History of California before 1900
in California began when indigenous Americans first arrived some 13,000 years ago. Coastal exploration by the Spanish began in the 16th century, with further European settlement along the coast and in the inland valleys following in the 18th century. California was part of New Spain until that kingdom dissolved in 1821, becoming part of Mexico.
During the Mexican–American War, California was ceded to the United States under the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The same year, the California gold rush began, triggering intensified U.S. westward expansion. California joined the Union as a free state via the Compromise of 1850. By the end of the 19th century, California was still largely rural and agricultural, with a population of about 1.4 million.
Pre-Columbian history (c. 13,000 BC – 1530 AD)
The most commonly accepted model of migration to the New World is that people from Asia crossed the Bering land bridge to the Americas some 16,500 years ago. The remains of Arlington Springs Man on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces of a very early habitation, dated to the Wisconsin glaciation about 13,000 years ago.Some 30 tribes or culture groups lived in what is now California, gathered into perhaps six different language family groups. These groups included the early-arriving Hokan family and the later-arriving Uto-Aztecan of the desert southeast. This cultural diversity was among the densest in North America and was likely the result of a series of migrations and invasions during the previous 13,000 years.
At the time of the first European contact, Native American tribes in California included the Chumash, Kumeyaay, Nisenan, Maidu, Miwok, Modoc, Mohave, Ohlone, Pomo, Serrano, Shasta, Tataviam, Tongva, Wintu, Yurok, and Yokuts. The relative strength of the tribes was dynamic, as the more successful expanded their territories and less successful tribes contracted. Slave-trading and war among tribes alternated with periods of relative peace. The total population of Native California is estimated, by the time of extensive European contact in the 18th century, to have been perhaps 300,000. Before Europeans landed in North America, about one-third of all natives in what is now the United States were living in modern-day California. California indigenous language diversity numbered 80 to 90 languages and dialects, some surviving to the present.
Tribes adapted to California's many climates. Coastal tribes were a major source of trading beads, which were produced from mussel shells and made using stone tools. Tribes in California's broad Central Valley and the surrounding foothills developed early agriculture, while tribes living in the mountains of the north and east relied heavily on salmon and game hunting, also collecting and shaping obsidian for themselves and trade. The harsh deserts of the southeast were home to tribes who learned to thrive by making careful use of local plants and by living in oases or along water courses. Local trade between indigenous populations enabled them to acquire seasonings such as salt or foodstuffs and other goods that might be rare in certain locales, such as flint or obsidian for making spear and arrow points.
The Native Americans had no domesticated animals except dogs and no pottery; their tools were made out of wood, leather, woven baskets and netting, stone, and antler. Some shelters were made of branches and mud; some dwellings were built by digging into the ground and then constructing a brush shelter on top covered with animal skins, tules and/or mud. On the coast and somewhat inland, traditional architecture consists of rectangular redwood or cedar plank semi-subterranean houses. Traditional clothing was minimal in the summer, with tanned deerhide and other animal leathers and furs and coarse woven articles of grass clothing used in winter. Feathers were sewn into prayer pieces worn for ceremonies. Basket weaving was a high form of art and utility, as were canoe making and other carving. Some tribes around Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands were using large plank canoes to fish and trade, while tribes in the California delta and San Francisco Bay Area were using tule canoes and some tribes on the Northwest coast carved redwood dugout canoes.
A dietary staple for most indigenous populations in interior California was acorns, which were dried, shelled, ground to flour, soaked in water to leach out their tannin, and cooked. The grinding holes worn into large rocks over centuries of use are still visible in many rocks today. The ground and leached acorn flour was usually cooked into a nutritious mush, eaten daily with other traditional foods. Acorn preparation was a very labor-intensive process nearly always done by women. There are estimates that some indigenous populations might have eaten as much as one ton of acorns in one year. Families tended productive oak and tanoak groves for generations. Acorns were gathered in large quantities and could be stored as a reliable winter food source.
The staple foods then used by other indigenous American tribes, corn and/or potatoes, would not grow without irrigation in California's typically short three- to five-month wet season and nine-to seven-month dry season. Despite this, the natural abundance of California and the environmental management techniques developed by its tribes over millennia allowed for the highest population density in the Americas north of Mexico. The indigenous people practiced various forms of forest gardening in the forests, grasslands, mixed woodlands, and wetlands, ensuring that desired food and medicine plants continued to be available. The Native Americans controlled fire on a regional scale to create a low-intensity fire ecology which prevented larger, catastrophic fires and sustained a low-density "wild" agriculture in loose rotation. By burning underbrush and grass, the Native Americans revitalized patches of land whose regrowth provided fresh shoots to attract food animals. In a primitive example of permaculture, a form of fire-stick farming was used to periodically clear areas of old growth, which in turn encouraged new growth.
