Activities: Author Activities
Lorenzo Asisara - Selected Archive Items
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 Edward Vischer, Indian Rancheria of José Antonio Venado, At San Luis Rey Mission, Near the Zanja. Caicha-Tribe, Quechumas (1868),
courtesy of the University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library.
Made about a decade before the first recording of Asisara's testimony, this drawing illustrates the material circumstances of Native Americans on former California mission lands after secularization.
 Rand McNally & Co., New Enlarged Scale Railroad and County Map of California Showing Every Railroad Station and Office in the State (1883),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division [LC Railroad Maps, 189].
Building railroads required extensive mapping of natural geographical features. Later maps such as this one showed industrial transportation and government communications outposts.
 Anonymous, Montgomery Street, San Francisco, 1852 (n.d.),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-55762].
Rapid, mainly white immigration during the Gold Rush brought California to statehood in 1850, as a "free state" that forbade slavery. Yet demand for land and forced labor caused genocidal-scale population decline among California Indians.
 Anonymous, San Gabriel Mission (1832),
courtesy of the California Historical Society.
Missions often maintained large herds of cattle as a reliable source of meat.
 Lorenzo Asisara, "Punishment" [Narrative By Lorenzo Asisara, Translated And Edited By Edward D. Castillo] (1877).
Asisara's narrative details abuses by the priests at the Santa Cruz Mission, exposing their fraudulent financial dealings, sexual exploitation of mission Indians, and reliance on harsh physical punishments.
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