It is merely a criticism of their judgment.
The fact that in a few years the Indians became remarkably competent in so many fields of skilled labor is the best answer to the unfounded charges of abject savagery.

Peoples are not civilized nor educated in a day.

Brains cannot be put into a monkey, no matter how well educated his teacher is.

There must have been the mental quality, the ability to learn; or even the miraculous patience, perseverance, and love of the missionaries would not have availed to teach them, in several hundred years, much less, then, in the half-century they had them under their control, the many things we know they learned.
The Indians, prior to the coming of the padres, were skilled in some arts, as the making of pottery, basketry, canoes, stone axes, arrow heads, spear heads, stone knives, and the like.

Holder says of the inhabitants of Santa Catalina that although their implements were of stone, wood, or shell "the skill with which they modelled and made their weapons, mortars, and steatite _ollas_, their rude mosaics of abalone shells, and their manufacture of pipes, medicine-tubes, and flutes give them high rank among savages." The mortars found throughout California, some of which are now to be seen in the museums of Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, etc., are models in shape and finish.