The Spanish missions in Baja California were a large number of religious outposts established by Catholic religious orders, the Jesuits, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, between 1683 and 1834. The missionary goal was to spread the Christian doctrine among the Indigenous peoples living on the Baja California peninsula. The missions gave Spain a valuable toehold in the frontier land, and would also act as a deterrent to prevent pirates from using the peninsula of Las Californias as a jumping off point for contraband trade with mainland New Spain. Missionaries introduced European livestock, fruits, vegetables, and industry into the region. Indigenous peoples were severely impacted by the introduction of European diseases such as smallpox and measles; furthermore, the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish Empire in 1767 ripped the social fabric of the peninsula, although Franciscans were sent to replace them. In 1769, the Franciscans moved to Upper California, leaving Dominicans in charge of Baja California. By 1800, indigenous numbers were a fraction of what they had been before the arrival of the Spanish, yet even today many people living in Baja California are of indigenous heritage.
By 1834, all missions in Mexico had been secularized by the Mexican secularization act of 1833, and the last of the missionaries departed in 1840. Under secularization, native mission congregations lost their communal rights to the lands which they had farmed since baptism. Some of the mission churches survive and are still in use.Burckhalter, David, Sedgwick, Mina, and Fontana, Bernard L. (2013), Baja California Missions, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, p.27. Downloaded from Project MUSE.
In 1840 the Roman Catholic Diocese of California was founded but, after the U.S. conquest of "Northern" California and the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty (1848), the missions in Baja California were put under the apostolic administration of the Archdiocese of Mexico City (officially in 1853 but de facto since 1849, they became a vicariate administrated by an auxiliary bishop in 1855). A new Apostolic Vicariate was founded in 1874 for Baja California (predecessor of the current Archdiocese of Tijuana).
Background
As early as the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Kingdom of Spain sought to establish missions to convert pagans to Catholicism in Nueva España (New Spain). New Spain consisted of the Caribbean, Mexico, and portions of what is now the Southwestern United States. To facilitate colonization, the Catholic Church awarded these lands to Spain.
In addition to the presidio (royal fort) and pueblo (town), the misión was one of three major agencies employed by the Spanish crown to extend its borders and consolidate its colonial territories. Asistencias ("sub-missions" or "contributing chapels") were small-scale missions that regularly conducted Catholic religious services on days of obligation, but lacked a resident priest. Smaller sites called visitas ("visiting chapels") also lacked a resident priest, and were often attended only sporadically. Since 1493, the Crown of Spain had maintained missions throughout Nueva España.
Between 1683 and 1685, Eusebio Kino established a mission at San Bruno, but he did not have enough political or financial support to sustain the community, and returned to the mainland where he established Mission Dolores on the opposite side of the Gulf of California among the Pima. In 1696, the Pious Fund for the Californias was founded at Jesuit headquarters in Mexico City, the idea being that this endowment could produce enough revenue every year to give the critical financial support to a second missionary effort, which was undertaken by Juan Maria Salvatierra in 1697 starting with Mission Loreto. For every 10,000 Spanish dollars donated to the fund by wealthy merchants, the Jesuit living an austere life in the Peninsula would receive 500 Spanish dollars which was used to support himself, but also to import tools and cloth for native congregants and decorations for the church. Aside from this 500 Spanish dollar annual income, each frontier mission aimed to be self-supporting.Duggan, M.C. (2023) "Redes de comercio de contrabando en el golfo de California entre 1665 y 1701 como motor de la expansión jesuita" in Guillermina del Valle Pavon, ed., Contrabando y Redes de Negocios: Hispanoamerica en el comercio globa, 1610-1814. Mexico City: Instituto Jose Luis Mora, pp. 75-126.Duggan Redes Supplies came at times from the mainland, either from sister missions in Sonora via Guaymas or from merchants in Tepic near the port of Matanchel, which the Jesuits used. The Manila galleon stopped regularly at Cabo San Lucas 1734 to 1767, and was a more inexpensive source of supply. Ignacio Tirsch, a Jesuit friar of the 1760s, drew a picture of such a Manila galleon trading at Mission San Jose del Cabo.
To sustain a mission, the padres needed colonists or converted indigenous Americans, called neophytes, to cultivate crops and tend livestock in the volume needed to support a fair-sized establishment. A scarcity of imported materials and of skilled laborers compelled the colonizers to employ simple building materials and methods. Although the Spanish hierarchy considered the missions temporary ventures, individual settlement development was not based simply on "priestly whim": the founding of a mission followed longstanding rules and procedures. In Jesuit times, a donation of an additional 10,000 Spanish dollars was a prerequisite. In addition, the paperwork involved required months, sometimes years, of correspondence, and demanded the attention of virtually every level of the bureaucracy. Once empowered to erect a mission in a given area, the men assigned to it chose a specific site that featured a good water supply, proximity to a population of indigenous peoples, and arable land. The padres, their military escort and often converted mainland indigenous people or mestizos initially fashioned defendable shelters, from which a base was established and the mission could grow.
