Mark Hylkema: California during the Spanish and Mexican Colonial Periods, 7/22/17

I was asked by an Silveira to speak to you as a community it is the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of the Villa de brazza 40 which is significant it's a very important historic feature on the landscape and so it's fun for me to participate in this opportunity to talk to you you guys actually pay my salary I work for state parks so I do feel like it's important to give back to the community when you have the opportunity to do so so thank you I'm speaking specifically today about as you can see California during the Spanish and Mexican colonial periods because I thought it'd be important to have a context to understand grants Authority's development in a larger scheme of colonial ambition so we understand it in a context and what is that context well it starts with the day of discovery if you will use those words discovery is a funny word because we also had Native Americans here for well going back to the Ice Age which is actually my specialty and I work with contemporary tribes today with the state park system I have 32 state parks under my tutelage for cultural resources I'm also the tribal liaison for our district so we do work actively with the descendants of the native people I've been doing that all my life so coming into parks and this area was coming home in many ways this is home to me even though I don't live in Santa Cruz but you know you have a wide range you know I'm a nomad so I have a large foraging catchment area I specialize in Native American culture and so I wanted to point out that the Spanish colonial period is the nexus between thousands and thousands of years of Native American cultural development and then the outside world suddenly appearing California is an ancient place and it's been very isolated for a long time in history and the east coast you have colonization starting you know pretty early and there's a long history hundreds of years of history of colonialism and Native American interaction and California happens like the flip of a switch so what we call prehistory and history occur on a single event in 1769 and where you sit it's October 1769 to be specific when the first Spanish land expedition comes walking through here under orders from the king of Spain to found a harbour called Monterey that had been visited 147 years before and established a colony at a place called San Francisco which for them was point raised because at that time they didn't know about the day and so 1769 is kind of a pivotal point in California when prehistory and history flip so when the Europeans get here for the first time they're stumbling into a landscape that's unknown to them in the time of the European contact California had the greatest population of Native Americans in all of North America a lot of people are unaware of that we had the greatest population of indigenous people north of the Aztec empire and the Aztecs were an empire all right the state level society like us all right so the native peoples here were occupying many ecological zones California also had one of the great language diversities of the planet it's extremely complex culture region and so for instance many of us are aware of the people to San Francisco and Monterey Bay area and in school were taught that they are the Ohlone Indians and that's actually not correct because the word ellonija is a catch-all term of 50 tribes seven languages so it's a point that follows the native people brought up the word aloni in the 60s after the civil rights movements when they no longer wanted to be called the Costa Nolan's which is the word the anthropologist created around the turn of the last century when they were trying to organize tribes of California into political units that we understood and so the word Costa Nolan was applied loosely over San Francisco and Monterey Bay area from the Spanish word Castaignos coastal people because they weren't interested in the diversity of culture they're lumping everyone together and so they all become close to knowing anthropologists call them such and then in the 60s we see the word Ohlone emerge the word alone are all Han is a name of one of the 50 tribes and they were on San Gregorio Creek further up the coast so the political scene here is very complex you have many political groups with their own government and they're spread over landscape in a very cosmopolitan way this is a map of the local tribal communities here I apologize for the fuzziness this is my laptop that's doing that one of these days I'll get rich and buy another with a sharper screen but in any case these are names we didn't have until a friend of mine dr. Randy Milliken made it a point to do his PhD on looking at mission records and figure out where these tribes were so up until the mid 1990s we didn't know right we had the names from the mission records but where were they now we know so right where we are we're in the area of the weepies or the weep the name there's sometimes an N on the end of it and they control the San Lorenzo River where we sit and to the south so the apt oh you know that name right tribal name further down an apt old country you have a tribal group called the show cal like that huh we're where we sit that's you're looking at the tribal name but in those tribes are villages so he gets more complicated than this so for instance santa cruz here was called a lien tock which means ocean houses like ocean bungalows always sounds very good to valley people like me you know yeah ocean houses there he laid back and so further up the San Lorenzo you get to scion tack or the Scion time I've heard of zion.t Road right it's named after them they're stationed in at Scotts Valley and Quail Hollow and have that catchment area up to coast by Scott Creek you have the Coe Tony and then the most powerful of all of the tribes are the Kuro State and they're a Tanana wave oh I do a lot of work in an you know wave oh and that's also where we have today's contemporary learning people working with me in the field we're working together still so maybe I should preface this now and let you know the native people are still here these are the people I consult with and the state is mandated to do so by law so all this consultation goes on and the public generally doesn't know but it's what we do so now you're looking at it the real political landscape and this is what the Spanish explorers come into so of course they don't understand this diversity of peoples but how does this start well it starts pretty early in one sense you have Cortes going out with a license to go conquering conquistadors most of you don't realize are not Spanish military they're licensed soldiers and so they're what we might call mercenaries actually so you get wealthy people who organize arms ships cannons to material they get a license from the Viceroy of the New World the Viceroy is the King's right-hand man in the New World and pirates could be hung but if you had a letter from your government allowing you to pray on the other guys Navy you became a letter of marque and that was considered legal so there was a certain comportment in those days so conquistadors letters of marque these are people who have license to go out and conquer what they get 1/10 of whatever they find goes to the king so that's the motivation for the crowd who permit these undertaking so Cortes is that Cortes arrives in Veracruz is surprised to see complex societies he's greeted with gifts including gold discs which sparks their imagination after all they're not out here for land for philanthropy they're looking for opportunity and they find it they find out that the people's down the coast are subjugated by an interior nation called the Aztecas and so Cortes begins his campaign against Moctezuma as you all know that's history by 1519 he starts his campaign against mexico city called Tanakh caitlyn in the day and the spanish talk about mexico city is an island in the middle of a big lake hard to imagine now and in it were streets with pyramids and markets and sewers and water systems and the Spaniards say it was far more cleanly than any of the cities in Spain