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Spanish   California
Sten Endrik Mihkelsoo
MM-14
California's contact with Europeans began in the mid 1530s when Cortez's men 
ventured to Baja California. Not  until  1542 did Spaniards sail  north to Alta 
California, and Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's expedition of that  year  made landings 
as far north as modern Santa Barbara . The Spaniards, of course, were hardly the 
first  to discover this land of wonder and extremes. The earliest Californians were
adventurous Asians who made their way  across  the Bering Straits to  Alaska  
thousands of  years  ago when a warmer climate and a now-vanished land bridge  
made such   travel   easier . These men and women and their descendants settled 
North and  South  America, spreading  out to form the various nations and tribes  
whom the first European visitors to this hemisphere dubbed "Indians." The 
mountain  ranges of the Pacific  Coast isolated these early  settlers from the 
cultures  that  developed in neighboring Mexico  and the western United States .
Still, more than two hundred years  passed  before Spain made any concerted 
effort to colonize the  coastal  regions Cabrillo claimed for the crown . Coastal 
winds and currents made the voyage north difficult, and Spanish captains failed 
to find safe  harbors for their crafts. Baja California became  the northwest limit 
of Spanish colonization, and even   there , efforts to settle the area and bring native
tribes to Christianity and European  ways  were halfhearted at  best . Not until the 
Seven  Years War (1756-1763) realigned European alliances and their colonial 
empires did Spain seriously attempt to assert  control  of Alta California.
This was to be  done through a combination of  military  forts (presidios) and 
mission  churches overseen by Franciscan fathers  led by Junípero Serra . In 1769 , 
the first parties set north from Baja California, and the line of Spanish settlement
along the coast was inaugurated when  soldiers  and priests  established a presidio 
and mission church at San Diego . By the end of the Spanish colonial  period , 
Alta California had three more presidios (at Monterey, San Francisco , and Santa 
Barbara) and no fewer than twenty -one missions . In addition to the missions, 
where the Franciscans ministered to local  converts, and the military presidios, 
small towns or pueblos sprang up. The earliest of these were associated with the 
missions and presidios, but in 1777 an independent  civil  pueblo was created at 
San Jose, and others  followed. The pueblos tried to attract  settlers with land 
grants and other  inducements and were governed by an alcalde (a combination 
of a  judge and a mayor ) assisted by a council  called the ayuntamiento. After 
1769, the life of the California natives who came  in contact with the Spanish 
was reshaped by the mission fathers, not the townspeople of the pueblos or the 
soldiers of the presidios. The Franciscans came to California not merely to 
convert the tribes to Christianity but to train them  for life in a European colonial 
society. Conversion was seldom an entirely voluntary  process , and converts 
(neophytes) were not  left  to return to their old ways but were required to live in 
the walled mission enclosure or on rancherías, separate settlements sponsored by
missions  although located some distance from the mission proper. There they 
were taught Spanish as well as the tenets of their new  religion and  trained in 
skills that would fit them for their new  lives : brickmaking and construction , 
raising  cattle and horses , blacksmithing, weaving, tanning hides, etc.
In theory, the neophytes were to live at the missions only until this process of 
education was  complete . Then they would establish homes in the nearby 
pueblos. As the native people of one region were Christianized and educated, the
missionaries were to move  on, leaving the old missions behind to become parish
churches as they  built  new missions in more distant locations peopled by non-
converted tribes or "gentiles." In fact, neither the Spanish government  nor the 
Franciscans ever judged any of the neophytes ready for "secularization" or life 
outside the mission system, and Christian  natives or "Mission Indians" and their 
descendants remained at the missions until the system was abolished in 1834.
By then, sixty- five years of  exposure  to Europeans had reduced the number of 
California's native peoples by half  to about 150,000. Although outright  warfare  
cost  few lives, Spaniards had introduced not only Christianity but also new 
diseases  to which the neophytes had no resistance , and thousands died in 
epidemics. Crowded, harsh living conditions  at the missions contributed to the 
Indians' health problems, and  infant  mortality and death rates  among  young 
children  soared. It was the tribes of the coast, the "Mission Indians," who were 
most drastically affected. Tribes like the Modocs in the northern mountains had 
little  or no contact with the Spanish and suffered little.