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The California missions
A mission was a church with farmland and workshops around it, where Indigenous people were to be converted to Christianity and trained in European working life. California's Indigenous population fell from around 310,000 to under 100,000 during the mission period, before the Gold Rush made it worse. The missions are at the same time the basis of the state's geography — San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose are where they are because of them, and El Camino Real joins them. The canonisation of Junípero Serra in 2015 drew strong opposition from Californian Indigenous communities, and several statues of him have since been removed.
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