The headstone for Jose de Los Santos Junques is located in the Campo Santo cemetery inside the Mission walls. His small tombstone reads as follows:
"JOSE DE LOS SANTOS JUNQUES
Nee Santos Quin
Died February 1921
Aged 101 years
R. I. P."
We were not able to find any documents we could conclusively say relate to this person either on ancestry.com or on the Internet. We could not even find an obituary. We did find some fragmentary information that Mr. Santos was the last Indian buried at Mission San Gabriel. Source: (
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We did find a paper called Overview of the History of the American Indians in the Santa Monica Mountains that had fragmentary information: (
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". . . José de los Santos Juncos of Juaneño ancestry, but
reared at San Gabriel (Hudson 1979b: 356)"
During his lifespan of 1820-1921, Mr. Junques would have seen his birthplace change hands three times beyween countries, He would have lived under seven different governments:
(1) He was born in territory held by the King of Spain, which
(2) was captured by Mexico during the 1821 Mexican Revolution that won Mexico its independence from Spain. 25 years later in 1846, shortly after the start of the Mexican War with the US,
(3) on 30 Jun 1946 a small contingent of US settlers seized the Mexican garrison at Sonoma and established the California (or "Bear Flag") Republic. The CA Republic lasted until 9 July 1846, when
(4) the US Navy steamed into Monterey CA, captured the city from Mexican forces, and claimed all of California for the United States. Mexico sued for peace. The Treaty of Cahuenga 1847 ended the fighting between the US and Mexico in California only. The wider Mexican War continued.
(5) After the rest of the Mexican War ended in 1848, under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo Mexico formally ceded all of its lands north of 32*N latitude to the 110th western meridian (roughly) to the United States, including California. That treaty was executed 2 Feb 1848. On that day,
(6) CA formally became a US territory, presided over by a Territorial Governor appointed by Congress, thereby beginning the formal process to achieving
(7) full US statehood in 1850.
As far as US history was concerned, Jose de Los Santos Junques lived through the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and all the subsequent compromises and acts that tried to hold a fragile US together over slavery. When all those political maneuvers failed, he witnessed the bloody US Civil War period, the assassination of President Lincoln, and 40 years later, the assassination of President McKinley.
He saw covered wagons give way to stagecoaches, which gave way to railroads, which gave way to cars and airplanes.
He saw the coming of motion pictures, the invention of the electric light, the telephone, and the telegraph.
Closer to home, ansd since he was raised in the Mission, Jose de Los Santos Junques experienced the years where the Franciscans ran a successful operation at Mission San Gabriel, until the drastic and damaging effects of the 1833 Mexican Government policy on secularization of the Missions upset the Mission's ability to function. By 1855, the Franciscans had departed from Mission San Gabriel, and the Mission fell into disrepair, even after the US Congress restored the Mission to the Catholic Church in 1862. The mission struggled for 45 years until the Claretian fathers took the over in 1908, repairing and rehabilitating its decrepit buildings, restoring its farming operations, re-energizing its religious outreach, and preserving its history. Jose de Los Santos Junques was alive for all of that. See: (
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