Franciscan Frontiersmen

Following a harrowing transatlantic voyage from Spain, Franciscan friars Pedro Font, Juan Cresp?, and Francisco Gare?s traveled through uncharted lands, finding themselves beset by raiding Indians, marauding bears, starvation, and scurvy. Recording daily events of the 1775-76 colonizing expedition of Juan Bautista de Anza, Font's journal includes some of the earliest accurate maps of California between the bays of San Diego and San Francisco. Gare?s, a missionary, developed close relationships with Indians in Sonora and California and brokered dozens of peace agreements before being killed in a Yuma uprising. Cresp? traveled up the California coast with Father Jun?pero Serra, keeping meticulous journals of the expedition to the San Francisco Bay area, Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and northern reaches of California's central valley. Drawing on the friars' diaries and correspondence and his own exhaustive field research, Robert A. Kittle elevates the place of these friars in American exploration, while illuminating encounters between European explorers, missionaries, and American Indians who occupied the Pacific coast for millennia.

• | Author: Robert A. Kittle
• | Publisher: Oup
• | Publication Date: Jan 22, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 296 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Biography & Autobiography
• | ISBN-10: 0806160977
• | ISBN-13: 9780806160979