Life in a California Mission: Monterey in 1786 : The Journals of Jean Francois De LA Perouse

Rating:
Summary: it deserves a 10....
Review: ....for the introduction alone, written by Malcolm Margolin, who discusses the actual life of California Indians in the Missions in 1786, the year two French ships brought Jean Francois de la Perouse to Monterey to see for himself what was going on. The book is largely his journal, and an honest one it is, European prejudices and all.

The routines, the manacles, the superstitious judgmentalism of the ruling padres are sketched here, as well as the mistreatment by Spanish soldiers, and hanging over all, the depression of a people who'd held their hand out in friendship and been conquered, systematized, and subjected to deicide by idealists who brought into their land what had never been there before: homelessness, poverty, hierarchy, and plaguelike illnesses that rippled outward around each Mission.