Californio

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Californio
Notable Californios Pío Pico · Andrés Pico · José Antonio Estudillo
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
Religions
Predominantly Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
Mediterranean · Amerindian · Mestizo

The Californios were Spanish-speaking inhabitants of Alta California, first a part of New Spain, later of Mexico. This area was later annexed in 1848 by the United States following the Mexican-American War.

Californios included both the descendants of European settlers from Spain and Mexico, and also included other European settlers, Mestizos, and local Native Americans who adopted Spanish culture and converted to Christianity. Some white Americans, who settled in California, spoke Spanish, and lived as Mexicans, are also considered Californios.

At first, 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. The United States government did not continue this practice.

Much of Californio society lived at or near the many Missions, which were established in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were 21 Missions under the Roman Catholic church along the fabled route, El Camino Real.

Some Americans became honorary Californios due to their early arrival, marriage to Californios, and their adoption of, and adaptation to, Spanish culture and religion. Some wealthy Californio nobles intermarried with the settlers; thus a few prominent families in California may have Spanish or Mexican ancestors.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Californio independence 2 Key Californio battles 3 The end of Mexican rule 4 Californios after U.S. annexation 5 Californio identity in the 20th century 6 Notable Californios 7 Californios in literature 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Californio independence

Mexico's commander in California, Pío Pico, abandoned the Californios, who organized an army to defend themselves from the United States. The Californios defeated an American force in Los Angeles on September 30, 1846, but were defeated after the Americans reinforced their forces in Southern California. Mexico then signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo accepting American sovereignty over California on February 2, 1848. [1] [2]

European and Anglo American settlers in Northern areas of California had already threatened to rebel against Mexican rule in the 1840s. Among them was John Sutter, a land owner from Switzerland and founder of New Helvetia, in present-day Sacramento. That town was made famous by the 1848 California gold rush after miners found gold on the banks of the American River. When thousands of American settlers 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. Jose 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 the 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's 600 man army defeats the 160 man Californio force near Los Angeles.
  • Battle of La Mesa, January 9. Kearny, Robert F. Stockton and John Fremont'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 in July 1847, when the U.S. cavalry seized Pio Pico's adobe in present-day Bell, California south of Los Angeles, and arrested Mexican-Californio noble Don Antonio Lugo in his adobe near present-day Chino, California.^{[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 the conditions for favoritism in the parcelling of mission lands that had been worked by Indians for many years. Many 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,^[1], which stated that unless grantees presented evidence supporting their title within two years, the property would automatically pass into the public domain.^[2] 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.^[3][4] Although the Commission eventually confirmed 604 of the 813 claims received, the cost of litigation forced most Californios to lose their property. This land in turn was parcelled out to immigrant settlers under the 1862 Homestead Act.

[edit] Californios after U.S. annexation

The mysterious "disappearance" of Californios after 1850 in state history is debated. Some Mexican Americans and Latinos residing in California claim to have genealogical roots with Californios before the arrival of non-Spanish white Americans. The romantic history of Californios has even fueled the political volatile issues of the La Raza movement by some Chicano activists who depict "Mexican" Californios or Hispanics as the state's original people, instead of the native Coast Miwok, Ohlone, Wintun, Yokuts and other Native Americans who inhabited the region for centuries before European contact. They claim that California was part of a "lost land" of the Southwest U.S., 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]}

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 eventually 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.

Ever since the 1850s until it began to end by the 1960s, the Californios (either 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)

Until recently, especially within long-standing Mexican communities in Southern California, a number of people who claimed Native Californian and Californio ancestry could be found. However in the 1970 and 1980 US census reports, less than 1,000 Americans of Mexican descent in California called themselves Californios. It is often believed that these communities have become extinct, or that they have become absorbed or integrated with the more recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America over the recent decades.^[5]

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 friction took place between the two Hispanic groups^{[citation needed]}, as the older generation felt more "American" and "Spanish" than the recent arrivals from Mexico since the settlers of northern New Spain (which is now California and the rest of American Southwest) during the colonial period and before it became part of newly formed country of Mexico were Spaniards and identify with Spanish history while the central or south Mexicans who came to California since Mexican Revolution were mostly of Native American blood or mestizos and identify with Mexican history.^{[citation needed]}

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 also, 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 and they are the newest Californio and Spanish American populations in the state.

Remnants of the so-called 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]}

[edit] Notable Californios

• José María Alviso Grantee of Rancho Milpitas, Alcalde of San José
• Juan Bautista de Anza
• José Antonio Estudillo
• José María Estudillo
• Arcadia Bandini, co-founder of Santa Monica, California
• Juan Bandini
• José Raimundo Carrillo
• José Antonio Carrillo
• Nicolas Den
• Manuel Dominguez
• 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
• Sepulveda Family
• José Sepúlveda
• Abel Stearns
• John Temple, early Long Beach rancher
• Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the namesake of Vallejo, California
• Tiburcio Vasquez, bandit
• José María Verdugo, recipient of major land grant
• Benjamin Davis Wilson, also known as Don Benito Wilson
• Jose Antonio Yorba, major land grant recipient
• Juan Matias Sanchez, Juan Matias Sanchez Adobe, Rancho Merced, Montebello, California

[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 written and set in 1880s California, depicts a very wealthy Californio family's legal struggles with immigrant squatters on their land. 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.^{[verification needed]} This process was long (most Californios spent upwards of fifteen years defending their grants before the courts), and the legal fees alone were enough to make many Californios landless.^{[citation needed]} Californios felt confused about having to pay land taxes to American officials, because they opposed the idea on paying for land ownership that wasn't 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.^[clarify] They could not compete economically with all the European and Anglo-American emigrants who arrived in the region with large amounts of money.^{[not specific enough to verify]}

The end of Californio culture is depicted in the novel Ramona, written by Helen Hunt Jackson in 1884. The fictional Zorro has grown to become the most identifiable Californio due to short stories, motion pictures and by the 1950s on television; although the historical truth of the era is sometimes lost in the story-telling.

[edit] See also

• Hispanic
• Peninsulares
• Spanish American
• Mestizo
• Spanish people
• History of California to 1899

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Californios, a People and a Culture, a personal website
• Californios ~ early Mexican San Diegans
• "Mexican Americans in California," FIVE VIEWS: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California, California Department of Parks and Recreation Office of Historic Preservation, December 1988 (includes discussion on Californios)
• 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.