Cheryl Anne Stapp

As busy as they were at establishing 21 missions, the Franciscan priests sent to California in 1769 by a Spanish king, still found time to teach the native Indians to play the lute, violin, trumpet, metal triangle, and to sing Christmas carols in Spanish. At Mission San Jose and possibly other missions as well, Indian neophytes enacted a church play at Christmastime. Under Mexican rule, secularization of those missions—which began in 1834—disrupted ordinary customs that had b

View of hiking trail & Griffith Observatory, downtown Los Angeles in the distance. Photo by Brian Schmidt Sprawled over 4,310 acres, for...

Baptism at Aguaje de la Piedra The year was 1769, and Imperial Spain had been a world power for a little more than three centuries. But...

Seeking safe harbor to recondition his ship, English explorer Francis Drake landed in a sheltered cove in what is now Marin County,...