Bardell Fototone Miniatures, and Pacific Novelty Co. Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, founded 1772. 1923. Postcard. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2025662032/.
Students will begin with a visual inquiry of the 1923 postcard, analyzing colorization, architectural details, and the romanticized portrayal of the mission. They’ll consider how media like postcards influence public memory and historical perception. The class will then read “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” by Leslie Marmon Silko, a short story about the intersection of Native and Catholic traditions. Through discussion and writing, students will compare how the mission system and Catholic imagery are interpreted both in the postcard and in Silko’s narrative. Students will write a short reflection on how place and ritual can be sources of both tension and healing.
Founded in 1772 by Father Junípero Serra, Mission San Luis Obispo was the fifth of California’s 21 missions. Located in the Central Coast region, it served as a religious, cultural, and agricultural center during Spanish colonization. The Chumash people were relocated to the site, where they endured religious instruction, loss of land, and labor. The mission has since been restored and now functions both as an active parish and a preserved historical site.
Source: https://missionscalifornia.com/missions/mission-san-luis-obispo-de-tolosa
Teacher’s Overarching Question: What does the 1923 postcard of Mission San Luis Obispo reveal about how missions were visually presented to the public in the early twentieth century?
Supporting Questions
- How do the postcard’s composition, color choices, and perspective convey a particular narrative about the mission?
- What visual details suggest an idealized or romanticized version of the mission’s history?
- Which elements or perspectives are absent from the postcard, and how might those omissions shape a viewer’s understanding?
Extension Question
Choose another example of religious architecture in California. How does its visual presentation compare to its actual history?
ELA Standard
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CA RL.11–12.6: Analyze how point of view shapes a text’s content and style.
Social Studies Standard
CA HSS 11.3.2: Examine the effects of westward expansion and the displacement of Native peoples.
NCTE Standard 3
Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features.
- This lesson centers visual literacy and cultural critique by combining historical imagery with Indigenous storytelling. Begin with a whole-class observation of the 1923 postcard of Mission San Luis Obispo. Ask: How does the postcard image present a particular narrative about the mission? What story is it telling? What’s missing? Consider color, composition, and intended audience. Introduce brief historical context, focusing on the mission’s founding, its role in colonization, and its present function in civic life.
- Next, students read Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Man to Send Rain Clouds,” annotating for moments where spiritual traditions coexist and conflict. Ask: What cultural tensions arise in Silko’s story between Native and Catholic burial practices? Discuss how the story’s juxtaposition of Catholic rituals and Pueblo customs serves as a springboard for understanding how Indigenous communities reframe imposed belief systems.
- Facilitate a class discussion: In what ways do stories and architecture preserve or distort histories of colonization? Compare the visual portrayal of the mission to Silko’s more nuanced narrative of religion, power, and community.
- Students then write a comparative analysis that synthesizes their findings from the image and the text.
- Finally, for a creative extension, students design a postcard or mini-poster of a sacred space in their own life, annotating its significance and layered meanings. This synthesizes visual storytelling with personal reflection and historical awareness.
Highsmith, Carol M. Church in Chinese Camp, a small settlement in Tuolumne County, California. 2012. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013634024/.
Highsmith, Carol M. Old Mission San Juan Bautista in San Juan Bautista, a city in San Benito County, California. 2013. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013634732.