FIRST CONTACTS 28000 BCE 1821 CE
SPANISH EXPLORERS
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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Drake named them after places in Spain
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Cortes named them after places in Spain
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They were named after Catholic Saints by Spanish explorers
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They were named by Mexicans
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Detailed explanation-1: -When the United States took over all of its new territory in the west, many of the Spanish names stuck. That is why the names of all of the major cities in California are in Spanish.
Detailed explanation-2: -Because those cities were founded as Spanish missions, that is Spain’s religious settlements to turn native Americans into Catholic Hispanics, members of the Spanish Empire. California was a Spanish settlement, that’s why those saints’ names are also in Spanish.
Detailed explanation-3: -San Anselmo, San Andreas, San Bernardino, San Carlos, San Gabriel, San Leandro, San Mateo, Santa Monica, San Pedro, San Quentin, Santa Rosa –merely scratch the surface. A common naming strategy for the Spanish was matching the date of a discovery to the appropriate saint’s feast day.
Detailed explanation-4: -The area was originally called Yerba Buena in the 1700s by Spanish-speaking explorers. It was officially changed to San Francisco in 1847. The namesake was Mission San Francisco de Asís a la Laguna de los Dolores or “The mission of our seraphic father Saint Francis of Assisi at the Lake of the Sorrows."