mission churches overseen by Franciscan fathers led by Junípero Serra. In 1769, the first parties set north from Baja California, and the line of Spanish settlement along the coast was inaugurated when soldiers and priests established a presidio and mission church at San Diego. By the end of the Spanish colonial period, Alta California had three more presidios (at Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara) and no fewer than twenty-one missions. In addition to the missions, where the Franciscans ministered to local converts, and the military presidios, small towns or pueblos sprang up. The earliest of these were associated with the missions and presidios, but in 1777 an independent civil pueblo was created at San Jose, and others followed. The pueblos tried to attract settlers with land grants and other inducements and were governed by an alcalde (a combination of a judge and a mayor) assisted by a council called the ayuntamiento. After
turquoises. When the four forlorn survivors of the Florida expedition of Narvaez arrived in Mexico in 1536, they reported tales of large and powerful villages, four and five stories high. Cabeza de Vaca, one of these survivors, said that the lands he had actually seen were "remote and malign, devoid of resources," but that the Indians in the Sonora valley had told tales of a rich, faraway people with whom they traded. Two Franciscans, Fray Juan de la Asuncion and Fray Pedro Nadal, who traveled north in 1538 on a missionary journey, were also told of a country where people wore cotton clothes, had many turquoises and knew of larger and wealthier villages than their own. The first European to enter what is now Arizona was probably Fray Marcos de Niza in 1539.* The viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, had selected the Franciscan to lead a small party north. Accompanying
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