Studies of the Spanish conquest in the Americas traditionally have explained European-Indian encounters in terms of such factors as geography, timing, and the charisma of individual conquistadores. Yet by reconsidering this history from the perspective of gender roles and relations, we see that gender ideology was a key ingredient in the glue that held the conquest together and in turn shaped indigenous behavior toward the conquerors. This book tells the hidden story of women during the missionization of California. It shows what it was like for women to live and work on that frontierÑand how race, religion, age, and ethnicity shaped female experiences. It explores the suppression of women's experiences and cultural resistance to domination, and reveals the many codes of silence regarding the use of force at the missions, the treatment of women, indigenous ceremonies, sexuality, and dreams. Virginia Bouvier has combed a vast array of sourcesÑ including mission records, journals of explorers and missionaries, novels of chivalry, and oral historiesÑ and has discovered that female participation in the colonization of California was greater and earlier than most historians have recognized. Viewing the conquest through the prism of gender, Bouvier gives new meaning to the settling of new lands and attempts to convert indigenous peoples. By analyzing the participation of womenÑ both Hispanic and IndianÑ in the maintenance of or resistance to the mission system, Bouvier restores them to the narrative of the conquest, colonization, and evangelization of California. And by bringing these voices into the chorus of history, she creates new harmonies and dissonances that alter and enhance our understanding of both the experience and meaning of conquest.

"This study examines the ways in which Mexican and Native women challenged the patriarchal traditional culture of the Spanish, Mexican , and early American eras in California, tracing the shifting contingencies surrounding their lives from the imposition of Spanish Catholic colonial rule in the 1770s to the ascendancy of Euro-American Protestant capitalistic society in the 1880s." -from the book cover.

The first history of women's contributions to the Spanish colonization of the New World.

This collection of essays by leading scholars in Mexican ethnohistory, edited by Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, examines the life experiences of Indian women in preconquest colonial Mexico. In this volume: "Introduction," Susan Schroeder; "Mexica Women on the Home Front," Louise M. Burkhart; "Aztec Wives," Arthur J. O. Anderson; "Indian-Spanish Marriages in the First Century of the Colony," Pedro Carrasco; "Gender and Social Identity," Rebecca Horn; "From Parallel and Equivalent to Separate but Unequal: Tenochca Mexica Women, 1500-1700," Susan Kellogg; "Activist or Adulteress/ The Life and Struggle of Doña Josefa Mará of Tepoztlan," Robert Haskett; "Matters of Life at Death," Stephanie Wood; "Mixteca Cacicas," Ronald Spores; "Women and Crime in Colonial Oaxaca," Lisa Mary Sousa; "Women, Rebellion, and the Moral Economy of Maya Peasants in Colonial Mexico," Kevin Gosner; "Work, Marriage, and Status: Maya Women of Colonial Yucatan," Marta Espejo-Ponce Hunt and Matthew Restall; "Double Jeopardy," Susan M. Deeds; "Women's Voices from the Frontier," Leslie S. Offutt; "Rethinking Malinche," Frances Karttunen; "Concluding Remarks," Stephanie Wood and Robert Haskett.