so they begin to conquer it and they do and after a period of several years they do buy 1522 the Aztec empire Falls to Cortes and he continues the conquests because it doesn't stop it continues for several hundred more years actually throughout Mesoamerica and South America but the kicker for us as they continued westward a conquering away they discover a huge body of water they say is kind of smooth mmm they call it the passive water or the Pacific right so up until then none of the European navies were finding their way into the Pacific but that changes and so they begin to build ships and explore and they create they discover the prevailing winds and trade routes of the ocean and they begin to create a trade network where they go to China remember that's why Columbus sails in the first place tried to find a shortcut why do they want a shortcut because they want to avoid the Silk Road which has been the trade network from China to India to a Persia to the Mediterranean for a thousand years but all those middlemen in between Wow insulates prices quite a bit so he who finds the direct route wins so that was the motivation by this time they do find their way into the Pacific they begin building ships that are called galleons and the galleons begin a trade where they followed prevailing currents across the Pacific and each year Spain would send what they called the black ship a big Galion full of spices ceramics and wealth and they would find their way across the Pacific and by the time those ships made the transoceanic voyages hygiene wasn't too good on these ships you have a high mortality rate know you know the waters now full of green living things the meat has maggots you've got bread you have to tap to get the weevils out later you eat them too because you need everything even the rats life is hard so Spain is interested in finding a port somewhere on the western Pacific coast where these ships can stop and get fresh water firewood greens and continue their voyage south to Acapulco and San Blas which they create as shipping ports and that's where the great cargo goes over layout to Mexico to the Caribbean and then to Spain so you're looking at a world economy developing in California is kind of coming into this scene so they need to find ports so they send juan Rodriguez Cabrillo up the coast to explore at that time they thought in 1542 well that's the same year Coronado is looking for the lost cities of gold and the Southwest doesn't find it finds out that yes there's an Indian prisoner in the southwestern Pueblo he's a Plains Indian and he says well we have a clean that rides around in a golden canoe let me take you there so they break him out of the Pueblo prison Coronado takes him all the way to Kansas there's no golden city's there or golden canoes and that's going on the same time the Cabrillo is sailing up the coast they think California is an island then you know you know we know more about Mars and they knew about this place so Cabrillo sets forth he comes up the coast finds San Pedro Harbor fouls it in Southern California sails on the Channel Islands where he's greeted by thousands of Chumash Indians who have ocean-going canoes they made planked votes just like the Polynesians do in fact they called them the same thing as Polynesians too so just saying we connections across the Pacific around the 10th century the Chumash boats are called Tamala they stitched these planks together with deer tendon and drilled holes the Hawaiians do too and they call them tomorrow which means to stitch so yeah we have connection fish hooks to any rate in Santa Barbara never mind because Cabrillo come sailing in there and he goes off the channel islands where there are thousands of Indians on the islands big populations and he gets off with his flags and I'll conquer this place stuff he jumps off the boat under the rocks and he slips on the algae covered rocks breaks his arm which turns gangrenous and it kills him on the voyage yeah so he's there and he so he's not feeling so good they get up further on the voyage to continue north they get around a bay here nearby here and there's a plane of land they call the plain of the pine trees they named it the bay of the pines and they hear a bunch of barking sea lions they call a the plane of land Point Lobos out there the sea wolves you know where I'm talking about alright but he continues north because he's not feeling so good and they continue off the Farallon Islands which they see and they cease at Point rays but they don't see the Golden Gate why nobody does no but he does for a long time because it's fog or you look through the Golden Gate you see the Oakland Hills behind it it's one-dimensional you know you don't see a bay and so they don't and they continue north to get all the way to Puget Sound and they go that's a big body of water maybe to lead to the Atlantic they speculate ok he dies they come back not so good meanwhile galleons continue to come make this transoceanic pledge 1579 the other Europeans start coming into the Pacific there is a British well we'll call him a privateer the Spanish called him a pirate his name was Sir Francis Drake and he isn't a sir yet he's Francis Drake and he comes in he makes it across the he just he steals a Spanish navigational device they call a rudder which is a seagoing map so he's got the secret document to get into the Pacific goes around here Flay go which is nasty for sailing ships survives it comes up Birds Panama onto the ground which really stirs up the ants nest with Imperial Spain because nobody's been here yet now they're all like oh crap we're discovered and so he continues up the coast and he hauls his ship out somewhere near point raised and beaches it which is really dangerous to do he pulls all the cargo out high tide you get a spring tide you run it up on the beach beach goes down it tilts that's where you had be careful you don't break your ship but you could scrape all that seaweed off because you got a floating reef going with it and you know what you're a pirate you need to be quick so he spends several months at point raised and how do we know that because the Indians and he are having a great time and he's recording the language and we know that number in me walks because of the languages that he recorded well long story short and this is a long story he he takes the black ship and he takes it back home he's a millionaire and now everybody's now you got the Dutch we got the English to Dutch had an 82 I'm Dutch so I have to say that you know and they're in there too and you get the French and all since Spain is pretty preoccupied with the colonial land grab game throughout the Pacific Rim so that's colonialism California is not on the agenda so much meanwhile these ships still need Harbor and so they send in 1602 another Mariners sebastián vizcaíno to follow up and reconnoiter again he follows in Cabrillo footsteps and sees the Chumash on Santa Barbara it's all of the fanfare going on there and he sails up to this Harbor out here he names moderate after the Viceroy of Mexico very piecey thing to do the King's right-hand man I just named a harbor up to you you know everybody's feeling good and so he's there in in Christmas 1602 and he talks about the snow on a sandwich he arranges and having to break ice to fill his water cask it's almost been a cold winter and he says the heathen because it'll get the tone to the music here the heathen are very my five mannered people they've come down and they feed the expeditionaries that's pretty cool because imagine how shocking it would be to see a ship with you know all the material and people they've never met and time and time again the heathen are feeding the Explorers not running away so as a very profound thing and I challenge any of you to have such comportment when Big Foot lands in your barbecue in the backyard with a UFO you know so as the person been similar in sense so any rate this Cato says there's a fabulous harbour he says it's big enough to hold the Imperial fleet of Spain well that's quite a brat and so he sets forth the Viceroy he finds out about this Harbor and nobody does anything about it not for a hundred forty seven