California's missions were also military outposts, they were also industrial/agricultural centers in need of labor and designed to export the riches believed to be abundant in the new world.
"Weren't better than what the Spanish had" suggests that you know that infant mortality etc. were no better in Madrid or London than on the Monterrey Peninsula of today's California...and I sincerely doubt that tribal wars here were even a fraction as horrendous as contemporary national and religious wars of Europe.
I guess this is a good time to ask you about your opinion of Mexican illegal immigration into the USA and muslim infiltration into Christian Europe and America today; both organized assaults on the existing culture which some say is "no better than...".
(In my Neanderthal opinion, it sucks!)