*Background photo taken by me (same for the other pages)

Settlement and Purpose

In 1798, Father Tapís and other missionaries selected the location for Mission Santa Inés near the Chumash town of Alaxulapu, seeking proximity to interior Chumash territories and an abundance of natural resources (Haas 21). Once established, hundreds of Chumash individuals, including many who came from Mission Santa Barbara and La Purísima, moved to live on the mission. They resided in dormitories, in which there is no visible evidence at the site today (Haas 22). Rolling hills and dry brush surrounding the mission extends for miles - seemingly erasing any physical traces of the Chumash peoples. To the missionaries, this land was a great space to claim so Christianized neophytes could be molded into craftsmen and laborers. That space, according to colonial logic, was finally being used to an advantage, especially to prove that the missionaries were "civilizing" the Chumash (Haas 14). And in the process of "civilization," the mission narrative masks the underlying displacement and control of Indigenous lives.

Despite incoming Chumash individuals and families moving to Mission Santa Inés, disease was prevalent. A measles epidemic swept through between 1806 and 1808, and 154 persons died between 1815 and 1816 as the mission population began to diversify with other villagers (Haas 23-24). Yet, the mission site offers little recognition of this devastating loss. Visitors may find a few marked graves and wooden crosses, but the overwhelming majority of the dead - those who labored and died at Santa Inés - remain unnamed and relatively unknown. Their burial sites are unmarked and their stories are omitted from the mission's past. It is possible that Chumash remains lie beneath the ground throughout the Santa Inés area, perhaps underneath the parking lot or the hotel just a quarter of a mile away.

Citations

Haas, Lisbeth. "Colonial Settlements on Indigenous Land." Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2014, pp. 14, 21-24. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt5hjhhx.6. 

Mission Santa Ines; Cemetery; Church Side. Photo. 1804-1817. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.14753246.