Friar Geronimo Boscana

Chinigchinich: a Historical Account of the Origin, Customs, and Traditions of the Indians at the Missionary Establishment of St. Juan Friar Geronimo Boscana

Friar Geronimo Boscana (Jeronimo Boscana) (1775- 1831) was an early nineteenth-century Franciscan missionary in Spanish and Mexican California. He is noted for producing the most detailed ethnographic picture of a Native Californian culture to come out of the missionary period. He was educated at Palma and joined the Franciscan order in 1792. He travelled to Mexico in 1803 and to California in 1806. He served at the missions of Soledad, La Purisima, San Luis Rey, and San Gabriel. For more than a decade (from 1812-1826) he was stationed at Mission San Juan Capistrano. His first ethnographic contribution resulted from an 1812 questionnaire sent by the Spanish government to the missionaries of Alta California. The task of preparing a response on behalf of San Juan Capistrano may have stimulated the missionary's latent interest in the native culture. While at San Juan Capistrano, Boscana composed two versions of a detailed ethnographic sketch of the Juaneño Indians, who were primarily speakers of a dialect of Luiseño but probably also included Gabrielino speakers from the north. One version of Boscana's manuscript (Chinigchinich) was translated by Alfred Robinson and published in 1846.