Californio

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Californio

Notable Californios Pío Pico · Andrés Pico · José Antonio Estudillo · José Antonio Carrillo
Total population
Spanish & Mexican 92,597 Californios were in the 1850 Alta California population  ·  · Californios and Spaniards in Alta California
Regions with significant populations
Alta California Less than (92,597) 1850 San Diego (650 pop)1850 San Francisco (56,802) 1860
Languages
Spanish
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
Mediterranean · Amerindian · Mestizo

Californio (historic and regional Spanish for "Californian") is a term used to identify a Californian of Hispanic—and in some rare cases, of Portuguese, Brazilian, or other non-Hispanic Latin American—descent, regardless of race, during the period that California was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and Mexico. The territory of California was annexed in 1848 by the United States following the Mexican-American War.

Californios included the descendants of agricultural settlers and escort soldiers from Mexico. Most were of mixed backgrounds, usually Mestizo, contrary to popular media representations in books and films in the United States, such as the "Zorro" franchise. Few were of "pure" Spanish (Peninsular or Criollo) ancestry.^[1] Spanish, and later, Mexican officials encouraged people from the northern and western provinces of Mexico, as well as people from other parts of Latin America, most notably Peru and Chile, to settle in California, and encouraged them to become Mexican citizens.

Much of Californio society lived in ranchos or agricultural settlements near the many missions, which were established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the start of the nineteenth century, twenty-one missions under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church were located along the royal highway, El Camino Real. The Californio rancho society produced the largest cowhide and tallow business in North America, which provided exports for trading with merchant ships from Boston. Ships put in to San Diego, San Juan Capistrano, San Pedro, San Buenaventura (Ventura), Monterey and Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

Contents 1 Early colonization 2 The United States invasion 3 Key Californio battles 4 The end of Mexican rule 5 Californios after U.S. annexation 6 Californio identity in the 20th century 7 Notable Californios 8 Californios in literature 9 See also 9.1 Culture, race and ethnicity 9.2 History and government 10 References 11 Bibliography 12 External links

[edit] Early colonization

By the late colonial period (the late seventeenth and eighteenth century), the population of Mexico is estimated to have been around one million Indians and 100,000 Spaniards. The agricultural settlers and escort soldiers who founded the towns of San José de Guadalupe and La Reina de Los Ángeles were primarily mixed-race and from the then-province of Sonora y Sinaloa. An example of this are the settlers of Southern California. Recruiters in Mexico of the Fernando Rivera y Moncada expedition, who were charged with founding an agricultural community in Alta California, had a difficult time persuading people to emigrate to such a isolated outpost, so the majority of settlers were recruited from the northwestern parts of Mexico.

The final make-up of the party who founded the Pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781 was eleven pobladors, that is, agricultural settler families and 64 soldiers, who escorted them. Only half were españoles (Spanish), the rest had Casta (caste) designations such as mestizo and indio. Some of these were changed in the California Census of 1790, as often happened in colonial Spanish America.^[2]

In a frontier society, Casta designations did not carry the same weight as they did in older communities of central Mexico. The significant criteria was the concept of the gente de razón, a term literally meaning “people of reason.” It was used to designate peoples who were culturally Hispanic (that is, they were not living in traditional Indian communities) and had adopted Catholicism. This served to distinguish the Mexican Indio settlers and converted Californian Indios from the barbaro (barbarian) Californian Indians, who had not converted or become part of the Hispanic towns.^[3] California’s Governor Pío Pico was himself descended from Mestizo and mulato settlers.

In the period between 1850 and 1900, descendants of theoriginal colonists found it expedient to nurture a myth that they were all “Spanish” in the face of racist feelings on the part of Anglo-Americans who came during and after the Gold Rush. By claiming a purely European background, the early Californios tried to avoid the discrimination that confronted more recent Mexican immigrants to California.^[4][5]

[edit] The United States invasion

The Mexican governor of California, Pío Pico, was forced to abandon the Californios at the outset of the American invasion. The Californios organized a militia to defend themselves against the United States. The Californios defeated an American force of Marines in Los Angeles on September 30, 1846, at the Siege of Los Angeles. Several battles were fought in defense of California, but the Californio Lancers were defeated in January 1847 after American Army reinforcements arrived overland from New Mexico. The southern Californios signed the Treaty of Cahuenga, bringing an end to hostilities in the south. The next year Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, accepting American sovereignty over California on February 2, 1848.^{[6] [7]}

In the 1840s Anglo-American settlers in Northern California had already threatened to rebel against Mexican rule. Among them was John Sutter, a land owner from Switzerland and founder of New Helvetia, in present-day Sacramento. The revolt against Mexican rule, which established the so-called California Republic, was led by John Frémont in an independent action.