years that's a long time in a hundred and forty seven years we see the first motivation to explore Upper California or Alta California meanwhile Baja California has a string of Dominican later to be Franciscan missions the Southwest too has been colonized from about 1640 on and they're stopped because the Apaches and Navajos have now got verses thank you very much and they stopped the explorations right there so the Southwest becomes locked in as a border of Empire in Baja is expanding but Upper California or Alto California is unknown so with that they decide it's time to learn because the Russians are now coming down the coast the Russians have a lucrative fur trade going on in what is now British Columbia in Alaska which as you may recall was Russia until we bought it yeah so the Russian American Fur Company is looking for someplace south on the coast to colonize so they can grow vegetables and things to support their hundreds in the far north Moscow's a long ways from these places so with that in mind Spain decides it's time to establish shop in the new world cannot colonize it and put a stop to those colonial ambitions by having some of their own so they do 147 years later they send an expedition from the Presidio and Loretto and Baja California under the command of a military commander named Don Gaspar de Portola who mounts an expedition they Rob all the Baja California missions to put it together because they're not doing so well down there and they put together a team of Baja California Indians for labor they have an engineer on the expedition in big al Costanzo who keeps a great diary and they have a Franciscan priest named Juan Crespi who also creates a great diary and these are the Diaries that are the eyewitness accounts of the transition from prehistory to history in California great reading Don Gaspar de Portola the commander has a crappy diary they're just like bullet items and you're like man I need more there's nothing here right yeah need some air in here isn't that you wanna open the door a little yeah Don Gaspar de Portola heads up the coast one crusty by David was send us one of Sarah's students three of his students from way back in Spain they all head to the New World and all three of these students become founders of missions in Upper California and are the early colonists of California great stories you know between these people so any rate so Crespi sets north with the expedition of exploration and they're under King's orders to found the harbor of Monterey and establish a colony at a place called San Francisco or point raised and so they do they head up north they march over the deserts of San Diego where there are a lot of hostile Indians there they mentioned and no wonder because they're already aware of what's going on you know and so they get to San Diego and there's a ship there that's going to sail forth and meet them at this harbor of Monterey wherever it is with supplies and so they say farewell see you later and that's not going to work out because anybody sail here you guys know that if you sail down the California coast it's not so bad you see a lot be going against wind and current so you have to go way out to sea and back we ought to see it back this ship gets blown all the way to Panama so they're not going to see it it's not for quite a while so many rate the expedition's farewell we'll see you on the way and they continue north they get across a large plane they call most employers because they feel much earthquakes it's covered with wild sunflowers as far as you can see but they say the air is very bad here from all the Indian campfires and there's a tar pit in the middle of the valley which they named La Brea where are we yes we're in LA and they're leaving la base I'm a northerner so anyway we head north and they get to Ventura and they drop into the Chumash Country those guys with those big boats the ocean boats and big villages there a thousand two thousand people in a village and they come up to the first village the head man comes well you know the chief comes out welcome to my village and he seats them on clean mats and he makes the villagers come out and he puts on a big show very festive occasion they feed the Spaniards and the head man as his Californian custom gives a big speech spanner is about to eat and he starts the speech again in the other direction and he does this to the four directions well these guys are trying to grab a spoonful of it right and they say it's great great and that I decide we have to move on farewell all the Chiefs going what's wrong when you stand with us and he continues north you going down to my own you hit another village with another leader got to go through the custom again because it's his place they set up the mats the dinners going on did it fit up finally Crespi writes in his diary we were now camping away from the Indians so that we can sleep at night you know these are first encounters it's wonderful they continue north along Highway 101 till they get to Gaviota and now they got a choice follow 101 through the Salinas River Valley San Luis Obispo that nice Street where you can plunge it down the highway yeah there's no highway so of course what do they do they hug the coast they go by plank Concepcion what is now Vandenberg Air Force Base because they're waiting for that ship and it continued north and or Los Padres forest which is really remote and rugged country we let condors go there I mean why because this remote right so these guys are in this territory going over these steep mountain sit down every time they drop in a valley there's another village their villages everywhere it has a populated landscape new dialects different physical appearance - these are different people's they continue north to get to what will be Mission San Antonio in just two years later and they get to a four hundred a get and they come down through a Rio Seco because they're looking for Monterey and now they're out of supplies and they come down to King City and they could smell the ocean up ahead and that's a lot of had so they continued north and they get to the harbour side of Monterey look at it and go this is it I don't think so so they pull up to what is now what is that Cannery Row area and then on a rate is sense sergeant Ortega south because they think they've past memory send him south well what the heck there's no Highway one yeah he gets down to Big Sur and says no this isn't it so they turned back and they do what military expeditions never do they have a vote should we go forward King's orders they decide yeah I'm on Remus lie heads they continue north they get past where the law at Salinas River comes out now it didn't then he used to drain at moral cohost flew by Elkhorn Slough so they get up to Elkhorn Slough which wasn't a slough end it was a brackish water lake the power plant dredged it to make it a flushing estuary you know that any rate so they call it Lake of the cranes it's covered with egrets and they go around and normally the scouts there's a bunch of scouts with you guys I mentioned this you got these Daniel Boone guys under sergeant Francisco Ortega they're not literate but they're up ahead of everybody paving the way making first contacts in mountain men so at one point when they're they get to about Prunedale and they have the scouts with them they dropped out into a little valley and scare the heck out of a vision village all of a sudden all the women are running out of the grass houses and the men are coming out with bows and arrows it was no warning the men come out and they stick girls on the ground and they stand back turbos and the expedition's kind of like isn't good there are as many of them and so they come riding up Ortega rides up with his glass beads Indians really loved red glass beads and so he's handing them a string of beads from his horse they won't budge so he gets off his horse dangles them in front of the head man nothing you know it's tense moment these guys got their bows and so finally puts the beads on a stick mmm prefers it that way nothing going and what to do so somebody pulls one of these arrows out of the ground to look at it and they start applauding he stumbled