1.  Why did the Spanish decide to settle San Diego?
  2.  Who were the first settlers of San Diego?
  3.  Were these first settlers Spanish?
  4.  When and why did the first violence take place between Indian and Spaniard?
  5.  When and why was the Mission San Diego de Alcalá founded?
  6.  Did the Indians accept the mission?
  7.  Was the mission a school or a concentration camp?
  8.  What evidence is there that the missions mistreated the Indians?
  9.  Did the San Diegans participate in the revolt against Spain in 1810?
10.  Resources

The story of the early settlement of San Diego during the Spanish era can be found in almost every California history textbook. The image of Fr. Serra leading a group of soldiers and priests in the first mass, outdoors, under a ramada, while curious natives looked on, is etched in our collective imaginations but it is important to go behind this idealized image when studying the Spanish speaking people in San Diego, for it conceals a tenuous and contested reality. In reviewing the Spanish settlement we learn that the settlers were just barely able to coexist with the local Indians and survive in this desert outpost far from civilization. The natives resisted conversion and attacked the Spanish settlement again and again. During the first year of colonization most of the Spanish colonists died of disease, starvation and wounds. Thus it was not foreordained that this enterprise would succeed. The harsh life endured by the early soldier colonists bonded them into a tightly knit community--one that would become the nucleus of a civil settlement in the Mexican era.