Californios
Californios are Hispanic Californians, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries who arrived under Spanish and Mexican rule before California was annexed by the United States. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there since 1683 and is made up of varying Spanish and Mexican origins, including Criollos, Mestizos, Indigenous Californian peoples, and small numbers of Mulatos. Alongside the Tejanos of Texas and Neomexicanos of New Mexico and Colorado, Californios are part of the larger Spanish-American/Mexican-American/Hispano community of the modern United States, which has inhabited what is now the American Southwest and the West Coast since the 16th century. Some may also identify as Chicanos, a term that came about in the 1960s.
The term Californio was originally applied by and to the Spanish-speaking residents of Las Californias during the periods of Spanish California and Mexican California, between 1683 and 1848. The first Californios were the children of the early Spanish military expeditions into northern reaches of the Californias, which started out from what is now modern Mexico. Many of their fathers were soldiers who established the presidios of California and guarded the California mission system.
Later, the primary cultural focus of the Californio population became the Vaquero tradition practiced by the landed gentry, who received large land grants and created the Rancho system. In the 1820s–40s, American and European settlers increasingly migrated to Mexican California. Many married Californio women and became Mexican citizens, learning Spanish and often converting to Catholicism, the state religion. They are often also considered Californios, for their adherence to Californio language and culture.
In 2004 studies estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 state inhabitants have ancestry from the Spanish and Mexican eras of California.
Definitions
The term "Californio" has different meanings depending on the author or source. According to the Real Academia Española, a Californio is a person native to California. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a Californio as both a native or resident of this state and a specific ethnic group: the Spanish settlers and their descendants in California.Authors such as Douglas Monroy, Damian Bacich or Covadonga Lamar Prieto, among others, define Californios as exclusively applying to Alta California residents and their descendants.
Historians Hunt Janin and Ursula Carlson consider a Californio to be any settler who migrated to Alta California and their descendants; and also non-Hispanic immigrants who intermarried with Hispanics and integrated into the Californio culture during the Mexican era, and their descendants.
Calisphere and author Ferol Egan restrict the meaning of Californio to the Californian elite who acquired land during the Spanish and Mexican periods and their descendants.
Leonard Pitt considers a Californio to be any Spanish-speaking person born in California. Writer Jose Antonio Burciaga considers Californios to be any Hispanic living in California, even if they have lived there temporarily. Burciaga, in a 1995 Los Angeles Times article, points to such examples as Cesar Chavez, Luisa Moreno and Bert Corona.
History
Early colonization
In 1769, Gaspar de Portolá and less than two hundred men, on an expedition, founded the Presidio of San Diego as a military post. On July 16, Franciscan friars Junípero Serra, Juan Viscaino and Fernando Parron raised and 'blessed a cross', establishing the first mission in upper Las Californias, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Colonists began arriving in 1774.Monterey was established in 1770 by Father Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolà. Monterey was settled with two friars and about 40 men and served as the capital of California from 1777 to 1849. The nearby Carmel Mission in Carmel was moved there after a year in Monterey to keep the mission and its Mission Indians away from the Monterey Presidio soldiers. It was the headquarters of the original Alta California province missions headed by Father-President Junípero Serra from 1770 until his death in 1784—he is buried there. Monterey was originally the only port of entry for all taxable goods in California. All ships were supposed to clear through Monterey and pay the roughly 42% tariff. The oldest governmental building in the state is the Monterey Custom House and California's Historic Landmark Number One. The Californian, California's oldest newspaper, was first published in Monterey on August 15, 1846, after the city's occupation by the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron on July 7, 1846.
File:Portrait_of_Juan_Bautista_de_Anza_.jpg|thumb|upright|Juan Bautista de Anza led the 1775–76 Anza expedition.
Late in 1775, Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza led an overland expedition over the Gila River trail he had discovered in 1774 to bring colonists from Sonora New Spain to California to settle two missions, one presidio, and one pueblo. Anza led 240 friars, soldiers and colonists with their families. They started out with 695 horses and mules and 385 Texas Longhorn bulls and cows—starting the cattle and horse industry in California. About 600 horses and mules and 300 cattle survived the trip. In 1776 about 200 leather-jacketed soldiers, Friars and colonists with their families moved to what was called Yerba Buena to start building a mission and a presidio there. The leather jackets the soldiers wore consisted of several layers of hardened leather and were strong enough body armor to usually stop an Indian arrow. In California, the cattle and horses had few predators and plentiful grass in all but drought years, and essentially grew and multiplied as feral animals—doubling roughly every two years. This partially displaced the Tule Elk and pronghorn antelope who had lived there in large herds previously.
Anza selected the sites of the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asís in what is now San Francisco; on his way back to Monterey, he sited Mission Santa Clara de Asís and the pueblo San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley but did not initially leave settlers to settle them. Mission San Francisco de Asís, the sixth Spanish mission, was founded on June 29, 1776, by Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and Father Francisco Palóu.
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.
On November 29, 1777, El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe was founded by José Joaquín Moraga on the first pueblo-town not associated with a mission or a military post in Alta California. The original San Jose settlers were part of the original group of 200 settlers and soldiers that had originally settled in Yerba Buena. Mission Santa Clara, founded in 1777, was the eighth mission founded and closest mission to San Jose. Mission Santa Clara was from the original San Jose pueblo site in neighboring Santa Clara. Mission San José was not founded until 1797, about north of San Jose in what is now Fremont.
