California Indigenous communities endured the same kinds of catastrophes that plagued Indigenous people across what became the US. In some ways, the California experience differed from experiences elsewhere, and in other ways it was similar, but in all cases the destructive result was the same. It’s important, therefore, to understand California Indigenous experiences in the larger historical contexts of Catholic missionary activity and US Western expansion.

By the time Spanish missionaries arrived in California in the 1770s, the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere, in particular those of Central and South America, had endured the worst effects of colonization—disease and violence—for more than two centuries. The Catholic Church, whose leaders believed that they possessed a divine mandate to save as many souls as possible by whatever means necessary, had perfected the instruments of forced conversion. Wherever Spanish soldiers marched in the Americas, Catholic priests followed close behind, carrying with them all the brutal traditions of the Spanish Inquisition, the sinister and authoritarian institution that terrorized dissenters from Catholicism. In the Catholic missionaries of Spain, therefore, Indigenous people in California met the one group of European Christians who had proved themselves most determined to convert “heathen” souls at any cost.

Catholicism itself didn’t necessarily mean religious terrorism for Indigenous people.