The high and rugged Sierra Nevada mountains located behind the Great Basin Desert east of California, extensive forests and mountains in the north, the rugged and harsh Sonoran Desert and Mojave Desert in the south and the Pacific Ocean to the west effectively isolated California from easy trade or tribal interactions with indigenous populations on the rest of the continent, delaying the damages of colonial-settler arrival until the Spanish missions, the Gold Rush, and Euro-American invasion. The few trade connections that were made outside of the Californias were between Yuman language speaking tribes and other Yuman groups along the Colorado and Gila Rivers in Arizona and south to modern-day Baja California and northwest Sonora, between Athabaskan language–speaking groups and indigenous peoples along the Coast of the Pacific Northwest. It has also been proposed by some that contact was made by the Chumash and the Tongva with Polynesians, such as the Central Polynesian groups in the 8th century and the Native Hawaiians in the 14th century, who could have provided the shipbuilding knowledge to create Tomol canoes.
European exploration (1530–1765)
The first European explorers, flying the flags of Spain and of England, sailed along the coast of California from the early 16th century to the mid-18th century, but no European settlements were established. The most important colonial power, Spain, focused attention on its imperial centers in Mexico and Peru. Confident of Spanish claims to all lands touching the Pacific Ocean, Spain sent an exploring party sailing along the California coastline. The California seen by these ship-bound explorers was one of hilly grasslands and wooded canyons, with few apparent resources or natural ports to attract colonists. The other European nations, with their attentions focused elsewhere, paid little attention to California. In the mid-18th century, both Russian and British explorers and fur traders began establishing trading stations on the coast.Hernán Cortés
Around 1530, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán was told by a Native American slave of the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. About the same time, Hernán Cortés was attracted by stories of a country far to the northwest populated by Amazonish women and abounding with treasure.An expedition in 1533 discovered a bay, most likely that of La Paz, before experiencing difficulties and returning. Cortés accompanied expeditions in 1534 and 1535 without finding the sought-after land.
On May 3, 1535, Cortés claimed "Santa Cruz Island" and subsequently laid out and founded the city that was to become La Paz.
Francisco de Ulloa
In July 1539, Cortés sent Francisco de Ulloa to sail the Gulf of California with three small vessels. He made it to the mouth of the Colorado River, then sailed around the peninsula as far as Cedros Island. This proved that Baja California is a peninsula. The next year, an expedition under Hernando de Alarcón ascended the lower Colorado River to confirm Ulloa's finding. Alarcón may thus have become the first to reach Alta California. European maps published subsequently during the 16th century, including those by Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, correctly depict Baja California as a peninsula, although it was sometimes mapped as an island over the next two centuries.The account of Ulloa's voyage marks the first-recorded application of the name "California". It can be traced to Las sergas de Esplandián, the fifth volume of the chivalric romance cycle Amadis de Gaula arranged by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo and first printed around 1510, in which a character travels through an island called "California".
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to explore the California coast, with either a Portuguese or Spanish background. He was a soldier, crossbowman, and navigator who sailed for the Spanish Crown. He led an expedition in two ships of his own design and construction from the west coast of what is now Mexico, setting out in late June 1542. He landed on September 28 at San Diego Bay, claiming what he thought was the Island of California for Spain. As he passed them, Cabrillo named and claimed each of Californias' channel islands, which lie offshore from Baja California to northern California.Cabrillo and his crew continued north and came ashore October 8 at San Pedro Bay. The expedition then continued north in an attempt to discover a supposed coastal route to the mainland of Asia. They sailed at least as far north as San Miguel Island and Cape Mendocino. Cabrillo died as the result of an accident during the voyage; Bartolomé Ferrer led the remainder of the expedition, which may have reached as far north as the Rogue River in today's southern Oregon.
The expedition found that there was essentially nothing for the Spanish to easily exploit in California, located at the extreme limits of exploration and trade from Spain. The indigenous populations were depicted as living at a subsistence level, typically located in small rancherias of extended family groups of 100 to 150 people.