Within a matter of minutes Father Jayme was pierced with stone arrow tips and beaten to death. Jose Arroyo, a blacksmith, was slain and Urselino, the carpenter, also met his death. The survivors fought off the attackers amid flashing muskets and terrified confusion. Fearing reprisals and counterattacks from the soldiers at the nearby presidio, the aggressors did not press their advantage and instead fled into the interior. The impoverished mission yielded a scanty booty; religious icons, clothing and trinkets.
Following the revolt, Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada, Lt. Francisco Ortega and other officials conducted a exhaustive investigation into the insurrection. The results of what must have been hundreds of hours of interrogation are provided in Volume I of Archivo de California Provincial State Papers, Military, in the untranslated diary of Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada, and in several translated and untranslated sources.19 Collectively, these documents form a rather complete, if sometimes conflicting, picture of the events leading up to, and following, the revolt.
The emphasis of the formal investigation was on determining which rancherías took part in the uprising and on identifying the ringleaders (cabecillas) so that they could be brought to trial. Military reprisal against the rebels was out of the question even with reinforcements from the north. Juan Bautista Anza hoped to march on the enemy villages and punish them to reduce the potential for further revolts, an action that Captain Rivera y Moncada would not sanction and Father Serra railed against.20 Instead, mounted troops were dispatched with orders only to recover stolen goods, capture native leaders, and take informants into custody
The Insurrectionists
Ortega's investigation revealed that at least fifteen villages including the so-called Christian villages of San Luis, Matamo, Jamacha, Meti, La Punta, Janat, Abusquel, and Mactate took part in the revolt as well as the gentile villages of Chiap, Melejo, Utay, Cojuat, Tapin and Cullamac. Leaders of the insurrection were identified as Oroche of Macate, Francisco of Cullamac, Rafael of Janat, and Ysquitil of Abusquel.21 Perhaps indicating the degree to which the revolt was partially fueled by spiritual concerns, three of the four leaders came from villages considered to be Christian.
The overall effect of six years of contact should probably be seen as a cumulative one; no one factor led to the revolt. Comparison of baptismal records with villages that supplied warriors and leaders reveals that sheer numbers of baptisms in a given village was not reason enough to form alliances and stage an insurrection. For example, several well-documented coastal Ipai rancherias situated north of the San Diego River (Jamo, Ystagua, San Dieguito and Jeyal) as well as other inland villages, had been receiving baptisms for years -- yet they did not revolt. Conversely, Tipai settlements at Chiap, Cojuat, Melijo, and Meti played a major role in the uprising in spite of having few or no converts in their midst.
Comparison of mission baptismal, death, marriage and narrative records for 1769-1782 provides an interesting study in native band structure and sib socio-political organization within various native villages including those who revolted and those who remained at peace. By noting family and sib names for occupants of each village, it is possible to partially reconstruct the sib networks, territory, and alliances of the local Ipai and Tipai. The work of Florence Shipek provides far more detail on the sib/shimull relationships and cultural patterns for the Kumeyaay.22
At least 25 rancherías were situated within twelve leagues (36 miles) of the San Diego presidio in 1775. Nine of these settlements were north of the San Diego River; two were on the banks of the river and fourteen were south of the river. Seven of the villages were coastal and the rest were inland foothill/plain. Most of the 25 settlements had contact with the Spaniards as reflected in the mission registers, various informes, diaries, and provincial state papers. Contact was especially intense along major trails and travel corridors such as the coastal route (El Camino Real) between Baja California and Los Angeles and the inland routes along the San Diego and Sweetwater Rivers.
