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California in the Dreams of Gálvez and the Achievements of Serra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Miguel León-Portilla
Miguel León-Portilla*
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma De México, Mexico City, Mexico
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Extract

Let me introduce to you, or rather reintroduce, the two great characters, the dramatis personae about whose dreams and achievements I invite you to a brief reflection.

The action begins in July 1768. The Majorcan Father Serra had spent already twenty years working as a missionary in various places on the Mexican mainland. Of all of his accomplishments, the best known were his achievements in the Sierra Gorda of Querétaro where, accompanied by his former student and always active assistant Francisco Palou, he had established five missions. Serra certainly deserved the reputation he had of being not only a sincere and religious friar but also a distinguished theologian, indeed a scholar, and besides a man who knew how to carry out what he considered ought to be done. Now at the age of fifty five, he had a new and difficult task as president of the California missions, replacing the just-expelled Jesuits. There, at the old mission headquarters of Loreto, he was learning about the demographic collapse of the natives and the general situation of the peninsula. Before him lay the task of reorganizing those missions whose future appeared to him so uncertain.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , April 1985 , pp. 428 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1985

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References

1 Letter of José de Gálvez to Fr. Junípero Serra, Santa Ana, California, July 22, 1768, Archivo Histórico of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Fondo Franciscano, v. 65, fols. 174–180.

2 “Letter of Junípero Serra to the Superiors of the San Fernando College (Mexico City), Tepic, October 17, 1767”, in Writings of Junípero Serra, Tibesar, Antonine O.F.M., (ed.), 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955–1966), 1, 33.Google Scholar

3 Instructions of the Visitor General de Gálvez, José, Santa Ana, California, October 1st, 1768, Archivo General de la Nación, (Mexico City), Misiones, 5. 12, fol. 64–77.Google Scholar

4 Report written by Gálvez’s secretary Juan Manuel de Viniegra, preserved at the National Library, Madrid, Manuscript 4, 494, Papeles Varios, fols. 411–530. The English translation of this quotation is taken from Chapman, Charles E., A History of California, The Spanish Period (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921), p. 236.Google Scholar

5 “Letter of Viceroy Antonio Maria Bucareli to the Secretary of State Julián de Arriaga, February 22, 1771”, Archivo General de Indias, (Seville), Audiencia de México, Legajo 1509, num. 204. Quoted from Bobb, Bernard E., The Vicerregency of Antonio María Bucareli in New Spain, 1771–1779 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), p. 31.Google Scholar

6 “Letter of Junípero Serra to Governor Fernando de Neve, April 18, 1780”, in Tibesar, (ed.), Writings, 3, 437.Google Scholar

7 Ibid.

8 “Title page of Marriage Record of Mission San Carlos, June 3, 1770”, in Tibesar, (ed.), Writings, 4, 317.Google Scholar