Sources of Rebellion: Indian Testimony and the Mission San Gabriel Uprising of 1785

Abstract

This article reinterprets the 1785 Indian rebellion at Mission San Gabriel in Alta California by reexamining the testimony of the Indians accused of leading this uprising. For decades, scholarly and popular discussions of this event have focused on the role of Toypurina, an Indian woman implicated in the rebellion. This essay, however, clarifies the roles played by Toypurina, Nicolás José, and others in the rebellion and emphasizes the importance of eyewitness native accounts to early California history. Through a careful use of the mission's birth, marriage, and burial records, this study also uncovers key moments in the lives of the rebels. These two sources-Indian testimony and mission registers-help to suggest the rebellion's diverse origins: the mission Indians' anger at the Spaniards for the suppression of their ceremonies and the frustration among some Gabrielinos that the creation of the mission and the congregation of hundreds of Indians at that one location constituted a threat to existing Gabrielino boundaries of land use and settlement. The article concludes that an understanding of colonial California rests not only upon a study of Indian-Spanish relations but on an examination of the interactions between individuals and among groups of Indians as well.The Franciscan missions have long exerted a powerful influence upon California's historical identity. Tens of thousands of Indians lived and died in these missions, but until the late 1970s an Indian perspective was largely absent from most accounts of early California. Scholars offered a good reason for this omission: Indians did not have written languages, and since written documents form the core of the historical record, Indian views on Spanish colonization seem to have been lost to historians. For generations, therefore, historians of colonial California have relied almost exclusively on the letters, narratives, and reports of the Franciscans, soldiers, Ethnohistory 50:4 (fall 2003)

From Tovaangar to the University of California, Los Angeles

“…According to historian Steven W. Hackel, a small number of Tongva leaders, including Nicolás José, from the village of Sibapet, and the more renowned Toypurina, a twenty-five-year-old unbaptized woman from the village of Japchivit, initiated an uprising inside and outside the mission. 63 Multiple sources document that Toypurina was "angry with the priests because they were living on her ancestral land." 64 These acts and words against land seizure, alongside narratives of abuse and mistreatment, offer rare glimpses of California Indian-specifically Tongva-perspectives at the time.…”

Resisting the Settler Gaze: California Indigenous Feminisms

“…In his article "Sources of Rebellion: Indian Testimony and the Mission San Gabriel Uprising of 1785," Steven W. Hackel interrogates Temple's accounts of the uprising, including his assertion of Toypurina as being one of the main organizers of the uprising (Hackel 2003). Hackel's analysis offers an important view on relying on Temple's article documentation in how it relies on stereotypes and a romanticized depiction of testimonies.…”

“…At the same time Hackel upholds the settler gaze of Indigenous women by minimizing Toypurina's involvement in the rebellion. Regardless of whether this was intentional, the framing around who was the leader of the rebellion centers Nicolás José as the authoritative figure and Toypurina as more of a bystander whose participation was purchased through beads (Hackel 2003).…”

“…Whether or not she planned or initiated the rebellion should not discount her involvement or serve as a source of disappointment of California feminist and/or activist scholarship. Based on analysis of her testimony, Hackel asserts that Toypurina was involved with the rebellion due to land disposition by both the Spanish colonizers and other Indigenous people who were being moved to Tongva lands (Hackel 2003). In his essay titled "The Rebellion Against the Mission of the Saintly Prince the Archangel, San Gabriel of the Temblors, 1785," Eric Frith further asserts that, "Toypurina was taking her stand against demographic and ecological compression; the steady undermining of community integrity and stability; and the disruption of a subsistence way of life by a nascent, and growing, commercial political economy" (Frith 2014).…”