Misión San Bruno

The short-lived Jesuit mission of San Bruno was established in 1684 on the Baja California Peninsula near the Gulf of California, in colonial Mexico of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Mission was located at

26°13′57″N 111°23′53″W / 26.23250°N 111.39806°W / 26.23250; -111.39806. The location of this mission should not be confused with the location of the present day town of San Bruno which is located about 110 kilometres (68 mi) to the north.

The site is about 25 kilometres (16 mi) north of the later site of the town of Loreto, in present-day Loreto Municipality, Baja California Sur state, Mexico'

History[]

In 1683, the Spanish admiral Isidro de Atondo y Antillón and the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino were forced to abandon an attempted settlement and mission at La Paz because of hostilities with the native Pericúes and Guaycura. In 1684, they moved north to the central portion of the peninsula, and selected a site for a settlement at the Cochimí settlement of Teupnon, near the mouth of a substantial arroyo about 25 kilometres (16 mi) north of the present day city of Loreto. The date was October 7, 1684, the Feast of San Bruno.^[1]

Mission work was begun with about 400 local Cochimi Indians and exploratory expeditions into the surrounding region were undertaken, including the first land crossing of the Baja California Peninsula by Europeans. However, shortages of water and imported food supplies and problems of illness forced the abandonment of San Bruno in May 1685, leaving Baja California again entirely in native hands until the first permanent Jesuit mission was established at Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó in 1697.^[2]

The San Bruno experience is documented in the letters and reports of Atondo, Kino, and other participants.^[3] A few crumbling walls of the uncompleted mission and fortress are all that remain of the San Bruno Mission.^[4]

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Bolton, Herbert Eugene. 1936. Rim of Christendom. Macmillan, New York.
• Burrus, Ernest J. 1954. Kino Reports to Headquarters: Correspondence of Eusebio F. Kino, S.J., from New Spain with Rome. Instituto Historicum S.J., Rome.
• Burrus, Ernest J. 1965. Kino Writes to the Duchess. Jesuit Historical Institute, Rome.
• Mathes, W. Michael. 1969. First from the Gulf to the Pacific: The Diary of the Kino-Atondo Peninsular Expedition, December 14, 1684 – January 13, 1685. Dawson's Book Shop, Los Angeles.
• Mathes, W. Michael. 1974. Californiana III: documentos para la historia de la transformación colonizadora de California, 1679–1686. José Porrúa Turanzas, Madrid.
• Vernon, Edward W. 2002. Las Misiones Antiguas: The Spanish Missions of Baja California, 1683–1855. Viejo Press, Santa Barbara, California.

See also[]

• Missions in Baja California Sur
• San Bruno, Baja California Sur
• Spanish missions in Baja California
• List of Jesuit sites