Spanish Missions in California Begin
In 1769 the Franciscan friar Junípero Serra and governor Gaspar de Portolá led an expedition that founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá—the first of twenty-one Spanish missions established along the California coast. The missions were designed simultaneously as religious institutions, economic enterprises, and military outposts to forestall Russian and British encroachment on Spain's Pacific coast. They operated on a system of forced indigenous labour and religious conversion that devastated California's native population through disease, cultural destruction, and violence. The mission system ended with Mexican independence in 1821, after which the missions were secularised.
- Year: 1769 CE
- Category: Cultural