on the right etiquette and they say come into the village let's eat and so now the sudden they're in and they're going okay yeah and it's pretty significant because when I talk about native Californians which isn't the topic here I talk about what it takes to make a corn into food it's labor-intensive and I can't help but imagine these women in this village going oh man there's a lot of these guys you know we've got to feed all these guys now you know because it takes a lot of time in the middle of this village they see a huge bird on a pole they call it a royal eagle any ideas what that might be condor condors used to be coming at common here commons buzzards and so they named the place the village of Paro the bird and today it's still the town of Paro and the river of Pajaro I know you guys would love it being local and I have this story in the Bay Area it doesn't have the same cachet so they continued north and they get to a little hollow in the hills with a hobble their horses they see their first redwood tree ever farther Crespi rights they stand tall like so many candles a real blessing of timber they named a little Hollow the little corral Carlitos and they continue north along Freedom Boulevard which is I've got a bunch of marshes in it past the village of show cal pass opto and they come here and they say the area's all burned it's burned they can't feed their horses or their mules and they don't and there's no heathens where are the heathen they can't get any more free food and they're starving they have no food where are the heathen where's my ray they continue north they don't know what we and what we know is that the Indians are at UC Santa Cruz gathering a corn is that's where the Oaks are right and they burned the grassland every year to increase the grass seed harvest because this was not a wilderness this was a garden and they managed it I published a lot on this recently with the tribe as well as UC Berkeley suffice it to say this was a managed landscape which is why you have so many tribal polities they're managing their tribal territories they're not nomadic they're territorially circumscribed very strict territories so Portola comes into all this they come hiking up the coast no more heathen to feed them they get up to rancho del Oso and with state parks I like to point this out and some of the soldiers are now dying so they parked them at the parks visitor center and father Crespi gives last rites to so many soldiers it's severe and Crespi says there are all these wonderful berries around here which we are now eating I think these guys are suffering from scurvy vitamin C deficiency because when they eat these berries it rains on them that night you got to figure you got all this leather and armor no gore-tex you know these guys laid out they're sick and dying now you're wet in the morning they're well Crespi says it's a miracle he names a place la salud good health and low tide they hike out to ND nuevo Crespi hikes up as Hassocks because you got a sprint there's no highway one and they get up and you nuevo Creek and there they say was a well-built he isn't waiting for us I like that because of course the men don't wear any clothes so Crestview would know any rate they take them over to us some low-lying hills behind annual where there's a valley and in the middle of the valley is a big dance house big enough to hold 200 people this is the Kuro state tribal headquarters it is now a cultural preserve we created a two hundred and twenty acre cultural preserve in 2009 for the tribe to continue managing the land with that's what we're doing now so we're trying to restore it back and we use the archeology to recover the pollens and plants to know anyway it's another story so they continue north I got ad get on here and continue our blah blah blah they meet a bunch of Indians to get up to Half Moon Bay they're still stuck no food they get up a little bit that pisses pacifica the center group of deer hunters / Sweeney Ridge bingo there's San Francisco Bay they're going what the heck they say there are many campfires around it it reached one of the great population centers of North America right they can see the Farallon Islands that's a reference they now know they've passed them on terrain they can see point raised to the north there San Francisco and their destination but they can't get there because there's well the Golden Gate in the wait with no bridge so they decide to drop down to a place we call Crystal Springs reservoir and highway 280 that was the tribal of the South Shaolin people they follow a little creek out they named it the little San Francisco Creek it's still called San Francisquito Creek today and they camp it's a Stanford Shopping Center where they see the they see the Palo Alto the big redwood tree they're Crespi is a mathematician he's sitting there measuring it and he's surrounded by Indians who's like what the heck and it's giving them little mirrors and putting rings in their ears and they love it and so they send sergeant Ortega to reckon leader el contra Costa the other side so you go south through San Jose up through the plains of Fremont gets up to Oakland goes we can't get across there they can see now the Golden Gate and now they have to go inland because there's another Bay mmm San Pablo so they continue east we're trying to find their way around cuz royal orders you know point raised in San Francisco and so now they can't get across I'm going east to get to Hercules Venetia no towering tanks of petroleum yeah and they go through what is called Carquinez Strait scar keen that's like Smith in the Aloni language Suisun Bay there's another Ohlone name and they continue eastward but they start seeing Indians on the hillsides by the hundreds they say this isn't any good they turn around the hike path to Palo Alto and they go oh crap let's turn around and they go all the way to San Diego this is great stuff it's a big right and they get to San Diego in there and what are we gonna do and they see the ship coming in the ship is flying distress flags their people have been starving and so now the soldiers are on board ship they work it it says try again they try again and one week later or two weeks later they end up in Monterey now they know better and they established the first colonial foothold in Upper California the Royal Presidio of Monterey and the first of 21 missions mission San Carlos the mission is a tule hut with an oak limb as an altar the Presidio is a ditch with sharpened sticks and that is where prehistory and history flip and that's history for you so with 1770 marking the advent of the column of colonial foothold we see new changes come to California changes to the land the politics and the indigenous people once they get a foothold in Monterey they begin to explore to figure out the confusion of these bays and routes and fajas who is on the Portola expedition becomes Governor of California and he too starts his own expeditions that blue line you can see he follows Portales route along the coast but he cuts inland and he finds the way through Santa Clara that they called the way of the trees because there were huge oak woodlands from Morgan Hill all the way to San Carlos because the Indians managed them they burned them every year they coppiced them the trees produce more acorn their orchards and so consequently these trees get to be enormous vancouver will come through here 20 years later on a horseback ride and say mountain view looks like an english parkland there's no understory and immense oaks one he measures at 15 feet across it's because they're managed as a resource any rate so expedition after expedition finally you get the first ship enter San Francisco Bay the San Carlos since 1775 one year later Mission Dolores will be founded in the Presidio of San Francisco in the year 1776 what else is going on that year the American Revolution we've already been added a couple hundred years on the East Coast it's just happening here Juan Bautista Anza comes through with father fought another great diarist and they found the settlement for San Francisco and Santa Clara mm-hmm so that's what the Royal Presidio begins to look like