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Foundation of the Baja California Missions
Mission Frontiers: Rio Grande do Sul and Baja California
The Jesuits established missions in two very different types of environments, and on very different colonial frontiers in the Rio de la Plata region
and Baja California. The Spanish and Portuguese and Portuguese colonists in Brazil contested the Rio de la Plata frontier in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and the Jesuit missions and the Guarani neophytes living on the missions were caught in the middle of the competition but also
materially contributed to Spanish efforts to assert and sustain territorial claims. The Jesuits in Paraguay first founded missions in what today is
Brazil after 1610, but these early establishments met a violent end at the hand of Portuguese colonists from Sao Paulo. The establishment of missions
in Tape (modern Rio Grande do Sul) asserted Spanish territorial claims, but the Jesuits evacuated the region in the 1630s as a result of destructive
raids by the bandeirantes, slave raiders from Sao Paulo. The establishment of Colonia do Sacramento by the Portuguese in January of 1680 across the
Rio de la Plata estuary from Buenos Aires in what today is Uruguay generated considerable concern among Spanish officials, but at the same time the
Rio de la Plata region was also a sparsely populated borderland that generated little revenue to support expansion into the Banda Oriental (Uruguay),
and in the late seventeenth-century Spain did not have the same financial resources as in the previous century to pay for a potentially expensive
colonization initiative that might have also provoked a war. The Spanish did occupy Colonia do Sacramento shortly after its establishment in
1680-1681, but then returned the outpost to the Portuguese. The Spanish reoccupied Colonia in 1704 during the War of Spanish Succession, but then
returned the settlement to Portugal at the end of the war. There was another attempt to capture Colonia again in 1735-1736, but following a long siege
the campaign failed.
The Portuguese expansion in the region threatened Spanish claims to the Banda Oriental and the territory east of the Uruguay River first occupied by
Jesuit missions after 1610. By 1680, the Paulistas no longer posed a threat to the missions, and in response to the establishment of Colonia do
Sacramento the Jesuits re-established missions east of the Uruguay River in what today is the Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul. This was a cost
effective way for the financially strapped Spanish government to counter the Portuguese expansion into an area that had been claimed by the Spanish
government for more than a century.
Between 1680 and 1710, the Jesuits relocated two existing missions to sites east of the Uruguay River. They were San Nicolas and San Miguel. They also
established five new missions with populations from existing establishments: San Francisco de Borja, San Luis Gonzaga, San Lorenzo Martir, San Juan
Bautista, and Santo Angel Custodio. In 1697, for example, the Jesuits took a part of the population from San Miguel to found San Juan Bautista. Seven
years earlier, in 1690, the Jesuits relocated 3,512 neophytes from Santa Maria la Mayor located west of the Uruguay River to establish San Lorenzo
Martir. In establishing missions east of the Uruguay River, the Spanish Crown was able to assert a stronger claim to the disputed borderlands. By
transferring thousands of neophytes from exiting missions to the new establishments, the Jesuits were able to rapidly develop the new communities with
a large labor force. There was also a short-lived mission called Jesus Maria de los Guenonas, located near San Francisco de Borja mission and
populated by native peoples from the Chaco region. The Jesuits later merged the population of Jesus Maria with Loreto mission, located on the Parana
River.
The Jesuit missions in the Rio de la Plata region did not exist in a vacuum, and the Jesuits and the Guarani neophytes interacted with and in some
areas competed with settlers, royal officials, and secular clergy. This competition could and did result in tensions and conflict between
missionaries, Guarani, and settlers. Once instance of tension and conflict occurred, for example, in the mid and late 1640s, and involved the Bishop
of Paraguay Bernardino de Card##as, and the Jesuits. However, underlying this dispute were the interests of the holders of encomiendas (grant of
jurisdiction over a group of natives, with rights to collect tribute and in some instances labor) and the producers of yerba mate who viewed the
Jesuits as competitors who also controlled valuable land and native labor coveted by the settlers. Settlers involved in the marketing of yerba mate
also accused the Jesuits of selling more of the product than allowed by law. This accusation was related also to the fact that the Jesuits used
neophyte labor in the production of yerba mate, which was seen as giving them an advantage in production costs. These tensions contributed to a period
of civil unrest in Paraguay in the 1720s and 1730s known as the Comunero revolt.
