Luis Sales (1745–1807) served as a Dominican missionary in

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

, Mexico, between 1773 and 1790. He is most notable for three long letters in which he described the history of the peninsula and the lifeways of the native peoples in its northwestern region.Sales, Luis. 1956. ''Observations on California, 1772–1790''. Edited by Charles N. Rudkin. Dawson's Book Shop, Los Angeles.

Life

Sales was born in

Valencia, Spain Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area also ...

in 1745. He was with the initial group of Dominican missionaries who took over responsibility for the Baja California missions in 1773 from the

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

s, who in turn had replaced the expelled

Jesuits The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

in 1768. Sales apparently served at the missions of El Rosario, San Vicente, and San Miguel. In 1790 he received permission to return to Valencia where he died in 1807. Sales wrote three letters to an anonymous friend in Valencia while he was serving at San Miguel and during his voyage home. The first provided a brief geographical description of the peninsula and then discussed in detail the customs and character of the Indians on its northwestern frontier, particularly regarding the Kiliwa and Paipai. The second letter continued the discussion of ethnography and related the history of Spanish involvement, including a lengthy digression on the

Nootka Crisis The Nootka Crisis, also known as the Spanish Armament, was an international incident and political dispute between the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, the Spanish Empire, the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the fledgling United States of America triggered ...

. The third letter discussed the Dominican role in Baja California. Sales' view of the native peoples was often strongly negative, recalling the acerbity of the Jesuit

Johann Jakob Baegert Johann Jakob Baegert (or Jacob Baegert, Jacobo Baegert) (December 22, 1717 – September 29, 1772) was a Jesuit missionary at San Luis Gonzaga in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He is noted for his detailed and acerbic account of the peninsula, th ...

. However, Sales provided indispensable information about traditional subsistence activities, religion, and many other matters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sales, Luis History of Baja California Spanish Dominicans 18th-century Spanish people 1745 births 1807 deaths Spanish Roman Catholic missionaries Historians of Baja California