The Los Angeles Pobladores is the name given to the 44 original Sonorans—22 adults and 22 children—who settled the Pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781. The pobladores were agricultural families from Sonora, Mexico. They were the last settlers to use the Anza trail as the Quechans closed the trail for the next 40 years shortly after they had passed over it. Almost none of the settlers was españoles ; the rest had casta designations such as mestizo, indio, and negro. Some classifications were changed in the California Census of 1790, as often happened in colonial Spanish America.
File:Founding of Los Angeles.jpg|thumb|right|The founding of Los Angeles by the Felipe de Neve and the Los Angeles Pobladores in 1781.
The settlers and escort soldiers who founded the towns of San José de Guadalupe, Yerba Buena, Monterey, San Diego and La Reina de Los Ángeles were primarily mestizo and of mixed Spaniard and Native American, and sometimes mulato, ancestry from the province of Sonora y Sinaloa in Mexico. Recruiters in Mexico of the Fernando Rivera y Moncada expedition and other expeditions later, who were charged with founding an agricultural community in Alta California, had a difficult time persuading people to emigrate to such an isolated outpost with no agriculture, no towns, no stores or developments of almost any kind. The majority of settlers were recruited from the northwestern parts of Mexico. The only tentative link with Mexico was via ship after the Quechans closed the Colorado River's Yuma Crossing in 1781. For the next 40 years, an average of only 2.5 ships per year visited California with 13 years showing no recorded ships arriving.
In Californio society, casta designations carried more weight than they did in older communities of central Mexico. One similar concept was the gente de razón, a term literally meaning "people of reason". It designated peoples who were culturally Hispanic and had adopted Christianity. This served to distinguish the Mexican Indio settlers and converted Californian Indios from the barbaro Californian Native Americans, who had not converted or become part of the Hispanic towns. California's Governor Pío Pico was criticized for his alleged descent from mestizo and mulato settlers.
Later years of Mexican rule
In the 1830s, the newly formed Mexican government was experiencing difficulties, having gone through several revolts, wars, internal conflicts and a seemingly never-ending string of Mexican Presidents. One of the problems in Mexico was the large amount of land controlled by the Catholic Church, which was continually granted property by many landowners when they died and controlled property supposedly held in trust for the Native Americans. This land, as it gradually accumulated, was seldom sold, as it cost nothing to keep, but could be rented out to gain additional income for the Catholic Church to pay its priests, friars, bishops, and other expenses. The Catholic Church was the largest and richest landowner in Mexico and its provinces. In California, the situation was even more pronounced, as the Franciscan friars held over 90% of all settled property, supposedly in trust for the mission Indians.In 1834, secularization laws that voided the mission control of lands in the northern settlements under Mexican rule were enacted. The missions directed thousands of Indians in herding livestock, growing crops and orchards, weaving cloth, etc. for the missions, presidios, and pueblo dwellers. The mission lands and herds formerly controlled by the missions were usually distributed to the settlers around each mission. Since most had almost no money, the land was distributed or granted free or at very little cost to friends and families of the government officials.
The Californio Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, for example, was reputed to be the richest man in California before the California Gold Rush. Vallejo oversaw the secularization of Mission San Francisco Solano and the distributions of its roughly. He founded the towns of Sonoma and Petaluma, California, owned Mare Island and the future town site of Benicia, California, and was granted the Rancho Petaluma, the Rancho Suscol and other properties by Governor José Figueroa in 1834 and later. Vallejo's younger brother, Jose Manuel Salvador Vallejo, was granted the Rancho Napa and other additional grants known as Salvador's Ranch. Over the hills of Mariano Vallejo's estate of Petaluma roamed ten thousand cattle, four to six thousand horses, and many thousands of sheep. He occupied a home on the plaza at Sonoma, where he entertained all who came with hospitality; few travelers of note came to California without visiting him. At Petaluma he had a great ranch house called La Hacienda. About 1849 on his home farm called Lachryma Montis, he built a modern frame house where he spent the later years of his life.
File:Portrait of Pio Pico.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Pío Pico served as the last Governor of Alta California under Mexican rule.
Vallejo tried to get the California State Capital moved permanently to Benicia, California on land he sold to the state government in December, 1851. It was named Benicia for the General's wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. The General intended that the prospective city be named "Francisca" after his wife, but this name was dropped when the city of Yerba Buena changed its name to "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Benicia was the third site selected to serve as the California state capital, and its newly constructed city hall was California's capitol from February 11, 1853, to February 25, 1854. Vallejo gave the Rancho Suscol to his oldest daughter, Epifania Guadalupe Vallejo, on April 3, 1851, as a wedding present when she married U.S. Army General John H. Frisbie. It is unknown what he gave as a wedding present when his two daughters Natalia and Jovita married the brothers, Attila Haraszthy and Agoston Haraszthy, on the same day—June 1, 1863.
In some cases particular mission land and livestock were split into parcels and then distributed by drawing lots. In nearly all cases, the Indians got very little of the mission land or livestock. Whether any of the proceeds of these sales made their way back to Mexico City is unknown. These lands had been worked by settlers and the much larger settlements of local Native American Kumeyaay peoples on the missions for several generations in some cases. When the missions were secularized or dismantled and the Indians did not have to live under continued friar and military control, they were essentially left to survive on their own. Many of the Native Americans reverted to their former tribal existence and left the missions, while others found they could get room and board and some clothing by working for the large ranches that took over the former mission lands and livestock. Many natives who had learned to ride horses and knew a smattering of Spanish were recruited to become vaqueros that worked the cattle and horses on the large ranchos and did other work. Some of these rancho owners and their hired hands would make up the bulk of the few hundred Californios fighting in the brief Mexican–American War conflicts in California. Some of the Californios and California Native Americans fought on the side of the U.S. settlers during the conflict, with some joining John Frémont's California Battalion.