In a nice corrective twist, though, the current curator of the Old Mission Museum — Andrew Galvan — is Ohlone, and his great-great-great grandparents are buried in the Mission Dolores graveyard.

(“Jolon” comes from “Ohlone”? I should have guessed!)

I remember in school having to construct a mission out of coardboard, sand and shells for my forth grade history project. Oh how humiliating it was. Fast forward 25 years I began learning all about missions and their relationship to my immediate family. Namely my grandmother and great-grandmother. Having visited Mission San Antonio and Mission San Miguel many times near the town of Jolon, which is the name of her tribe (kind of like Ohlone) I can say that I am filled with an appreciation of its beauty and natural splendor, but at the same time filled with a little bit of heartache because of the transformation of native life caused by the mission system. I think you will find that is true for a lot of California Indians.

As for San Juan Batista de Anza, the trail he used cut right throught my grandmother’s back yard along the Salinas River in Atascadero (Salinan is the widely used name for my grandmothers tribe).

The only way we can some to understand the full history of California’s missions and reckon with our complicated feelings about them is to read a historical account much like the one you constructed here in your podcast.

Thanks Richard