California’s Native American History
The first people migrated to California nearly 20,000 years ago from Asia across the Bering Straits. California’s mountain ranges and deserts isolated Native American tribes from each other, and they lived in peaceful family clans with little political structure. More than 500 tribes, each with their unique culture, developed across the state, such as the Pomo, Tolowa, Miwok, Maidu, Cahto, Wintun, Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Chumash, Karok, Mojave, Yokuts, Paiute and Modoc.
When Spanish missionaries first came to California in the mid-1700s, the native population was estimated to be about 30,000—or 13 percent of the total Indigenous population in North America at the time. The population was gradually decimated, first in the 18th century by disease and forced labor in Spanish missions, and then in the late 19th century by American settlers.
California Missions
Concerned about Russian and English encroachment on western New Spain territory, Spain ordered an expedition north from Baja Mexico in 1769. The first Spanish soldiers and priests traveled and established a presidio (military fort) and mission church in San Diego. This marked the first of at least 21 California missions, which were often accompanied by presidios and pueblos (small towns).
Greatly outnumbered by native inhabitants, Franciscan missionaries came with the blessing of the Spanish state to convert Indigenous people to Christianity and train them into loyal Spanish citizens. Missionaries introduced agriculture and ranching to indigenous peoples. They taught them Spanish culture and language as well as skills like weaving, construction and blacksmithing. They also forced natives to build and stay within their walled communities and flogged those who disobeyed. Forced labor along with foreign disease, which spread rapidly in crowded living conditions, halved the indigenous population by the time the Mexican government secularized the mission system in 1834.
European Exploration
Spanish explorers began sailing the West Coast of North America looking for the mythical “Island of California,” entirely populated by beautiful women, described in Garcí Rodríguez Ordóñez de Montalvo’s book Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Exploits of Esplandián). They named the Baja California peninsula of Mexico after the book.
Spanish conquistador Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to explore the West Coast of the United States, naming the area “Alta California.” Sent by New Spain to find a water route to Asia, Cabrillo and his crew left from Mexico and set foot on modern-day San Diego on September 28, 1542, then traveled north to Monterey Bay.
Sailing for the English in 1579, Sir Francis Drake looted Spanish settlements in the Americas and escaped to Point Reyes Peninsula, near San Francisco. Portuguese merchant-adventurer Sebastián Rodríguez Cermeño landed in Drake’s Bay in 1595 and explored parts of northern California including Monterey, an area revisited several years later by Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno.
The Spanish only settled in California with the Franciscan establishment of presidios and missions beginning in 1769. Spanish commander Juan Bautista de Anza created an overland route from California to New Spain and brought the first families to California in 1776. Fewer than 4,000 settlers lived in California until the mid-1800s.
From Mexico to the United States
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence, and Alta California became a Mexican province in 1822. The Mexicans established a ranching culture, and Mexico’s liberal trading policies encouraged Californians to trade with the Americans and the English.
In 1826 trapper Jedediah Smith led the first group of U.S. citizens overland into the area. In 1841, John Bidwell and John Bartleson led the first group of organized American settlers into California. Immigration continued until American immigrants outnumbered Mexican citizens by the mid-1840s. American settlers revolted against the Mexican government in 1846 and declared California an independent nation in what became known as the Bear Flag Revolt.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government had gained interest in expanding its territory and was fighting the Mexican-American War. One month after the Bear Flag Revolt, the U.S. military occupied California. In January 1847, California surrendered to the United States. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the war’s end gave California to the United States on February 2, 1848. Without ever becoming a territory, California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state on September 9, 1850.