An examination of the known locations for rancherías that took part in the insurrection reveals an interesting and informative pattern. Without exception, rebel villages were situated on, or south of, the San Diego River. These villages include three coastal settlements (Chiap, Milejo and Apusquel) and two mountain villages (Cajuat and Cullamac); the remaining settlements are scattered across the inland plains and foothills. Given both ethnographic data and information from mission registers, it appears that Yuman-speaking villagers, today often collectively called Kumeyaay, north of the San Diego River were Northern Diegueño/Ipai and those south of the river were Southern Diegueño/Tipai.23 While trade and contact between these two cultural linked groups existed, affiliations were directed west and east along major drainages at the band and sib level rather than north/south.24
A preliminary analysis of family and sib names in the mission registers for the 25 villages within twelve leagues of the presidio reveals a strong east-west overlap and clustering. Although sib and clan names from assumedly Tipai settlements do occur north in Ipai territory, they are far less frequent (one or two per settlement) than their occurrence within the hypothesized Tipai territory.
For instance, as Shipek has pointed out, the village at Ystagua in coastal Sorrento Valley, maintained affiliations and shared sibs with Paguay (present-day Poway) several miles inland to the east. This pattern is consistent to the north until the territory of the Shoshonean-speaking Luiseño is approached near Agua Hedionda on the coast and Escondido inland.
South of the San Diego River the rancherías also align themselves with regard to east-west drainages. Thus, inland Utay is associated with Chiap although both share some sibs or family names with other Tipai settlements. Similarly, the Cullamay sib appears at Chiap, Apusquel, Matamo, and probably at San Luis (as Guillamay). Melloc appears at Milejo on the coast and at inland Tapin. Allayac sibs were at Chiap and San Luis. Guesnac sibs were at Utay and Chiap and these villages were particularly allied through intermarriage and Utay appears as a precimiente or precinct of Chiap throughout mission registers and military documents. Comparison north to south away from the San Diego River indicates far less sharing of lineages and further established the river as an apparent break between historic period Ipai and Tipai or at least between linked alliances of sibs within the larger Kumeyaay territory.
Given the alignment of villages and sibs, it is hardly surprising that a pattern of military affiliation appears in regard to the revolt. According to contemporary sources two neophytes, Francisco of Mission San Diego de Alcala (Nipaquay) and his brother Carlos, the kwaipai of Nipaquay, ran off from the mission on October 2, 1775 and began to incite their countrymen.25 Through a series of alliances, Oroche of Magtate, Zegotay (kwaipai of Matamo) Francisco of Cullamac, Rafael of Janat and Yguetin (a baptized kwaipai of Apusquel) assumed leadership of the revolt along with Carlos and Francisco.26
In testimony provided after the attack, Zegotay stated that he and other cabecillas invited ten other rancherías to join the revolt. Apparently all of those invited were Tipai, most were interrelated through marriage or sib affiliation and, most agreed to fight. An interesting exception to this was the Tipai village of Las Choyas, which although asked to fight, decided not to revolt. Las Choyas was one of a few villages in the sphere of military influence/alliance that did not take part in the insurrection.
Chiap, four leagues south of Choyas along the coast, was an assembly point for the southerly rancherías including Milejo, Utay, Apusquel, and Janat. Metí, a large village six leagues inland and northeast in El Valle de Jorge (present-day Spring Valley) was the meeting spot for inland valley and mountain bands including Tapin, San Luis, Matamo, Jamacha, Cajuat, and Cullamac. Three of the largest sibs identified by Shipek (Comey or Coamy, Escaripa, and Guaypoc) of Jamacha and Nipaquay, La Punta, and Jamacha respectively, were involved in the insurrection and these villages were active rebel enclaves. Chajual Guaypo(c), a second kwaipai at Chiap, may have been a catalyst for other Guaypoc sib members at nearby villages and is identified in Spanish documents as a cabecilla or ring leader. Another leader, Cupacuanic, was an influential Cupeño from Warner's Hot Springs who had married into the powerful Matamo ranchería.27
Why the Tipai of the south revolted and the Ipai to the north played a minor role is unclear. Proximity to the presidio/mission complexes does not appear to be a dominant factor. Jamo and Ystagua were coastal villages less than three leagues and six leagues respectively from the presidio -- both had extensive contact with soldiers and priests alike. Villagers at Jamo stoned Portolás troops on their return from Monterey in 1770 and rapes of Ipai women were noted at Jamo during the 1771-1775 era.