after a time where we are now this was still the wilderness and so the it takes a while for Spain you get a foothold Spain had learned to colonize the new era with three institutions they use the Presidio the pueblos and the mission together the Presidio Zoar government is as we're military control is that's where your weights and measures are kept for trade and exchange the pueblos their civilian establishments allotted by the king because no one can own land except the king and he gives land for community to create agrarian farming communities to support the pueblos the third institution is the church the mission is established to bring in the native people because Spain needed to colonize by using the Indians their method is to create a European political system here like in the old world we have a tiered caste system you have the aristocracy and royalty you have the middle class the merchants and you have the farmers the peons guests who they needed the Indians to be here because there was no labor here for the government so the idea was to convert the Indians into citizens of Spain to make them the colonists that was the goal so their invention was to bring Indians in and teach them to become men of reason and Spanish law forbid keeping them longer than 10 years so technically the missions all of the property in trust for their wards the Indians that was the idea okay so an ideal Pueblo is looks on the right like on the right where you have a river to water it some orchards you have laid out agrarian plots and Adobe's Adobe's in it right we got one here right ed that's right there we go it's like that okay and then the Presidio well the ideal world is going to have earthworks and a wall and defensible fortifications because you know those other Europeans that come around and you got a fire can and set each other so and it has a church today Presidio Church has been restored you can go into downtown Monterey and visit the Presidio Chapel it's really beautiful still on I think it's I don't know if the church owns it or the army owns it but in any case so this is the ideal setting and then over time California was divided into procedural districts with its own set of missions over 50 years 21 missions were built in California since that gardens likes to say they were one day's hike apart that's baloney they put the missions where the greatest Indian populations work they put them right in the middle of that to bring them in to change the economics to change the life way they forbid the Indians from burning the land anymore and so you bring cattle in and a land begins to change so it too goes through a transformation you'll notice it is strictly a coastal phenomenon the interior of California is still you know native for quite a while so this is the political scene and by the way a little drawing at the bottom shows you those Chumash boats the tamales the stitched boats so this is the ideal scenario for conquest the Pueblo the Presidio on the mission and who's the grease to all of this the native population because they are by far the dominant people here for quite a while so the ideal mission looks like this you have the quadrangle with its church and sacristy and cemetery but you have all these outlying facilities that make the mission - it isn't just the four walls so you have pastures of barracks and houses and orchard places and so picture in Santa Cruz as a larger facility that spreads through the San Lorenzo River Valley that is now downtown so that's what was going on Brants of 40 is adjacent to it so the first of the missions is San Carlos built in 1770 that's the reconstructed mission looks kind of nice but that's what it started out looking like notice the Indian Hut's there because who builds the missions yeah there are only two priests six soldiers at each mission how'd that work at the point of a gun no you're looking at cooperative relationships at first this is part of the story we don't hear much about I work a lot with mission stuff I'm doing studies at Mission Santa Clara right now and they've excavated five rows of adobe apartments that held 1,400 married couples Indians and we have a hundred arrowheads there 100 arrowheads those are high-velocity weapons what are they doing in the mission what I'm learning is that you have Indians that acculturate to the mission - there's many stories here of different identities who are the soldiers going out to get other Indians and again neophytes of the mission and they're armed 30% of the arrowheads I'm looking at or made out of glass bottle glass so there is Mission San Carlos as we see it today you pay a fee and you can go in and look at it and father Sara thought it was the most beautiful mission his student photic recipe when he dies is buried here Sara when he dies is buried here - father Pulu later becomes president of the font of the missions that was one of his other students and he's stationed in San Francisco father Maria the third of his students found Mission Santa Clara in the 1777 and dies before the door is opened anyhow that's how Franciscan priests lived they took a vow of poverty they're not exactly what you called the same as everybody else you know these are very devote and they're not even the same as the Jesuits or the Dominicans right so austerity Mission San Antonio was built after Monterey or Carmel 1771 it's one of my favorites you can still go through the military base has been reconstructed too by the way and you can still all see all the features in the 30s when we had these make work programs as CCC also had a division that reconstructed California missions and they scratched away the paints to look at the original paintings underneath and they reproduced them so many of today's missions that you see are reconstructed from the CCC make work programs and so all that painting actually mimics the real deal and the foundations are archaeological features on the landscapes this is a anna tsuchiya or our water system they built water systems they knew how to use lime they learned it from the Romans so their own kind of cement and that can you see that its pattern in the ground made out of stones that's a stone cobble floor with spokes radiating out from a center like a wheel that's the threshing floor for the wheat and the adobe buildings on the landscape pictured this is going on because Branson for tea has yet to be built we were built about 1797 right at that's right I don't want to hurt anybody else who knows better 1797 so this is earlier this is 20 years earlier right this is the colonial foothold buildings with luxurious tiles I mean if you have time go to Mission San Antonio bring your wine and cheese and enjoy it's beautiful and the Indian cemetery of course when Indians are brought into this system their diet changes it becomes narrow rather than broad hunting gathering populations have diverse diets not so in agricultural societies and we find that they're now living in houses they don't know about hygiene the Spanish do not and so you see the breeding ground for disease and the Indians have no resistance to smallpox syphilis and tuberculosis which is what levels them they take the indian women and Lockton and mon areas because they learned that marriage was the key to alliance and kinship networks in native California so they would keep the women locked into ammonia's for 12 hours a day to prevent them from being God at by other native people and so they were trying to control the marriages as well consequently health is pretty bad and so we see large die offs begin to occur this is Mission Dolores 1776 it's built there's that banner year the Constitution is being written and independence all at the same time this is an archaeologists dream because look at the street it's just full of crap I love it that's the artifacts that I would like to be finding if you go there now it's paved but you see the stay in front of the mission still there so I found Mission Santa Clara on a highway project when I worked for Caltrans they did 11 years hard time for that agency yeah instead of doing we rerouted the Alameda and I found the church the sacristy and six thousand graves all under the neighborhood under the