During most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Rio de la Plata region remained a sparsely populated but strategic borderlands region
contested, as noted above, by the Spanish and Portuguese. The Guarani residents of the missions played a very important role in the economy and
geopolitics of the region. For one the mission populations constituted a large part of the population of the Spanish Rio de la Plata region. In 1680,
for example, the population of the Spanish provinces in the Rio de la Plata region counted a population of some 125,000 people. Of this, the missions
accounted for 67,000 or fifty-four percent of the total.
The mission residents likewise played a significant military role in the geopolitics of the larger region that was very different from what occurred
in Baja California, where the Jesuits hired and paid the salaries of soldiers who protected the missions. The early history of the mission expansion
between 1610 and about 1630 ended with raids by bandeirantes, slave traders from Sao Paulo. The Jesuits organized several large-scale migrations in
the 1630s from regions vulnerable to slave raids to escape from the bandeirantes, and created a militia in the missions to defend themselves. In
January of 1641, the Guarani militia scored a notable victory against bandeirantes at the battle of Mborore on the Uruguay River. The Jesuits
retained the militia following Mborare, and royal officials took advantage of the existence of the militia and mobilized it some fifty times between
1637 and 1737 to maintain order within Spanish settlements in the region, and to participate in campaigns against the Portuguese. The Jesuits also
used mission resources to supply the mobilized militiamen, and thus subsidized Spanish military campaigns on a chronically under funded but
strategically important frontier region.
An example of the involvement of the Guarani militia in international conflict comes from the repeated instances of Spanish attacks against Colonia do
Sacramento. Shortly after the establishment of the outpost, a Spanish force that included Guarani militia captured Colonia, but a 1681 treaty returned
the outpost to Portugal. A quarter of a century later, in 1704 during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713), the Spanish captured Colonia a second
time. Some 4,000 Guarani militia participated in the campaign. Spain returned the outpost of Portugal at the end of the war in 1713. Local officials
mobilized a force of 1,000 Guarani militia to expel the Portuguese from a new outpost established at modern Montevideo in 1724, and to help construct
the fortifications of the Spanish colony at the site named San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo established two years later in 1726.
With two exceptions, the missions located on the northern frontier of Mexico did not participate in or become victims of international conflict with
Spain?s colonial rivals, which is not to say that international rivalries did not play a role in decisions made to expand into new areas. The two
exceptions were Florida and Texas. During the War of Spanish Succession, in 1702, 1704, and 1705, English colonial militia from South Carolina and
allied Indians attacked a destroyed most of the missions, and enslaved hundreds of natives. Similarly, in 1719 during a short-lived Spanish-French
war, a French patrol into east Texas led to a precipitous Spanish flight from the missions and presidios. Royal officials in Mexico City organized the
Aguayo expedition (1721-1722) to reoccupy east Texas, and to strengthen Spanish control over the province by establishing more outposts. The Baja
California missions did not become involved in international conflict or colonial rivalries.
One instance of the mobilization of the mission militia contributed to tensions between the Jesuits and settlers In the late 1720s and early 1730s,
there was growing discontent among the colonists in Paraguay, related in part to competition between the settlers and missions in the marketing of
yerba mate. In 1732, the government mobilized 6,000 Guarani militiamen to restore order in Paraguay, and then sent to militia to Buenos Aires to
possibly serve in the siege of Colonia do Sacramento. The intervention of the Guarani militia in Paraguay further poisoned relations between the
settlers and missions in the decades leading up to the 1767 order of expulsion of the Jesuits, and contributed to the continued call by the settlers
to close the Jesuit missions.
