ABSTRACT
This chapter examines selected aspects of cultural change in the missions. The mission program envisioned a radical transformation in the culture, religion and worldview, and social structure and social relations of the indigenous population. Religion was one of the elements that defined the status of colonial peoples in Spanish America. The subjects of the king were to be at least nominally Catholic. From the outset of the establishment of the missions, the missionaries sought to modify or to eliminate certain social practices and to restructure indigenous society to conform more closely to their own notions of the standards that should be followed in sedentary Christian communities. The missionaries in both regions attempted to eliminate other native social practices. Cultural change can also be measured through an analysis of material culture. The task of reshaping the fundamental way in which the native peoples viewed the cosmos and their place within the universe proved to be difficult at best for the missionaries.
