California

During the eighteenth century, California consisted of two mission frontiers—Baja California, developed after 1697 by the Jesuits, and Alta California, controlled by the Franciscans from 1769. Until 1804, both areas were included in the same administrative jurisdiction.

With the exception of a small region in the southern part of the peninsula where small-scale commercial farming and marginal silver mining developed after 1750, Baja California held little attraction for colonists. On this frontier the Jesuits did not establish the first missions until after 1697 and without government financial support. Between 1697 and 1840 twenty-seven missions were established, by the Jesuits (1697–1768), the Franciscans (1769–1773), and the Dominicans (1774–1840). The Indians who were resettled in the mission communities experienced high rates of mortality from disease and other factors and declined in total numbers from an estimated 50,000-60,000 in the 1690s to a mere 2,000 by the mid-1840s. Following the secularization of the missions in the 1830s, Baja California remained an isolated territory until a French mining company began to exploit its copper deposits in the 1870s.

In response to reports of Russian activities in Alaska and Captain James Cook's exploration of the Pacific islands, the Spanish began their occupation of Alta California, the modern state of California, in 1769 under the direction of Visitor-General José de Gálvez. The Spanish government encountered such considerable difficulty in populating the region with settlers that Alta California remained a mission frontier until the early years of the nineteenth century. Between 1769 and 1823 the Franciscans established twenty-one missions in the region, and the viceregal government founded four presidios (military garrisons) and three pueblos (civilian communities). The death rates among the Indians gathered into the missions were high, but until the 1820s the Franciscans, backed by the military, were able to resettle thousands of Indians in the missions. Between 1769 and 1832 the Franciscans baptized nearly 88,000 Indians in the missions, but during those years almost 64,000 of them died.

After about 1800 a vibrant but illegal trade in hides and tallow developed. Foreign merchants bartered manufactured goods for cattle hides and tallow from mission herds in a trade legalized by the newly independent Mexican government in 1823. The outbreak of the war for independence in central Mexico in 1810 placed increased pressure on the Franciscans to produce surplus goods to supply military garrisons cut off from their traditional sources of supplies there and intensified illegal trade with foreign merchants. Growing production levels in turn forced the Franciscans to recruit additional workers to replace the Indian converts, who died at alarming rates in the missions.

In 1833 a short-lived liberal congress in Mexico legislated the secularization of the Alta California missions. Theoretically, the missions were to be converted to formal autonomous Indian pueblos, with their land, livestock, and other communal goods distributed among the Indians. However, local politicians were able to establish de facto independence from Mexico City and to administer the secularized missions for their own benefit. Under the colonization laws passed by the Mexican government in the 1820s, different governors of California made more than 800 grants of large tracts of land in the province to prominent politicians and settlers. The recipients of such grants stocked their ranches with livestock from the mission herds and increased their exports of hides and tallow.

In the 1830s and 1840s a growing number of Anglo-Americans and Europeans settled in Alta California. A small minority married into local families and became Mexican citizens, but the majority remained hostile to Mexicans and the Mexican government. In 1846 in Sonoma they declared an independent California republic. Within a month of this so-called Bear Flag Revolt, U.S. forces began the conquest of the province. (As early as the 1820s, the U.S. government had tried to buy California from Mexico.) U.S. forces also occupied Baja California in 1846 and 1847, but they returned the province to Mexico under the terms of the 2 February 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It is the northernmost state of Mexico and became an official state therein in 1953. Due to its proximity to the U.S. border, there are large immigrant populations from both the United States and Central America. The majority of the population is mestizo (a mix of Amerindian and European heritages).

See alsoCopper Industry; Missions: Spanish America; Slavery: Indian Slavery and Forced Labor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Altamirano, Graziella, et al. Vida social y cotidiana en la historia regional de México. San Juan Mixoac, Mexico: Instituto Mora, 2001.

Amao, Jorge Luis. Mineros, misioneros y rancheros de la antigua California. México, D. F.: Plaza y Valdés, 1997.

Cook, Sherburne F. The Conflict between the California Indians and White Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Engelhardt, Zephyrin, O.F.M. Missions and Missionaries of California, 4 vols. San Francisco: J. H. Barry, 1929–1930.

González Montes, Soledad. Mujeres, migración y maquila en la frontera norte. México, D.F.: Colegio de México, Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer, 1995.

Jackson, Robert H. "Demographic Change in Northwestern New Spain." The Americas 41, 4 (April 1985): 462-479.

Jackson, Robert H. "Population and the Economic Dimension of Colonization of Alta California: A Study of Four Mission Communities." Journal of the Southwest 33, no. 3 (1991): 387-439.

Meigs, Peveril. The Dominican Mission Frontier of Lower California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935.

Truett, Samuel, and Elliott Young. Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.

                                  Robert H. Jackson