment of history or the present, the Catholic Church should have its own standards. With the canonization of Serra, it is their hypocrisy that is truly in question. They allegedly base their decisions and actions on Canon Law and the biblical myths of a non-violent savior who lived in poverty and sacrificed his life out of compassion for humanity. There are individuals, like Serra, whose devotion to the institution caused them to act in violent, inhumane ways, but are ignored rather than honored. No pope has seen fit to canonize Tomas de Torquemada, Spain’s first Grand Inquisitor, a famous administrator of torture and death by burning. But a friar who enslaved as many Native Americans as he could, causing the deaths of thousands and abetting the annihilation of surrounding tribes, is accorded sainthood. Why? Because the Catholic Church exists, as a profitable institution, to expand its wealth and influence. Canonizing Serra is a way to claim California as an area where they have power. Sainthood gives the faithful an idol around whom to gather and pray. Canonization is highly political and propagandistic in its enactment. In the most craven, calculating manner, the Church weighed the value of increased power/influence, against the lives of the thousands of Native Americans Serra killed. They decided that the institution would benefit more from having Serra as a saint. The outcry for justice from Native Americans, the inhumanity of Serra, even the Church’s allegedly vaunted morality; none of these were factors in their decision. The Vatican may wish to ignore the acts of Junipero Serra. But Castillo will not. After all of his work, he deserves the last word:

“Serra and his Franciscans established, in the Century of Light, a movement that had a goal of crushing the civilization of California’s coastal Indians. Imprisoned within the missions, where they died by the tens of thousands, the Indians saw their lands lost and their culture all but extinguished” (Castillo, p. 202).

Castillo, Elias. A Cross of Thorns. The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions. Fresno: Craven Street Books, 2015.