built environment we rearranged the highway engineering raised the grade change the drainage it's all capped it's all underneath the asphalt and the frat houses don't tell the students they don't know that the urban basements have the dead stacked Ni and the profile of the sidewalls don't tell them okay so that vision you see now is the fifth mission because the fort burned the third was the one I found is destroyed by earthquakes the second was a Hut the first was the Adobe one built by the loop a river flooded within two years so the missions moved several times and then Soledad I'm taking you through the missions that affected the aloni the people that are catch-all aloni the word aloni as I say is a catch-all term it's like the word Asian or African or European there are many cultures in it all right I told you that there were 21 missions in California they built them with the greatest Indian populations ler well one-third of all California missions aren't alone seven of them so gives you an idea of what happened Soledad's one of my favorites that's the reconstructed church behind it you have the ruins and it's beautiful looking good reconstruction by the way the Indians did all the painting and this stuff and that's how they did it they use native minerals cinnabar noon Aladeen was a big producer of red paint and they grounded up in stone mortars pestles mixed it with binding agents they found the pilots cactus the sap from the nopales cactus makes a good binding agent they also use it for whitewash on walls any rate so they mix that also while cucumber seeds can be used as an adhesive and so the Indians are asked to paint the church I love this because the native society putting paint on things as Shea monistic you're putting ritual things pain isn't decorative it has a power so the priest is saying sure I paint the walls even is going yeah so they do and they're putting their mojo on the walls but what I really enjoy is Soledad because it truly is in ruins they never reconstructed it there it is since then archaeologists have been working out there I have to check on it but there it is blowing around in the dust and that's the church with the Larios and as the dust moves you see marble headstones with names like Vallejo in it and Castro and Bernal even whoa you know all with the tumbleweeds on it yeah and that's what you find in archaeology around the missions exotic stuff what the heck look at those ceramics they like stuff like that too whenever ship pulled into Monterey it was like a warehouse you went shopping and all the people from grants the Forte from the Presidio they'd all come riding down to Larkin house and monitor it'll be like Costco parked out there and you went out you'll in shop it and so all around here in these remote Adobe's because this place was remote you get flying Chinese ceramics like what the heck you know because they like exotic stuff Santa Cruz there we are that's our friend 1791 never very good concern they built most of the missions early on then 20 years later there was another spate of mission building San Juan Bautista San Jose Santa Cruz and they did that to fill in the gaps with the engines they hadn't gotten yet so the Indians here were still holding out for about 20 years while the Presidio of Monterey and San Carlos is going on since Santa Clara is reaching over here baptizing Indians too then they build this mission and it's never really a great facility because frankly the wheat Gardens here is not the best place for growing large amounts of crop in their style for that kind of a population so Santa Cruz is always kind of struggling but then they have it struggles even more because where you sit now we're part of the pastures for Mission Santa Cruz and then the crown decides it's time to build civilian pueblos the first Pablo is the Pueblo of San Jose de Guadalupe in 1777 to stand near the Mission Santa Clara's founded Sara hates it he writes letter after letter to the governor saying you'll built your pueblos illegally close to my mission and why does he care because the Indians would rather go to the pueblos to get new stuff and in the mission where they can't leave and they get more religious indoctrination and the settlers do right so that's why Sara is complaining about San Jose 22 almost 20 years later they build brand support a and why because they have a lot of soldiers they're not paying anybody and they decide that it's an opportunity to provide pension pension ears property so this becomes one of three early towns of California that's cool right where we are right so that's why I'm here now and so are you so any rate then they build Mission San Jose it starts picking up the Indians from Livermore and into the Central Valley I love this picture it's done by a German artist but in the background to the right you see that peak barely that's Mission Peak that's where Highway 680 is that Magoon is where the BART station is because years later some years ago I found a large cemetery there when they were building it up so I know where this is anyhow and then San Juan Bautista another major institution locally and by this time brass authority has been established so this would have been within the mindset of the people here these places and of course this is a pretty nice Church and they did it in garish fashion a lot of the Americans that come exploring the fur trappers come in they see done in the garish taste because of course most Americans are Protestant all right and so they have this chip on their shoulder about the Catholic churches and they say they're done to amaze the Indians and they were done and pretty you know lots of gold flake you know they had statues that would be movable sometimes to freak out the Indians I know you got these know the Archangel Gabriel with you know mannequin arms that can move what the you know you can put religion into people that way to any rate so in every mission as a cemetery for the native people who check in they can't check out so this is what's going on inside the mission right but outside that window that's what's going on outside the little one Two Worlds two different ideas two different ways of explaining their universes symbols are different colors have different meanings the worlds are as alien as can be and I try and draw an emphasis on that that you know how do you get that point home to people look at that and this is what the Indians see they don't see that this is their world grinding corn on a metate and drudgery and so when they enter the missions they give up the world they know because they're forbidden from maintaining their identities in the missions so you see a lot of fugitives and people leading the missions you know and you leave the mission excuse me it's like sailors on a ship you can't jump ship or the ship doesn't go anywhere and so when Indians leave they send the soldiers out to bring them back at first the Indians of the Central Valley defend these Runaways but then they find they're getting killed over it and also the neophytes bring with them disease and so after a while the interior tribes that we don't let you so it creates an end point for the people of the mission here the two worlds are diametrically in you know different universes on the right you see Native American shamanistic art that they can understand that we can't on the left you have a mission painting from San Miguel and what do you see you have the Archangel Gabriel there with his wings on his back standing on the heads of babies okay let's interpret that so can you not see the diametrically different views of the world that are at play here so it takes some accommodation the two worlds have different values and how they dress how they see things right wrong their value systems that it all comes unglued for the native people because once they come in the economy changes the landscape changes they can no longer burn the land to maintain the native grasslands and to keep the pine forests out and the thickets of poison oak away instead now you have cattle and the cattle don't eat the native grass so they feed the Mediterranean grasses the cattle defecate their seeds dominate the land all the grasses