Construction of the iglesia (church) constituted the focus of the settlement, and created the center of the community. The majority of mission sanctuaries were oriented on a roughly east–west axis to take the best advantage of the sun's position for interior illumination. The workshops, kitchens, living quarters, storerooms, and other ancillary chambers were usually grouped in the form of a quadrangle, inside which religious celebrations and other events often took place.
The Native Americans
Indian peoples encountered by the Spanish missionaries in Baja California (from north to south) were the Kumeyaay, Cocopah, Pai Pai,Winter, Werner. 1967. "The Identity of the Paipai (Akwa'ala)." In Studies in Southwestern Ethnolinguistics: Meaning and History in the Language of the American Southwest, edited by Dell H. Hymes and William E. Bittle, pp. 371–378. Mouton, The Hague. Kiliwa,Meigs, Peveril, "The Kiliwa Indians of Lower California". Iberoamerica No. 15. University of California, Berkeley. Cochimi, Monqui, Guaycura, and Pericu.Schmal, John P., Indigenous Baja, http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/baja.html, accessed 1 Apr 2016 The Kumeyaay and Cocapah practiced limited agriculture, but the majority of the Baja Californians were nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who eked out a living under difficult desert conditions and scarcity of fresh water.
In a policy followed throughout much of Latin America called reductions, the missionaries concentrated the Indians at or near the mission for religious instruction and training to become sedentary farmers and stock herders. Their goal was to create a self-sufficient theocracy in which the missionary, usually supported by Spanish soldiers and laymen, attempted to rule over every facet of the Indian's religious and secular lives.Burckhalter, David, Sedgwick, Mina, and Fontana, Bernard L. (2013), Baja California Missions, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, p. 7. Downloaded from Project MUSE. The Indigenous peoples were housed often by gender, forcibly converted to Catholicism and acculturated to the Spanish Empire within the confines of the mission. Recalcitrant indigenous peoples often ran away or revolted, and many missions maintained a precarious existence during the colonial era. Use of firearms, corporal punishment in the form of whippings and religious ritual and psychological punishments were all methods employed by the missionaries to maintain and expand control.Jackson, Robert H., 1981, Epidemic Disease and Population Decline in the Baja California Missions, 1697-1834. Southern California Quarterly 63:308-346. Downloaded from JSTOR. There were instances of armed resistance by the Indians against the missions, notably the Pericue revolt of 1734–1737, and Indians at the missions frequently ran away to escape the religious and labor regime forced on them by the missionaries or sabotaged the missionary's efforts by passive resistance.Jackson, Robert H. (1986), "Patterns of Demographic Change in the Missions of Southern Baja California", Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Vol. 8, NO. 2, pp. 173-279. Downloaded from JSTOR.
At the time of first contact with the Spanish, the Native Americans living in Baja California may have numbered as many as 60,000. By 1762, their numbers had fallen to 21,000 and by 1800 to 5,900. The primary reason for the decline was recurrent epidemics of European diseases, primarily smallpox, measles, and typhus. The spread of disease was facilitated by the missionary's practice of congregating the population near the mission. Endemic syphilis resulted in higher child mortality and a reduced birth rate. By the early 19th century, the tribes of Baja California were culturally extinct, except for the Kumeyaay, Cocopah, and Pai Pai.Jackson, Robert H. (1981), "Epidemic Disease and Population Decline in the Baja California Missions, 1697-1834", Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 4, pp 308-341. Downloaded from JSTOR.
Missions in Baja California
Fortún Jiménez de Bertadoña discovered the Baja California Peninsula in early 1534. However, it was Hernán Cortés who recognized the peninsula as the "Island of California" in May 1535, and is therefore officially credited with the discovery. In January 1683, the Spanish government chartered an expedition consisting of three ships to transport a contingent of 200 men to the southern tip of Baja California. Under the command of the governor of Sinaloa, Isidoro de Atondo y Antillón, and accompanied by Jesuit priest Eusebio Francisco Kino, the ships made landfall in La Paz. The landing party was eventually forced to abandon its initial settlement due to the hostile response on the part of the natives. The missionaries attempted to establish a settlement near present-day Loreto, which they named Misión San Bruno, but failed for lack of supplies.Burckhalter et al, p. 17; Bolton, 1936 Kino went on to establish a number of missions in the Pimería Alta, now located in southern Arizona, USA and Sonora, Mexico.
The Jesuit priest Juan María de Salvatierra eventually managed to establish the first permanent Spanish settlement in Baja California, the Misión Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó. Founded on October 19, 1697, the mission become the religious center of the peninsula and administrative capital of Las Californias. From there, other Jesuits went out to establish other settlements throughout the lower two-thirds of the peninsula, founding 17 missions and several visitas (sub-missions) between 1697 and 1767.Crosby, Harry W. (1994), Antigua California, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 20-26, p.179