College - Author 1
College of Liberal Arts
Department - Author 1
History Department
Degree Name - Author 1
BA in History
Date
3-2023
Primary Advisor
Matthew Hopper, College of Liberal Arts, History Department
Abstract/Summary
The Chumash War remains an under-explored flashpoint in California history and the history of the Mission system of Alta California for myriad reasons, which include a lack of contemporary documentation relating the motivations of the Chumash as well as a broader silencing of indigenous voices in state and colonial Spanish and U.S. history. For the hegemonic centers of power present at the time, the Catholic Missionaries and the Mexican Government, the impetus to ignore the grievances of Chumash and enact a counter-revolution couldn’t be clearer—both institutions depended directly on the forced labor and production of the Chumash at Missions Santa Barbara, Ines, and La Purisima. In the broader historiographic literature, however, the need to downplay the Chumash desire for freedom from the yolk of European colonialism and focus instead on natural phenomena, inter-personal conflicts, and narratives from biased primary sources such as Franciscan missionaries belies the larger cultural hegemony of a settler-colonial project. Ignoring the political realities of the Chumash War in the scholarship has served as detriment to the collective memory of the Mission era, which has only begun to be remedied by the most recent scholarship. A new study of the Chumash War that centers the Chumash and places their actions within the context of a century of emancipatory revolution and anti-colonial struggle is a necessary and forthcoming step in the scholarship, especially considering the prominence of the Mission era in California state history, from the elementary school curriculum and beyond.
URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/histsp/62
Final Project