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Prehistory

The remains of Arlington Springs Woman on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces of a very early habitation, dated to the last ice age (Wisconsin glaciation) about 13,000 years ago.

The first European explorers and settlers found many Native American tribes living in a land of oak woodlands, grassy hills, and broad beaches. Among them were the Chumash, Maidu, Miwok, Modoc, Mohave, Ohlone and Tongva.

Coastal tribes were a major source of trading beads (wampum), which were produced from mussel shells using stone tools, while those in the northern Cascade Range traded obsidian, used for arrowheads, axe heads, and knives. Tribes in the Sierra Nevada foothills collected acorns from oak trees, ground them, and leached out the acidic tannin to make the flour edible.

16th century

European exploration

Hernán Cortés

About 1530, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán (President of New Spain) was told by an Indian slave of the Seven Cities of Cibola that had streets paved with gold and silver. About the same time, Hernán Cortés was attracted by stories of Ciguatan, a wonderful country far to the northwest, populated by Amazonish women and abounding with gold, pearls, and gems. The Spaniards conjectured that these places may be one and the same.

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 city.

On May 3, 1535, Cortés claimed "Santa Cruz Island" (now known as the peninsula of Baja California), and laid out and founded the city that was to become LaPaz later that spring.

Francisco de Ulloa
, also Island of California

In July 1539, moved by the renewal of those stories, Cortés sent Francisco de Ulloa out with three small vessels. He made it to the mouth of the Colorado, then circumnavigated the peninsula and sailed as far as Cedros Island.

The name "California" was first applied in the account of this voyage. It can be traced to the fifth volume of a chivalric romance, Amadis de Gallia, arranged by Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo and first printed around 1510, in which a character travels through an island called "California" or "Califerne".

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo

The first European to explore the coast was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese navigator sailing for the Spanish Crown. In June 1542, Cabrillo led an expedition in two ships from the west coast of what is now Mexico. He landed on September 28 at San Diego Bay, claiming what he thought was the Island of California for Spain.

Cabrillo and his crew landed on San Miguel, one of the Channel Islands, then continued north in an attempt to discover a supposed Strait of Anián. But Cabrillo died during this voyage, and the remainder of the exploration was led by Bartolomé Ferrelo, who sailed as far as the modern California-Oregon border.

Special Note: On the map to the right notice the little islands that are in the channel next to the Isle of California. Those islands were put there on an early map as a myth, since this channel obviously had never been nor could have ever been explored. Mapmakers over the centuries always placed them on their maps taking it on faith that they must have existed since somebody first acknowledged them.

Sir Francis Drake

In 1579 the English explorer Sir Francis Drake was sailing the coastline of California when, on June 17, he found what he said was an excellent port, where he was able to repair and restock his vessels. Drake claimed the new land, what he called Nova Albion, in the name of Queen Elizabeth I. To this day, it is not known where he landed or the exact extent of the territory he claimed. What is known however, is that an Elizabethan coin from the 1600s was found at Olompali State Park in Novato, California during an archeological dig; Novato is within a day's journey from the coast of California at what is currently known as Drake's Bay. That coin is currently at a musuem under the direction of UC Berkeley. There is a legend that Drake left a copper plate on land, but it has never been found. A fake engraved plate was found by a professor who believed the story. That fake was created by his colleagues as a practical joke.

17th century

Sebastián Vizcaíno

In 1602, the Spaniard Sebastián Vizcaíno explored California's coastline as far north as Monterey Bay. Besides that discovery, his major contributions to the state's history were the detailed charts he made of the coastal waters.

Other Spanish expeditions

18th century

Spanish colonization

Spain had maintained a number of missions and presidios in some of its richer lands since 1493. The Spanish claims to the Northern provinces, excluding Santa Fe, were essentially ignored for almost 300 years. It wasn't until the threat of an incursion by Russia coming down from Alaska in 1765, however, that King Charles III of Spain felt such installations were necessary in Upper ("Alta") California. By then the Spanish empire was on its last legs and could only afford a minimal effort. Alta California was to be settled by Franciscan Monks protected by a few troops in widely separated California Missions. Between 1774 and 1791, the Crown sent forth a number of small expeditions to explore the Pacific Northwest, but by 1819 chose to limit its "reach" to Northern California because of the costs involved.

Gaspar de Portolà

In May 1768, the Spanish Visitor General, José de Gálvez, planned a four-prong expedition to settle Upper California, two by sea and two by land, which Gaspar de Portolà volunteered to command.

