2.5: Political Developments in Spanish California

As noted earlier, the first government in California was a military one, headed in 1769 by Governor Pedro Fages. Power was shared with Father Serra, the father-president of the missions in charge of ecclesiastical affairs. From the start and continuing thereafter, conflicts arose between the two authorities. Serra fought with Fages over where to build the missions and over the sexual misconduct of the soldiers toward Indian women. For the next 40 years, clerics occasionally criticized the military government for the lack of protection of the missions or for the misbehavior of soldiers. In 1771, Felipe de Neve became the military governor and he energetically set about founding new pueblos and presidios by recruiting more colonists from Mexico. Accordingly, secular authority within the province became more important. The three pueblos were given forms of self-government, including the right to elect officials and to make local ordinances. Neve ordered that mission Indians be allowed the same rights and that certain prerogatives of the clergy be reduced.

The Spanish town government established in California was a type of local democracy. The system underwent some changes in the Mexican era, but its basic character was that of a Spanish institution. Each male head of household of the pueblo was given a small grant of land from the community lands granted by the king. These landholders had the right to vote in elections, which were held yearly. Historian Michael Gonzalez summarized the town government in Los Angeles in the 1830s. Although changed slightly in structure in the Mexican era, the town government election system reflected the Spanish traditions. At nine in the morning the property-owning pobladores were summoned to the plaza by a drumroll. After hearing nomination speeches for the various offices, they voted by a show of hands for electors, called compromisarios. These electors then selected the members of the town council, or ayuntamiento. These included one alcalde, or administrator/judge; two regidores, or councilmen; the sindico, or town attorney; and an escribano, or secretary. During the Spanish era, the military governor appointed an additional member, the comisionado, in lieu of an alcalde when no literate person was available. The comisionado had veto power over actions taken by the council. Members of the ayuntamiento were limited to two terms in office. The town council met weekly to hear petitions for land, listen to accusations of domestic strife, rule on violations of public ordinances, and decide on action in times of crisis.

In the Spanish era, the military government had more control in the town councils than was true in the Mexican period. The exact composition and duties of the members varied from pueblo to pueblo. But essentially the ayuntamiento allowed the Spanish colonists a form of self-government and free expression. Among the missionized Indians, the missionaries allowed the alcaldes to have authority to mediate minor disputes and to exercise some authority as a leader during times of war. The mission fathers relied on the Indian alcaldes as intermediaries whose authority could be countermanded by the padre.

The town records of the pueblos provide a glimpse into the realities of daily life. The pueblo of Los Angeles was the largest of the Spanish towns, with more than 615 settlers in 1820. About a third of the vecinos lived in surrounding ranchos and had homes in the pueblo proper. Los Angeles was known as a settlement where there were conflicts between the local officials and the general population. The annals of the Spanish period are full of disputes, complaints, petitions, and grievances directed against the government by the vecinos. Pío Pico remembered that upon his arrival in Los Angeles from San Diego, he was ordered by the local alcalde to work on the new aqueduct. But Pico refused because he considered the alcalde a “brutish ignorant man.” José Sánchez complained that an alcalde put him in irons because he refused to copy some documents without pay. The pueblo did not have a church until 1822 and, in order to comply with the law of attending mass, one had to travel to Mission San Gabriel. The pobladores built their homes around the plaza area with streets running roughly in a grid pattern. A zanja madre, or main irrigation ditch, ran through the center of the town and was used for washing, bathing, and drinking.

Other small civilian settlements, ruled by military officials from the local presidios, appeared in San Diego, Monterey, and San Francisco. Their growth would increase during the Mexican period. The civilian settlers were dependent on the missions for surplus food and skilled and unskilled workers and on the presidios for protection. The church and military authorities sought to control the settlers’ lives but, with the increase in population and with political changes brought about by independence from Spain, this control diminished.

The Wars of Independence in New Spain

In 1810, the colonists living in New Spain began a lengthy rebellion and civil war that eventually resulted in independence in 1821. The precipitating causes of the rebellion in New Spain, soon to be called Mexico, were the exclusion of many criollos (the children of Spaniards who were born in the New World) from important political and ecclesiastical posts, and the long-term oppression of the Indian population. In a complex series of events—involving the overthrow of the Spanish government by a French revolutionary army in 1809 and a struggle among the Creoles and Spaniards over who would be the caretaker of royal authority in the Americas—millions of Indians, mulattos, and mestizos came to question the legitimacy of the royal government. Eventually, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a priest in the small town of Dolores, emerged as the leader of an insurrection. Although he was captured and executed a year later, the rebellion continued with new leaders, lasting more than 11 years and ravaging Mexico’s economy and population. In the process, California became even more isolated from the central government of Mexico as resources were used by the king to fight both the rebels in the New World and the French in Europe. This lack of resources created an economic crisis throughout the borderlands, which weakened the missions as well as the presidios.