Yet, villagers from Jamo and Ystagua played no role in the revolt nor did any of their Ipai neighbors north of the San Diego River along the coast. Based on post-attack inquiries, Jamo and Ystagua, as well as other Ipai villages, were not asked to join the rebel junta. This probably indicates that the Ipai and Tipai each maintained their own alliances exclusive of each other and that even in time of mutual danger, they operated independently.
It appears that fomentation, organization, and implementation of the 1775 San Diego revolt followed traditional band/sib organization and that the Tipai alone, with limited assistance from the Ipai, staged the revolt. If Shipek is correct, the northern people may have formed composite bands and the southern people developed more localized sibs. Perhaps the localized sibs were easier to organize because of smaller populations, closer alliances, and tighter distribution across the territory.
The sacking of Mission San Diego de Alcalá may well have been an insurrection planned and executed by Southern Kumeyaay/Tipai shamans and leaders. These rebel leaders recruited from their own ranks, relied upon traditional alliances, and sought redress for grievances experienced by their particular sibs and clans, rather than some form of an early West Coast pan-Indian movement or nationalistic military excursion of the type frequently mounted by the desert Mojave.
Aftermath of the Revolt
The historical implication of the insurrection is that it was a major, but not fatal, set back for the struggling mission. Following their hasty retreat to the presidio in November 1775, it would be more than one and one-half years before Junipero Serra returned to San Diego in the summer of 1777. Serra's goal was to personally rebuild a new mission on the charred adobe ruins in Mission Valley. Ultimately the mission grew, and while it never prospered in the manner of some of the other missions, it did serve as a religious outpost that linked Baja and Alta California. Unlike some of the other missions, San Diego only held a tenuous grip on the native population and then only in the region closest to the church. By no means did all of the Indians in the mission district come under the church's influence nor did Spanish hegemony prevail. The spirit that flared on that November night in 1775 was never extinguished.
The overall effects of the November 1775 revolt can be viewed from several historical and cultural perspectives. For the missionaries the insurrection was clearly the work of the devil rather than of repressed or dissatisfied native people. This response was natural from men fully immersed in a post-medieval epistemology and Christian world view.28 To Serra, Lasuen, and others, the true enemy on the Spanish colonial frontier was Satan himself. The Franciscans in Alta California perceived the devil's gnarled claws at work everywhere just as their predecessors had after the Pueblo revolt 105 years before.
Given this belief system, the Franciscans were unlikely to seek or sanction revenge against the Kumeyaay. Serra stoically wrote, "...after the missionary [Luis Jayme] has been killed, what can be gained by campaigns."29 Instead they sought to forgive the insurrectionists and rely upon the power of prayer rather than the might of the sword. In particular, Serra's and Lasuen's efforts to gain a pardon, or at least reduced sentences for the rebels stand out.
By contrast, Lt. Ortega and Captain Rivera took a decidedly more secular militaristic approach. To these men, the Kumeyaay were killers, thieves, and insurrectionists against the Spanish crown. While perhaps believing the devil may have played some role in the sacking, these professional soldiers saw the culprits as military adversaries and warriors, not misguided souls. Their task, after the sacking, was to ensure the safety of the garrison and of the missionaries without regard for the souls of native insurrectionists. Ultimately, the higher authorities compromised between execution and pardons. More than one year after the insurrection, thirteen alleged leaders remained imprisoned at the presidio jail. Several of these were later exiled, probably to Loreto, Baja California.30
In the years immediately following the insurrection, the response on the part of the Kumeyaay varied. Several villages severely limited their interaction with the mission while others entered more fully into the Catholic world. Tensions remained high throughout the late 1770s as rumors of impeding attacks circulated on a regular basis. In August 1776, a Christian Kumeyaay, Joseph Maria told the commandant that the villagers of Metí and La Punta were arming themselves again and planning another attack.31 Investigation by Sergeant Carrillo found the village of La Punta at the end of San Diego Bay abandoned and he was told by a visiting Kumeyaay that some villagers were in the Sierras making arrows. The reason given for them arming themselves was that they feared the soldiers would come and capture them as they had the brother of La Punta's kwaipai.32 Nothing more came of the Meti and La Punta incident. Two years later a more volatile situation arose when leaders of the ranchería at Pamo, near present-day Ramona, threatened the presidio and taunted the Spaniards to come into the hills and meet their death. Presidial force made a preemptive strike on Pamo killing several people, burning others to death, and capturing the cabecillas. The mid-to-late 1770s reflected a decade of tension, turmoil and death as the two cultures clashed.