Sacramento became famous in the 1848 California Gold Rush after miners found gold on the banks of the American River. When thousands of American immigrants came to the conquered lands, long-time Californios helped the newcomers raise livestock and crops.

[edit] Key Californio battles

• 1846
  • Battle of Dominguez Rancho, October 9. José Antonio Carrillo leads Californio forces in victory against 350 US Marines and sailors near Los Angeles.
  • Battle of San Pasqual, December 6. US Cavalry General Stephen Kearny's dragoons defeat Californio forces led by Andrés Pico north of San Diego.
  • Temecula Massacre, December 1846. Californios and Cahuilla Indians combine to wipe out a party of Pauma Band Luiseno Indians responsible for a massacre of eleven unarmed Californios, near Temecula.
• 1847
  • Battle of Rio San Gabriel, January 8. Kearny and Stockton's 700 man army defeat the 160 man Californio Lancer force near Los Angeles.
  • Battle of La Mesa, January 9. Kearny, Robert F. Stockton and John Frémont's combined US forces, defeat the Californios in the climactic battle for California, at present day Montebello east of Los Angeles.

The war campaign in California ended on January 13, 1847, after the signing of Treaty of Cahuenga. Later, the U.S. cavalry seized Pio Pico's adobe in present-day Bell, south of Los Angeles, and arrested Mexican-Californio Antonio Maria Lugo in his adobe near present-day Chino.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] The end of Mexican rule

In the 1830s Californios differentiated themselves from Mexicanos, migrants from the Mexican interior, by asserting exclusionary land grant laws after the dissolution of the mission lands in 1834. These laws created favoritism in the parcelling of mission lands that had been worked by the Mexicans and Indians for many years. Many Mexicans and Indians were able to assert their rights to mission lands, but they were not given official papers documenting these claims.

Following the discovery of gold in 1848, Congress set up a Board of Land Commissioners to determine the validity of Spanish and Mexican land grants in California. California Senator William M. Gwin presented a bill that, when approved by the Senate and the House, became the Act of March 3, 1851,^[8] which stated that unless grantees presented evidence supporting their title within two years, the property would automatically pass into the public domain.^[9]

This proviso was contrary to Articles VIII and X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which guaranteed full protection of all property rights for Mexican citizens.^[10][11] The Commission eventually confirmed 604 of the 813 smaller claims they received, but the cost of litigation, surveys, and permits forced most of the larger Rancho Californio land owners to lose their property. This land in turn was parceled out to American immigrant settlers under the 1862 Homestead Act. The treaty also promised that Californios and their descendants would be guaranteed educations, a promise that was never met.

[edit] Californios after U.S. annexation

Californios did not disappear. Many people in the area still have strong identities as Californios. There is a huge group who are descended from the Sepulveda family that still meets and keeps in contact via the internet. Thousands of people who are descended from the Californios have well-documented genealogies of their families.

The romantic history of Californios has fueled the politically volatile issues of the La Raza movement by some Chicano activists, who depict Mexican Californios or Hispanics as the state's original people. They discount claims to this status by the [[indigenous peoples such as Coast Miwok, Ohlone, Wintun, Yokuts and other Native American ancestors who inhabited the region for thousands of years before European contact. The Chicanos claim that California was part of Aztlán, where there was a Latin American culture: some Californios,^{[citation needed]} along with Tejanos of Texas and Chicanos (a 20th century designation), prefer to be identified as Spanish Americans.^{[citation needed]}

Other Californio descendants claim they had an integrated society of Mexicans, Indians, Mestizos and American immigrants, which had evolved over 150 years beginning with the founding of Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó in the California territory in 1697. They believe they lost their land, businesses and society to the United States due to the American aggression that propagated the ideals of Manifest Destiny.

