428 S. Mission Dr., San Gabriel 91776 (at S. Ramona St.)
(626) 457-3035, sangabrielmission.org
The San Gabriel Mission was built in 1771 under the Spanish crown. It was the first mission in the Los Angeles area and the fourth in California.
The mission was originally located near Whittier Narrows, but after flooding there it was moved to its current location in 1775. The California mission system has been highly romanticized as an idyllic period in which Spanish padres cared for and converted the indigenous population to Catholicism, Spanish culture, and productive labor habits. Such mythology, however, obscures the conquest, dispossession, widespread death, and forced labor that occurred at the missions. Tony Pinto, a Kumeyaay from San Diego, tell the story this way: “I am now 73 years old. My grandfather and grandmother told me what happened at the missions. . . . The Indians were slaves. They did all the work, and after a day’s work, the priests locked them up. . . . They fed them actually as little as possible. They beat them and killed them if they were sick or couldn’t work.” Under the Franciscans, Indians were forced to work the 1.5 million acres of land that constituted the San Gabriel Mission. It was one of the most productive missions, and the site of widespread death: an estimated 6,000 indigenous people died at San Gabriel Mission.
In 1775, mission Indians formed alliances with residents of eight local villages, including Sibapet, Juvit, and Jajamovit, to attack the mission and its priests. The uprising was led by Nicolas José, a mission Indian, and Toypurina, a nonbaptized woman from Juvit. Unfortunately, the plot was discovered and 21 Indians were arrested. Most were whipped and released. Governor Pedro Fages described the lashes as “the most serious scolding for their ingratitude, making ugly their perverseness, and showing them the . . . powerlessness of their practices against we who are Catholic.” Nicolas José was banished from San Gabriel and sentenced to six years of hard labor with irons, and Toypurina was banished to the Monterey mission, where she lived out her days. The San Gabriel Mission is still a functioning church, as well as a major tourist spot and frequent field-trip destination for fourth-grade students. (All quotes are from Steven Hackel, “Sources of Rebellion: Indian Testimony and the Mission San Gabriel Uprising of 1785,” Ethnohistory 50 (2003): 643–669.)
Image: San Gabriel Mission, 2007. Photo by Wendy Cheng.