Indian Family Housing at Mission San Juan Bautista: Archaeology and Ethnohistory

Summary

Although the Indian converts resident at Mission San Juan Bautista numbered as high as 1248 (in 1823), the available adobe housing for families could only accommodate perhaps a fifth of this number. Archaeological testing on the Indian family housing site for this mission was combined with Spanish sacramental records, annual reports, and other documents to suggest individuals and their families most likely to have been allotted this scarce housing. The aim of this study is to attempt to bring the Indian presence at the mission to life and thus rectify the unfortunate pattern of seeing missions simply in terms of the priests and soldiers and a few other "gente de razon". In many cases we can follow individual converts from their original native villages and the personal name they had right on through their lives at the mission, including occupations and relations thanks to a valuable online database held at the Huntington Library.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage