Title: How Did the California Missions End? | The California Frontier Project
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Content: The idea was that during those 10 years the Indian people living at the mission would learn how to live according to the lifestyle of a Latin American pueblo or town. After that time, the missionaries would move away and that the land of the missions would be converted into small farms that would be owned by individual Indian families. The mission church would become a parish church, with a “secular” priest (one who didn’t belong to a special order like the Franciscans), as in most Latin American and Spanish towns. This process was called “secularization”, because in Latin the word “secular” refers to a common ordinary life in the world. The mission communities were therefore to become common, ordinary towns. In the view of the missionaries, though, 10 years was not enough time for this to be accomplished. They believed that Native Americans in California needed more time be educated and adapt to the new lifestyle. So, when the Spanish government pressed to have the missions converted into towns, the missionaries resisted, saying that the Indians in their communities were not ready for the change. Who started secularization? When Mexico became independent from Spain in the 1820s, the newly formed Mexican government decided that it was time to secularize the missions.