Mission San Antonio de Padua Founded: Spain Expands in California
Junípero Serra sang the Salve Regina while hanging bells from an oak tree, hoping the sound would attract Salinan people to his third California mission. July 14, 1771. The nearest Spanish settlement sat 25 miles away—he wanted isolation. Within months, 158 Salinans arrived for baptism, trading their seasonal migration patterns for fixed agricultural labor. The mission eventually claimed 165,000 acres of their ancestral land. By 1834, when Mexico secularized the missions, disease had reduced the Salinan population by 95 percent. Serra called it conversion. The Salinans had no written language to record what they called it.
July 14, 1771
255 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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