Fray Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, O.F.M., second president of the California Missions, founded San Miguel Archangel on July 25, 1797, selecting this site because of the great number of Salinan Indians living hereabout. It was the sixteenth in a chain of twenty-one Franciscan Missions, and its influence played not only upon the native population but upon the history of California as a whole.