The Guarani War of the mid-1750s caused a temporary rupture in the alliance between royal officials, the Jesuits, and the mission militias. The
process of trying to implement the Treaty of Madrid (1750) and the resulting Guarani resistance, and particularly the ascension of a new King Carlos
lll (1759-1788) resulted in a shift in policy in the disputed borderlands of the Banda Oriental and Rio Grande do Sul. This change in policy led to
the creation of a new viceregal jurisdiction in the Rio de la Plata region that also included Alto Peru (modern Bolivia) in 1776. The creation of the
new viceregal jurisdiction, that was one aspect of a larger administrative, fiscal, and military reform initiative, represented a recognition of a
growing interest in asserting Spanish domination in the Rio de la Plata region. The Treaty of Madrid represented an attempted rapprochement with
Portugal by Ferdinand Vl (1746-1759), who was married to a member of the Portuguese royal family. With the ascension to the throne of Carlos lll,
however, the policy shifted in the 1760s to an effort to win control over Colonia do Sacramento and the Portuguese settlements in Rio Grande do Sul
by conquest. An initial campaign in 1762-1763 followed Spain?s unilateral nullification of the Treaty of Madrid, and reassertion of control over the
missions located east of the Uruguay River. Spanish forces occupied much of modern Rio Grande do Sul, only to loose the territorial gains in a
successful Portuguese counter attack in 1776. The Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1777 negotiated at the end of the Spanish defeat in Rio Grande do Sul
resolved the border conflict for a generation, but the contest for territorial domination resumed in the early nineteenth century and would play a
significant role in the demise of the ex-missions. Unlike the missions in Baja California, regional conflict contributed to significantly to the
development of the Jesuit establishments in the Rio de la Plata region.
Tribute, Regional Trade, and Tensions with the Settlers in the Rio de la Plata Region
The missions also contributed to royal finances in the Rio de la Plata region in a way that the missions on the north Mexican frontier did not. The
tribute paid by the Guarani living in the missions was an important source of revenue for the local government in Buenos Aires, particularly in the
1720s to the early 1750s. The amount of tribute received fluctuated. In 1721, for example, it totaled 38,054 pesos, or nearly four percent of all
local revenues. Three decades later, in 1755, tribute revenue reached 41,112 pesos, four percent of total revenues. In the years 1757 to 1761, it was
81,686 and total revenues of 4,783,609 that were inflated by the infusion of additional monies to cover the costs of the implementation of the 1750
Treaty of Madrid, or two percent.
Surpluses from the mission farms and estancias also supplied the population of the larger Rio de la Plata region. The Jesuits and the Guarani
themselves marketed their products over the entire region, and competed with settlers for limited markets. Missionaries stationed in Sonora also
marketed surplus grain and livestock to mining centers and other non-native settlements, which also created competition and hence tensions with
settlers. A truly symbiotic relationship evolved between the missions and the settlers, but at the same time it was a relationship strained by
competition over markets and in the case of Paraguay the Guarani militia intervention in the so-called Comunero Uprising in 1732.
The Establishment of the Baja California Missions.
Whereas colonial rivalry between Spain and Portugal framed the development of the seven Jesuit missions established east of the Uruguay River, the
environment, and particularly the aridity of large parts of the Peninsula. It was the aridity of the Peninsula, the hostility of the native peoples,
and particularly the lack of ready sources of wealth that resulted in the failure of earlier colonization schemes, including one in the early 1680s
funded by the government at San Bruno, near Loreto. In October of 1697, Juan Maria Salvatierra, S.J., and a small band of Spaniards landed at a site
known by the local indigenous peoples as Concho, the location of a settlement. The local peoples did not initially embrace the strangers, and in
November native warriors attacked the small temporary compound the Spaniards had built. The attack failed, and gradually the natives accepted the
presence of the Spaniards. Salvatierra began the task of developing the new mission named Nuestra Senora de Loreto (Our Lady of Loreto), and exploring
the land for new potential mission sites and populations of natives to convert. Loreto, the site of the first mission as well as the presidio or
military garrison, became the de facto capital of the new colony.
Two years following the establishment of Loreto, the Jesuits founded a second mission west of Loreto at a site known as Biaundo in the mountains of
Vigge as it was known in the indigenous language. Over the next two decades the Jesuits would concentrate on establishing missions in mountain valleys
with water and/or large native populations. In 1703, the new mission consisted of ten native settlements in addition to the cabecera (main mission
village). The Jesuits later moved the mission to a new site several miles away, the site today occupied by the large stone church completed in 1758.
Franciscan missionary Francisco Palou, O.F.M., described the two sites of the mission in the following way: ?At first it was established on a spot
called by the natives Biaundo in the sierra called Vigge, but after some time, for want of water, it became necessary to remove it to the place it now
occupies, which is in a narrow dale with openings to the north and the south, but hemmed in by high mountains of solid rock. It lies on an arroyo
which has water only in time of rain; but toward the north the mission has a copious spring whose flow is joined by some streamlets. From it by means
of a ditch water is led to the mission, where it is collected in two reservoirs of masonry for the purpose of irrigating the little pieces of land
which are entirely surrounded by a stone wall.?
