American Spanish Colonial Confession Manuals and their impact on Amerindian populations

Abstract

From the late 17th through the 19th centuries Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries established missions for Amerindian populations in Northern Mexico, New Mexico, Texas and in Baja and Alta California. Economic, civic and religious instruction and training relied mostly on indigenous interpreters, but the requirements of sacramental life made linguistic interpretation and translation problematic. To address these problems missionaries prepared confessional manuals in some indigenous languages. These manuals emphasize the missionaries’ preoccupation with certain church commandments, particularly those associated with indigenous sexual and shamanistic practices, and marked such practices as sinful and deviant. This paper uses several archival confessionary manuals to discuss the socio-cultural implications of the confessional questions for Amerindian practices during the mission period as well as their consequences for future generations. The paper also explores the ambivalent attitudes of missionaries toward conversion work as they encountered indigenous cultures.