Intimate Frontiers

Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California

Albert L. Hurtado

• Éditeur: University of New Mexico Press
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780826356468
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: North American History

This book reveals how powerful undercurrents of sex, gender, and culture helped shape the history of the American frontier from the 1760s to the 1850s. Looking at California under three flags--those of Spain, Mexico, and the United States--Hurtado resurrects daily life in the missions, at mining camps, on overland trails and sea journeys, and in San Francisco. In these settings Hurtado explores courtship, marriage, reproduction, and family life as a way to understand how men and women--whether Native American, Anglo American, Hispanic, Chinese, or of mixed blood--fit into or reshaped the roles and identities set by their race and gender.

Hurtado introduces two themes in delineating his intimate frontiers. One was a libertine California, and some of its delights were heartily described early in the 1850s: "[Gold] dust was plentier than pleasure, pleasure more enticing than virtue. Fortune was the horse, youth in the saddle, dissipation the track, and desire the spur." Not all the times were good or giddy, and in the tragedy of a teenage domestic who died in a botched abortion or a brutalized Indian woman we see the seamy underside of gender relations on the frontier. The other theme explored is the reaction of citizens who abhorred the loss of moral standards and sought to suppress excess. Their efforts included imposing all the stabilizing customs of whichever society dominated California--during the Hispanic period, arranged marriages and concern for family honor were the norm; among the Anglos, laws regulated prostitution, missionaries railed against vices, and "proper" women were brought in to help "civilize" the frontier.

ONE

Sexuality in California’s Franciscan Missions:

Cultural Perceptions and Historical Realities

At one of these Indian villages near this mission of San Diego the gentiles therein many times have been on the point of coming here to kill us all, [because] some soldiers went there and raped their women, and other soldiers who were carrying mail to Monterey turned their animals into their fields and they ate up their crops. Three other Indian villages about a league or a league and a half from here have reported the same thing to me several times. For this reason on several occasions when Father Francisco Dumetz or I have gone to see these Indian villages, as soon as they saw us they fled from their villages and fled to the woods or other remote places, and the only ones who remained in the village were some men and some very old women. The Christians here have told me that many of the gentiles of the aforesaid villages leave their huts and the crops which they gather from the lands around their villages, and go to the woods and experience hunger. They do this so the soldiers will not rape their women as they have already done so many times in the past.

FATHER LUÍS JAYME, 1772

Before Father Junípero Serra founded California’s Franciscan missions, he led a religious revival in Mexico’s Oaxaca region. Francisco Palóu, Serra’s companion and biographer, approvingly reported that Serra’s religious work produced concrete results. He reformed an adulteress who at the tender age of fourteen had begun to cohabit with a married man whose wife lived in Spain. This sinful arrangement had lasted for fourteen years, but on Serra’s order she left the house of her lover. The man was desolate. He threatened and begged, but to no avail. Then “one night in desperation,” Palóu related, “he got a halter, took it with him to the house where she was staying, and hung himself on an iron gate, giving over his soul to the demons.” At the same moment a great earthquake shook the town, whose inhabitants trembled with fear. Thereafter, the woman donned haircloth and penitential garb and walked the streets begging forgiveness for her shameful past. “All were edified and touched at seeing such an unusual conversion and subsequent penance,” the friar wrote. “Nor were they less fearful of divine Justice,” he added, “recalling the chastisement of that unfortunate man.” Thus, Palóu believed, the tragedy brought “innumerable conversions . . . and great spiritual fruit” to Serra’s Oaxaca mission.²

This story was a kind of parable that prefaced Palóu’s glowing account of Serra’s missionary work in California. It demonstrated not only the presence of sexual sin in Spain’s American colonies — which is not especially surprising — but that priestly intervention could break perverse habits, and that public exposure and sincere repentance could save souls. This incident is especially important because Palóu linked Serra’s Mexican missionary triumph with the rectification of sexual behavior on the eve of his expedition to California. Thus, a discussion of sexuality in the California missions is not merely a prurient exercise, but goes to the heart of missionaries’ intentions. While errant sexuality was not the only concern of priests, the reformation of Indian sexual behavior was an important part of their endeavor to Christianize and Hispanicize native Californians. Their task was fraught with difficulty, peril, and tragedy for Indians and Spaniards alike.

