Misión San Bruno

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The short-lived Jesuit mission of San Bruno was established in 1683 on the Gulf of California of Baja California Sur, about 20 kilometers north of the later site of the town of Loreto.

In 1683, the Spanish admiral Isidro de Atondo y Antillón and the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino were forced to abandon an attempted settlement at La Paz because of hostilities with the native Pericúes and Guaycura. Moving north to the central portion of the peninsula, they arrived at the Cochimí settlement of Teupnon, at mouth of a substantial arroyo on October 7, the Feast of San Bruno. Mission work was begun among the local inhabitants, and exploratory expeditions into the surrounding region were undertaken, including the first land crossing of the peninsula by Europeans. However, the inadequacy of local and imported food supplies and problems of illness forced the abandonment of San Bruno in 1685, leaving Baja California again entirely in native hands until the first permanent Jesuit mission was established at Loreto in 1697.

The San Bruno episode is well documented in the letters and reports of Atondo, Kino, and other participants (Bolton 1936; Burrus 1954, 1965; W. Michael Mathes 1969, 1974). The modern condition of San Bruno's site, containing the remnants of military emplacements, has been described by Edward W. Vernon (2002:1-7).

References

• 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

• San Bruno, Baja California Sur
• Spanish missions in Baja California