The Role Of Spanish Colonization In Alta California

Beginning in the 1700’s, the Spanish searched Alta California in order to find a place for them to begin colonization. They had a couple of goals they wished to accomplish by settling in Alta California, which included; conversion of the native peoples’ to Christianity in order to acquire a larger population and gaining more land in a power race with the Russians. Before the Spanish had arrived, the natives were already struggling with diseases which had travelled from animals which they ate, for the animals had received those diseases from European contact from the east coast. The sight of new people with different technology and culture had caught the attention of many natives. With the increasing amount of curiousness, the Spanish realized
Since their religion ran so deep, they had always believed everything that the Catholic Church stood for and told them. At first, there were many Ohlone Indians, which had rejected the Catholic conversion, for they found it offensive that the Spanish were attempting to change their religion. As a tribe who had set their life’s religion as it was for the past 2,000 years, it was almost threatening to have a group of strangers to come and push to convert from their religion. The only reason for which the natives had approached the Spanish was out of curiosity and a hope of having trade relations with them. One way in which the padres took the Ohlone in and gained power over them was through baptism. It took time to convince them to be baptized, but once they were, “...the people lost their freedom, as the padres took this act to signify that they now had the power to hold the Ohlone in the missions against their will and enforce any means necessary to make the people act as they wished” (Monterey County Historical Society). In order for the padres to reach the adults into baptism, they would lure in the inquisitive children and teenagers, for they were the most easily convincible targets. Once they would baptize the children, they would be held at the mission in order to bring in the adults who cared and worried about them. In turn, this created a chain reaction where more and more Ohlone Indians flowed into the doors of the mission, for they were following their loved ones and their feelings of concern for them. With the missions filling so quickly, they soon mirrored that of a prison, as the Ohlone were not permitted to