Native people, of course, already behaved according to sexual norms that, from their point of view, worked perfectly well. From north of San Francisco Bay to the present Mexican border, tribes regulated sexual life so as to promote productive family relationships that varied by tribe and locality. Everywhere the conjugal couple and their children formed a basic household unit, sometimes augmented by aged relatives and unmarried siblings. Indian families, however, were not merely a series of nuclear units, but were knit into sets of associations that comprised native society. Kinship defined the individual’s place within the cultural community, and family associations suffused every aspect of life.

Indian marriages usually occurred within economic and social ranks and tended to stabilize economic and power relationships. Chiefs (who were occasionally women) were usually from wealthy families and inherited their positions. Since secure links with other groups provided insurance against occasional food shortages, chiefs frequently married several elite women from other rancherías (a Spanish term for small Indian communities). Diplomatic polygyny provided kinship links that maintained prosperity and limited warfare that could result from poaching or blood feuds. In the event of war, kinship considerations helped to determine who would be attacked, as well as the duration and intensity of conflict.³

Given the significance and intricacy of kinship, marriage was an extremely important institution, governed according to strict rules. Parents or respected ranchería elders often arranged marriages of young people and even infants. California Indians regarded incest — defined according to strict consanguinial and affinal rules — as a bar that prohibited marriage if a couple was related within three to five generations, depending on tribal affiliation. Consequently, men had to look for eligible wives outside their tribelet. Since most groups had patrilocal residence customs, women usually left their home communities, thus strengthening the system of reciprocity that girded native California.

The bride price symbolized women’s place in this scheme. The groom gave his parents-in-law a gift to recognize the status of the bride’s family, demonstrate the groom’s worth, and compensate her family for the loss of her labor. The bride price did not signify that the wife was a chattel. No husband could sell his spouse, and an unhappy wife could divorce her husband. Even so, men were considered to be family heads, descent was usually through the male line, and residence in the groom’s ranchería.⁴

California’s native household economy was based on hunting and gathering according to a sexual division of labor. Men hunted and fished, and — after the advent of white settlement — raided livestock herds. Women gathered the plant foods that comprised the bulk of the Indian diet — acorns, seeds, roots, pine nuts, berries, and other staples. All California tribes prized hardworking, productive women.⁵ Women’s material and subsistence production was of basic importance to Indian society, but they made another crucial contribution as well — they bore children, thus creating the human resources needed to sustain native communities. When populations suffered significant reductions, the lack of fertile women meant that the capacity to recover was limited.

Re-creating the sexual behavior of any people is a difficult task, but it is especially difficult in societies that lacked a written record. Still, modern anthropology and historical testimony make possible a plausible — if partial — reconstruction of intimate native life. California Indians regulated sexual behavior in and out of marriage. Premarital sex does not seem to have been regarded as a matter of great importance, so virginity was not a precondition in a respectable mate. After marriage spouses expected fidelity from their husbands and wives, possibly because of the importance of status inheritance. Consequently, adultery was a legitimate cause for divorce and husbands could sometimes exact other punishments for the sexual misbehavior of their wives. Chumash husbands sometimes whipped errant wives. An Esselin man could repudiate his wandering wife, or turn her over to her new lover who had to pay the cuckold an indemnity, usually the cost of acquiring a new bride. Wronged Gabrielino husbands could retaliate by claiming the wife of his wife’s lover, and could even go so far as to kill an adulterous spouse, but such executions were probably rare.

Women were not altogether at the mercy of jealous and sadistic spouses, for they could divorce husbands who mistreated them, a circumstance that probably meant they could leave if their husband committed a sexual indiscretion. In Chumash oral narratives, women often initiated sex and ridiculed inadequate partners. Some women even killed their husbands. It is impossible to know how frequently adulterous liaisons and subsequent divorces took place, but anthropologists characterize the common Gabrielino marital pattern as serial monogamy with occasional polygyny, indicating that separations were common. It is not unreasonable to suppose that because so many marriages were arranged in youth some California Indians subsequently took lovers after meeting someone who struck deeper emotional chords than their initial partners had. Nor is it implausible to speculate that some grievances were overlooked completely in the interest of maintaining family harmony and keeping intact the economic and diplomatic advantages that marriage ties were meant to bind. Prostitution was extremely rare in California, and was noted only among the Salinan Indians before the arrival of the Spanish. The lack of a flesh trade may indicate that such outlets were simply not needed because marital, premarital, and extramarital associations provided sufficient sexual opportunities.⁶

