Missionization among the Coastal Chumash of Central California: A Study of Risk Minimization Strategies

Anthropologists have long been interested in missionization, acculturation, and political subjugation of traditional peoples. In recent years scholars have generated voluminous amounts of data on Spanish colonialism and its effects on the native population of the Americas. This article specifically examines the missionization of the Chumash occupying the coastal region of central California. Although the abandonment of Chumash villages occurred over a 40-year period, the vast majority of the Chumash people—over 85 percent—migrated to the missions between 1786 and 1803. We suggest that the decision to move to the missions may have been based on a desire to minimize risk and was considered an acceptable alternative under the pressures of several interrelated catastrophic events: the period between 1780 and 1830 was characterized by high climatic variability, several years of droughts, and significantly elevated sea surface temperatures. This was a particularly difficult period of high subsistence risk, and the traditional Chumash buffers of trade and political alliances failed under intense pressures of missionization. Compounding these conditions were European diseases that decimated the Chumash people. Primary sources used for this research include mission documents and registers produced by Franciscan missionaries between 1786 and 1834. Information on paleoenvironmental conditions is derived from high-resolution dendrochronological and marine sedimentary records.