you see now are Mediterranean all those weeds getting stuck in your socks our mediterranean species a native species that then out competed because native plants need fire their fire adapted and their fire adapted because people have been doing it for millennia so the two go together which is a new paradigm we're trying to adopt in parks as we are land managers and we have to figure out what do we want to manage here yeah well what are we doing you know are we creating wilderness because it never was think about it the places we call natural landscapes native landscapes or not they can only be native when you have Indians working it pruning coppicing tilling for bulbs burning it patches after patch after patch each tribe is a ten-by-ten square-mile radius that's pretty small because that's a garden plot if you need arrows you've got two copies the wood years in advance to get straight shoot you need basket you got to prepare that burn those got bunch grasses of Tufts of grass the ferns the things used for bats get years in advance so it has the right strength intense sylheti and quality so they're constantly gardening that we don't see and neither did the Spanish so once they came into the missions they were forbidden to leave this is in 1816 watercolor from a French artists we were talking somebody's talking about that and heard it in the background the French were here spying on the Spanish and in the days before polaroid cameras you had art watercolor artists on board so louis cherry was a 21 year old artist who painted these he dies after this voyage in Acapulco where he's killed by highway robbers at the age of 21 these watercolor images which are now becoming more popular were hard to find they're at the Bancroft where his originals are I got the negatives and so I can use these slides now they're in books all over but there was a time before the digital age I'm dating myself where you had to do buy negatives you know what I mean so anyway this image is powerful that's Mission San Francisco de la res and you see the peninsula tribes there from here up and there are different groups because they don't get along in the mission they're separate they all have red staves and that they carry around and the onions are labor so now they have a different way of looking at the world mmm this is a population chart my students start glossing over here so I won't trouble you to try and remember this but the squares give you an idea of where the populations were the bigger the square or the bigger the population so you can see where it's happening right again a costal phenomenon and again the missions with the Indians application of art red paint was always holy to them and there they are painting it on the walls I love it and restoration has brought back some of these arts that were covered for quite a long time so the cattle changes the landscape the livestock runs wild here nobody cared whether you took somebody's cow to eat the meat they cared that you left the leather on the fence and the hide and tallow was what everybody wanted the leather was marketable in the fat and the animal bones became part of the industry so the missions become great supporters of this because between 18 starting around 1816 we have something called the Mexican Revolution beginning in Mexico Spain no longer supports Northern California and ambitions find themselves in the obligatory position of taking care of the Pueblo civilians the Presidio and their own people so they need more Indians so they start sending the military to the interior to go get them and bring them in they go all the way to the Sierras to bring Indians in so they do and the Mexican revolution takes root by 1822 we have the Republic of Mexico first thing they do is divest the state from the church and they start to break up the mission land holdings because the missions owned all the property and the civilians can't compete with that because they have the labor in the land so this is a diagram the dots on the bottom or the founding of the missions you see there are two general groupings 1769 - about 1776 and then again later you have another batch so you can see where they tie in and you can see how the trade and the mission starts going up and exponential I should also point out that the Russians do come down the coast they create a harbor at Bodega Bay above San Francisco right under the Spaniards noses do they like it no they don't but they can't do anything about it and they establish Fort Ross State Park which I advise you to go see some day it's really quite beautiful and so they're up north and they blend in they bring down Aleut hunters harpooners that are eskimo and they're going through San Francisco Bay and skinned kayaks there was a day the Mission Indians in Santa Clara look at from San Jose look in the Y loopy river and they see these guys and skinned boats with harpoons but who are these guys and there are aliens from Alaska hunting sea otter up the rivers because we used to have sea otter up the rivers and San Francisco Bay mmm anyhow the missions are now producing it was illegal for Spanish missionaries to have boats they wouldn't allow them to have any boats and they wouldn't allow any foreign trade with any other nations they're very phobic to be eccentric inside and so when the Mexican Revolution takes place they started an illegal trade with the Russians because Mission Santa Clara is producing tons of wheat times of wheat and so they're now supporting the Russians up north it's all very hush-hush secret you know and that goes on to about the 1830s pretty late during the Mexican period sitting right this is just a diagram that jut that port that's heart that says smuggling that's the Russians so by 1832 Mexico decides to break down the private lands and our break down the mission Lance of privatization and we see the beginning of the Mexican Ranchero period the cattle ranching phase that goes on grants the for date by the way has a big racetrack in the middle here a lot of gambling going on in early Mexican California here what kind of entertainment might one have mmm fan tangos yeah lot of dueling going on you know life-stealing dueling going on people are bored and so they challenge each other and so racing becomes very important Brants of florida has that tradition here of having a major racetrack right here in the center of town the Indians are still here a lot of people say God missions are over there for so are the Indians no they're still here in fact they are the labor force here mmm the hind tallow trade picks up and you start seeing the elites come in the dogs of California who are now running the show making money on the hide and tallow trade because Mexico opens up our ports to foreign ships American and British ships flock to California to get the hides for the leather industry back in Europe maybe you've read Richard Henry gayness two years before the mast that's what it's all about the hide and tallow trade that he was important the participant in so here's the royalty of now picture where you sit this guy would have been very colorful here they'd really like to do it up with silver and is this guy punching the cattle no he's not who is who is the Caballero sand Vaqueros are the exhibition Indians so they have adapted to Hispanic society and they're still here so they would extirpate grizzly bears for sport at the Castro Adobe rancho santa dress another state park used to have a bull and bear pit or it was very fashionable to throw a wild grizzly bear in with a long horn steer and bet on the outcome and by the way that went on throughout a lot of parts of California and the grizzly bears were not quite as spunky as they could have been after they're hauled in so you know no any rate so that that was color of the day and you know most of the Dobies like here at brands afford it would have looked like this you have open land surrounding your town and people would ride right up sometimes they rode the horses right in the house you know man and horse these are very quest Rhian people and but meanwhile back at the ranch you have the Indians inside still doing labor so scenes of grants of 40 what it looked like this