The distinctive northern rainforest environment encouraged these tribes to establish their villages along the many rivers, lagoons and coastal bays that dotted their landscape. These tribes used the great coast Redwood trees for the manufacture of their boats and houses.

Native Americans had to adapt to survive, and they did so in a number of ways, which included merging tribes, attacking settlers, allying with one group of settlers against another, entering into treaties with Europeans, and adopting Western technologies when feasible.

There these California Indians learned how to farm and make new things. “However, once they came to the missions, some California Indians were not free to leave. They were forced to give up their way of life and work hard. They also had to learn Spanish and follow Catholicism, the religion of the Catholic church.

They cooked, washed, mended clothes and were doctors and nurses for the Natives. In addition, they built houses, churches and tended livestock. A mission strongly needed an Native population. With a stable Native population, many crops could be grown and well-tended, and the mission could be self-sustaining.

Background: When the Native Americans were taken to live in the missions, the difference in language made it difficult for communication between them and the Spanish-speaking priests. They were expected to learn the language in order to carry out daily rituals and to learn the Roman Catholic religion.

Daily life in the missions was not like anything the Native Texans had experienced. Most had routine jobs to perform every day, and the mission priests introduced them to new ways of life and ideas. The priests supervised all activities in the mission. They would often physically punish uncooperative natives.

The American Indians owned most of the ranchos of California. Ranchos traded cowhides and tallow for the goods they needed. The Californios, who owned the ranchos, were very wealthy and could buy any goods they needed with their money.

The Chumash were skilled artisans, hunters, gatherers, and seafarers, but had no formal agricultural system. When Padre Fermín de Francisco de Lasuén first started the Santa Barbara mission in 1786, he aimed to bring both religious and sustainable farming practices to the native population.

The Spanish mission was a frontier institution that sought to incorporate indigenous people into the Spanish colonial empire, its Catholic religion, and certain aspects of its Hispanic culture through the formal establishment or recognition of sedentary Indian communities entrusted to the tutelage of missionaries under …

2. The Plains tribes resented the missionaries and their intrusion on their hunting grounds. 3. The missions were isolated and often lacked the supplies and people to survive.

Cortes defeated the Aztecs and forced them to convert. The destruction of idols, temples, the kidnapping of the Aztec children, the killings of the no- bility, and the practice of Christianity were forced for the most part on the Az- tecs by the Spaniards.