Alta California
Alta California, also known as Nueva California among other names, was a province of New Spain formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of Province of Las Californias, but was made a separate province in 1804. Following the Mexican War of Independence, it became a territory of Mexico in April 1822 and was renamed Alta California in 1824.
The territory included all of the present-day U.S. states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, and Colorado. The territory was with Baja California in Mexico's 1836 Siete Leyes constitutional reform, granting it more autonomy. That change was undone in 1846, but rendered moot by the outcome of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when most of the areas formerly comprising Alta California were ceded to the U.S. in the treaty which ended the war. In 1850, California joined the union as the 31st state.
The El Camino Real trail established by the Spanish extended from Mexico City west to Santa Fe, and California, as well as east to Florida. To the southeast, beyond the deserts and the Colorado River, lay the Spanish settlements in Arizona. Spanish soldiers, settlers, and missionaries invaded the homelands of the indigenous peoples of California, people of the Great Basin, and the Pueblo peoples in the establishment of Alta California.
Evidence of Alta California remains in the numerous Spanish place names of American cities such as Monterey, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Ana, and Santa Rosa.
History
Plans for colonization (1697–1769)
Father Eusebio Kino missionized the Pimería Alta from 1687 until his death in 1711. In 1697, a Jesuit expansion into California was funded and the Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó was established that same year. Plans in 1715 by Juan Manuel de Oliván Rebolledo resulted in a 1716 decree for extension of the conquest which came to nothing. Juan Bautista de Anssa proposed an expedition from Sonora in 1737 and the Council of the Indies planned settlements in 1744, although these plans did not take action.Don Fernando Sánchez Salvador researched the earlier proposals and suggested the area of the Gila and Colorado Rivers as the locale for forts or presidios preventing the French or the English from "occupying Monterey and invading the neighboring coasts of California which are at the mouth of the Carmel River." Alta California was not easily accessible from New Spain: land routes were cut off by deserts and Indigenous peoples who were hostile to invasion. Sea routes ran counter to the southerly currents of the distant northwestern Pacific. Ultimately, New Spain did not have the economic resources nor population to settle such a far northern outpost.
Spanish interest in colonizing Alta California was revived under the visita of José de Gálvez as part of his plans to completely reorganize the governance of the Interior Provinces and push Spanish settlement further north. In subsequent decades, news of Russian colonization and maritime fur trading in Alaska, and the 1768 naval expedition of Pyotr Krenitsyn and Mikhail Levashov alarmed the Spanish government and served to justify Gálvez's vision.
Spanish colonization (1769–1821)
The Portolá expedition was the first European land-entry expedition into the area that is now California. The missionaries and soldiers encountered numerous Indigenous peoples of the area, who became the primary subjects of the expanding Jesuit and Franciscan missions that were already established in Baja California and Baja California Sur. The expedition first established the Presidio of San Diego at the site of the Kumeyaay village of Kosa'aay, which became the first European settlement in the present state of California. At first contact, the villagers provided food and water for the expedition, who were suffering from scurvy and water deprivation.The first Alta California mission was founded that same year adjacent to the village Mission San Diego de Alcalá, founded by the Franciscan friar Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolá in San Diego in 1769. Similar to the site of this mission, subsequent missions and presidios were often founded at the site of Indigenous villages. Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was founded at the Tongva village Toviscanga and the Pueblo de Los Ángeles at the village of Yaanga. The first settlers of Los Angeles were African and mulatto Catholics, including at least ten of the recently re-discovered Los Pobladores. Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded at the Acjachemen village of Acjacheme. Mission San Fernando was founded at Achooykomenga.
As the Spanish and civilian settlers further intruded into Indigenous lands and imposed their practices, ideas of property, and religion onto them backed by the force of soldiers and settlers, Indigenous peoples formed rebellions on Spanish missions and settlements. A major rebellion at Mission San Gabriel in 1785 was led by the medicine woman Toypurina. Runaways from the missions were common, where abuse, malnourishment, and overworking were common features of daily life. Runaways would sometimes find shelter at more distant villages, such as a group of runaways who found refuge at the Vanyume village of Wá'peat, the chief of which refused to give them up. Many children died young at the missions. One missionary reported that 3 of every 4 children born at Mission San Gabriel died before reaching the age of two.
The precolonial Indigenous population of California is estimated to have numbered around 340,000 people, who were diverse culturally and linguistically. From 1769 to 1832, at least 87,787 baptisms and 63,789 deaths of Indigenous peoples occurred, demonstrating the immense death rate at the missions in Alta California. Conversion to Christianity at the colonial missions was often resisted by Indigenous peoples in Alta California. Many missionaries in the province wrote of their frustrations with teaching Indigenous people to internalize Catholic scripture and practice. Many Indigenous people learned to navigate religious expectations at the missions with complex social behaviors in order to maintain their cultural and religious practices.
Establishment of ranchos
In 1784, the Spanish established the first rancho, Rancho San Pedro, as a 48,000-acre site for cattle grazing. Nine ranchos were subsequently established before 1800. Spanish, and later Mexican, governments rewarded retired soldados de cuera with large land grants, known as ranchos, for the raising of cattle and sheep. Hides and tallow from the livestock were the primary exports of California until the mid-19th century. Similar to the missions, the construction, ranching and domestic work on these vast estates was primarily done by Indigenous peoples, who learned to speak Spanish and ride horses. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, the ranchos prospered and grew. Rancheros and pobladores evolved into the unique Californio culture.File:Mission_San_Carlos_Borromeo_de_Carmelo_.jpg|thumb|left|Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, established in 1770, was the headquarters of the Californian mission system from 1797 until 1833.By law, mission land and property were to pass to the Indigenous population after a period of about ten years, when the Indigenous people would become Spanish subjects. In the interim period, the Franciscans were to act as mission administrators who held the land in trust for the Indigenous residents. The Franciscans, however, prolonged their control over the missions even after control of Alta California passed from Spain to independent Mexico, and continued to run the missions until they were secularized, beginning in 1833. The transfer of property never occurred under the Franciscans.
As the number of Spanish settlers grew in Alta California, the boundaries and natural resources of the mission properties became disputed. Conflicts between the Crown and the Church arose over land. State and ecclesiastical bureaucrats debated over authority of the missions. The Franciscan priests of Mission Santa Clara de Asís sent a petition to the governor in 1782 which stated that the Mission Indians owned both the land and cattle and represented the Ohlone against the Spanish settlers in nearby San José. The priests reported that Indians' crops were being damaged by the pueblo settlers' livestock and that the settlers' livestock was also "getting mixed up with the livestock belonging to the Indians from the mission" causing losses. They advocated that the Indigenous people be allowed to own property and have the right to defend it.
Province of Alta California
In 1804, due to the growth of the Spanish population in new northern settlements, the province of Las Californias was divided just south of San Diego, following mission president Francisco Palóu's division between the Dominican and Franciscan jurisdictions. Governor Diego de Borica is credited with defining the border between Alta and Baja California's as Palóu's division, while the division became the political reality under José Joaquín de Arrillaga, who would become the first governor of Alta California.The cortes of New Spain issued a decree in 1813 for at least partial secularization that affected all missions in America and was to apply to all outposts that had operated for ten years or more; however, the decree was never enforced in California.
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, between the United States and Spain, established the northern limit of Alta California at latitude 42°N, which remains the boundary between the states of California, Nevada and Utah and Oregon and Idaho to this day. Mexico won independence in 1821, and Alta California became a territory of Mexico the next year.