Really Ticked Off

In the state of California, all fourth-grade children are required to study California History. This was true when I went to school in San Diego during the 60's and it's still true now. The biggest change in the requirements is that now the kids have to choose one of the Spanish missions, write a report, and build a model of it. There's even a model-building industry that has sprung up because of the requirement.

In my quest to be a tour director, this state requirement has come in handy, because I need to have a good handle on the history of whatever region I'm in. For Southern California, knowing the mission history is important, and the best way to get an overview on any particular subject is to go to the juvenile section of the library. Books for kids condense the information in a way that's perfect for what I need.

So I checked out three books, one on each of the three southernmost missions: San Diego de Alcala, San Luis Rey de Francia, and San Juan Capistrano. As I started reading them, I started getting really annoyed by the revisionist, multicultural, Europeans-are-bad kind of language in these books.

From MissionSan Luis Rey de Francia, by Jennifer Quasha:

At this time, most Europeans did not value cultural diversity. They believed that their religion and way of life were superior to those of the American Indians. They thought that the Indians needed their help to become more "civilized." These beliefs led them to think of the Indians as children or "savages" who needed to be educated. They also believed that they could take away the Indians' land. Today we know that all cultures are important and should be respected. Although the Spanish may have believed that they were helping the American Indians, European colonization of the Americas drastically changed the American Indian's way of life.


From Mission San Juan Capistrano, by Kathleen J. Edgar and Susan E. Edgar:

Because the Indians lived much differently than they did, the Spanish regarded the Indians as "savages." The Indians wore little or no clothing, while the Spanish men wore shirts and trousers and the Spanish women wore floor-length dresses. The Indians didn't attend schools, while many Spaniards did. The Spanish didn't recognize that the Indians' lifestyle was just as full and respectable as their own.

From Mission San Diego de Alcala, by Kathleen J. Edgar and Susan E. Edgar:

The Spanish thought the Indians living in New Spain should adopt the Spanish language, lifestyle, and religion. The Spanish didn't understand the Indian culture. They thought the Indians were "uncivilized" because they lived off the land, wore few clothes or none at all, did not believe in the Christian god, and were not educated in schools. At that time the Spanish believed that Indians needed to be taught Christianity. In actuality the Indians did have a complex civilizaton that the Spanish didn't understand. We know today that different religions and cultures should be respected.

I'm not sure I can articulate the reason, but reading this kind of stuff really strikes a visceral point of anger in me. Maybe it's the use of the word "diversity" or the way they put "savages" and "uncivilized" in quotes. Or that gratingly offensive, "We know today...." Whatever it is, I find it apalling, and it's even more so because almost the same wording is used by completely different authors.

And I know my anger at the authors (or their puppet-masters) is keeping me from being objective about the questions raised. Was it wrong for the Spanish to settle California with the mission system? (I'm not going to argue that Cortes's decimation of the Aztecs might have been OK. This question is limited to the priests in California.) Would the Indians have been any better off if the Russians or British had moved in ahead of the Spanish, as those two nations were intending?

Would the authors have said the same "full and respectable lifestyle" thing about the Sioux tribes, who were constantly at war with other tribes and other Sioux family groups? Would they have been this diversity-loving about the Angles and the Saxons and the Vikings and the barbarian hordes in Europe and blamed the Romans for having invaded the complex civilization of the Gauls?

At what point in human history would the multiculturalists have preferred people to have stayed put?

This stuff makes me crazy. I'd better shut up now and try to get some sleep, before I say something really angrily stupid.