San Luis Obispo

This is the beautiful San Luis Obispo Mission. Note the date – 1772. My mission ancestors moved up the Californian coast around that time, when it was still a Spanish Territory. The first conquistadors visited in the 1500s. Some of us Hispanic people have been here in the USA for a long time with a rich and full history. I am so proud of my 4% Native American DNA …although they were illegal immigrants, too! There was a recent National Geographic article that stated that they have proved categorically that current Native American people have a direct DNA link to those recent skeleton finds in the American continent that date back 12,000 years. Their bone structure looks different likely because they evolved to live in different conditions. In front of the San Luis Obispo Mission, there is a delightful water sculpture that pays homage to the Chumash, the native people who lived there. They made remarkable plank canoes, fished, hunted and gathered nuts, especially acorns. Like many other tribes their numbers were decimated by the diseases that the Spanish brought such as influenza and smallpox. Eventually they moved into the Missions and adapted to life with the new migrants, perhaps unwillingly? San Luis Obispo was the first place in California that I fell in love with. Click on the red link to see more of the town and my adventures. POSTCARD FROM SAN LUIS OBISPO – click here