Missions

“Fallen people in the grip of Satan” was what the Puritans of New England believed of the Aboriginals.
 * When European settlers discovered the New World they were fascinated by the aboriginal’s uncivilized behavior and that they were a blemish on the beautiful land they lived on. So to fix the //problem, // the Europeans brought in Missionaries to teach the aboriginals the Christen way, thus making them civilized. Spanish who settled in California main reason there was to Christianize the Indians and teach them to run a self-sufficient mission. In 1606 the Virginia Charter allowed for Indian land to be bought and missions to be built to Christianize the aboriginals. The Europeans thought once they were Christianized / civilized, they could live in harmony with each other, but that wasn’t the case.

 Many missions were overcrowded and Indians were forced to join. They weren’t allowed to practice their own beliefs. This included what they ate, dressed in, their language, and most of all to believe the Christian God. There, they were forced to work; clean rooms, farm, cook meals, and make clothing and textiles for in order to for them to run the self-sufficient missions the Spanish wished for. ||  ||

Children in Missions

 * [[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Sunday_School_Class_at_Post_Oak_Mission%2C_Indiahoma_OK._Mrs._A._J._Becker%2C_U._S._Field_Matron_Teacher_-_NARA_-_268433.tif/lossy-page1-320px-Sunday_School_Class_at_Post_Oak_Mission%2C_Indiahoma_OK._Mrs._A._J._Becker%2C_U._S._Field_Matron_Teacher_-_NARA_-_268433.tif.jpg caption="Sunday School Class at Post Oak Mission, Indiahoma OK. Mrs. A. J. Becker, U. S. Field Matron Teacher"]] ||  Mainly Missionary’s attempted to convert the children, since children learn faster than adults and are more influential. At first mission schools reached out to men and boys thinking that would set the ground work for the rest of the family’s practices. It was Isaac Baird of Wisconsin’s Presbyterian BFM Odanah mission that said “The girls will need the training more than the boys and they will wield a greater influence in the future. If we get the girls, we get the race.” Ideally it’s the mother that raises her children, so by teaching the woman the christen way, it will in turn rub off on her children, creating the civilized culture with the Europeans and Aboriginals that they have imagined.

 The children were sent to live on Missions away from their family and home or attend day schools. “To send a child to school meant, to the Indian, giving up all of his distinctive tribal life, his ancestral customs, his religious beliefs, and sinking himself into the vast unknown, the way of the white man.” – Charles Hall, minister. They were put into an unfamiliar setting with a different behavioral code and language which they were expected to quickly learn. This was certainly confusing and scary to many of the Indian children. "it is almost impossible to explain to a sympathy white person what a typical old Indian boarding school was like; how it affected the Indian child suddenly dumped into it like a small creature from another world, helpless, defenseless, bewildered, trying desperately and instinctively to survive it all” - //Mary Crow Dog// explains her grandmas experiences at a mission school. To escape unhappy and culturally challenging situations, shockingly girls at her school committed or attempted suicide.

Parents and their children refused to go to the day and boarding schools. A couple of years after opening many Missions were forced to close because of low enrollment. ||

__Citations: __

Forman-Brunell, Miriam, and Leslie Paris. //The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century //. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Print.

Jackson, Robert, and Edward Castillo. "Spanish Missionaries ." //We are California Stories of Immigration and Change //. N.p., 1995. Web. 16 Apr 2012. <[]>

Oswalt, Wendell H. //This Land Was Theirs, A Study Of Native North Americans //. 9th ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008. Print.

__Photos: __

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pala_Asistencia_circa_1875.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunday_School_Class_at_Post_Oak_Mission,_Indiahoma_OK._Mrs._A._J._Becker,_U._S._Field_Matron_Teacher_-_NARA_-_268433.jpg