De Portolà's land expedition arrived at the site of present-day San Diego on June 29, 1769, where it established the Presidio of San Diego. Eager to press on to Monterey Bay, de Portolà and his group, consisting of Father Juan Crespi, sixty-three leather-jacket soldiers and a hundred mules, headed north on July 14. They moved quickly, reaching the present-day sites of Los Angeles on August 2, Santa Monica on August 3, Santa Barbara on August 19, San Simeon and Ragged Point on September 13 and the mouth of the Salinas River on October 1.

On October 31, de Portolà's explorers became the first Europeans known to view San Francisco Bay. Ironically the Manila Galleons had sailed along this coast for almost 200 years by then. They never made it to Monterey Bay on that journey. The group returned to San Diego in 1770. Leaving Captain Pedro Fages in charge, de Portolà sailed for San Blas, Mexico on June 9.

Junípero Serra

Junípero Serra was a Majorcan (Spain) Franciscan who founded the Alta California mission chain. After King Carlos III ordered the Jesuits expelled from "New Spain" on February 3, 1768, Serra was named "Father Presidente."

Serra founded San Diego de Alcalá in 1769. Later that year, Serra, Governor de Portolà and a small group of men moved north, up the Pacific Coast. They reached Monterey in 1770, where Serra founded the second Alta California mission, San Carlos Borromeo.

The Alta California missions

The California Missions comprise a series of religious outposts established by Spanish Catholic Dominicans, Jesuits, and Franciscans, to spread the Christian doctrine among the local Native Americans, but with the added benefit of giving Spain a toehold in the frontier land. The missions introduced European livestock, fruits, vegetables, and industry into the California region. Most missions were small with normally two Franciscans and six to eight soldiers. All these buildings were built with unpaid native labor with some Franciscan supervision. In addition to the presidio (royal fort) and pueblo (town), the misión was one of the three major agencies employed by the Spanish crown in an attempt to cheaply extend its borders and consolidate its colonial territories. None of these Missions were self supporting, requiring continued if modest financial support. Starting with the Mexican war of Independence in 1811 this support largely disappeared and the Missions and their converts were left on their own. In 1832 Mexico forced the disbandment of the Missions and dispersal of the lands. Most of the lands went to friends of the people disposing of the property and not the Indians.

The missions themselves were situated approximately 30 miles (48 kilometers) apart, so that they were separated by one day's long ride on horseback along the 600–mile (966–kilometer) long El Camino Real trail (Spanish for "The Royal Highway"), also known as the California Mission Trail. Tradition has it that the padres sprinkled mustard seeds along the trail in order to mark it with bright yellow flowers.

A number of mission structures survive today or have been rebuilt, and many have congregations established since the beginning of the 20th century. The highway and missions have become for many a romantic symbol of an idyllic and peaceful past. The "Mission Revival Style" was an architectural movement that drew its inspiration from this idealized view of California's past.

Military Districts
Four presidios, strategically placed along the California coast, served to protect the missions and other Spanish settlements in Upper California. Each of these posts functioned as a base of military operations for a specific region, organized as follows:

El Presidio de Sonoma, or Sonoma Barracks, was established in 1836 by Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (the "Commanclate-General of the Northern Frontier of Alta California") as a part of Mexico's strategy to halt Russian incursions into the region.

British influences

Captain James Cook, midway through his third and final voyage of exploration in 1778, sailed along the west coast of North America aboard the HMS Resolution, mapping the coast from California all the way to the Bering Strait. The town of Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) was founded in 1792 by British explorer George Vancouver, who had served under Cook's command.

French influences

In 1786 Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, led a group of scientists and artists on a voyage of exploration ordered by Louis XVI and were welcomed in Monterey. They compiled an account of the Californian mission system, the land and the people. Traders, whalers and scientific missions followed in the next decades.

19th century

Russian exploration

In the early 1800s, fur trappers of the Russian Empire, which had already claimed Alaska, briefly explored the coast and set up trading posts as far south as Fort Ross in modern-day Sonoma County. They hunted for sea otter pelts as far south as the Channel Islands (west of the coastline from Santa Barbara to San Diego). A prominent marriage between a leading Californio family and an Imperial noble almost caused Russian trade to advance into Southern California. The scion from Russia, however, died of disease while crossing Siberia to get a dispensation from Russian Orthodox leaders to marry a Catholic (his would-be bride entered a convent after his death).

Ranchos

To support the agricultural and pastoral work of the missions, the Spanish encouraged settlement with large land-grants, called ranchos, that largely remained empty of people. These were used for to raise cattle and sheep. Cow hides at roughly $1.00 each and fat (used to make candles) were the primary export of California until the mid-19th century. The owners of these ranchos were called rancheros and styled themselves after the Spanish nobility, though they had to import all manufactured goods and had little real material wealth. Their workers were usually mission Indians that had learned to speak Spanish and ride horses.

