The Jesuits share a long and complicated history with the Native Communities of North and South America. In 1568, the first Jesuits came with Spanish soldiers to Florida in an ill-fated attempt to convert the Calusa people to Catholicism. By 1700, the Calusa were completely decimated by smallpox. In the mid-sixteenth century, among the Aymara of Peru and the Guaraní of Paraguay, Jesuits established reduccións, missions that protected Indigenous People from Spanish authorities, and where Jesuits controlled the religious, political, and economic life of the community. The Jesuits maintained their reduccións in Peru and Paraguay until 1767, when they were expelled by Spain as part of a worldwide suppression of the Society of Jesus. In the early seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries sought to convert the Huron people, living between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron in Canada. Approximately fifty percent of the Huron died of influenza, smallpox, and measles. The Jesuits were also unsuccessful in converting the Algonquin on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake in the Maryland Colony, many of whom died of influenza and smallpox, or who were driven-off by colonial settlers. From 1591 to 1767, Jesuits founded missions in Northern Mexico, Baja California, and Arizona; attempted to convert Native Americans of these regions to Catholicism; and developed cattle ranches, agriculture, and commerce for them. These efforts ended when the Jesuits were suppressed by the pope and the monarchs of Europe. 

During the nineteenth century, many Italian Jesuits migrated to the Pacific Northwest, where they established the Rocky Mountain Mission, encompassing Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Idaho. The Jesuits tried to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism and to develop self-supporting agrarian communities for them. These efforts were undermined, however, by diseases and incursions by white settlers. Nevertheless, the Rocky Mountain Mission continued to offer education for the Native Americans in the region, who were permitted to maintain their native languages and dress. By 1896, the schools of the Rocky Mountain Mission enrolled more than 1,000 Native American students from many tribes: the Flathead, Yakima, Umatilla, Nez Percés, Cheyenne, Assinoboine, and Crow Nations. 

The San Francisco Bay Area and the Ohlone Native Americans

Before the Spanish arrived in 1769, the San Francisco Bay Area had been occupied for approximately 10,000 years by the Ohlone people and other Native Americans, including the Coast Miwok in the North Bay. Over the next seventy-five years, the European encounter with the Native Americans of the Bay Area led to the death of approximately 90 percent of the estimated 260,000 Indigenous People who lived in the region. European diseases, the mission system, the Gold Rush, and organized killing decimated the Native American population and almost destroyed their culture. According to the 2020 federal census, however, there are approximately 18,500 Native Americans living in the San Francisco Bay Area, a tribute to their resilience in the face of horrible treatment.

Before European contact, there were at least 50,000 Ohlone people living in the Bay Area. They spoke eight to twelve distinct but closely related languages. The Ohlone established thirty to forty permanent villages and a series of shell mounds in the East Bay. The area that became the City of San Francisco was occupied by the Ramaytush Ohlone. In the 1770s, the Ohlone were confronted by the first Spanish colonizers and Franciscan priests. In 1776, the Spanish established San Francisco, and Franciscan priests founded six missions in Ohlone territory, including Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Delores) and Santa Clara Mission. In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and in 1833, the Mexican government secularized the missions and began to grant large tracts of mission land to individual Mexicans. Beginning in 1848, the Gold Rush further decimated the Ohlone, and gold miners, settlers, soldiers, and vigilantes initiated a campaign that led to the deaths of thousands of these Native Americans.

The Jesuits in San Francisco

In December 1849, Jesuits Michael Accolti and John Nobili came to San Francisco from the Willamette Mission in Oregon. In 1851, Accolti and Nobili were invited by Joseph Alemany, the Archbishop of San Francisco, to convert the deteriorated buildings of Santa Clara Mission into a school. These Jesuits established Santa Clara College, the first institution of higher education in the State of California. John Nobili was the college’s first president. Santa Clara Mission had been started by Franciscan priests in 1777, who ran it until Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821. By the time the mission system ended, the Native American population, the Thamien Ohlone, was decimated by European diseases. According to the secularization decree passed by the Mexican legislature, half of the mission land was to be divided among Native Americans, but the decree was never enforced. Instead, individual Mexicans received land grants from the Mexican government. By the time the Jesuits arrived in Santa Clara, the Thamien Ohlone were largely gone from the area. Archbishop Alemany went to court to secure title for the Santa Clara mission buildings and a small portion of the adjacent property for the Jesuits. John Nobili spent much of his tenure as the college’s first president buying back some of the old mission land. 

In San Francisco, Mission Dolores was founded in 1776 by Francisco Palóu, a Franciscan priest, under the direction of Father Junípero Serra. The mission was built by the forced labor of the Native Americans of the area, the Ramaytush Ohlone. At its peak from 1810 to 1820, the average annual Native American population at Mission Dolores was about 1,100. The Native Americans were forced to farm and produce various goods for sale by the mission. The Native Americans at the mission were decimated by disease and suffered massive cultural disruption. More than 5,000 Native Americans are still buried in the cemetery adjacent to the mission. In 1833, the Mexican government secularized most of the church properties, and the land was sold or granted to new Mexican owners. Mission Dolores only retained title to the church and a small amount of land surrounding the church. During the next decade, Mission Dolores fell into disrepair. 

