lol you poor people. the Spanish were to the American Indian what Hitler and the Nazis were to the Jews. In N. and S. America they killed thousand upon thousands with arms and disease. Only you Catholics would fall for this sham of “history”.
There were big differences between the secular and mission systems in California, particularly insofar as regulating the behavior of the soldiers was concerned. So for you to lump these two administrations together is in this case unfair. For the most part, most of the damage to the tribes that the Franciscans did was due to cluelessness.
As to overt genocide, the Americans who came to California were worse to the Indians than the Spanish ever thought of being.
The Californians' vulnerability to European diseases was a bio-tragedy, not policy. In many parts of this Hemisphere, diseases spread faster than Spaniards: in other words, once the disease was introduced into the Amerindian population at the coast, it spread inland like wildfire, years before the Spanish set foot in the interior. It was no more a "genocide" (a policy of extermination) than was the Black Plague in 14th century Europe. The only place the Indians could get treatment --- inadequate as it was at the time --- was in the missions. That was one reason why so many willingly came to the missions.
As for arms, the Franciscans were firmly opposed to the policies of the Spanish military in the presidios, who wanted to round up Indians as slave or serf-labor for the haciendas. A further reason why native Californians came to the missions willingly, was because they were sanctuaries against abduction by slave-catchers and the military.
One of the reasons I am glad for Serra's canonization is that the historians will have a chance to win out against the Left-wing propagandists.