Mexican California

Spanish California lasted until Mexico's decade-long War of Independence ended in 1821. Although California had been a separate region beyond the frontiers of New Spain, it became a state of Mexico with a population (4,000) that was tiny even compared to the sparse population of states in Mexico proper.

The Roman Catholic church owned more than half the land in Mexico and was effectively a state within a state. As part of the process of wresting effective control of Mexico from the Vatican, Mexico seized real estate from the church, something that eventually was codified into the Mexican constitution. The missions in California were largely abandoned, and fell into disrepair.

Trappers and Traders

Beginning in 1820s, American and British trappers began entering California in search of beaver. Using the Siskiyou Trail, Old Spanish Trail, and later, the California Trail, these trapping parties arrived in California, often without the knowledge or approval of the Mexican authorities, and laid the foundation for the arrival of later Gold Rush era Forty-Niners, farmers and ranchers.

French interest

The leader of a French scientific expedition to California, Eugene Duflot de Mofras, wrote in 1840 "it is evident that California will belong to whatever nation chooses to send there a man-of-war and two hundred men." In 1841 General Vallejo wrote Governor Alvarado that "there is no doubt that France is intriguing to become mistress of California" but a series of troubled French governments did not uphold French interests in the area.

During disagreements with Mexicans, the German-Swiss Francophile John Sutter threatened to raise the French flag over California and place himself and his settlement, New Helvetia, under French protection.

In 1845 the French vice-consul of California, Louis Gasquet urged the French government to send a naval force to California and when American troops occupied Monterey he created a diplomatic incident by refusing to recognize the new government. During the fifty-one days he was held prisoner in his own home he continued to hope that his government would intervene but it did not. *

American Conquest 1846

Under Mexican rule, American sailing companies maintained trade with Native Americans and gathered pelts, and in 1840 young Richard Henry Dana wrote of his own experiences aboard ship off California in the 1830s in his famous and still published "Two Years Before the Mast" (etext *) Mexico paid little attention to its poor far-flung northern possession.

In 1846, California had a Spanish-speaking population of just 4,000 — about 800 families, mostly concentrated on a few hundred large ranchos in the south. About 1,300 Americans and a very mixed group of about 500 Europeans were scattered mostly from Monterey to Sacramento dominated trading just as the Californios dominated ranching. In terms of adult males, the two groups were about equal, but the Americans were more recent arrivals.

When war was declared on May 13, 1846, it took almost two months (mid July 1846) for definite word of war to get to California. U.S. consul Thomas O. Larkin in Monterey California on hearing rumors of war tried to keep peace between the Americans and the small Mexican military garrison commanded by José Castro. American army explorer and cartographer John C. Fremont with about 60 well-armed men had entered California in December 1845 and was making a slow march to Oregon when they received word that war between Mexico and the U.S. was imminent. Hearing rumors that the Mexican authorities were going to arrest all Americans, 30 settlers revolted and seized the small Mexican garrison in Sonoma. They raised the "Bear Flag" of the proposed California Republic over Sonoma on June 15, 1846. On June 23, 1846, Frémont arrived with his force of sixty soldiers and took over command of the combined force. [http://www.longcamp.com/batt.html Commodore John Drake Sloat, on hearing of imminent war and the revolt in Sonoma, ordered his naval forces to occupy Yerba Buena (present San Francisco) on July 7 and raise the American flag. On July 15, Sloat transferred his command to Commodore Robert F. Stockton, a much more aggressive leader. Commodore Stockton, put Fremont's forces under his orders. On July 19th, Fremont's "California Battalion" swelled to about 160 additional men from newly arrived settlers near Sacramento, and he entered Monterey in a joint operation with some of Stockton's sailors and marines. The official word had been received--the Mexican American war was on. The American forces easily took over California; within days they controlled San Francisco, Sonoma, and Sutter's Fort in Sacramento.

Mexican General Castro and Governor Pio Pico fled from Los Angeles. When Stockton's forces entered Los Angeles unresisted on August 13, 1846 the nearly bloodless conquest of California seemed complete. Stockton, however, left too small a force (21 men) in Los Angeles, and Californios, acting on their own and without help from Mexico, forced the small American garrison to retire in late September. Reinforcements sent by Stockton were repulsed in a small battle at San Pedro.