The agricultural economy of California allowed many Californios to continue living in pueblos alongside Native peoples and Mexicanos well into the 20th century. These settlements grew into many modern California cities, including Santa Ana, San Diego, San Fernando, San Jose, Monterey, Los Alamitos, San Juan Capistrano, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Arvin, Mariposa, Hemet and Indio.

From the 1850s until the 1960s, the Californios (of Spanish, Mexican and native Californian origins) lived in relative autonomy, practicing some acts of social segregation by custom, while maintaining Spanish-language newspapers, entertainment, schools, bars, and clubs. Cultural practices were often tied to local churches and mutual aid societies.

At some point in the early 20th century, the official modes of record-keeping (census takers, city records, etc.) began lumping together all Californios, Mexicanos, and Native ("Indio") peoples with Spanish surnames under the terms "Spanish", "Mexican", and sometimes, "colored". Thus the unique history and identity of the Californio people has been absorbed into that of the greater Hispanic community in the area.^{[dubious – discuss]}

[edit] Californio identity in the 20th century

This section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (December 2007)

Some Californios, well aware of Anglo racism, choose to identify with the “Anglo” category in the 20th century. Until recently, especially within long-standing ethnic Mexican communities in Southern California, a number of people who claimed Native Californian and Californio ancestry could be found. Because there is no Californio category in the census, and many Californios do not have "Hispanic" surnames, the ethnic identity of many Californios does not surface in office census and school documentation.

Historically many cultural differences have existed between Californios and Mexicanos. In the 1910s and 1920s, when a large wave of Mexican immigrants poured into Californio communities in California and the Southwestern U.S., social tensions occurred between the two Hispanic groups. The older generation felt more "American" than the recent arrivals from Mexico.

Nevertheless, strong historical ties exist between Mexicanos, many of whose families immigrated to the U.S. between 1900 and World War II, and the Californios and Native Californians. There has been a constant exchange of culture and language between Mexico and these enclaves of Mexicano/Californio/Indio culture, evidenced by marriage, migratory trends, and linguistic evolution in the region. As a result, the cultural dividing lines separating Californios from the descendants of more recent Mexican immigrants have blurred considerably over the years.^{[citation needed]}

In the 20th century, descendants of southern Spanish (Andalusian, Granadan or Valencian) pineapple and sugar cane workers who first settled Hawaii and northern Spanish (Asturian, Galician or Leonese) skilled workers in the beginning of the century settled California. Many Spanish post-colonial settlers came to California from Hispanic Latin American nations, mostly Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. They are the newest Californio and Spanish American populations in the state.

Descendants of the Californio people are in the small Central Valley town of Hornitos located in Mariposa County. The majority of its 500 residents claimed both Spanish and Native American descent, but would use the term "Californio".^{[citation needed]} In an article published by the Society of Hispanic Historical & Ancestral Research, Alexander V. King has estimated that there were between 320,000 and 500,000 descendants of Californios alive in 2004.^[12]

[edit] Notable Californios

• José María Alviso, grantee of Rancho Milpitas, Alcalde of San José
• Juan Bautista de Anza
• Arcadia Bandini, co-founder of Santa Monica, California
• Juan Bandini
• Berreyesa family, various early settlers holding land grants
• José Raimundo Carrillo
• José Antonio Carrillo
• José Castro, general of the Mexican army in Alta California
• Manuel Dominguez
• José Antonio Estudillo
• José María Estudillo
• José María Flores
• José de la Guerra y Noriega
• Antonio Maria de la Guerra
• William Edward Petty Hartnell, also known as Don Guillermo Arnel
• Robert Livermore, namesake of Livermore, California
• Eulalia Perez de Guillén Mariné
• Joaquin Murietta, basis for fictional hero Zorro
• Andrés Pico
• José Maria Pico
• Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California
• Juan Matias Sanchez, Juan Matias Sanchez Adobe, Rancho La Merced, Montebello, California
• Tomas Avila Sanchez
• Francisco Xavier Sepulveda
• Juan Jose Sepulveda
• Francisco Sepulveda
• Abel Stearns
• Jonathan Temple, early Long Beach rancher
• Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the namesake of Vallejo, California
• Tiburcio Vasquez, bandit
• Jose Maria Verdugo, recipient of Rancho San Rafael land grant
• Benjamin Davis Wilson, also known as Don Benito Wilson
• Bernardo Yorba, major land grant recipient
• Jose Antonio Yorba, major land grant recipient

