A California Missions Resource for Teachers
Primary Resources
Primary resources consist of those documents, including historic newspapers, reports, letters, diaries, paintings, and artifacts, needed to interpret the past. In this instance, we have added digitized documents penned by prominent personalities of the period.
3Images
Historic photographs, illustrations, lithographs, and paintings all constitute a key resource for documenting the California missions. We have added selected historic photographs here for your use in the classroom.
Secondary Resources
Secondary resources consist of those interpretive works resulting from research based on primary resources and other second-hand studies by academic and community scholars and or avocational enthusiasts. Much of the literature on the California missions consists of such interpretive studies.
4Maps
A host of early California maps exist to document the cultural and historical geography of the Mission era, and land claims of the ranchero or rancho traditions of Mexican California (1821-1848) and beyond.
Daily Topics
- Mythic beginnings/Spanish colonial history
- How to read a Mission
- Mission art and music
- Mythic constructs and historical memory
- Piracy, the Spanish militia, and indigenous leadership
- Indigenous acculturation, conversion, and authority
- Mission life ways and political economy
- Secularization, decline, and restoration of the California missions