There was one other sexual practice common among California Indians — male homosexual transvestism, or the so-called berdache tradition which was evident in many North American tribes. The berdache dressed and acted like women, but they were not thought of as homosexuals. Instead, Indians believed that they belonged to a third gender that combined both male and female aspects. In sex they took the female role, and they often married men who were regarded as perfectly ordinary heterosexual males. Sometimes a chief took a berdache for a second wife because it was believed that they worked harder. Moreover, the berdache were thought to have special spiritual gifts that made them especially attractive spouses.⁷

Serra and the secular colonizers of Spain’s northern frontier based their familial concepts on a narrower Spanish model that was in some respects contradictory. The state regarded marriage as a contract that — among other things — transferred property and guaranteed rights to sexual service. On the other hand, the church regarded marriage as a sacrament before God and sought to regulate alliances according to religious principles.⁸

In theory, although not always in practice, Spanish society forbade premarital sex and required marital fidelity. Marriages were monogamous and lasted for life; the church granted divorces only in the most extraordinary cases, although remarriage of widows and widowers was permitted. The church regarded all sexual transgressions with a jaundiced eye, but held some acts in special horror. By medieval times Christian theologians had worked out a scheme of acceptable sexual behavior that also reflected their abhorrence of certain practices. Of course, fornication, adultery, incest, seduction, rape, and polygamy were sins, but far worse than any of these were the execrable sins “against nature,” which included masturbation, bestiality, and homosexual copulation. The church allowed marital intercourse only in the missionary position; other postures were unnatural because they made the woman superior to her husband, thus thwarting God’s universal plan. Procreation, not pleasure, was God’s purpose in creating the human sexual apparatus in the first place. Therefore, to misuse the instruments of man’s procreative destiny was to subvert the will of God. Medieval constraints on intimate behavior began to erode in the early modern period, but Catholic proscriptions against what the church defined as unnatural sexual behavior remained a part of canon law when Spain occupied California.⁹

This was the formal sexual ideology that Franciscans, soldiers, and pobladores brought to California. They also brought sinful lust. Maintaining sexual orthodoxy in the remotest reaches of the empire proved to be a greater task than Franciscan missionaries and secular officials could accomplish. Spaniards also brought to California an informal sexual ideology rooted in Mediterranean folkways that often ran counter to the teachings of the church. In this informal scheme, honor was an important element in determining family and individual social ranking and male status was linked to sexual prowess. To seduce a woman was to shame her and to dishonor her family while her consort acquired honor and asserted his dominant place in the social hierarchy. Women were thought to be sexually powerful creatures who could lead men astray, and more importantly, dishonor their own families. Society controlled female sexual power by segregating women, sometimes going so far as to sequester them behind locked doors to assure that they would not sully the family escutcheon with lewd conduct.¹⁰ Catholic priests labored to restrict sexual activity in a world of philanders, concubines, prostitutes, and lovers.

Thus California’s Spanish colonizers brought with them formal and informal ideas about sexuality that were riven with contradictions. The conquest of the New World and its alien sexual conventions made the situation even more complicated, but did not keep Spaniards from intimate encounters with native people. From the time of Cortés the crown and the church encouraged intermarriage with native people, and informal sexual amalgamation occurred with great regularity. Throughout the empire interracial sex resulted in a large mixed-race, mestizo population. Ordinarily, the progeny of these meetings attached themselves firmly to the religion and society of their Spanish fathers. Thus, sexual amalgamation was an integral part of the Spanish colonial experience that served to disable native society and strengthen the Hispanic population as it drew Indians and their children into the colonial orbit.¹¹ This was the world that Serra had tried to reform in Oaxaca; it was a world that he and fellow Spaniards would unwittingly replicate in California.

In 1775 Father Serra wrote thoughtfully to the viceroy of New Spain about interracial marriages in California. Three Catalán soldiers had already married neophyte women and three mor...