Californio Voices

Californio Voices

Author: José Mariá Amador

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1574411918

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In the early 1870s, Hubert H. Bancroft and his assistants set out to record the memoirs of early Californios, one of them being eighty-three-year-old Don Jose Maria Amador, a former Forty-Niner during the California Gold Rush and soldado de cuera at the Presidio of San Francisco. Amador tells of reconnoitering expeditions into the interior of California, where he encountered local indigenous populations. He speaks of political events of Mexican California and the widespread confiscation of the Californios' goods, livestock, and properties when the United States took control. A friend from Mission Santa Cruz, Lorenzo Asisara, also describes the harsh life and mistreatment the Indians faced from the priests. Both the Amador and Asisara narratives were used as sources in Bancroft's writing but never published themselves. Gregorio Mora-Torres has now rescued them from obscurity and presents their voices in English translation (with annotations) and in the original Spanish on facing pages. This bilingual edition will be of great interest to historians of the West, California, and Mexican American studies.


The Californios

The Californios

Author: Hunt Janin

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2017-12-14

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1476663033

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Before the Gold Rush of 1848-1858, Alta (Upper) California was an isolated cattle frontier--and home to a colorful group of Spanish-speaking, non-indigenous people known as Californios. Profiting from the forced labor of large numbers of local Indians, they carved out an almost feudal way of life, raising cattle along the California coast and valleys. Visitors described them as a good-looking, vibrant, improvident people. Many traces of their culture remain in California. Yet their prosperity rested entirely on undisputed ownership of large ranches. As they lost control of these in the wake of the Mexican War, they lost their high status and many were reduced to subsistence-level jobs or fell into abject poverty. Drawing on firsthand contemporary accounts, the authors chronicle the rise and fall of Californio men and women.


Alta California

Alta California

Author: Steven W. Hackel

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010-11-16

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0520289048

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"A set of probing and fascinating essays by leading scholars, Alta California illuminates the lives of missionaries and Indians in colonial California. With unprecedented depth and precision, the essays explore the interplay of race and culture among the diverse peoples adapting to the radical transformations of a borderland uneasily shared by natives and colonizers."—Alan Taylor, author of The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the missions of California and the communities that sprang up around them constituted a unique laboratory where ethnic, imperial, and national identities were molded and transformed. A group of distinguished scholars examine these identities through a variety of sources ranging from mission records and mitochondrial DNA to the historical memory of California's early history."—Andrés Reséndez, author of Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850


The California Campaigns of the U.S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848

The California Campaigns of the U.S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848

Author: Hunt Janin

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-10-14

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1476620938

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For the Mexican government to go to war with its more powerful northern neighbor in 1846 was folly. Mexico surrendered to the United States more than half a million square miles of territory, contributing to a legacy of distrust and bitterness towards the U.S. that has never entirely dissipated. The real prize was California. The Californios--Spanish speaking, non-native inhabitants of the province of Alta (Upper) California--had ambiguous loyalties to the Mexican government and minimal military capabilities. American control of California was considered the keystone of Manifest Destiny, and naval and amphibious operations along the Pacific coast began as early as 1821 and continued for weeks after the end of the war. This book describes the often overlooked military and naval operations in California before and during the Mexican War, and introduces readers to the colorful Californios, the American adventurers who arrived after them, and the Indians, who preceded them both.


The Latino Big Bang in California

The Latino Big Bang in California

Author:

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2023-12-15

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0826365515

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The Latino Big Bang in California presents a Spanish transcription and English translation of a diary written by Forty-Niner Justo Veytia, a Mexican immigrant seeking riches during California’s Gold Rush. Veytia’s diary offers insights into the dilemmas and choices of an adventurous and ambitious young mexicano and provides a detailed glimpse into the life of Latinos who participated in this tumultuous moment in California history. In doing so, Veytia’s diary demonstrates that the US-Mexico War together with the Gold Rush constituted a Latino “big bang” in California that attracted large swaths of fortune seekers from across the Spanish-speaking world throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. Combining archival research with quantitative methods to extrapolate demographic information about the persistent presence of Latino communities in California from the mid-nineteenth century to today, The Latino Big Bang in California shows how Latino migration and labor forever changed the course of California history.


