Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó
Mission Loreto | ||
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Mission of Our Lady of Loreto Concho | ||
Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó | ||
Style Baroque | | |
Groundbreaking | 1740 | |
Completed | 1744 | |
Specifications | ||
Number of domes | 1 | |
Materials | Stone | |
Administration | ||
Division | Spanish missions in the Americas | |
Subdivision | Baja California |
Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó, or Mission Loreto, was founded on October 25, 1697, at the
The mission, with the exception of its essential Catholic church functions, closed in 1829.
History
Attempts
After
After many unsuccessful ventures in Baja California, the government of New Spain and the Spanish crown were reluctant to finance any further attempts. However, Kino's enthusiasm for this potential mission field was persistent. He ultimately persuaded some of his colleagues, including Salvatierra and the authorities in New Spain, to allow the Jesuits to return to the peninsula, but this time on their own responsibility and largely at their own expense.
By the start of 1697 everything was ready for the journey's start at the mouth of the
Founding
On October 19, 1697, Salvatierra, with nine armed men, disembarked from the galley Santa Elvira at the place that the Indians called Coruncho (
A Monqui
Two days later a Spanish ship with supplies and reinforcements, including a second Jesuit priest,
Later history
The Loreto Mission would prove "worthless as a breadbasket" because of insufficient water to irrigate crops, but valuable as a base for expansion of the missionary enterprise and Spanish control of Baja California. The Spanish recognized that providing food to the Indians would draw them to the mission, but food had to be brought from the mainland of Mexico across the often stormy Gulf of California. Periodic shortages of food impacted the mission for decades. In 1699, the mission's need to find land suitable for agriculture led it to establish a new mission in a promising valley about 25 kilometres (16 mi) inland from Loreto at a place called Biaundó by the Cochimí Indian residents.[6] In succeeding years, with Loreto as the base, the Jesuits created several new missions in south-central Baja California and then in more remote portions of the peninsula both to the north and to the south.
Loreto mission's stone church, which still stands, was begun in 1740 and completed in 1744.
Mission Loreto came to an end in 1829, by which time the native population throughout Baja California had declined "to the point of near extinction."[8]
Population decline
By the end of 1698, one year after its founding, the Loreto mission had a population of about 100 Monqui families who had been converted to Christianity, nearly all of the Monqui who had lived along a 65-kilometre (40 mi) stretch of coast.This population of around 400 steadily decreased thereafter because of the toll from imported European diseases. By 1733, the Monqui population of Loreto was only 134 and the population was maintained thereafter at about that level only by bringing in Christian Indians from other parts of Baja California. In 1762, a Jesuit report recorded only 38 baptisms in the previous 18 years – but 309 deaths.[9]
At the same time as the Monqui population declined, the transplanted Spanish, mestizo, and Indian population of Loreto increased. In 1730, the Jesuits recorded the non-Monqui population of Loreto at 175, which included 99 men and their wives and children. The men were employed as soldiers, sailors, artisans, teamsters, and cowboys. By 1770, the total population of Loreto was more than 400, of whom only about 120 were Indians indigenous to Baja California. The Monqui as a people and distinct culture were virtually extinct.[10]
Gallery
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Detail of the façade
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Presidio arms
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Colonial-regional rare religious artifacts
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Side view from plaza de armas
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Museum structure attached to presidio from plaza de armas
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Main nave
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Interior
See also
- Spanish missions in Baja California
- Spanish missions in California
- Veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church
- Spanish colonization of the Americas
- Eusebio Kino
- fleet oiler built during World War II
- List of Jesuit sites
Footnotes
- ^ "Baja California Sur-Loreto". Instituto Nacional para el Federalismo y el Desarrollo Municipal. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
- ^ "Loreto Directory and City Guide". Mexonline.com. Mexonline.com. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
- ^ Weber, Francis J. (April 1967), "Jesuit Missions in Baja California", The Americas, Vol. 23, No. 4., pp. 412. Downloaded from JSTOR; Burckhalter, et al 19-20.
- ^ Crosby, Harry W. (1994), Antigua California: Mission and Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, 1697-1768, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 29-33
- ^ Crosby, pp. 34-36, 38-39; Burkckhalter et al, p. 20
- ^ Crosby, 34-45
- Project MUSE.
- ^ Jackson, Robert H. (1981), "Epidemic Disease and Population Decline in the Baja California Missions", Southern California Quarterly, Vol 63, No. 4, p. 308. Downloaded from JSTOR.
- ^ Crosby, pp. 266–277
- ^ Crosby, pp. 276–277
References
- Crosby, Harry W. 1994. Antigua California: Mission and Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, 1697–1768. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
- León-Portilla, Miguel. 1997. Loreto's Key Role in the Early History of the Californias (1697–1773). California Mission Studies Association.
- Salvatierra, Juan María. 1971.Selected Letters about Lower California. Edited by Ernest J. Burrus. Dawson's Book Shop, Los Angeles.
- Vernon, Edward W. 2002. Las Misiones Antiguas: The Spanish Missions of Baja California, 1683–1855. Viejo Press, Santa Barbara, California.
External links