Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

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For the novel by Thornton Wilder, see The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

Today, Mission San Luis Rey de Francia is well maintained. This Mission is architecturally distinctive due to the combination of Spanish, Moorish, and Mexican lines exhibited.
Location	Oceanside, California
Name as Founded	La Misión de San Luis, Rey de Francia [1]
English Translation	The Mission of Saint Louis, King of France
Patron	King Louis IX [2]
Nickname(s)	"King of the Alta California Missions" [3]
Founding Date	June 13, 1798 [4]
Founding Priest(s)	Father Fermín Lasuén [5]
Founding Order	Eighteenth [2]
Military District	First [6][7]
Native Tribe(s) Spanish Name(s)	Kumeyaay, Quechnajuichom Diegueño, Luiseño
Native Place Name(s)	Quechinga [8]
Baptisms	5,399 [9]
Marriages	1,335 [9]
Burials	2,718 [9]
Neophyte Population	2,788 [10][11]
Secularized	1834 [2]
Returned to the Church	1865 [2]
Governing Body	Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego
Current Use	Franciscan College / Museum
Coordinates	33.1°15′63″N, 117.2°00′66″W
National Historic Landmark	#NPS–70000142
Date added to the NRHP	1970
California Historical Landmark	#239
Web Site	http://www.sanluisrey.org/

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia was founded on June 13, 1798 in what is now the town of Oceanside, California. In 1816, Mission San Antonio de Pala was established twenty miles inland as its asistencia ("sub-mission"). The local Quechnajuichom tribe became known as the Luiseño, after the Mission.

[edit] Precontact

The current prevailing theory postulates that Paleo-Indians entered the Americas from Asia via a land bridge called "Beringia" that connected eastern Siberia with present-day Alaska (when sea levels were significantly lower, due to widespread glaciation) between about 15,000 to 35,000 years ago. The remains of Arlington Springs Man on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces of a very early habitation in California, dated to the last ice age (Wisconsin glaciation) about 13,000 years ago. The first humans are therefore thought to have made their homes among the southern valleys of California's coastal mountain ranges some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago; the earliest of these people are known only from archaeological evidence.^[12] The cultural impacts resulting from climactic changes and other natural events during this broad expanse of time were negligible; conversely, European contact was a momentous event, which profoundly affected California's native peoples.^[13]

[edit] History

In its prime, the San Luis Rey compound covered almost 6 acres, making it one of the most extensive of all the missions.^[14] An early account of life at the Mission was written by one of its neophytes, Pablo Tac, in his work Indian Life and Customs at Mission San Luis Rey: A Record of California Mission Life by Pablo Tac, An Indian Neophyte (written in Rome circa 1835, edited and translated by Minna Hewes and Gordon Hewes in 1958). In the book, Tac lamented the rapid decline of his people:On June 13,1798 the mission was found or built:

In Quechla not long ago there were 5,000 souls, with all their neighboring lands. Through a sickness that came to California 2,000 souls died, and 3,000 were left.^[15]

Tac went on to describe the preferential treatment the padres received:

In the mission of San Luis Rey de Francia the Fernandino [sic] father is like a king. He has his pages, alcaldes, majordomos, musicians, soldiers, gardens, ranchos, livestock....^[16]

The Mission-born, Franciscan-educated Tac noted that his people initially attempted to bar the Spaniards from their southern California lands. When the foreigners approached, "...the chief stood up...and met them," demanding, "...what are you looking for? Leave our country!"

During the Mexican-American War, the Mission was utilized as a military outpost by the United States Army.^[14] Following secularization, no religious services were held at the Mission until 1893, when two Mexican priests were given permission to restore the Mission as a Franciscan college.^[14] Father Joseph O'Keefe was assigned as an interpreter for the monks. It was he who began to restore the old Mission in 1895. The cuadrángulo (quadrangle) and church were completed in 1905. San Luis Rey College was opened as a seminary in 1950, but closed in 1969. Today, Mission San Luis Rey de Francia is a working mission. It is cared for by the people who belong to the parish, and is still being restored. There is a museum and visitors center at the Mission, as well as a small cemetery.

The fourth episode of the Walt Disney television series Zorro was filmed on the Mission grounds. The story line purported that the Mission was haunted, and the episode (entitled "The Ghost of the Mission") was aired on Halloween (October 31, 1957).

In 1998, Sir Gilbert Levine led members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and, with the special permission of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, the ancient Capella Giulia Choir of Saint Peter’s Basilica, in a series of concerts to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the founding of the mission. These festival concerts consituted the first-ever visit of this 500 year-old choir to the Western Hemisphere. The concerts were broadcast on NPR’s “Performance Today”.

[edit] Mission industries

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, circa 1910.

The goal of the missions was, above all, to become self-sufficient in relatively short order. Farming, therefore, was the most important industry of any mission. Prior to the establishment of the missions, the native peoples knew only how to utilize bone, seashells, stone, and wood for building, tool making, weapons, and so forth. The missionaries discovered that the Indians, who regarded labor as degrading to the masculine sex, had to be taught industry in order to learn how to be self-supportive. The result was the establishment of a great manual training school that comprised agriculture, the mechanical arts, and the raising and care of livestock. Everything consumed and otherwise utilized by the natives was produced at the missions under the supervision of the padres; thus, the neophytes not only supported themselves, but after 1811 sustained the entire military and civil government of California.^[17]

[edit] Mission bells

Bells were vitally important to daily life at any mission. The bells were rung at mealtimes, to call the Mission residents to work and to religious services, during births and funerals, to signal the approach of a ship or returning missionary, and at other times; novices were instructed in the intricate rituals associated with the ringing the mission bells.

[edit] Notes

Inside the "cavernous" capilla (chapel} at Mission San Luís Rey de Francia, circa 1900. The cruciform design is shared only with the ruined "Great Stone Church" at Mission San Juan Capistrano, making the two structures unique among the Alta California missions in that regard.^[18]

[edit] References

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia as it appeared in 1986. In 1841, French explorer Eugene Duflot de Mofras produced a sketch of the Mission that depicted a second campanario, thereby supporting the theory that two bell towers were planned, but never completed; the lone tower was also used as a lookout post.^[1]

• Engelhardt, Zephyrin, O.F.M. (1920). San Diego Mission. James H. Barry Company, San Francisco, CA. 
• Engelhardt, Zephyrin, O.F.M. (1922). San Juan Capistrano Mission. Standard Printing Co., Los Angeles, CA. 
• Forbes, Alexander (1839). California: A History of Upper and Lower California. Smith, Elder and Co., Cornhill, London. 
• Johnson, John; Crawford, Dinah & O'Neil, Stephen (1998), “The Ethnohistoric Basis for Cultural Affiliation in the Camp Pendleton Marine Base Area: Contributions to Luiseno and Juaneno Ethnohistory Based on Mission Register Research.” 
• Jones, Terry L. and Kathryn A. Klar (eds.) (2007). California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity. Altimira Press, Landham, MD. ISBN 0-759-10872-2. 
• Krell, Dorothy (ed.) (1979). The California Missions: A Pictorial History. Sunset Publishing Corporation, Menlo Park, CA. ISBN 0-376-05172-8. 
• Leffingwell, Randy (2005). California Missions and Presidios: The History & Beauty of the Spanish Missions. Voyageur Press, Inc., Stillwater, MN. ISBN 0-89658-492-5. 
• Lightfoot, Kent G. (2004). Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. ISBN 0-52020-824-2. 
• Paddison, Joshua (ed.) (1999). A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush. Heyday Books, Berkeley, CA. ISBN 1-890771-13-9. 
• Ruscin, Terry (1999). Mission Memoirs. Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA. ISBN 0-932653-30-8. 
• Yenne, Bill (2004). The Missions of California. Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, CA. ISBN 1-59223-319-8. 
• Young, Stanley and Melba Levick (1988). The Missions of California. Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, CA. ISBN 0-8118-3694-0. 

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

The courtyard of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, with the first California pepper tree (Schinus molle) planted in California in 1830, visible behind the arch.^[2]

• Las Flores Asistencia
• Mission San Antonio de Pala
• USNS Mission San Luis Rey (AO-128) — a Buenaventura Class fleet oiler built during World War II.
• Union Station (San Diego)

[edit] External links

• Early photographs, sketches, land surveys of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, via Calisphere, California Digital Library
• Elevation & Site Layout sketches of the Mission proper
• Satellite image from Google Maps
• Early History of the California Coast, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary

v • d • e U.S. National Register of Historic Places Keeper of the Register · History of the National Register of Historic Places · Property types · Historic district · Contributing property List of entries National Park Service · National Historic Landmarks · National Battlefields · National Historic Sites · National Historical Parks · National Memorials · National Monuments