Conclusion
As noted by Trigger, historical and ethnohistorical approaches to Native American reactions and responses to European colonization can be categorized as a "romantic" school of thought or as a "rationalistic" school.33 In broad terms, the difference in the two approaches is that the romantic school maintains that each culture responds in ways unique to that culture and in ways that were particularistically proscribed by culture norms. Inherent in this view is that Indians may or may not have responded in a reasonable or rational manner, i.e., the responses are rigidly bound to tradition, mysticism, and deeply imbedded reactive mechanisms. By contrast, the rationalistic approach states that while culture is intrinsically the sieve through which societies filter their actions and reactions, culture is ultimately driven by more or less rational thought and reasoned approaches to a given problem. The rational approach does not deny the cultural relativistic view that has gained such a foothold in anthropological and historical thought, it tempers it by seeing commonalities in human responses. When the Kumeyaay's actions are seen through a rationalistic lens, the sacking of Mission San Diego represents a reasonable and pragmatic solution to the problem of Spanish intrusion.
The Kumeyaay reaction to Spanish colonization and Catholic conversion took many forms but seems to have been based fully in rational thought within the context of their world view. The actions of the insurrectionists were not forged on the hot anvil of ancient strictures or blind belief. Unlike the beliefs of some of the tribes of the Eastern seaboard and the Southeast who were contacted in the early periods of European exploration and colonialism, there is no evidence that the Kumeyaay ascribed supernatural powers to the Spaniards of San Diego. As worldly as the Kumeyaay were, the Spaniards did not represent the resurrection of some lost deity nor were they seen as immortal. In spite of the efforts of the Spaniards to secretly bury their dead, the Kumeyaay took note not only of the deceased, but of the sickly composure of the living. The tired, scurvy ridden sailors and dusty, threadbare men of the overland march from Loreto in 1769 did not engender awe or evoke a mood of spiritualism in the Kumeyaay.
While there is little doubt that initially, at least, the Kumeyaay were impressed by the technology of the intruders and coveted some of the material goods possessed by the Spaniards, the perception seems pragmatically based and not reverential. This is not to say that at least some Kumeyaay, particularly the religious leaders, did not impart mystical powers to the priests or fear the Christian God. The caution and fear exhibited towards the priests and their strange religious practices was rational and reasonable by virtually any standard.
The insurrection reflects the Kumeyaay, or perhaps more correctly largely the Tipai, response to the Spaniards' inappropriate actions. The revolt was not just a military action or a spiritual quest. The sacking was a rational, and calculated reaction to increased conversions, rapes, thefts, transmittal of diseases, and fear of forced imprisonment.
If one perceives the sacking of the mission and the killing of Father Jayme in this light, the insurrection literally makes sense. The mission and its inhabitants were viewed as symbols of evil and dark mysticism inconsistent with (and at odds with) the Kumeyaay spiritual world. While some historians seem bewildered by the Kumeyaay failure to attack the nearby presidio, it seems probable that the presidio, which was weakly garrisoned, was not the target. In this sense, the insurrection was an unqualified success -- Luis Jayme, the evil practitioner of the strange religion was killed, the sacred objects were removed and distributed across the land, and a cleansing fire swept across the dreaded mission grounds.
