A number of years ago, I went to San Antonio, Texas, to see the missions. They are sobering places. The information plaques tell stories of safety and refuge, describing them as places where Native tribes could come for safety from marauding Kiowa or Apache. Those plaques didn’t tell the stories of abuse or why tribes that had found a way to live at peace with each other were now warring again. The plaques didn’t talk about the mission’s own slavery and land theft or the beating and starving of Indigenous people who refused to convert. The plaques were as whitewashed as the buildings.
