My dissertation traced patterns of rebellion by the indigenous peoples of California from 1775 to 1828. Focusing on uprisings within the mission communities of San Diego, San Gabriel, Santa Barbara, La Purisima, Santa Ines, and San Jose, I integrated data from several disciplines and sources---including contemporary and historic ethnography, linguistic research, archival research, and folklore---to build a picture of the rebellions and the motivations behind them. What made my work unique was its focus on unpacking the rhetoric used by both the missionaries and the military officers whose reports constitute the main sources of our knowledge about these rebellions. Violence periodically engulfed the California frontier, but the Spanish and later Mexican authorities that responded to these uprisings were often in competition with one another. Their accounts present vastly different views of these events, and often blamed individuals in the other camp for provoking these events.