And to put this in perspective: the forces that wanted to get rid of Serra in his lifetime, were the hacienda owners who wanted the native Californians for serfs, and the soldiers at the presidios who wanted the women for undignified, coerced sexual slavery.
Serra fought hard to counter the overwhelming political power of the hacendados and the Spanish military. He had only a very few choices of how to do that.
Serra and his friars are today criticized for being "paternalistic" toward the Indians, and indeed they were: these were rough times, but they were as fathers to them --- in contrast to the hacendados and soldados, who were to them as wolves.
Serra was in conflict with with three successive governors, Pedro Fages, Fernando Rivera y Moncada, and Felipe de Neve. And only a few decades after Serra's death, the Spanish power-brokers got their way, the missions were taken away from the Franciscans, and the Indians reduced to prostitutes and serfs on the haciendas.
I still stand by my conclusion that "If we were in the exact same situation, with the same range of options, we would have done nobly indeed to do as Serra did."
Thank you for your contribution.
Good post. Thanks.