In 1705, the Jesuits began to expand the number of missions in the Peninsula. Expeditions went north and south of Loreto to establish two missions,
one at a site known as Mulege on an estuary, and the second to the south at Malibat. The mission at Malibat, christened San Juan Bautista, operated
for sixteen years, but was then relocated and renamed Dolores. The Jesuits abandoned Ligui, in part, because of the unreliable water supply. Santa
Rosalia de Mulege operated for more than a century as a mission. The Jesuits chose a site for the mission that has the appearance of an oasis. Palou
described the site as ??situated on the side of a high sierra along the banks of a large arroyo called Mulege, which flows into an estuary that
terminates in the gulf?The mission is in a poor condition, because the floods of 1770have carried away the dam and the soil from the fields, so that
the whole has become a sandy waste?I examined a place called Magdalena about ten leagues from the mission on the road to San Ignacio, and I discovered
that it had an arroyo with sufficient water. By means of a dam the good plots of land that it possesses could be irrigated; and with it the mission
might support itself[.]? The Franciscans went on to develop a farming station at the site Palou described, and restored the dam and irrigation system
at the mission site.
Julian Mayorga, S.J., newly arrived in Baja California, established San Jose de Comondu mission in 1708 in a narrow valley called Comondu by the local
natives. Juan Maria Salvatierra, S.J. first visited the site in 1701, and for seven years promoted the establishment of a mission at Comondu because
of the large indigenous population in the area, even though the site had limited potential for agriculture. In 1707, Salvatierra and Juan de Ugarte,
S.J., the missionary stationed at San Francisco Xavier mission, independently visited a second valley about 20 miles south of the Comondu site, where
they discovered a more reliable water supply and arable land. Each began the process of developing a farming station in the well-watered valley that
held greater potential for agriculture. Salvatierra named one station San Ignacio, and Ugarte named the second San Miguel.
Mayorga labored at Comondu for 28 years, and died in 1736. Following his death Comondu mission was moved to the site of the farming station at San
Ignacio, which had better prospects for agriculture. The move was completed by December of 1736, and in July of the following year the German
Francisco Javier Wagner, S.J., arrived to replace Mayorga. The first site became known as Comondu Viejo, and the name of the mission transferred to
the new site, along with the neophyte population.
The relocation of Comondu also resulted in the transfer of the farming station at San Miguel to the jurisdiction of Comondu mission. San Miguel had
functioned as a de facto mission for several years in the 1730s. A short baptismal register survives for San Miguel, and shows that two Jesuits spent
time there. One was Agustin Maria Luyando, S.J., and the second was the Scottish missionary William Gordon, S.J. who was a refugee from the 1734
Indian uprising in the southern Cape region of the Peninsula. In addition to the baptism of children from local families, the Jesuits also congregated
numbers of Guaycuros from the Magdalena Desert south of the Sierra. The Jesuit missionaries directed the construction of extensive building complexes
at both sites.
The next mission established in a valley in the mountains was La Purisima mission, that also occupied two sites. Nicholas Tamaral, S.J., established
the mission in 1720 at a location now know as La Purisima Vieja after having served a period of apprenticeship at San Miguel de Comondu. The Jesuits
moved the mission to a new site in 1730, again because of the inadequate water supply at the first site greater potential for agriculture at the new
site. Palou described the second site of the mission in 1771 as being ?on the banks of an arroyo called Cadegomo, on a beautiful spot and in a
pleasant climate. It has enough land capable of cultivation upon which may be sown several fanegas [a measure of grain] of wheat, with an abundance of
water from the said arroyo, though for irrigating it depends upon a very large dam built across the arroyo, and upon the floods.?
In the 1720s and 1730s, the Jesuits established six missions among the native peoples of the southern Cape region and the Magdalena Desert region,
speakers of various dialects of a language known today by linguists as Guaycura and Pericu. In the south the Spanish encountered a damper climate that
supported agriculture, including more specialized crops such as sugar cane. Moreover, with the establishment of San Jose del Cabo mission in 1730,
there was a strategically located settlement that could supply fresh water and provisions to the Nau de Filipinas (Manila galleon). The colonial
government had pressed the Jesuits for several decades to find a safe port for the Nau to stop on the long voyage from Manila to Acapulco. The
strongest resistance to the new colonial order also occurred in the south with uprisings in October of 1734 and again in the early 1740s, and the
uprisings and their suppression modified the development of missions in the southern region. The rebels in 1734 killed Jesuit missionaries Lorenzo
Carranco and Nicolas Tamaral, and also ambushed the second Nau to stop at San Jose del Cabo.
