Pre-contact
Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years,
California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse
areas in
pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The
Indigenous peoples of California included more than
70 distinct groups
of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on
the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse
in their political organization with bands, tribes, villages, and on
the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the
Chumash,
Pomo and
Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups.
16th, 17th and 18th centuries
The first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the
Russian River was a
Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer
Francis Drake
also explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast
in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the
Manila galleons on their return trips from the
Philippines beginning in 1565.
[29] The first Asians to set foot on what would be the United States occurred in 1587, when
Filipino sailors arrived in Spanish ships at
Morro Bay.
[30] Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for
New Spain.
Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th
century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. That
depiction appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.
[31]
After the
Portolà expedition of 1769–70, Spanish
missionaries began setting up 21
California Missions on or near the coast of
Alta (Upper) California, beginning in San Diego. During the same period, Spanish military forces built several forts (
presidios) and three small towns (
pueblos). Two of the pueblos grew into the cities of
Los Angeles and
San Jose. The Spanish colonization brought the
genocide of the indigenous Californian peoples.
19th century
Imperial Russia explored the California coast and established a trading post at
Fort Ross. Its early 19th-century coastal settlements north of
San Francisco Bay constituted the southernmost Russian colony in North America and were spread over an area stretching from
Point Arena to
Tomales Bay.
[33]
In 1821, the
Mexican War of Independence gave
Mexico (including California) independence from Spain; for the next 25 years,
Alta California remained a remote northern province of the nation of Mexico.
Cattle ranches, or
ranchos,
emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. After
Mexican independence from Spain, the chain of missions became the
property of the Mexican government and were
secularized by 1834.
[34] The ranchos developed under ownership by
Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians) who had received land grants, and traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants.
From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and the
future Canada arrived in Northern California. These new arrivals used
the
Siskiyou Trail,
California Trail,
Oregon Trail and
Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California.
Between 1831 and 1836, California experienced a series of revolts against Mexico;
[35] this culminated in the
1836 California revolt led by
Juan Bautista Alvarado, which ended after Mexico appointed him governor of the department.
[36] The revolt, which had momentarily declared California an independent state, was successful with the assistance of
American and
British residents of California,
[37] including
Isaac Graham;
[38] after 1840, 100 of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the
Graham affair in 1840.
[37]
One of the largest ranchers in California was
John Marsh.
After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the
Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the
United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the
California climate, soil and other reasons to settle there, as well as
the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route." His
letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers
throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to
California.
[39] He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.
[40]
After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California,
Marsh helped end the rule of the last Mexican governor of California,
thereby paving the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the
United States.
[41]
In 1846, settlers rebelled against Mexican rule during the
Bear Flag Revolt. Afterwards, rebels raised the
Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was
William B. Ide,
[42] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt.
The California Republic was short lived;
[43] the same year marked the outbreak of the
Mexican–American War (1846–48).
[44] When Commodore
John D. Sloat of the
United States Navy sailed into
Monterey Bay
and began the military occupation of California by the United States,
Northern California capitulated in less than a month to the United
States forces.
[45] After a series of defensive battles in
Southern California, the
Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the
Californios on January 13, 1847, securing American control in California.
[46]
Following the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war, the western territory of Alta California, became the United States state of California, and
Arizona,
Nevada,
Colorado and
Utah
became United States Territories. The lightly populated lower region of
California, the Baja Peninsula, remained in the possession of
Mexico.
In 1846, the non-native population of California was estimated to be
no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans down from about
300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.
[47]
After gold was discovered in 1848, the population burgeoned with United
States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the
great
California Gold Rush. By 1854 over 300,000 settlers had come.
[48] Between 1847 and 1870, the population of
San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.
[49] On September 9, 1850, as part of the
Compromise of 1850, California was admitted to the United States undivided as a
free state, denying the expansion of
slavery to the Pacific Coast.
California's native population precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which they had no natural immunity.
[50]
As in other states, the native inhabitants were forcibly removed from
their lands by incoming miners, ranchers, and farmers. And although
California entered the union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned
Indians" were de facto enslaved by Mexican and Anglo-American masters
under the 1853
Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
[51]
There were massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were
killed. Between 1850 and 1860, California paid around 1.5 million
dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government)
[52]
to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the
indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was
placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and
isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the
government to sustain the populations living on them.
[51]
As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native
inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including
Benjamin Madley and
Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.
[53]
The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule was located at
Monterey from 1777 until 1845.
[34] Pio Pico, last Mexican governor of Alta California, moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States
consulate was also located in Monterey, under consul
Thomas O. Larkin.
In 1849, the Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey.
Among the tasks was a decision on a location for the new state capital.
The first legislative sessions were held in
San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included
Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby
Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in
Sacramento since 1854
[54] with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to
flooding in Sacramento.
Initially, travel between California and the rest of the continental
United States was time consuming and dangerous. A more direct connection
came in 1869 with the completion of the
First Transcontinental Railroad through
Donner Pass
in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Once completed, hundreds of thousands
of United States citizens came west, where new Californians were
discovering that land in the state, if irrigated during the dry summer
months, was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture
in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops,
cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in
Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's
prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.
