Hugo Reid
Hugo Reid (1809 - 1852) was a resident of Los Angeles, California who wrote a series of newspaper letters that described the culture, language, and modern circumstances of the local Gabrieliño Indians and criticized their treatment under the Franciscan mission system.
[edit] Life
Born in 1809 or 1810[citation needed] in Cardross, Scotland, Reid came to the United States as a sailor and jumped ship at Los Angeles in 1832. He married a Gabrieliño woman named Victoria and adopted her children, Maria and Felipe.
Reid was granted the 13,319-acre (53.90 km2) Rancho Santa Anita land grant by Mexican Governor Pio Pico in 1845. His rancho home, known as the Hugo Reid Adobe, is located on the former estate of Lucky Baldwin at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in what is now the town of Arcadia.
Reid published a series of 22 letters in the Los Angeles Star during 1852 which provide an important ethnographic picture of the little–known Gabrieliño and were republished in book form several times. He died in Los Angeles on December 12, 1852. Arcadia's Hugo Reid Elementary School is named after Reid.
[edit] References
- Dakin, Susanna Bryant. 1939. A Scotch Paisano: Hugo Reid's Life in California, 1832-1851, Derived from His Correspondence. University of California Press, Berkeley.
- Reid, Hugo. 1968. The Indians of Los Angeles County: Hugo Reid's Letters of 1852. Edited and annotated by Robert F. Heizer. Southwest Museum Papers No. 21. Los Angeles.
