California History Flashcards
Tribal distribution from West to East and North to South
Yurok, Shasta, Modoc, Yuki, Pomo, Wintu, Maidu, Nisenan, Ohlone, Miwok, Yokut, Chumash, Tatavian, Serrano, Tongva, Kumeyaay, Mojave
Language distribution from North to south
Athabaskan, Hokan, Penutian, Yuki-Wappo, Uto-Aztecan, Chumashan
Ulloa
Alarcon
Cabrillo
- Figures out that Baja California isn’t an island because runs into mouth of Colorado River.
- Navigates up the Colorado a bit.
- Meets the Tongva on Catalina. Goes further north, but misses, as would many Spanish for the next 200 years, the entrance into SF bay.
Galleons from Philippines
- Trade between Acapulco, Manila, and Mexico City returns because of the currents to north of SF bay and then rides the coast current down. By 1680, these galleons, carrying silks from China (through Manila) and cotton from India, would stop yearly on CA coast, though no Spanish settlements.
Francis Drake
- Lands north of SF bay (also misses entrance) and claims Northern CA for Britain.
First Filipinos in CA
1587
Native Population 1700
Highest concentration of people in North America. Cultivated oak groves. Huge acorn consumption. Horticulture, not so much corn and potatoes because of growing season not suitable. Klamath lived on salmon. Fire control.
Junipero Serra becomes Franciscan Monk in Majorca, Spain, age 17.
1730
Serra requests mission in Madrid and arrives in Vera Cruz. Walks Camino Real to Mexico City.
1749
Serra and Pame
- Serra reduces the Pame near Queretaro. Forced mission, Indians not allowed to leave. Control market system.
Sierra Gorda liberated from colonos
- Serra gets Spanish colonists and soldiers out of his mission lands where they had been clashing with his Pame slaves and corrupting them. He achieved this liberation partially be getting the Inquisition to send a resident inquisitor to Sierra Gorda and accuse non-Indian women of witchcraft.
Russian Fur trade
- Enter Spanish claimed land in Alta CA.
Jesuits kicked out
- Jesuits expelled from New Spain by new king so Franciscans take over and Junipero became the mission president of the Baja California mission.
God kills off the Baja California Indios
- God (i.e., syphilis) was killing off Baja California missionized Indians and so Jose de Galvez, Inspector General of New Spain, needed more to replace them and also he sought a buffer with Russians and British (who had recently taken Manila and Havana) and wanted to put colonists in Alta California to have a physical claim to the land so he sent Serra to Alta California protected by Portola in a 4 prong campaign. 2 by land and 2 by sea.
Sand Diego de Alcala
- Serra walks 300 miles to San Diego and reduces the Kumeyaay, preceded by a military force of Portola, establishing other missions in Baja California along the way. This would be the first in what would be CA. They produced olive oil eventually and brought all kinds of fruit trees and other non-native species, including pigs and cattle. Totally changed the environments around the missions from places to hunt and gather roots, to wastelands of cattle and depleted soil.
The missions
There were 23 missions established never more than 30 miles from a major coastal water way or the ocean and never more than 30 miles (a day’s ride) from one another. 5 large presidios (military barracks) as well. These were reducciones. A total of 146 Friars served. 67 missionaries died at their post. Always surrounded by military escorts because Natives had them outnumbered. Natives were lured in through trade, but once baptized they were trapped. If they didn’t return for work, military sent after them. 90,000 baptized total. 63,000 burried. All Indian girls lived in nunneries, cramped, rife with disease. So many girls died that military had to raid inland villages, kidnap their women to replace them. Since missions used slave labor, their opportunity costs were low and their competative advantage was so high that other Spanish colonists around in the pueblos couldn’t compete. Their goal was self-sufficiency and they got fairly close to achieving that eventually, producing ironworks and all kinds of highly skilled manufacturing, all made by the natives. Brought fruit to CA. The herds they brought multiplied and destroyed native lifeways. The mission natives eventually became house slaves to the presidios and also worked on the presidio plantations.
Portola “discovers” SF
- Portola goes by land ahead of Serra but then in San Diego takes a ship to Monterrey, which had been described in detail by Sebastian Vizcaino in 1602, everying from San Diego to Monterey, and claimed for Spain. Monterrey becomes the capital of “Las Californias” and Portola its first governor. He also discovers what 200 years of Spanish galleons had missed: SF bay.
