Mission Indians is a term for many indigenous peoples of California, primarily living in coastal plains, adjacent inland valleys and mountains, and on the Channel Islands in central and southern California, United States. The tribes had established comparatively peaceful cultures varying from 250 to 8,000 years before Spanish contact. These resident indigenous peoples of the Americas were forcibly relocated from their traditional dwellings, villages, and homelands to live and work at twenty one Spanish missions in California, and the Asisténcias and Estáncias as they were established between 1796 and 1823 in the Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.