Let's Go Exploring!
Fourth Grade Mission

Your task is to explore the Missions of California! Read each of the sections below. Visit the sites provided and use them to answer the questions on your worksheets.

The Highway

An important part of the settlement of California by the Europeans was the Mission system. These were a series of Catholic outposts, where priests lived and spent most of their time trying to convert the local Indians to Christianity. The Missions were built up and down the California coast and the road connecting them was nearly 600 miles long. This foot path eventually became the "El Camino Real", a major highway that still exists today.

What modern highway follows "El Camino Real"?
What does "El Camino Real" mean?

Find the Answer at El Camino Real.

Father Serra

Father Junipero Serra, a Jesuit priest, played an important in getting the Missions of Northern California started. Eventually there would be 21 stretching from what is now San Diego in Southern California up to Sonoma in Northern California.

How would you descibe Father Serra?
What year did he leave Spain to become a missionary in the New World?
How old was he when he was appointed to the charge of the Missions to be established in Upper California?

Find the Answer at California Missions.

Mission Life

Chanting and music were and are a key part of being Catholic. Below is a Web site where you can listen to the same music that people living at the missions would hear every morning.

What is the song about?

Find the Answer at California Missions: Sounds.

On this page, a map of California shows the location of each of the missions, below they are listed in the order they were established.

How many missions in total were there?
What is name of the 14th and final mission?

Find the Answer at California Missions:History.

Initially the Indians were greatly attracted to the missions, becuase the priests offered food and protection from enemies. However, many suffered from exposure to European diseases such as measles, which wiped out a large percentage of the Indina population. Others grew homesick and returned to the ways and beliefs of their own people. The Jesuits were not unsympathetic, in fact, the San Francisco mission built the first sanitarium (hospital) in California for the ailing Indians. Click on the link below to visit Mission San Rafael, the site where the sanitarium was established.

Why did they name the new mission San Rafael?
What year was it founded?

Find the Answer at California Missions:San Rafael.

Of course, we are all familiar with our own local Mission. Visit the site below to learn more about it.

What is a neophyte?
Describe the Indian orchestra that Father Narcisco Duran put together, (how many, what instruments, where did they performm?)

Find the Answer at California Missions: San Jose.

Can you imagine what is was like to live at the Mission during those long ago days? Click on the site below and take an online "walk" through one.

What are Atole and Pozole?
What types of foods were grown at the Missions?

Find the Answer at Think Quest.

Even as the Missions were flourishing, world politics were in place to bring them to an end. Secularization means made to be not spiritual, or without spiritual involvement. In this case, it meant that the Franciscan priests lost control of the missions, (although some remained tied to the churches on the sites). Most of the property and goods were eventually taken by other local officials or abandoned.

Food for thought. What do you think happened to the Indians, who had given up their old way of life for the protection and guidance of the missions?