Private Women, Public Lives
Private Women, Public Lives
Gender and the Missions of the Californias
Through the lives and works of three women in colonial California, Bárbara O. Reyes examines frontier mission social spaces and their relationship to the creation of gendered colonial relations in the Californias. She explores the function of missions and missionaries in establishing hierarchies of power and in defining gendered spaces and roles, and looks at the ways that women challenged, and attempted to modify, the construction of those hierarchies, roles, and spaces.
Reyes studies the criminal inquiry and depositions of Barbara Gandiaga, an Indian woman charged with conspiracy to murder two priests at her mission; the divorce petition of Eulalia Callis, the first lady of colonial California who petitioned for divorce from her adulterous governor-husband; and the testimonio of Eulalia Pérez, the head housekeeper at Mission San Gabriel who acquired a position of significant authority and responsibility but whose work has not been properly recognized. These three women's voices seem to reach across time and place, calling for additional, more complex analysis and questions: Could women have agency in the colonial Californias? Did the social structures or colonial processes in place in the frontier setting of New Spain confine or limit them in particular gendered ways? And, were gender dynamics in colonial California explicitly rigid as a result of the imperatives of the goals of colonization?
Bárbara O. Reyes is Associate Professor of History at University of New Mexico.
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Gender and Public Space in the Nineteenth-century Californias
- Part I. Constructing Space
- 1. "For the Riches of Its Souls": The Society of Jesus in Antigua California
- 2. "To Teach the Natives Love and Loyalty toward the Spanish Monarch": The Order of the Predicants of Santo Domingo in Baja California
- 3. "[For Its] Very Large and Fine Harbor": The Franciscans of the College of San Fernando in Alta California
- Part II. Negotiating Space
- 4. Bárbara Gandiaga: Race and Agency at Mission Santo Tomás
- 5. Eulalia Callis: Privilege and Power in the Colonial Californias
- 6. Eulalia Pérez: Gender and Labor in the Spanish Frontier
- Conclusion: Women in the Public Missions of the Californias
- Appendix I-A. Interrogatorio de Bárbara Gandiaga sobre la muerte del Padre Eudaldo Surroca, misionero de la Misión de Santo Tomás en la Antigua California
- Appendix I-B. Bárbara Gandiaga's Interrogation Regarding the Death of Padre Eudaldo Surroca, Missionary at Mission Santo Tomás, Baja California
- Appendix I-C. Interrogatorio de Bárbara Gandiaga sobre la muerte del Padre Miguel López, misionero de la Misión de Santo Tomás en la Antigua California
- Appendix I-D. Bárbara Gandiaga's Interrogation Regarding the Death of Padre Miguel López, Missionary at Santo Tomás Mission, Baja California
- Appendix II-A. Instancia de Da. Eulalia Callis, muger de Don Pedro Fages, Governador de Californias, sobre que se le oyga en justicia, y redima de la opresión que padece
- Appendix II-B. Petition by Doña Eulalia Callis, Wife of Don Pedro Fages, Governor of the Californias, That Her Case Be Heard
- Appendix III-A. Una vieja y sus recuerdos, dictados por Doña Eulalia Pérez que vive en la Misión de San Gabriel a la edad avanzada de 139 años, a D. Thomas Savage para la Bancroft Library, 1877
- Appendix III-B. An Old Woman and Her Recollections, Dictated by Doña Eulalia Pérez, Who Lives at Mission San Gabriel at the Advanced Age of 139 Years, to D. Tomás Savage for the Bancroft Library, 1877
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