On balance, the southern Baja California missions were perhaps the least successful of the establishments in the Peninsula. The indigenous peoples of
the south had had contact with Spaniards for more than a century, particularly pearl fishermen who often landed and exploited the natives. European
corsairs also visited the southern Cape region looking to ambush the Nau de Filipinas, and also interacted with the indigenous peoples. Some Spanish
officials believed that the southern natives caused so many problems because of the presence of individuals of mixed ancestry in the population,
children born of liaisons between native women and interlopers. However, I would suggest that more than anywhere else in Baja California, the
indigenous peoples in the south had had extensive contacts with the Spanish, and had experienced abuse and exploitation. The Spanish perception of the
people of mixed ancestry being a source of problem was consistent with the prevailing racial theory of the time that held people of mixed ancestry to
be naturally prone to vice and a threat to the moral fabric of society.
The first of the missions was La Paz, located at the port visited by Hernan Cortes in the mid-1530s. Although today La Paz is a major city in Baja
California, the mission established there lasted only from 1720 to 1749, and was abandoned because of limited water and agricultural potential and
other problems including the hostility of the natives. In 1730, a decade after the establishment of the mission, Nicolas Tamaral, S.J., noted that La
Paz did not have a missionary, and that few neophytes lived at the mission. However, Tamaral did highlight the potential of another site named Todos
Santos because of the availability of water and arable land.
In 1721, missionary Clemente Guillen, S.J., established the second mission known as Dolores del Sur at a site roughly half way between Loreto and La
Paz, among an indigenous population collectively known as the Guaycuros. Guillen had been stationed at San Juan Bautista mission, established south of
Loreto in 1705. The site chosen for the mission initially had a large indigenous population but little water for agriculture. By 1721, few neophytes
still lived at the mission. Moreover, hostile natives from several neighboring Islands raided the mission. Guillen moved the indigenous population
of San Juan Bautista south to the site of the new mission described as having lands that could be irrigated from nine springs. The water supply,
however, did not prove to be adequate, and Guillen later moved Dolores mission to a new site.
In the same year the Jesuits also began to develop Santiago mission, but problems with the natives forced the relocation of the new mission to a
second site and delayed the formal foundation of the new establishment. After several years of turmoil, the natives of Santiago reportedly had
settled down by 1730. The tranquility reported at Santiago mission, however, was deceptive, given that only four years later the neophytes rebelled
and killed the resident missionary.
The Jesuits established three additional missions in the south in the early 1730s. The first was San Jose del Cabo, established in 1730 by veteran
missionary Nicolas Tamaral. Tamaral reported considerable activity at the new mission in 1730. The Jesuit baptized more than 900 natives, and directed
the development of the mission. Native workers opened an irrigation ditch that ran for 2,592 varas, and completed construction of temporary buildings.
Tamaral additionally reported developments at two satellite villages Soledad and Santa Rosa. As events were to prove, Tamaral?s early optimism was
misplaced, and in 1734 the Jesuit died at the hands of the neophytes who destroyed what had been developed over four years at the beginning of the
uprising. .
The next mission, Todos Santos, first developed as a satellite village of La Paz mission, established because of the availability of water and arable
land. The neophytes settled at Todos Santos produced wheat, corn, rice, and sugar. In 1733, the Jesuit Sigismundo Taraval established an independent
mission at Todos Santos named Santa Rosa, located several miles from Todos Santos visita. Taraval was to direct the continued development of
agriculture at Todos Santos. Taraval survived the uprising in the year following the establishment of the mission, and wrote the most detailed
account of the uprising and its suppression. In 1749, the Jesuits formally combined La Paz and Santa Rosa missions under the rubric of Nuestra Senora
del Pilar, the name of La Paz mission, but the establishment was more commonly called Todos Santos.
