We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California by Martin Rizzo-Martinez (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California by Martin Rizzo-Martinez Analiesa Delgado Martin Rizzo-Martinez. We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. 536 pp. Hardcover, $80.00. Traveling along Highway 101 in California, drivers will encounter hundreds of mission bells lining the California Coast. These bells are heralded as monuments to the California mission system. For many, these bells mark the beginning of California's Spanish fantasy past, but for others they are markers of colonization and genocide. Martin Rizzo-Martinez's book We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California seeks to tell a story of the survivance and resilience of Native Californians. Throughout the book, Martinez is upsetting a stereotype of California that is still widely held by both Californians and tourists: California history did not start with the missions. We Are Not Animals attempts to bridge the Spanish and Mexican eras into US statehood. With this overview, Martinez adds to the historiography of scholars like Steven Hackel, Lisbeth Haas, and James Sandos. Earlier scholars of the California mission period tend to focus heavily on the mission era, whereas Martinez expands this historiography by extending his timeline further—still with a heavy focus on the mission system but stretching the time period into the twentieth century. Further, Martinez combines both mission records and oral histories to highlight individual stories in order to center Indigenous perspectives, rather than focus on the Spaniards perspectives. We Are Not Animals focuses on the history of the Indigenous tribes of what is now known as Santa Cruz County in California. Martin Rizzo-Martinez begins his book with an oral history telling how the Santa Cruz Indigenous people killed a serpent. Martinez relates that he initially read this story with a centering of Indigenous encounters with the Spaniards, but it was through a conversation with an elder from the Amah Mutsun tribe, Ed Ketchum, that he learned it actually predates colonization and is most likely referring to a story about a conflict with the snake clan or another clan that inhabited the Santa Cruz mountains. Martinez notes that he is forced to recognize his own positionality, and to see Indigenous histories as not simply a "reaction to others" (3). The entirety of Matinez's book follows this pattern, and Martinez challenges his readers to recognize their own positionality within their research. [End Page 89] Martinez's book is broken into seven chapters. Chapter 1 looks at the Indigenous society of the Santa Cruz region precolonization, and then discusses the beginning of Spanish colonization, from 1773 to 1797. With this chapter, Martinez cites the earlier work of Randall Miliken, arguing that Indigenous peoples in this region were faced with "a time of little choice," as Spaniards arrival and settlements disrupted Indigenous societies (24). Martinez notes that the tribes of the San Francisco Bay area have inhabited the land for millennia, and that their cultural practices and lives were shaped around the environment. Chapter 2 examines the emerging social world that Native Californians were creating in the missions. Martinez argues that, while the Spaniards were increasing their presence, Native people were adapting and learning new labor practices, and participating in both spiritual and political hierarchies that were developing in the missions. Chapter 3 offers a closer analysis of the 1812 assassination of Padre Andres Quintana, looking at the larger context of what was taking place within Mission Santa Cruz. Martinez argues that this is necessary in order to fully understand this assassination as something other than a simple act of rebellion. Chapter 4 discusses how new alliances and kinship networks were created within the missions. He argues that these new communities were necessary for survival as Native Californians faced destruction and loss; various tribes who had rivalries precolonization could come together and form kinship bonds. Chapter 5 discusses the secularization and emancipation of the missions. Many Indigenous people began working for Californio ranchos, some left to return to their ancestral homelands, and others left to explore beyond California. He highlights that a new society...