A History of California Literature

A History of California Literature

Author: Blake Allmendinger

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 1316299074

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Blake Allmendinger's A History of California Literature surveys the paradoxical image of the Golden State as a site of dreams and disenchantment, formidable beginnings and ruinous ends. This history encompasses the prismatic nature of California by exploring a variety of historical periods, literary genres, and cultural movements affecting the state's development, from the colonial era to the twenty-first century. Written by a host of leading historians and literary critics, this book offers readers insight into the tensions and contradictions that have shaped the literary landscape of California and also American literature generally.


The Imperial Church

The Imperial Church

Author: Katherine D. Moran

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1501748823

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Through a fascinating discussion of religion's role in the rhetoric of American civilizing empire, The Imperial Church undertakes an exploration of how Catholic mission histories served as a useful reference for Americans narrating US settler colonialism on the North American continent and seeking to extend military, political, and cultural power around the world. Katherine D. Moran traces historical celebrations of Catholic missionary histories in the upper Midwest, Southern California, and the US colonial Philippines to demonstrate the improbable centrality of the Catholic missions to ostensibly Protestant imperial endeavors. Moran shows that, as the United States built its continental and global dominion and an empire of production and commerce in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Protestant and Catholic Americans began to celebrate Catholic imperial pasts. She demonstrates that American Protestants joined their Catholic compatriots in speaking with admiration about historical Catholic missionaries: the Jesuit Jacques Marquette in the Midwest, the Franciscan Junípero Serra in Southern California, and the Spanish friars in the Philippines. Comparing them favorably to the Puritans, Pilgrims, and the American Revolutionary generation, commemorators drew these missionaries into a cross-confessional pantheon of US national and imperial founding fathers. In the process, they cast Catholic missionaries as gentle and effective agents of conquest, uplift, and economic growth, arguing that they could serve as both origins and models for an American civilizing empire. The Imperial Church connects Catholic history and the history of US empire by demonstrating that the religious dimensions of American imperial rhetoric have been as cross-confessional as the imperial nation itself.


Juana Briones of Nineteenth-century California

Juana Briones of Nineteenth-century California

Author: Jeanne Farr McDonnell

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780816525874

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Juana Briones de Miranda lived an unusual life. She was one of the first residents of what is now San Francisco, then named Yebra Buena (Good Herb), reportedly after a medicinal tea she concocted. She was among the few women in California of her time to own property in her own name, and she proved to be a skilled farmer, rancher, and businesswoman. In retelling her story, McDonnell also retells the history of nineteenth-century California from the perspective of this surprising woman. -- P. [4] of Cover.


We Are Not Animals

We Are Not Animals

Author: Martin Rizzo-Martinez

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2022-02

Total Pages: 576

ISBN-13: 1496230337

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By examining historical records and drawing on oral histories and the work of anthropologists, archaeologists, ecologists, and psychologists, We Are Not Animals sets out to answer questions regarding who the Indigenous people in the Santa Cruz region were and how they survived through the nineteenth century. Between 1770 and 1900 the linguistically and culturally diverse Ohlone and Yokuts tribes adapted to and expressed themselves politically and culturally through three distinct colonial encounters with Spain, Mexico, and the United States. In We Are Not Animals Martin Rizzo-Martinez traces tribal, familial, and kinship networks through the missions’ chancery registry records to reveal stories of individuals and families and shows how ethnic and tribal differences and politics shaped strategies of survival within the diverse population that came to live at Mission Santa Cruz. We Are Not Animals illuminates the stories of Indigenous individuals and families to reveal how Indigenous politics informed each of their choices within a context of immense loss and violent disruption.