The Jesuits formally established the sixth mission, San Luis Gonzaga, in 1737 at a site called Chiriyaki, near Dolores del Sur mission. However,
shortages of missionary personnel delayed the arrival of the first permanent resident Jesuit until the early 1740s. In late 1743, Jesuit visitador
general Juan Antonio Balthasar, S.J., reported that San Luis was being established on a more permanent basis. With the establishment of San Luis
there were two missions located in Guaycuro territory, two among natives speaking Guaycuro dialects, and two among the Pericu. It should also be noted
that in the 1730s several Jesuits who spent time at San Miguel visita of Comondu mission congregated and baptized several dozen Guaycurans. One of the
Jesuits was William Gordon, who left La Paz following the outbreak of the 1734 rebellion.
Although much of Baja California is dry, the Central Desert that straddles the modern boundary between Baja California Sur and Baja California is
without question the driest section of the Peninsula. Water does exist in small pools, but with the exception of the oasis of San Ignacio none of the
mission sites chosen supported the Mediterranean-style agriculture practiced by the Spanish. The Central Desert was a geographic obstacle that had to
be overcome to reach the more hospitable shores of California that the Jesuits knew awaited them to the north, and a large indigenous population not
brought under control could potentially threaten communications once the projected colonization of California finally began.
Although the Jesuits and later the Franciscans and Dominicans baptized thousands of natives, most neophytes could not be supported at the main
mission village (cabecera) and resided in their traditional settlements that the missionaries euphemistically called visitas. Most of these satellite
settlements were undeveloped with few if any buildings or other improvements, and the missionaries made no pretext to the contrary. In 1755, for
example, Santa Gertrudis mission (established 1751) counted an indigenous population of more than 1,500, but only 69 resided at the cabecera. The rest
of the population lived on eight other seasonally shifting villages. Two decades later, in 1773, the population of Santa Gertrudis reportedly totaled
1,000, but only 141 resided at the cabecera. Franciscan missionary Francisco Palou, O.F.M., described the settlement pattern at Santa Gertrudis in
1771 in terms used to also describe the other missions in the Central Desert:
Of all of these families only forty families live at the mission with one hundred and seventy-four souls. All the rest are scattered in seven
houseless rancherias which surround the mission proper in every direction, all looking for wild fruits and changing about according to the seasons.
The missionaries periodically brought the neophytes from the outlying settlements for short periods of religious instruction, but then returned them
to their traditional way of life with only a veneer of Christianity at best. Despite the extreme drawbacks of this approach to evangelization, the
missionaries wrote confidently in a self-congratulatory tone of the depth of conversion of the natives. In his 1744 report on San Igancio, Sistiaga
noted that: ?They [neophytes] forsake, along with the many errors and superstitions, their belief in all the diabolic deceits and fables.? Needless
to say, Sistiaga and the other missionaries did not really know what transpired while the neophytes were on their own without supervision.
Over the course of some five decades the Jesuits and later the Franciscans established six missions in the Central Desert: Guadalupe (1720); San
Ignacio (1728); Santa Gertrudis (1751); San Francisco de Borja (1762); Santa Maria (1766); and San Fernando (1769). Following the establishment of San
Ignacio, it took more than two decades to establish the next mission even when funds were available for an endowment. One of the difficulties was
locating a suitable site with some water and arable soil, and initially the Jesuits planned to name the next mission Dolores del Norte as per the
request of the congregation of Our Lady of the Sorrows in Mexico City that provided the endowment. Reports from the 1740s referred to Dolores del
Norte as an incomplete mission, in the process of being established.
The final mission frontier in Baja California was the coastal region of the Pacific Coastal Desert northwest of San Fernando mission. This was the
region that the Franciscans left to the Dominicans as a part of the agreement to divide the Californias between the two orders. In 1767/1768, the
Spanish government ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from its territories. In Baja California, Franciscans from the apostolic college of San
Fernando, led by Junipero Serra, O.F.M., replaced the Jesuits. The Franciscans inherited a mission system in decline, and agreed to push on to settle
Alta California. The promise of the new mission field and particularly the need for personnel for new missions prompted the Franciscans to reach an
agreement with the Dominicans to cede the Baja California mission field. The Dominicans had previously been active during the sixteenth-century
evangelization of central Mexico, but had not played a role in the mission expansion on the northern frontier of Mexico.
