Mission Santa Inés: Where the Chumash Revolt of 1824 Began

Mission Santa Inés in Santa Ynez, California. Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress.

Founded in 1804, Mission Santa Inés was the 19th Spanish mission in Alta California and is today one of the best-preserved Spanish mission complexes in the U.S. — its setting, original buildings, art and furnishings, water works and archeological remains all survive. The remains of two mission wings, part of the convento and the Native American village are rare evidence of Native resistance to Spanish colonial power. It is still an active parish.

Founding

• Why: Father Estévan Tapís, president of the missions, sited it midway between Mission Santa Barbara and Mission La Purísima Concepción, to relieve their crowding and serve Native people east of the Coast Range.
• First buildings (1804): one row holding a temporary church, sacristy, padres' quarters and granary, with 30-inch adobe walls and roofs of poles, sticks and hardened adobe soil.
• Dedication: on September 17, 1804, Tapís dedicated it to Saint Agnes at a brushwood shelter where 200 Native people attended High Mass. By year's end, 112 Chumash of all ages had been baptized.

Earthquake and peak

An 1812 earthquake near Santa Barbara wrecked most of the original church and the bell tower. The mission carried on with a temporary church, reached its peak in 1816 with 786 baptized Native people, and dedicated its new church and bell tower — still standing — on July 4, 1817.

The altar of Mission Santa Inés. Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress.

The Chumash Revolt

After Mexico won independence in 1821, mission life changed. The Chumash were forced to work for the Mexican army and paid in IOUs, and frustration grew. In February 1824, a Santa Inés soldier's beating of a Chumash man sparked an armed revolt that spread quickly to other missions — one of the largest and most successful revolts of Native Catholic converts in the Spanish West. Fires destroyed many Santa Inés buildings and smoke damaged the sanctuary's paintings. After months of violence, the governor pardoned all the participants, but the mission's heyday was over.

Secularization and decline

• 1834: Mexico's Secularization Laws moved mission property to the government, handing lands, crops and livestock to local ranch owners. Priests kept small plots and had to swear allegiance to Mexico; those loyal to Spain were deported. Mission churches became parish churches, and most missionaries and Chumash converts left.
• 1843: Bishop Francisco García Diego opened the College of Our Lady of Refuge, California's first seminary, at Santa Inés, educating landowners' sons. It later moved away as "College Ranch" and was abandoned by 1881.

Restoration

• From 1947: workers found traces of rooms above the arches and rebuilt the second story, making the mission look as it did before 1812. The roofs were repaired, the south end remodeled, the 1817 bell tower returned to its original design, the Chapel of the Madonna created, radiant heating laid under the restored tile floor to protect the paintings, and gardens re-landscaped. A statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was set beside the cemetery in 1954.
• 1989: the 18th annual Fiesta celebrated rebuilding 8 of the 19 arches of the eastern façade, recreating the convento as it looked before 1834; it now holds a parish hall with paintings of mission eras.
• 1992 on: ongoing restoration of the mission paintings.

The historic district

The Mission Santa Inés District has 15 buildings, structures and sites from 1804 to 1855, when the Chumash lived in one of Spain's and then Mexico's main colonizing institutions: the massive original adobe church and convento wing; remains of the padres' residences, the Chumash village of traditional and adobe homes, the soldiers' quarters, the temporary church and the ecclesiastical college (1844–1868); and a largely intact water system of plaza and village lavanderías (washing areas), the mission garden site, reservoirs and mills.

Sources

Based on "Mission Santa Inés: Site of the Chumash Revolt," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Photographs by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress.