Primary Source

Misión San Juan Capistrano

Annotation

The Misión San Juan Capistrano was a Spanish colonial complex intended to evangelize the native peoples. Although Spain claimed vast stretches of territory throughout the Americas, it struggled to produce enough bureaucrats to staff local governments. In some sparsely-populated regions like the modern-day US Southwest, the Crown granted missionaries the power to establish and supervise settlements among the indigenous people in order to convert them to Christianity. Francsiscan friars oversaw the San Juan Mission, which was built with indigneous labor in the mid-eighteenth century near modern-day San Antonio, Texas. It originally featured a church, a convent, and a granary.

Credits

"Mission San Juan." 2018. National Park Service. June 30, 2021.
Annotated by Brittany Erwin.
"Mission San Juan Capistrano, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, San Antonio, Texas." 2015. Flickr. June 30, 2021.

How to Cite This Source

"Misión San Juan Capistrano," in World History Commons, https://worldhistorycommons.org/mision-san-juan-capistrano [accessed March 28, 2024]