cow be arrows Vaqueros with their stirrups outfits and you know what the appearance of the women were and the men this is what town would have looked like and okay in the back you got the Indians still right and the population relief is trying to simplify this so you get a lot of exotic material coming in status objects fandango's and dancing partying bedding drinking all part of the scene kind of like now [Music] right so you know bedding was huge gambling on horse horses was the big pastime you got a guy on the right grabbing down to grab a chicken who's buried in the sand probably doesn't go so well for the chicken but he gets them you know that's the big show so but meanwhile back at home you have day-to-day activities going on right outside the front door as an archaeologist the best place to dig around in Adobe is outside the front door because he do everything they're leavin butcher the cattle right out the front door I worked on the bulk off Adobe old cop Josef Volkov from the Fort Rozz colony jump ship hides the ship leaves he marries into the wealthy Castro family becomes Jose Volkov Jose Volkov happens to be here when the law of secularization comes through he is the alcalde of Mayor of brass the forty he did he presides over the dismantling of Mission Santa Cruz takes it apart grants himself a ranch we now call Wilder ranch state part builds an Adobe out of Mission Santa Cruz which is the bulk off Adobe you see the little piece we still have which I'm trying to restore it as falling down but that's all tied to all of this so bulk off was here he was the mayor of Branson floor tape and so you have that living history stretching beyond the spot right here so when the Mexicans come in artist Americans come in trade experience you start seeing a lot more exotic trade goods these are excavated from the Adobe's at Monterey old town Monterey yeah because Parks does archaeology there with our historic buildings and you can see these goods are pretty exotic on the bottom that Fiestaware is called maja luka and a ceramicist I work with they're kind of their own nuts they love this stuff and so when you find mahalik at the missions are like you know that's great stuff i I'm a pre historian so I kind of like stone tools any rate look at that that was from the old the Larkin house he had Monterey so you know these guys have fancy stuff here in the frontier soldiers were Lancers the New Mexicans of Los Angeles the government kept trying to assert the Monterey government so they would ride back and forth and Wratten sabers and fire shots nothing would happen they right away and this is going on back and forth and as Mexican California is trying to identify itself and then by 1860 1846 you started getting guys like Fremont coming in stirring it up under order secret orders to stir it up and that's what he's doing and then the Americans come in you start seeing greater trade but look the Rancho Presidio andthe blow is supported by the exhibition Indians I bring this up because a lot of people think history ends for the Indians with the missions and Kroeber the famous anthropologists at Berkeley in 1900 wrote the Koston owens are extinct and my aloni friends love to read that they say look we're extinct nobody told us anyhow land grass began to form as the interior starts to be colonized of California when you see those blue lines those are large acreages we're talking about one guy in those spaces like the San Gregorio ranch it was 18,000 acres one guy so it doesn't you know it deceives you into thinking we're being colonized reality it's still pretty remote and then by 1846 you start having the mexican-american war we go to war with Mexico and that's a big game changer this is a population chart of non-indians look at the lowest one 1845 what's the total five thousand six hundred and something blurry 5,600 people on the census of California well then the Gold Rush hits 10,000 people show up then a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand there is no law there is no order there's no government so the first thing the miners do is they had for the missions because they have orchards the fruit and they have houses and they take them all they throw the Indians out we're still living at the missions then right there most of Catholics at this time and so they throw them all out and the Gold Rush hits and as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed at the end of the mexican-american war it says we guarantee the rights of the Mexican citizens and we promise not to have to move the Indians from their land the ink isn't even dry when gold is discovered forget that so as the world rushes in and one of the greatest population movements in history these guys are overlooked and they are the descendants I worked with today and they're lucky because this begins a period of genocide interior California where the first laws of the new government of California are laws that authorized the elimination of California Indians the California legislators spent 1.2 million dollars in 1853 to reimburse vigilante groups for the cost of Indian hunting we created a law called the indentured servitude Act which legalized slavery of Indian children until 1877 as 12 years after the Civil War did you know that most of my students don't either we also legislated that Indians couldn't testify in court against white people if they were 1/16 or more Indian and that by the way pervaded California law until they became citizens of the United States in 1924 that's when women get to vote too and by the way Native American religion was outlawed in the United States until an act of Congress created the Native American Religious Freedom Act of 1977 that's when it became legal for the to openly practice do you know that no did you know this so in California becomes a state we become mining districts look at Santa Cruz what's it called grants of forte this was the town this was all breath support a district but no it's not so the missions fall into disrepair the Indians outlived them as Mission Dolores our Carmel the army exhumed Sara's grave they dig him up and a movement of Santa Barbara where what's left of him rest now so the missions fall apart people begin to loot them treasure hunt it becomes fun to collect artifacts as Mission San Antonio and then as I mentioned they're rebuilt during a phase would it be nice to have the brass authority brought back well I don't know maybe to make the school look Adobe right yeah but you know you can do that and we have restored these missions so that two worlds kids didn't eat we can still discuss these objectives that's route Rancho San Andres the Castro Adobe which we're restoring with our friends from Santa Cruz State Parks we're actually doing the work we've got a lane and so they're doing this but you can experience the Adobe's of Santa Cruz by being here no this is on the way so it's just off of freedom Boulevard take that yes what's above Watsonville I'm from the Bay Area says a different geology geography so and the way to preserve what no longer stands above the ground like here at Brown support a is through the archaeology so when development comes here city planners need to be aware that these histories are here and Santa Cruz has a troubled history of remembering things like that it's a strange town with so much archaeology UC Santa Cruz I'm here we have a lot of art I'll be on environmental down the road a very top-notch archaeological firm and yet we keep forgetting and we keep in town any things and well you read the papers right so anyway that's the end and I just want to say thank you for having me for this belong conversation but it puts brand support in the context

Channel: DoWa Productions

Views: 5,630

Rating: 4.6727271 out of 5

Keywords: California history, Santa Cruz history, Ohlone, Mark Hylkema, California prehistory, Native Americans, Spanish explorers, missions, Portolá, Aztecs, Branciforte, Villa de Branciforte, Villa de Branciforte Preservation Society, Ed Silveira, 220 years, Bria Steinbruner, Spanish colonialism, Spanish conquistadores

Id: ezKpw76f-ec

Length: 69min 16sec (4156 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 14 2018