Toypurina

Toypurina (1760–1799) was a Kizh medicine woman from the Jachivit village. She is notable for her opposition to the colonial rule by Spanish missionaries in California, and for her part in the planned 1785 rebellion against the Mission San Gabriel. She recruited six of the eight villages whose men participated in the attack.

1785 rebellion The causes of the San Gabriel rebellion were complex. The rebellion originated from both the Gabrielino people's frustration at the Spanish mission's imposition on their traditional territory, as well as their oppressive rule over their culture, language, labor, and sexual life. Even the Neophytes (the Spanish term for newly baptized indigenous people) resented the poor treatment at the hands of the Spanish, and the colonists' suppression of their culture and ceremonies.

Baptized Indigenous peoples within Spanish missions suffered labor exploitation and second-class citizenship under the Spanish. In 1782, the Spanish governor ordered soldiers inside the missions to prohibit baptized Indigenous people from having any dances in their villages. In the fall they traditionally held their annual Mourning Ceremony, a culmination of a series of death rituals including dances. Through this practice, they believed that the souls of the deceased achieved release from the earth and entrance into the land of the dead. By the end of October 1785, Nicolás José—a Neophyte and key figure in the 1785 rebellion— and others at the mission seem to have concluded that the ban on dances was intolerable, and that their inability to carry out their rituals jeopardized the repose of their dead relatives' spirits. Shortly after, she was moved to Mission San Carlos Borromeo. Two years after her baptism, she married a Spanish soldier named Manuel Montero, who had been serving at el Pueblo de Los Angeles. They received a tract of land from the governor. They lived in Monterey and had 3 children together (Cesario, Juana de Dios, and Maria Clementina). Thomas Workman Temple II, a genealogist and descendant of some of the first Spanish residents at the mission in Alta California, was the first scholar to study testimony from the interrogation. He published an article about Toypurina, “Toypurina the Witch and the Indian Uprising at San Gabriel” (1958). Although scholars believe Temple may have exaggerated certain events, As William Bauer writes in Toypurina, she “emerges from the historical record as a woman who not only confronted Spanish expansion in southern California but also charted a path for her survival and the endurance of her people.”

Well-known accounts of Toypurina's rebellion often depict her as a treacherous witch or seductive sorceress, including Temple's article, regarded as one of the most influential for subsequent writings on the Native woman. Toypurina's resistance against the colonial authorities through medicine and dialogue was consistent with the women's “other means of creating counter-histories,” such as through “oral and visual traditions”. These are how subjected women under the Spanish missions succeeded in remaining within the collective memories and resist throughout generations.

Judy Baca, Chicana artist and Gabrieliño traditionalist, designed a 20-foot arch and a 100-foot plaza prayer mound named Danzas Indígenas (Indigenous Dances, 1993), which is installed on a Metrolink commuter train platform in Baldwin Park. The memorial was dedicated to Toypurina, and also conceived as a reference to the nearby San Gabriel Mission's historical archway.

In 2014 the play Toypurina, about her life, premiered at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse.