Mission Santa Barbara Teacher Field Report
HooverNietoVic: . . . . Thu, Aug 9, 12:10AM PST (-0800 GMT)
DESTINATION #2 MISSION SANTA BARBARA FIELD REPORT 08/09/2001 TEAM #9 JOE NIETO & HOWARD HOOVER Our second destination for the Camp Internet training in Santa Barbara, California was the Santa Barbara Mission founded in December of the year 1786. Fray Junipero Serra founded this mission approximately two hundred and fifteen years ago. This single man is said to be the founder of many missions along the California coastline. Using the GPS (Global Positioning System) unit, we discovered the exact latitude, longitude, and elevation of the mission location as follows: Latitude = 34.43783° Longitude = -119.71314° Elevation = 315 feet The Chumash tribe was the group of Native Americans that inhabited the area of the mission before the Spaniards and missionaries arrived. We do not call them “Indians,” for the early European settlers and explorers of the New World mistook this land for the location of India. (Too bad they did not have GPS!) We found out that over four thousand Chumash Native Americans were baptized into the Christian religion. Although museum literature insists that the native people “voluntarily” worked for the friars and lived within the confines of the mission lands, we felt that our prior knowledge of history found this to be false. The main question is: were the native peoples really treated fairly like the missionary claimed or was this just a façade? We do know that the Chumash were the workers who built the mission, made candles, and engaged in other forms of manual labor. Did they do these things willingly or has history been exaggerated? Nevertheless, mission history tells us that the Chumash faired well in their many duties. There were various Chumash artifacts on display in the mission’s self-guided tour. We observed Chumash baskets, skin covered clubs, mortar and pestles used for grinding food, steatite bowls, stone arrowheads, arrow straightners, metate and mano, stone effigies, axes, and animal snares. Below is a sketch of an animal snare that the Chumash probably used to catch small game. Now, let us introduce you to The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island. It is said that a young Native American child was accidentally left on the island by her mother. The only early attempt to rescue her by her mother failed due to high winds that were jeopardizing the safety of the ship. It was not until the year 1853 that Captain George Nidever was sent by Father Gonzalez Rubio to find the missing girl. At the age of fifty, the lone woman was brought back to the mission at Santa Barbara. There she was baptized, Juana Maria, by the mission fathers who were living in Santa Barbara at the time. Shortly after the baptism, she died from fruit and vegetables that she had overindulged in. Her exact burial site, in the mission graveyard, is unknown. However, in 1928 a bronze plaque on the back wall of the mission tower on the cemetery side was placed in her honor. The inscription reads: JUANA MARIA INDIAN WOMAN ABANDONED SAN NICHOLAS ISLAND FOUND AND BROUGHT TO SANTA BARBARA BY CAPTAIN GEORGE NIDEVER IN 1853 SANTA BARBARA CHAPTER DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 1928 For a complete story of the Lone Woman, go to: button For more information on the Santa Barbara Mission, go to: button - For Lone Woman Story
HooverNietoVic: . . . . Thu, Aug 9, 12:19AM PST (-0800 GMT)
This picture of the graveyard where the Lone woman and over 4000 Chumash Indians are buried:
teeterarrowhead: . . . . Sun, Aug 19, 2:53PM PST (-0800 GMT)
Mission Santa Barbara… The mission was the tenth of the California missions to be founded by the Spanish Franciscans on December 4, 1786 . It’s at elevation of 405 feet, latitude of LAT: 34.43796 ^and LONG: 119.71329GPS^. The Chumash Indians lived in the area prior to the arrival of the Spanish. They were hunter-gathers that traveled back and forth to the Channel Islands for sustenance. The Chumash worked with the Franscians at the mission and learned many things about agriculture, irrigation, etc; some of them becoming Christians as well. To learn more about the mission, visit their website by clicking on the button following button . The Lone Woman of San Nicholas… Juana Maria was the name given to a valiant and resourceful Indian woman that was abandoned and lost on San Nicholas Island for eighteen years. Juana Maria was one of only about 20 Indians left on the island in 1835 when a ship came there with instructions to remove all of the Indians and take them to the Los Angeles area. While the Indians and sailors were boarding the ship, Juana Maria noticed that her young child was missing, so she returned to the island to look for him/her and was left behind. Through a series of mistakes and mishaps, she was left alone on the island for eighteen years without ever finding her child. In May of 1853, she was rescued by Captain Nidever and taken to Santa Barbara to live with his family. She was respected and protected by the Nidever family; however, she died only seven weeks later. She was buried in an unmarked grave, as was the custom at the time, in the cemetery of the Santa Barbara Mission which is at an elevation of 321 feet, LAT: 34.43910 and LONG^: 119.71348^. The bronze plaque erected on 1928 by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the mission cemetery can be found at . Santa Barbara Botanic Garden…