Our cspan cities tour takes American History tv on the road to feature the history of cities across america. Here is the recent program. We are here at the carmel mission, otherwise known as send carlos san carlos. It was established as part of the colonization of the coast. The original founding was 1770, after which the site moved. The initial mission was Asian Mission of upper california began in 1769 with the establishment of san diego mission. That particular site was not the prime objective. Wasas monterey, because it centrally located and as a result we get a joint military. Nd religious exposition the commander was accompanied by the fryer, who came to the monterey bay to establish the first site. June 3, 1770. Was bornnipero serra in a place that had been conquered by the muslims. And so when you visit the site, it is surrounded by military bastions that date all the way back to the roman conquest. You have islamic and other traditions that are all represented. And one could argue that there was a very conservative friend in so far as the catholic religious beliefs, which serra was inspired to bring to the americas. One of the key tenants was that the evangelization of gentiles, people who are not christian, should be ones life devotion. Ship,9 serra boarded a arrived in veracruz, spain and from the 1730s and 40s spain was being transformed by an wightman ideologys. The motion of the might met enlightenment is that all men are created equal, but you know as well as i do that in reality when it came down to it, slavery was condoned. The indian wars were condoned under that. So things were not quite equal. So when we look at the missions throughout california, we had the military espousing this enlightenment ideology, while the missions were looking for communities that could be built and transformed it. The problem was while the enlightenment ideology seems like one that was noble, the reality was releasing native people from the missions so they could be exploited by outsiders was one of the defaults of that and father serra knew that and he fought to keep them out of contracts with other european settlers. So the franciscans, however, evangelizingith upper california and their objective was basically bringing communities into the church and into the worship of christ. So that was their prime objective. The way they did that was by introducing skill sets identified with the church, including things like music, reading, agriculture, the liturgy, etc. All of these things were new imports to the region and serra was zealous about the effort. These sites were usually the result of decades of work. When the father was here, there was a tendency to think that he lived in this space, the nice buildings, look at the mediterranean architecture. I have documentation showing basicallyved in thatch structures. And i have a letter from him when he is complaining about the roof leaking and he is housing a soldier that went awol. Gradually we see the buildout of more substantial structures. This site alone had ultimately seven different churches. The earliest churches, the first five, were insubstantial. I have excavated one and i know that for a fact. Ultimately he built in adobe church and he died of shortly after. He died in that church and then that church was demolished to build the one that we see behind us. , the it comes to abuses primary allegation against father serra has much to do with the fact that he worked within a system which condoned Corporal Punishment. What is Corporal Punishment . That is the use of whips, sticks or other devices in order to punish individuals who had transgressed against the church or the state or the Indigenous Community of the mission. And so that did occur, but one of the misunderstandings is that it was father serra doing it. No, father serra could order it done. But all Corporal Punishment, all administration within the mission site were conducted by native people who were selected by their own communities, it out punishment Corporal Punishment, or to , basically determined and administer resources that should be within the indigenous communities of the mission. But the reality is that father serra himself has never been documented to have laid a hand on any individual. You might say, well, he still ordered it. Yes, that was a fact. But it was an acceptable form of punishment applied to Indigenous People and others. In fact, soldiers were shot, so for things we thought were minor, but those were things done at that time. The reality is that though same kind of procedures occurred in much of American History until relatively recently. So serras is to be condemned within that system, clearly, there is condemnation to go all around. Now you had two competing groups. Those who believe the father serra was not worthy of canonization and those who absolutely felt he had lived a life as a holy man. And it wasegan here, not until january of this year, 2015, that pope francis announced that he would be canonized and that it would happen on september 23. Well, right about that time i was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times for a story on father serra and my work in the mission. That then launched a series of involvement. I was involved with the canonization as one of the scholars who was invited to rome to speak at augustinian. And while there, i spoke with three other scholars, monsignor weber, who has written for some time about father serra, and and robertary sienkiewicz. We did in overview on the strengthen the merits of the canonization. The media entered the picture. We dealt with that. Two days later, we basically participated in the second half, in which vatican scholars and friars and others were instrumental. And we then conducted mass with the pope. That was an incredible experience. So i was kind of on the ground floor to see a lot of that, but at the same time i was aware, that as i was there testifying to the merits of the canonization, there were people in california who were less than happy about it. But what i have seen is that there has been a significant amount of misrepresentation and even hate speech related to father serra, the Catholic Church and the hispanic catholic tradition. So it has been my objective to address those characterizations. You know, i am not going to minimize what happened as a result of european colonial interface in this region. Intervention in this region. Clearly it was catastrophic on many levels. But there were parts of it that allowed the native people to survive, the mexican era, and ultimately the american period. And it was in 1846 through 1848 when the Americans First entered monterey that the first governor of california, peter burnet, basically ordered the annihilation and extermination of the california indians. And he actually put taxpayer money be hind behind that effort to the extent that, within 12 years, a population documented to have existed of 150,000 native people in california at american context went to less than 30,000. So over 120,000 people have been documented to have been killed during the period. That was truly genocide. I believe, based on everything i have seen including recent , publications and want to come out next year, that essentially native peoples have conflated the atrocities of the early church with the shortfalls and the misgivings of the Spanish Colonial period and they blamed it all on father serra. So i think he has truly gotten a bum rap. And the demonization and the hate Speech Associated with father serra is really and uncalled for and illegitimate. Obviously, history is used in a lot of different ways. A book by historians and of those that want to use history to rewrite the past, we see that going on right now. The reality is that i construe the hispanic tradition of the southwest, in fact all the way through florida as part of , American History these are founding communities. Just as those in the east are founding communities. Even jamestown was left out of many American History books because it was in the south. And at one point after the civil war jamestown was written out of , the narrative and the pilgrims took the place. So the narrative changed and it became freedom from religious persecution versus a group of brits coming in and founding a military settlement and that becoming a disaster. Well, that has now been reincluded in our history by their virtue of the work of archaeologists. By the same token, archaeologists and historians are rewriting the history of these mission sites, such that we now recognize them as those very traditions under the auspices of franciscan friars who introduced many of the technologies that today we take for granted, including agriculture, stock raising viticulture or the wine , industry, metallurgy, architecture, all these things came in and are a direct byproduct of the introductions made by father serra and his compatriots. So the reality is to leave out this dimension of history leaves , us with no escalation why these massive sites exist which were in effect American Indian communities under the tutelage of franciscan or european friars. [bell rings] Santa Barbara mission is the 10th of a chain of 21 missions built by the franciscans in cooperation with the spanish, who were conquering california essentially, trying to keep others out. And along the coast of california they established four forts. And in between them they had schools of spanish culture, missions. The idea was to get the coastal indians to be prospanish and keep up the russians and possibly the english and whoever else might be encroaching on the Northern Edge of mexico. Mission in alto, california that continues to operate as a charge from its founding to the present day. Church from its founding to the present day. The Linguistic Group of the local indians came from malibu, just north of los angeles, all the way up to south of monterey county. And so one of the largest groups in california, they inhabited the area from the Channel Islands off of the coast, and inland to what his current county. Established this mission there were good relationships going on with the people. That deteriorated over time as the population dwindled due to massive diseases and more and more restrictions came from the spanish and later mexican government. But along the way, in the beginning, the natives were very welcoming and it enjoyed trade they enjoyed trade. The spanish note that the people were manufacturers of the most beautiful baskets, stone tools, everything that they produced seemed to be high quality. And the spanish population was extremely impressed with the quality of the material culture of the people. About time went on, and half probably of the shoe mash came into the mission system, there was discontent and it grew partly because of the Huge Population loss because of disease, and there was more spanishive life as the became the larger part of the population and they had more laws and rules that were new and problematic to the natives. They were cut off from hunting and gathering places as the reach is expanded. And eventually in the mexican period, in 1824, we see them revolt in just about the largest indian revolt in hispanic california. And i think the spanish wanted to control the Santa Barbara channel and they actually wanted to put more missions onto the natives man in the other than any other group in california. Santa barbara and others. And the idea was to control the central part of the coast, which shipping would need in order to go from north to south and south to north, to expand in the territory. So it gave them a good deal of control of the sea traffic, which is what they wanted to do, and control the middle of california. Have an Outdoor Museum as well as the interior rooms. This has two different sections. A small section where we are standing, which features plans used by the plans used by the indians, used by the which produce