[edit] Californios in literature

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., recorded his 1834 visit as a sailor to California in Two Years Before the Mast. Other Americans such as Joseph Chapman, a land realtor, hailed the first Yankee to reside in the old Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1831, described Southern California as a paradise yet to be developed. He mentions a civilization of Spanish-speaking colonists, "Californios," who thrived in the pueblos, the missions, and ranchos.

The Squatter and the Don by Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, a novel set in 1880s California, depicts a very wealthy Californio family's legal struggles with immigrant squatters on their land.^[13] The novel was based on the legal struggles of General Mariano G. Vallejo, the author's good friend. While the novel is by no means representative of the majority of Californios' lives and standard of living, it is truthful in its depiction of the legal process by which Californios were often "relieved" of their land. This process was long (most Californios spent upwards of 15 years defending their grants before the courts), and the legal fees alone were enough to make many Californios landless. Californios felt confused about having to pay land taxes to American officials, because they opposed the idea on paying for land ownership that was not in Mexican law. In some cases Californios had little fluid capital because their economy had operated on a barter system, and they often lost their land because they were unable to pay the taxes.^[14] They could not compete economically with all the European and Anglo-American immigrants who arrived in the region with large amounts of money.

The end of Californio culture is depicted in the novel Ramona, written by Helen Hunt Jackson in 1884.

The fictional character of Zorro has become the most identifiable Californio due to short stories, motion pictures and by the 1950s on television. The historical facts of the era are sometimes lost in the story-telling.

[edit] See also

[edit] Culture, race and ethnicity

• Hispanic
• Casta
• Peninsulares
• Mestizo
• Mulatto
• Spanish people
• Spanish American

[edit] History and government

• History of California to 1899
• Commandancy General of the Provincias Internas
• Las Californias
• Alta California

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Beebe, Rose Marie (2001). Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535-1846. Berkeley: Heyday Books. ISBN 1-890771-48-1.
• Beebe, Rose Marie and Robert M. Senkewicz (2006). Testimonios: Early California through the Eyes of Women, 1815-1848. Berkeley: Heyday Books, The Bancroft Library and the University of California.
• Bouvier, Viginia Marie (2001). Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840: Codes of Silence. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 9780816524464
• Casas, María Raquél (2007). Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820-1880. Reno: University of Nevada Press. ISBN 9780874176971
• Chávez-García, Miroslava (2004). Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 9780816523788
• Gostin, Ted (2001). Southern California Vital Records, Volume 1: Los Angeles County 1850-1859. Los Angeles: Generations Press. ISBN 9780970798800
• Haas, Lisbeth (1995). Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936, Berkeley: University of California. ISBN 9780520083806
• Heidenreich, Linda (2007). "This Land was Mexican Once": Histories of Resistance from Northern California. University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292716346
• Hurtado, Albert L. (1999). Intimate Frontiers : Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California. Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 9780826319548
• Mason, William Marvin (1998). The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of California, Menlo Park, California: Ballena Press. ISBN 9780295980836
• Osio, Antonio Maria; Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz (1996) The History of Alta California : A Memoir of Mexican California. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299149741
• Pitt, Leonard and Ramón A. Guttiérrez (1998). Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (New edition), Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520219588
• Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo; Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita (2001). Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton. Houston: Atre Publico Press. ISBN 9781558853287
• Sánchez, Rosaura (1995). Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-2559-8
• The editors of Time-Life Books (1976). The Spanish West. New York: Time-Life Books.

[edit] External links

• Californios, a People and a Culture, a personal website
• Pitti, José; Antonia Castaneda and Carlos Cortes (1988). "A History of Mexican Americans in California," in Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California. California Department of Parks and Recreation, Office of Historic Preservation.
• Guide to the Amador, Yorba, López, and Cota families correspondence. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
• Guide to the Orange County Californio Families Portrait Photograph Album. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.