Indian Life and Customs at Mission San Luis Rey

The Document entitled “Conversión de los San Luiseños de la Alta California,” by the Luiseño Indian, Pablo Tac, who was born at the California Mission of San Luis Rey de Francia in 1822, and who died in Italy in 1841, is of unusual interest both as an historical and ethnographic record, but perhaps most of all because it is the unique instance of an account of California Mission Indian life written by an Indian. It may also be claimed as the first writing of a literary nature produced by a native of California, even though there may be legal instruments, commercial notes and personal letters by native Californians bearing earlier dates. Although the culture of the Luiseño Indians is fairly well known from the work of modern anthropologists, Tac’s account is certainly the only written description of it by a Luiseño, brief and incomplete though it is.