As a part of the agreement, the Dominicans requested jurisdiction over lands not yet colonized and evangelized. The territory assigned to the
Dominicans in the northern part of Baja California included a series of coastal valleys in a region defined by geographers as the Pacific Coastal
Desert, as well as the mountainous interior. The Dominican mission frontier became commonly known as La Frontera. Over two decades the Dominicans
established five missions in the coastal valleys named Rosario (1774), Santo Domingo (1775), San Vicente (1780), San Miguel (1787), and Santo Tomas
(1791). They also established two missions in the interior named San Pedro Martir (1794) and Santa Catalina (1797).
Several of the Dominican missions occupied multiple sites, such as Rosario which the Dominicans moved to a new location around 1802 because a spring
used for irrigation at the first site dried up. The Dominicans also directed the development of satellite outposts also known as visitas or ranchos.
The missionaries at several of the missions supervised the construction of smaller building complexes at satellite settlements developed as centers of
farming or ranching. There are references to developed ranchos at several of the missions of La Frontera, including, San Jose (Rosario mission), San
Telmo (Santo Domingo), and Descanso (San Miguel). The Dominicans had buildings erected at all three ranchos, and moved Rosario mission to the San Jose
site in 1802 three years following the construction of buildings at the site and following the drying of the spring at the first site of the mission.
The construction record of San Telmo is the most complete. In 1796, the Dominicans directed the construction of an adobe structure measuring 50 varas
(a linear measurement of 33 inches) in length built at Rancho San Telmo. The building contained a reception room, bedroom, granary, dispensary, and
chapel. A corral and residence for the overseer were also built. In the following year a chapel was built at San Telmo, and three structures begun in
1796 were completed with the addition of a roof. Buildings at San Telmo were whitewashed. The development of San Telmo continued in 1798 with the
construction of a building that contained a granary, dispensary, and chapel. Lands for growing corn were cleared. In 1799, an adobe corral was built
at San Telmo, as well as a residence for workers assigned to San Telmo. Also added were A dam and irrigation ditch, and pillars were placed around a
pond of water to prevent cattle from entering it. The Dominicans developed San Telmo as a major satellite settlement.
Extant records note the first development of Descanso, an important farming station of San Miguel mission. In 1795, the Dominicans reported the
building of a granary 26 x 6 varas at a site 4 leagues from San Miguel mission where corn was grown. The description of the location of the site
identifies it as Descanso, later identified as a separate mission around 1817, after floods damaged the fields at San Miguel. Meigs and others
identify Descanso and later Guadalupe del Norte around 1834 as separate and independent missions. However, it is more likely that the move first to
Descanso and later to Guadalupe represented the relocation of San Miguel to new sites with greater agricultural potential.
Baja California was an isolated mission frontier on the fringe of colonial Mexico that did not attract many settlers, and did not have any apparent
source of wealth that would attract settlers. While the Jesuit missions of the Rio de la Plata region are often identified as a theocracy, the reality
is that the Baja California missions more closely resembled a Jesuit state within colonial Spanish America. The Jesuits established the missions in
the Peninsula after 1697 at their own expense, although later the royal government did provide some funds. More importantly, the Jesuits retained a
high degree of control over the non-missionary personnel brought into the Peninsula. Neither group of missions really existed as a theocracy, given
the connections between the mission enterprise and the colonial state. Rather, it is necessary to view the missions, particularly when seen within the
larger colonial world, as forming part of a complex and at times contradictory series of colonial policies and initiatives in the Americas.
The development of the missions in Rio Grande do Sul and Baja California differed in a number of ways, but the underlying differences resulted from
the environment of the two regions and the level of social and political organization of the native peoples. In Baja California, the Jesuits could not
accomplish the fundamental goal of creating stable indigenous communities that conformed to the Spanish urban ideal. In the Rio de la Plata region, on
the other hand, they succeeded in congregating thousands of Guarani on new communities.
[Edited on 9-8-2004 by academicanarchist]
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David K
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Great stuff Robert!
Allow me to clarify the names used above, applied to one of the missions. For today's historic minded visitor, let me say the Malibat, San Juan
Bautista, and Ligui are the same mission whose full name was San Juan Bautista de Ligui y Malibat. The two Indian tribes of the area had two names for
the site (Malibat and Ligui).
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BajaCactus
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Wow!!!
Excellent journey through history Robert.... thanks!!!
BajaCactus
"Where Baja is so much more than a dream..."
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