Meanwhile, General Kearny with a much reduced squadron of 100 dragoons finally reached California after a greuling march across New Mexico, Arizona and the Sonora desert. They fought an inconclusive skirmish at San Pascual California where 18 of Kearny's weary troopers were killed--the largest skirmish in California.

Stockton rescued Kearny's surrounded forces and their combined forces moved northward from San Diego, entering Los Angeles without opposition on January 10, 1847. Three days later, in the "Cahuenga Capitulation," the last significant body of Californios surrendered to Fremont. That marked the end of the Californio struggle. On January 28, 1847 Army lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman and his army unit arrived in Monterey California as American forces in the pipline continue to stream into California. March 15, 1847 Col. Jonathan D. Stevenson’s Seventh Regiment of New York Volunteers of about 900 men start arriving in California. All of these men were in place when Gold was discovered.

The southern border of California does not run straight east to west, as other borders in the western U.S. do. Rather, it runs at an angle from Arizona to just south of San Diego Bay. American claims dating to colonial times and back to Sir Francis Drake went only as far as south as Point Loma — just north of the mouth of the bay. San Diego Bay is one of the only natural harbors in California south of San Francisco, and to claim all this strategic water, the border was slanted to include it.

Gold Rush

In 1848, gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills — at Sutter's Mill — about 40 miles east of Sacramento, beginning the California gold rush. John Sutter was a Swiss German settler who colonized an area around the Sacramento River and Sutter Creek, north and inland from the sparsely-settled Spanish land-grants. James W. Marshall, an American who was Sutter's carpenter, discovered the gold which started a gold rush of immigrants, mostly from the U.S.

The merchants supplying the miners settled in towns along what is now State Highway 49, and especially in Sacramento (the state capital) and San Francisco. The nearest deep-water seaport, was San Francisco Bay, just inland from the narrow strait known as the "Golden Gate," and San Francisco became the home for new established bankers who financed exploration for gold. Gold is still found in many watersheds in amounts near 3/4 oz. per ton. This is an amount that is economical to mine were it not for federal and state laws that prohibit hydraulic mining.

The Gold Rush that began in 1849 brought a huge population of immigrants to the sparsely populated land. Before the Rush, there were too few people in the territory to make it a state. Thousands of people flocked to the region daring a long and arduous trip by land across North America or a 10,000-mile sail by sea around South America's Cape Horn.

This surge in population enabled the region to become a state far sooner then it otherwise naturally would have.

Before California was formally admitted into the U.S. as part of the Compromise of 1850, it occupied an ambiguous place politically. Nominally a free Republic, it was overseen by a military governor for most of the period. It was not quite a republic, not quite a military district, and not quite a federal territory. Finally, on September 9, 1850, it was admitted in the Compromise of 1850 as a free state. Typically one senator agreed to support the slave states to maintain the balance in the Senate.

Statehood

State capitals
California officially became a state in 1850, and situated its first capital in San Jose. The city did not have facilities ready for a proper capital, and the winter of 1850 - 1851 was unusually wet, causing the dirt roads to become muddy streams. The legislature was unsatisfied with the location, so former General and State Senator Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo donated land in the future city of Vallejo for a new capital; the legislature convened there for one week in 1852 and again for a month in 1853. Again, the facilities available were unsuitable to house a state government, and the capital was soon moved three miles away to the little town of Benicia, inland from the San Francisco Bay. The strait links San Pablo Bay to Grizzly and Suisun Bays deep in the interior. A lovely brick statehouse was built in old American style complete with white cupola. Although strategically sited between the Gold Rush territory of the Sierra Foothills and the financial port of San Francisco, the site was too small for expansion, and so the capital was moved further inland past the Sacramento River Delta to the riverside port of Sacramento.

Sacramento was the site of John Sutter's large plantation and his fort. The town was founded by John Sutter, Jr. while the elder Sutter was away, at the river's edge and downhill from the fort. Sutter Sr. was indignant since this place, shaded by water-needy Cottonwood trees, was often under water. Indeed, every hundred years or so, the whole Great Valley from Chico to Bakersfield, was one great freshwater sea. However, lots were already sold, so there the town of Sacramento stayed. At the end of the century, the streets were raised a full story, so buildings in Old Town are now entered through what were once doors to the balconies shading the sidewalks below.

California and the Civil War

California's role in the American Civil War is one of the least researched areas of American and Californian history, but it nonetheless played a distant role which is important for the many ways in which it was a microcosm of the whole United States, both North and South. California was settled primarily by Midwestern and Southern farmers who were sympathetic to decentralized government and states' rights. California also was the destination for a minority of powerful Northeastern capitalists who played a significant role in Californian politics through their control of mines, shipping, and finance.

