Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis

Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850

Bibliographic Data

ID7521985
AuthorsElisa Sampson Vera Tudela (0000-0001-6651-9647, King's College London, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume93
Issue3
Pages855-856
Publication date2006-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/4486449
OpenAlexW2325648842
LanguageEN

Steven W. Hackel has written a rich and rewarding contribution to the scholarship on missions of colonial California. His study focuses on the intersections of Indian and Spanish worlds and covers an extraordinary period between 1769 and 1850 when the establishment of missions was followed rapidly by Mexican independence and then U.S. rule. Using the mission San Carlos Borromeo as a case study, Hackel brings out the paradoxes of a system that was “anachronistic, self-defeating, and contradictory in its expectations” (p. 2). Throughout, he seeks to incorporate his subject into an understanding of American history and to establish connections with the historiography of colonial Spanish America and, where relevant, of early modern Europe. In the first part of the book, there is an overview of the Monterrey region and the dual revolutions of biological change and demographic collapse. The second part examines points of interaction between Indians and non-Indians. In the final part, Hackel brings the histories of some of the mission Indians into the present. Even from this cursory summary, the ambition and scope of the book are apparent, and Hackel satisfies all of the curiosity and most of the questions his study inspires. A review of this length cannot do justice to the massive scholarship underpinning this book or communicate the elegance and care with which the macro- and micro-narratives (and all their disciplinary and methodological demands) are woven together

Anachronism · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Curiosity · Discipline · Economic Justice · Historiography · Independence (probability theory · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · SAINT · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Psychology