The Old Mission's History

The Old Mission of San Juan Bautista was founded on June 24, 1797 by Fray Fermin Lasuen of the Franciscan order regionally based at Mission San Carlos Boromeo del Rio Carmelo (Carmel). Established as the 15th of the twenty-one missions and five assistencias of the Alta California mission chain, Old Mission San Juan Bautista was named for the patron saint of that day upon which the mission was founded; that being the saint's day of Saint John the Baptist, and hence the name of the mission and community of San Juan Bautista. The mission church of San Juan Bautista is unique in so far as its overall size and its status as the only three-aisled mission in the Alta California mission chain. The overall layout of the mission complex is that of a gated quadrangular enclosure; access to the center of which was made via two primary gateways extending through the Southeast convento wing, and by extension, the northwest convento wing of the quadrangle. Water was secured from a rock-lined artesian well or wells located at the center of the quadrangle enclosure (one of which is currently undergoing archaeological investigation under the auspices of the Alta California Mission Research Project) and another which has been claimed for the cemetary side of the Old Mission Church.

Built on a ridge created by the uplift of the San Andreas Fault, the Old Mission stands immediately above and slightly to the west of the San Andreas on that half of the geological formation identified with the Pacific Plate, whereas the Old Mission orchard immediately to the east lies on that half identified with the American Plate. Each of these geological formations grade against one another thereby creating the faulting and earthquake activity for which San Juan Bautista and much of north-central California is known.

Mission life at San Juan Bautista, particularly during the early years prior to the secularization of the California missions, was centered on the consolidation of access to natural resources and on the religious conversion of Native Americans to Christian doctrine and to their cultural conversion and political incorporation into the Spanish empire and its frontier cultural traditions and political economy (Bannon 1964; Jackson and Castillo 1995; Kennedy 1993; Kessell 1979; Mendoza and Halla 1997). While Christian teachings and doctrines framed the course of daily life and the larger goals of the missionaries, the isolated conditions of the frontier required that each mission, and San Juan Bautista was no exception, determine and define itself in terms of self-sufficiency and contributions to the growth of towns and the broader settlement of frontier regions and establishment of colonial institutions (Clough 1996; Engelhardt 1931; Farris 1991). The early Padres, or mission priests, were largely renaissance types who often plied their skills in administering Christian doctrine along with such other skills a ranching and stock raising, agriculture and irrigation works, architecture and construction, wood and metal craftsmanship, accounting and management, fundraising, facilities maintenance, and of course, the planning and coordination of the community's respective social agenda (Jackson and Castillo 1995; Mendoza and Halla 1997; Weber 1978).

Where those activities centered on the mission buildings themselves is concerned, the southeast convento wing served as the primary living quarters of the mission Padres, and included dormitories, kitchens, and reading rooms; whereas the southwest and northwest convento wings are thought to have served as housing for unmarried Native American female converts, and for the storage of provisions and supplies. At the center of the existing southeast convento wing still stands the Old Mission kitchen area where meals were prepared on a daily basis for a mission Indian population that eventually rose to a height of 1248 native inhabitants by 1823. According to an old museum caption in the Old Mission kitchen, as many as 50 cattle per day were slaughtered and prepared for meals during the height of the missions population growth. Shortly after 1809, the mission Indian population fell dramatically and by the 1820's, the mission population had fallen to below 1,000 persons. Though questions remain as to why this particular population decline occured when it did, prevailing views presuppose that disease and attrition were the primary factors underlying this decline of the Mutsun Indian population of mission San Juan Bautista. By the advent of the 1830's, the effects of the new and independent government of Mexico City were already being felt as far afield as missions San Juan Bautista and Solano in northern Alta California. At San Juan, the Mexican congressional decree of March 20, 1829, that ordered the expulsion of all Spaniards from Alta California, only served to heighten tensions within the mission system and further served to disrupt Hispanic colonial life in the farflung province of Alta California. On August 17, 1833, Mexican law ordered the secularization of the mission system and the partitioning of all mission lands and holdings. This decree ultimately led to the collapse of the mission system in Alta California. The failure of the secularization order to complete with the redistribution and parcelling of mission lands to the Indian inhabitants of Alta California fueled the decline of the mission communities and the dismantling and confiscation of mission holdings, including existing buildings, farm lands, art works, and furnishings. Farris (1991:26), in recounting the problematic character of findings related to the roof tile fall within rooms from the Neophyte Family Housing Area (Taix Site) of San Juan Bautista, has documented "ample evidence of a careful stripping of the old buildings to obtain the complete tiles for probable re-use in other structures...in the post-secularization period."

Recent archaeological excavations of the Old Mission quadrangle of San Juan Bautista, by the Institute of Archaeology of the California State University Monterey Bay, has resulted in several preliminary findings of interest and or concern to archaeologists and historians concerned with Spanish or Hispanic colonial archaeology in Calfornia. These findings are briefly summarized in the following project narrative.