California labor politics and the rise of Nativism
After the Civil War ended in 1865, California continued to grow. Independent miners were largely displaced by large corporate mining operations. Railroads began to be built, and both the railroad companies and the mining companies began to hire large numbers of laborers. Many of them were put out of work, when the mines and railroads took advantage of China's internal socioeconomic problems to recruit immigrant laborers who were disparagingly called "coolies."

The unemployed American laborers tended to riot when they lost their jobs, and the Chinese laborers rioted in response to mistreatment by both their employers and locals. From 1850 through 1900, anti-Chinese nativist sentiment resulted in the passage of innumerable laws, many of which remained in effect well into the middle of the 20th century.

The most flagrant episode was probably the creation and ratification of a new state constitution in 1879. Thanks to vigorous lobbying by the nativist Workingmen's Party, Article XIX, section 4 forbade corporations from hiring Chinese coolies, and empowered all California cities and counties to completely expel Chinese persons or to limit where they could reside. It would not be repealed until 1952.

The 1879 constitutional convention also dispatched a message to Congress pleading for strong immigration restrictions, which led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1889, and it would not be repealed by Congress until 1943.

Similar sentiments led to the development of a Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan, by which Japan voluntarily agreed to restrict emigration to the United States. California also passed an Alien Land Act which barred aliens, especially Asians, from holding title to land. Because it was difficult for members of most Asian ethnic groups to obtain U.S. citizenship until the 1960s, the law effectively barred nearly all Asians from owning land in California until it was overturned by the California Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1952.

In 1886, when a Chinese laundry owner challenged the constitutionality of a San Francisco ordinance clearly designed to drive Chinese laundries out of business, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor, and in doing so, laid the theoretical foundation for modern equal protection constitutional law. See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).

Meanwhile, even with severe restrictions on Asian immigration, tensions between unskilled workers and wealthy landowners persisted up to and through the Great Depression (and in some areas, still persists). Novelist Jack London writes of the struggles of workers in the city of Oakland in his visionary classic, Valley of the Moon, a title evoking the pristine situation of Sonoma County between sea and mountains, Redwoods and Oaks, fog and sunshine. Not far away, Robert Louis Stevenson also settled for a time in California to recover his health near the hot mineral springs and geysers on the edge of Napa Valley.

The rise of the railroads

The establishment of America's transcontinental rail lines permanently linked California to the rest of the country, and the far-reaching transportation systems that grew out of them during the century that followed contributed immeasurably to the state’s unrivaled social, political, and economic development. But while it is true that much of the traveling public would have been unable to make the trip to California's sunny climate were it not for the fleet, relatively safe, and affordable trains of the western railroads, it is also true that those companies in effect preyed on those same settlers once they arrived at the end of the line.

Feats of engineering
Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, there were several daring feats of engineering in Californian history. First is the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which runs from eastern California through the Mojave Desert and its Antelope Valley to dry Los Angeles far to the south. Finished in 1911, it was the brain-child of the self-taught William Mulholland and is still in use today. Creeks flowing from the eastern Sierra are diverted into the aqueduct. This attracts controversy from time to time since this withholds water from Mono Lake — an especially otherworldly and beautiful ecosystem — and from farmers in the Owens Valley. See also California Water Wars.

Other feats are the building of Hoover Dam (which is in Nevada, but provides power and water to Southern California), Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, Shasta Dam, and the California Aqueduct, taking water from northern California to dry and sprawling southern California. Another project was the draining of Lake Tulare, which, during high water was the largest fresh-water lake inside an American state. This created a large wet area amid the dry San Joaquin Valley and swamps abounded at its shores. By the 1970s, it was completely drained, but it attempts to resurrect itself during heavy rains.

Land grants
An important development in the early twentieth century was the success of a series of lawyers who exploited differences between Spanish law and Anglo-Saxon common law to cut up the old Spanish land grants and acquire the land for themselves and their business allies. One famous seizure was the part of the Santa Ana grant that became the City of Anaheim, which was divided and eventually sold to German and American farmers. A number of other Spanish land-grants were protected for their owners for a time, notably the Irvine Ranch in Orange County.

20th century

In the 20th century, California's history continues...

See also

Notes

References

  • Hubert Howe Bancroft. The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol 18-24, History of California to 1890]
  • Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 (1986)
  • Robert A. Burchell, "The Loss of a Reputation; or, The Image of California in Britain before 1875," California Historical Quarterly 53 (Summer I974): 115-30, stories about Gold Rush lawlessness slowed immigration for two decades

External links

California | History of California

Histoire de la Californie

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "History of California".

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