A Cross of Thorns Quotes

“Even the many deaths of Indian children did not faze Serra’s dark joy. In a report dated July 24, 1775, to Friar Francisco Pangua, his Franciscan superior at the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, Serra wrote: In the midst of all our little troubles, the spiritual side of the missions is developing most happily. In [Mission] San Antonio21 there are simultaneously two harvests, at one time, one for wheat, and of a plague among the children, who are dying.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions

“Many Spanish Moors and Jews who had established an intellectual culture superior to the rest of Europe during the Dark Ages were, under royal decree, either forced to renounce their religion or were compelled to flee. What remained in Spain was a population seething with intolerance toward any remnant of their former rulers. To guarantee a complete elimination of the Muslim and Jewish culture, the monarchs also ordered the destruction of all Moorish and Jewish libraries, considered Europe’s most advanced in science and literature.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions

“Those who dared criticize Serra and his Franciscans for their treatment of the Native Americans risked being crushed by the power of the Roman Catholic Church, with its power of excommunication, or being literally torn to pieces by the Inquisition, which could conduct an investigation using horrendous means of torture against anyone who dared challenge the church or its hierarchy.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions

“Women are never whipped in public, but in an enclosed and somewhat distant place that their cries may not excite a too lively compassion, which might cause the men to revolt. —Captain Jean-François Lapérouse, describing in 1826 the procedure for whipping Indian mission women.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions