On
his trip to the United States next month, Pope Francis is going to
canonize the Rev. Junipero Serra, the great Spanish missionary of 18th-century
California. As fourth graders from Chico to Chula Vista have been
taught for generations, Father Serra founded the first of the 21
Catholic missions that stretch along the coast like rosary beads. He
laid the foundation of California as we know it: the tile-and-adobe
wonderland of vineyards, citrus, olives, wheat and cattle.
That
story has a dark side, as even the most sympathetic Serra biographers
admit. Father Serra had soldiers with him. The civil and religious
conquest of Alta California was accompanied by brutality, coercion and
vast death. As the missions grew, California’s native population of
Indians began a catastrophic decline.