San Buenaventura Mission

The region where the mission is found was described by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 as "a beautiful valley in which there is much maize and food, with high sierras and rugged land surrounding the valley" (Weber xi). The Mission and its environs were given county status in 1872 as an autonomous district of 1,878 square miles (Weber xi). The Mission is one of the numerous missions making up an important religious system in the California region during the eighteenth century and beyond as the area came under Spanish conquest, Spanish rule, and eventually liberation from Spain:

The entire history of human affairs relates no adventure of greater ambition and deals with no task more utterly hopeless than the noble effort of the Franciscan padres of California to raise a pagan Indian race to the white man's standard of living. To add to its unique distinction, the whole grandiose undertaking from beginning to end spanned merely the period of one normal lifetime (Berger 3).

The period of Spanish rule covered 53 years beginning with settlement and extending to Mexican independence in 1822:

The short Spanish era of fifty-three years bequeathed to modern Californians an abundant heritage o

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and dwellings were also built around the two courtyards planted with gardens. The stone church took 15 years to complete, and it was dedicated in 1809. The remains of Father Santa Maria, who had died in 1806, were transferred from the old church to a niche in the wall of the new sanctuary: The thick walls were built of native stone and masonry, the roof of tile, and the ceiling beams of timbers brought down from the Ojai. A beautifully carved pulpit and canopy projected from the right wall. The pilasters of the canopied romanesque altar were finished in imitation marble and heavily gilded. The elaborate altar pieces included two silver crucifixes, silver oilstocks and a sculptured image of the Immaculate Conception (Berger 181-182). The fathers were able to take full advantage of the unusually industrious local Indian population, which benefited the mission in bringing water to the fields and in contributing to the abundant crops. The buildings were damaged by a series of earthquakes from December 1812 to February 1813, and much of the building had to be reconstructed. The mission was abandoned for a time when there was an attack by the Frenchman Bouchard around 1818, and problems continued throughout the troubled revo
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2089
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)