San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo
- Mission 2. Near Monterrey bay.
San Antonio de Padua
- Mission 3. Reduces the Salinan. South of Monterey Bay.
San Gabriel Arcangel
- Mission 4. Los Angeles.
Kumeyaay Uprising
1775.
Mission Capistrano produces CA’s first wine.
1783.
Mission Gabriel Arcangel plants orange orchard
1804.
French King of Spain
- The beginning of the independence movement in Mexico and so the military that handles the reducciones of the missions stop getting paid, as do the missionaries. The shipments from San Blas of goods also drop and the missions have to become more self-sufficient.
Indians kings of industry
- Reduced Indians are skilled and make not only missions self-sufficient, but supply manufactured goods, food, etc, to the entire military and civil government in Alta California who are there to enslave them.
Russian post
- Russians set up an otter pelt post near SF. In response, Mexico constructs its final mission as a buffer, San Franscico Solano in 1823 and then the Precidio de Sonoma in 1836.
Adams Onis treaty
- Sets the northern border of CA as it is today.
Missionaries lose control
- Missionaries lose control as the unpaid military men unofficially take land, become gendarmes.
Mexico becomes an independent monarchy
1821
San Francisco Solano
- 23rd and final mission, furthest north.
Mexico sends a governor to its territory (not state) called Alta California.
1824.
Uncompensated Indian labor at missions to finance presidios is normalized.
1825.
Jededia Smith
- Mentions meeting the Wintu people in Sacramento Valley.
Mexico evicts Peninsulares
- Including the clergy from Alta California.
1830 Native Snapshot.
The 21,000 remaining mission Indians survive without Spain’s once regular shipments from San Blas by trading hide, tallow, wool to Boston, South America and Asia.
CA total Native population is 250,000
Mexican Secularization Act.
- Missionized Indians lose their land as it gets divided up among the ex-military gendarmes who are now official hacenderos. These are the Ranchos. The missionized Indians, though some get ejidos, most become hacienda slaves.
Isaac Graham
- A fur trapper, he stages an insurrection in CA against the Mexican governor. He is sent to Mexico to be tried. Causes a diplomatic stir in Washington which would give Polk ideas for later use. Graham ends up going back to CA and causing further tensions between Anglos and Californios.
Presidio de Sonoma
1836.
Mexican military jails more Anglos and tensions rise. Only 400 Anglos and other non-Mexicans/non-Natives in CA.
1840.
Bartleson-Bidwell
- First organized overland crossing on the California Trail, a branch off from the Oregon trail.
Future CA’s first governor Burnett takes the Oregon trail after giving up on his law practice in Missouri where he owned slaves and was preparing to defend Joseph Smith in a trial (but Smith escaped).
1843.
Burnett in Oregon
- Becomes the Provisional Supreme Judge in the disputed Oregon Country and passes exclusion laws saying slavers must release slaves after 3 years and these free POC must evacuate Oregon or be flogged.
Freemont
- Arrives in CA with 60 armed men, secretly sent by Polk to cause an insurrection. Heads north as if going to Oregon, increases tensions between the 15,000 Californios and the now 800 or so recently arrived fur trapping Anglos mostly around Monterey.
U.S. Mexico War
- Polk gets congress to issue a war declaration. Meanwhile Anglos stage a revolt in Sonoma and raise the Bear Flag, but Freemont arrives in one week and takes it over, basically annexing the Bear Flag Republic as a U.S. territory. The navy soon arrives from Hawaii and Freemont and others quickly conquer NoCal with no blood. SoCal is more difficult, a few popular insurrections among Californios in LA, a few actual battles with Mexican military. LA mayor Pio Pico flees to Mexico, but comes back, becomes a U.S. citizen and is elected as CA senator. All the U.S. soldies that arrive to fight this war more than triple the Anglo population in CA and many stay for the gold rush.
Donner Party
1846.
Treaty of Cahuenga
- Treaty that ends the U.S. military conquest of CA.. Await word from the authorities in Mexico City and Washington as to what the status of CA will be, but the U.S. had just conquered it, so there was no question.
Guadalupe Hidalgo
- CA now a U.S. territory officially. Let by a provisional military government.
1848 Native Population
150,000
Gold discovered at Sutter’s mill near Sacramento
1848.