Monqui

The Monqui lived around Loreto on the eastern shore of the Baja California peninsula. Their homeland lay between the Gulf of California and the dry mountains inland. Marine resources and foods gathered from the peninsula supported communities in a land with little rain and only scattered reliable water.

In 1697 the Jesuit Juan María de Salvatierra established Nuestra Señora de Loreto among the Monqui, creating the first lasting Spanish mission on the peninsula. Loreto became the base from which missionaries and soldiers extended their settlements north and south. The mission drew Indigenous people into a new religious and economic system, while disease and colonial expansion caused severe disruption. Supplies from the mainland across the gulf were essential to the survival of the new settlement.