Notes
1. Hubert H. Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: The History Company, 1884), 1:254; Vicente Fuster, Register de Defunciones: 1775. Ms. on file at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Richard Pourade, Time of the Bells (San Diego: San Diego Evening Tribune Publishing Company, 1961), 28.
2. Bruce G. Trigger, "Early Native North American Responses to European Contact: Romantic versus Rationalistic Interpretations," Journal of American History 77 (March 1991): 1195-1198.
3. Bancroft, History of California, 1:137-138.
4. Ibid., 239; Francisco Palou, Historical Memoirs of New California, ed. Herbert E. Bolton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1926), 4:62.
5. Libros de Bautismo, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, baptismal records on file at the Mission San Diego Diocesan Center.
6. Florence Shipek, "California Indian Reactions to the Franciscans," The Americas 41 (1985): 53-66.
7. Bancroft, History of California, 1:249, 253; Florence Shipek, "Kumeyaay Socio-Political Structure," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 4 (1982): 296-303.
8. Palou, Historical Memoirs, 1:62.
9. Daniel T. Reff, "The Predicament of Culture and Spanish Missionary Accounts of the Tepehaun and Pueblo Revolts." Ethnohistory 42 (1995): 73, 80-81.
10. Luis Jayme, Letters of Luis Jayme, O.F.M., ed. Maynard Geiger (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1970), 43.
11. Bancroft, History of California, 1:254-255.
12. Ernest J. Burrus, ed., Diario del Capitan Comandante Fernando de Rivera y Moncada con un Apendice Documental, (Coleccion Chimalistac de Libros y Documentos Acerca de la Nueva Espana, Vol. 2, Madrid, Ediciones Jose Porrus Turanzas, 1967), 447-453.
13. Francisco Ortega, "Revolt of the Indians, Burning of the Mission, Death of the Missionary, November 30, 1775," Provincial State Papers, Benicia, Military, 1:473, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.
14. Alfred L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. (Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution, 1925).
15. Daniel T. Reff, "Contact Shock in Northwestern New Spain." 1518-1764. In Disease and Demography in the Americas, ed. John W. Verano and Douglas H. Ubelaker Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 272-273.
16. William Preston, "Serpent in Eden: Dispersal of Foreign Diseases Into Pre-Mission California," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 18 (1): 2-37.
17. Reff, "The Predicament of Culture," 65-66.
18. Bancroft, History of California, 1:254-255.
19. Burrus, Diario, 2:429-481.
20. Palou, Historical Memoirs, 4:78
21. Burrus, Diario, 1:227-237.
22. Shipek, "Kumeyaay Socio-Political Structure."
23. Kenneth Hedges, "Notes on the Kumeyaay: A Problem of Identification." Journal of California Anthropology 2 (1): (1975) 71-83;. Gifford, Edward W. "Clans and Moieties in Southern California," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 14: (2) 155-219; Luomala, Katherine. Tipai-Ipai, In "California," ed. Robert F. Heizer, Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 592-609.
24. Shipek, "Kumeyaay Socio-Political Structure."
25. Ortega, "Revolt of the Indians."
26. Ibid.; Bancroft, History of California, 1:252-253.
27. Shipek, "Socio-Political."
28. Reff, "The Predicament of Culture," 65-66.
29. Antonio Tibesar, (ed.), Writings of Junipero Serra (Washington, Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 2:407.
30. Provincial State Papers, Archivos de California, Provincial Records Ms, 1:143, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.
31. "Provincial State Papers, Archivos de California, Benicia, Military," 1:223-226, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.
32. "Provincial State Papers," 1:224-226.
33. Trigger, "Early Responses."
Richard L. Carrico
is an adjunct instructor at San Diego State University and Mesa Community College and is a partner in the environmental consulting firm of Mooney & Associates. He has B.A. in history and a B.S. in anthropology from San Diego State University, and a Master's in history from the University of San Diego. With an area of specialization in Native American history and ethnohistory, Mr. Carrico is the author of two books on local history and is a frequent contributor to anthropological and historical journals.