In 1854, the Turin provincial ordered Anthony Maraschi, a Jesuit then teaching at Loyola College, Maryland, to sail for San Francisco. In 1855, with the blessing of Archbishop Alemany, Maraschi purchased a small plot of land on what became the south side of Market Street, between Fourth and Fifth Streets, and founded St. Ignatius Church and St. Ignatius Academy. In 1927, St. Ignatius College moved to its current location on Fulton Street, and in 1930, it was renamed the University of San Francisco. 

The First Board of Trustees

The institutions that became the University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University established Boards of Trustees within four years of their founding. Both boards were composed mostly of Jesuits. Michael Accolti, Anthony Maraschi, and seven other Jesuits, served on the boards of both schools. Santa Clara College had five lay members on its first Board of Trustees, including Peter Burnett, the first governor of California. Burnett had helped draft the college’s original articles of incorporation. Although Burnett never served on the Board of Trustees of St. Ignatius College, he was active in the affairs of St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco and was one of the church’s major supporters. 

In 1848, Peter Burnett moved to California, was appointed to the California Supreme Court, and was elected the state’s first governor in 1850. In January 1851, during his first State of the State Address, he called Native Americans the “Indian foe” and “savages.” In his remarks, he said that a “war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct.” Governor Burnett signed into law an “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians,” which underpinned the enslavement and murder of Native Americans in California.

In California during the 1850s, there was a string of atrocities committed against Native Americans supported by the state. The State of California Legislature authorized private militias to murder Native Americans, and historians have documented at least 370 massacres and hundreds of vigilante killings of Native Americans in California between 1850 and 1854. During the 1850s, the state legislature appropriated $1.3 million for these mass killing campaigns. 

It is not known how Governor Burnett’s words and actions against California’s Native Americans were perceived among the Jesuits who served with him on the first Board of Trustees of Santa Clara College. Likewise, no evidence has surfaced regarding how the Jesuits of St. Ignatius Church and College viewed his sanctioning of the killing of Native Americans. The Jesuits who established their institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1850s are not of course responsible for Burnett’s attitudes and actions. It is hard to believe, however, that all the Jesuits at the time were unaware of Burnett’s views, or that they knew nothing about the implementation of those views in decimating the lives and cultures of Native Americans in California.

Questions

Several questions can be asked regarding the past and future engagement of the Jesuits with Native Americans:

• During its long missionary history, Jesuits often worked in tandem with European colonial powers; sometimes Jesuits operated independently from European colonial powers; and for one forty-year period, Jesuits were suppressed by the colonial powers and the pope. Given this uneven history, how responsible is the Society of Jesus for the harm done to the Native American people of North America? 
• The Jesuits developed the mission system used in parts of South America, Mexico, Arizona, and Baja California, but how responsible is the Society of Jesus for the decimation of the Native Americans of California, especially since the Jesuits were suppressed during the development of the Franciscan mission system in California?
• The Franciscan priest, Junípero Serra, established and oversaw the Spanish mission system in California, which was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Native Americans, and the near destruction of their culture. In 2015, the first Jesuit Pope, Francis, finalized the process that made Junípero Serra a saint. How can this canonization of Serra by Pope Francis be justified to Native Americans and to others? 
• Former California Governor Peter Burnett served on the first Board of Trustees of Santa Clara College, and for decades, was an active supporter of the Jesuits of St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco. Were the Jesuits who founded the University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University aware of the role played by Burnett in trying to exterminate the Native Americans of California? 
• During the second half of the 19^th century, how active were the Jesuits of California in protecting the lives of Native Americans who were being murdered by settlers, goldminers, soldiers, and vigilantes? 
• In addition to acknowledging that USF occupies land that was once part of Ramaytush Ohlone territory, are there other steps that USF can take to seek reconciliation with the Ramaytush Ohlone or other Native Americans? 
• Should reparations play a role in the efforts by USF to achieve reconciliation with the Ramaytush Ohlone?

Much of this nation’s success has been at the expense of Native Americans, and the University of San Francisco should consider its current position as a moral leader with a long history in the city, state, and nation. An institution’s obligations to right historical wrongs reflect a commitment to a moral good. Educational institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, should take the lead in reconciliation efforts with Native Americans. Institutions must honestly engage in their history to truthfully live in the present and build guideposts for the future.

Alan Ziajka is Historian Emeritus of the University of San Francisco, where he held several administrative positions during a 36-year career, including Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and University Historian. Ziajka holds a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, and he is the author of four books on USF history and numerous articles on history, education, and human development. The sources for this article are found in a longer paper being developed by the author and are available directly from him at ziajka@usfca.edu.