the food and materials that were important to them. The other part of the garden, plantss below us, is all that were introduced by the spanish and the beginning of agriculture in california. And all of those planss were brought here plants were brought here between 1769 and the 1830s and they represent a crosssection from across north america, latin america and asia. Those were brought cutting seeds and someone by the spanish, who gave them to the chumash and said, try to make that growth. The tree here is a rare island oak. There were many types of california live oaks, all of which produced acorns, the staple food of california indians. Ground up and leached to remove the tannin acid from them, they become very edible and nutritious. And the chumash where hunters and gatherers and they were maritime people, so lots of fish, acorns, and a really nutritious diet that they had before the spanish showed up with agriculture. The garden below is features the diet that the chumash change into in the missions, and the things that they learned to grow successfully. Thecan see in the distance banana grove. There were bananas growing at two missions and they were noted by the french explorer in 1790, growing between other orchard trees, apparently to keep them from freezing they would put them in the center with other trees around them. This garden is from clones and the cutting of original plants gathered throughout the state to become a mother bed for the California Mission plants. We are involved in with the National Park service likes to do, which is restoration of the cultural environment. And this Cultural Landscape is important because many times we walk up to an audit landmark building and it is surrounded by modern structures or plants introduced last week from somewhere else in the world. The idea of a Cultural Landscape is having the landscape around a building meet the same time period and give you, the visitor, and experience of what it would have been like an experience of what it would have been like during its most cultural period. Now we are in the spanish period part of the gardens. You can see next to me the grapes. They are just getting their autumn look. It is january, but we had a long drought, so they are just now catching on that the rain is coming and they are dropping their leaves. Famous,mission grape is or infamous, for being terrible for wine, but wonderful for cognac. That is vancouvers words when he visited Santa Barbara in the 1790s. The grapes were really important, missionaries always wanted to have a Church Service with bread and wine, so you needed to make wine and so you needed the grapes. So they introduced the grapes and the introduced the northern wheat, which grows in a dry climate. Their diet because is a mediterranean diet and is heavily dependent on olive oil and oils that were also used in blessings at services and so on. So this is an early all of taken from a cutting olive taken from a cutting taken from a oliveon with an early al growth. And one from a garden in northern california. They are all the same variety. And of course, citrus introduced to california along with grapes, two of the major crops we see in california still making a major part of our economic success in agriculture here. We are standing next to a typical mission era fence. The fencing was made out of cactus, this is a prickly pear version that produces three things that are really useful. It produces fruit, the food is delicious and it makes a wonderful drink as well. So the prickly pear fruit is fabulous and then this, the little pads, you can cut them up and you can fry them with your breakfast eggs. They are terrific. Then it is also producing the bugs that are on it. Red dye, iproduce a do not want to put my finger in it because it will get me on red and nasty, but when you break open this, if you get down to the little red smear, if you put it on a piece of paper it will come up a brilliant red and this is used to dye fabric. And the bright red color came from the bug. They would scrape them off the cactus and produce the dye for the fabrics that they were weaving. So you get dye for clothes, all kinds of food out of this, plus it is not a surface you want to push your way through. And that means it is the ideal fence for all of your agricultural fields, because it will get the cows and sheep and Everything Else out of your fields and protect the crops. We really need to recognize that thechumash are responsible for the Agricultural Industry in california. People do not usually give them credit for that, but they have made a success out of this agriculture. [chanting] i belong to the tribe it means the discovered one. Evidence says we have been here for 10,000 plus years. Our elders say we have been here since time immemorial. We have stories that go back, as far back as the flood times, i guess lake missoula. And we have stories about a place upon the peak, which is on the northern part of our current reservation. And on that peak sits a log that has been petrified, and it sits stuck into the mountain at a certain elevation. And what my grandpa told me was, during the flood time they brought it over, because we do not petrified wood around here, so it got pushed into the mountain there. Story,ou reference that we have been here for a lot longer than probably 10,000 years. Today we are standing in old mission, cataldo, and we are sitting in the interpreter center. And we have a lot of exhibits here that represent the tribe. Father smit, and our transition into a guess todays life. Our aboriginal territory, if you look at it today on a mac, exceeds map exceeds three states, idaho, Eastern Washington and and we shared territory to the south, to the west of us with the spokanes, to the north of us the cow stones calstones. We have had pretty good relationships, not perfect, but we have had shared territories, shared resources, but from what i understand there were skirmishes also. So there