Full name: Nuestra Señora de Columna (per 1772 map)
Founding date: October 16, 1766 (relocated 30 miles northwest and renamed on May 26, 1767) Mission #17
Catholic Order: Jesuit
Founded by: Padre Victoriano Arnés, Padre Juan Diez
Condition: Adobe outlines at 1766 site.
Closing date: Second site abandoned in 1774 or 1775.
GPS/ Access: 29.421194, -114.195100 (first site/ Calamajué), Mex. #5, Km. 179.5, east & south 17 miles or Mex. #1, Km. 251, east & north 15 miles.
Read more: Calamajué
April 1, 2026 photos by Mundo Medina
2022 drone photo by Victor Du
September 2016 photos by David Kier
July 2012 photos by David Kier
November 2003 photos by Jack Swords
January 2002 photos by David Kier
May 1957 photos by Howard Gulick
1949 photo by Marquis McDonald
Maps and plans
Photos at the second location, renamed ‘Santa María de los Angeles: https://vivabaja.com/santa-maria/
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#17 Nuestra Señora de Columna (Calamajué) /Santa María de los Ángeles (1766-1775)
The seventeenth Jesuit California mission was founded by Padre Victoriano Arnés and Padre Juan José Díez. The first mission location was at a site named Calagnujuet. The Cochimí name was soon modified to Calamajué (“Calah-mah-WAY”). Johann Jakob Baegert’s 1772 book, Observations in Lower California, provides the founding name of the mission as Nuestra Señora de Columna. “Columna” also appears on a map in the original German edition of Baegert’s book. Typically, this mission was called Calamajué. Some historians consider Calamajué as only a visita of Mission San Borja, but the documents show otherwise.
The running stream at Calamajué was discovered by Padre Fernando Consag in 1753 on his third expedition and revisited by Padre Wenceslaus Linck on April 12, 1766. During his 1766 expedition, Linck had discovered a fine site for a future mission far north at a location called Velicatá by the Cochimí Indians. The distance to Velicatá from Mission San Borja was too great through a potentially hostile region, and Calamajué was the only possible place for a mission known to the Jesuits between the two. Using funds provided by the Duquesa (Duchess) of Gandía, Doña María de Borja (of the famous Borgia family in Spain), the Jesuit Padre Visitador Lamberto Hostell, gave the order for a mission at Calamajué to be founded.
On October 16, 1766, Arnés and Díez arrived at the site after traveling for two days from San Borja with ten soldiers and fifty neophytes. The Calamajué site is on a shelf at the edge of a broad arroyo where a year-round stream emerges from a canyon. The water is heavily mineralized and undrinkable, although the local Cochimí natives were known to have survived on it. Wells had to be dug more than a mile away to provide potable water for the mission. The padres had hoped the minerals in the stream would serve as fertilizer for crops they would plant.
Soon construction of an adobe chapel, a storehouse, and residence for the missionaries was begun. Shacks were made for the soldiers’ quarters. Only one wooden door was available, and it was used to secure the storehouse. In the first months at the new mission, 200 Indians were baptized. Not long after the founding, Padre Díez became quite ill and returned to San Borja. Arnés continued on at Calamajué without Díez and soon had a confrontation with a tribe from a place called Cagnajuet, seventy miles to the north.
The men of Cagnajuet became angry when young women from their ranchería joined the mission. The men of Cagnajuet conspired with the Cochimí at Velicatá to kill the missionaries and soldiers. The Velicatá Cochimí had remembered the kindness of Padre Linck several months earlier and wanted no part in bringing harm to the Spanish. Juan Nepomuceno was the Cochimí neophyte governor at Calamajué. He sent six well-armed neophytes to Cagnajuet, captured the troublemakers, and brought them to the mission. Padre Arnés interceded and spared the prisoners from the lash, thus gaining their friendship and converting them to becoming Christians.
Wheat was planted, but when irrigated with the Arroyo Calamajué water, it withered and died. The soil became white with the salts from the stream. The mission could not survive any longer at Calamajué and seven months after Mission Nuestra Señora de Columna was founded, Padre Victoriano Arnés discovered a better location with good water. It was thirty miles away and called (in the Cochimí language) Cabujakaamang. There was not much arable land on which to cultivate crops, but the fine bay of San Luis Gonzaga was nearby, and it was reasoned that seafood could supplement their diet. Supplies from the south and mainland of Mexico could also be offloaded there.
The mission, relocated on May 26, 1767, to Cabujakaamang, was renamed Santa María de los Ángeles. When missions were moved, a complete name change was rare. This may have led to some confusion with writers about the relationship between Calamajué and Santa María. These both were indeed one mission, but two locations. The renamed and reestablished mission was to be a new start. What actually resulted would turn out to be the last mission center founded by the Jesuits. Orders for the Jesuits expulsion from the New World had already been made and were in route to Mexico from Spain during this period…*
*Book chapter continues at the bottom of the Santa María album: https://vivabaja.com/santa-maria/
Missionaries recorded at Calamajué:
Jesuit
Juan Díez 1766
Victoriano Arnés 1766-1768
(Mission moved and renamed in 1767)
See more mission photo albums and book chapters: https://vivabaja.com/baja-mission-albums/