Guaycura

The Guaycura inhabited the southern Baja California peninsula, between the country near Loreto and the region of Todos Santos. Their homeland included dry mountains, coastal waters and scattered sources of fresh water. Hunting, fishing and gathering supported communities moving through a landscape where rainfall was uncertain and cultivable land limited.

Spanish expeditions visited the peninsula in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but permanent mission settlement began at Loreto in 1697. Jesuit missions subsequently spread through Guaycura country, seeking to gather people into settlements and convert them to Christianity. Contact brought disease and profound population loss, while new settlements changed access to the places and resources on which Indigenous communities had depended. The missions depended heavily on supplies brought across the gulf from the mainland.