Andrés Quintana

Andrés Quintana, O.F.M. (November 27, 1777 – October 12, 1812) was a Spanish missionary who labored in the Mission Santa Cruz, in California during the early part of the 18th century.

Born in Antonossa, in the Province of Alva in Spain, Quintana joined the Franciscan Order in 1794 when he was 17 years of age. 9 years later he had completed his formation and achieved the priesthood in the province of Cantabria (in northern Spain), as did a great many of the Spanish missionaries. In 1804 he sailed to the New World to join the missionary College of San Fernando de Mexico, a springboard for all missionaries doing work in New Spain. There he received further instruction and preparation for his assignment to the Mission Santa Cruz. Arriving in Monterrey from the Mexican port of San Blas in the year 1805, he became one of two missionary fathers stationed at Santa Cruz until 1812, where he died at the age of 35 at the hands of the Indians under his care. According to one of the only surviving Indian narratives of the Mission period in California, Quintana was murdered because of his plans to use a metal-tipped whip against his Indian converts. [Leffingwell, p. 132] He is considered one of two martyr priests to serve in the mission system. [Leffingwell, pp. 19, 132]

During his tenure at the Mission, the vast majority of the native Ohlone population who lived at or near the Mission died because of the conditions, labor, and endemic diseases. The demographic collapse was so severe, that by 1810, Quintana and others had to hunt for converts from the Yokut populations of the Central Valley, hundreds of miles away, to replenish the vanishing labor force.

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