News traveled slowly and the Californians did not learn of the rebellion until 1811. Most clerics were loyal to Spain, since many of them were Spanish peninsulares. The military commanders similarly owed allegiance and their careers to the established monarchy. A few young Californios decided to join the rebellion. In 1811, Francisco María Ruiz, the comandante of the presidio at San Diego, discovered a “seditious” paper being circulated among some of the troops. This was probably propaganda from the Hidalgo rebellion in Mexico. Ruiz found that 60 men had formed a conspiracy to overthrow Spanish authority and he promptly arrested five of the ringleaders, including José María Pico, the father of the future Mexican governor of California, Pío Pico. Two of the San Diego conspirators were eventually released, but three others died in irons within the presidio jail.

Years passed without incident until the fall of 1818, when news came that the French pirate, Hippolyte Bouchard, was working his way down the California coast, ravaging Spanish settlements. He raided Monterey and torched the presidio in November, then sailed down the coast and landed a party at Dana Point to get supplies from Mission San Juan Capistrano. News of an impending attack on San Diego made for sleepless nights, but Bouchard bypassed the harbor. The only result of this agitation was to motivate the government to send more troops and money to San Diego.

The California garrisons remained loyal to Spain, as did the mission fathers. The idea of a social rebellion of Indians led by Creole liberals was anathema to the Spanish-speaking residents of the pueblos. Everyone knew that in California the natives outnumbered the colonists by more than 10 to one. There would be no revolution in California, at least not yet.

On April 20, 1822, news of the proclamation of Mexico’s independence from Spain arrived by ship in San Diego harbor. Throughout the province, the officers, soldiers, and civilians were required to take oaths of allegiance to the newly independent government. The friars and neophytes were required to take a similar oath. There were no reported protests to this change of allegiance. A few Spanish priests left California, but most stayed. Within a few months the de razón (Spanish and mestizo) male population of the province began involving themselves in the politics of the new government. While Mexico’s independence seemed to make no apparent immediate difference in the daily lives of the Californios, profound social and economic transformations were on the way that would radically alter the lives of natives and Californios alike.

Foreign Interest in Spanish California

One of the motives for the founding of a Spanish colony in Alta California had been to preempt other European powers from encroaching on the Pacific Coast. During the 52 years of Spanish control, Britain, France, and Russia launched exploration expeditions to the coast of California. These European rivals threatened the Spanish monopoly in the Pacific and were of great concern to the Spanish king and his advisers.

In 1786, the French Comte de la Pérouse visited Monterey for 10 days during a voyage around the world. He surveyed the mission system, pronounced it an abject failure, and made notes about the cultural and military weaknesses of the Spanish settlement. This, of course, was to justify and encourage a possible French takeover of Spanish California. Later, he published his impressions along with some of the first European sketches of the California natives and countryside.

Another explorer who made known the resources of the Pacific Coast was Alexandro Malaspina, an Italian commissioned by the king of Spain to visit his American possessions and search for the Northwest Passage. Malaspina had artists and scientists on board to report on the local environments and cultures. In 1792, his ships visited Monterey, where he stayed for two weeks making observations on the flora and fauna as well as the local inhabitants.

The English explorer George Vancouver visited California ports three times between 1792 and 1794. He later published his observations about the deficiencies of the Spanish settlements. Secretly, he reported the weaknesses of the Spanish defenses in California to the English king, an indication of England’s interest in acquiring this territory.

In 1796, the first American ship, the Otter, commanded by Ebenezer Dorr, visited California. Dorr’s visit was noticeable mainly because he left behind 11 Australian convicts who had stowed away on his ship. For a year, they worked as skilled artisans in Monterey but then the governor sent them by ship to Spain. Following this first visit, other American otter-hunting ships navigated off the coast and illegally traded manufactured goods with the locals.

One of the most memorable foreign visits to California was made by Nikolai Rezanov, a representative of the Russian-American Fur Company. In 1806, he visited San Francisco ostensibly to obtain supplies for the Russian fur outpost at Sitka, but more probably to investigate the fur-trading prospects in California. The California governor was initially opposed to giving aid to the Russians since that would strengthen their colony, which was in territory claimed by Spain. During his stay, Rezanov met and fell in love with Concepción Argüello, the 16-year-old daughter of the comandante of the presidio at San Francisco. The family agreed to the marriage, with Concepción’s approval. The governor also granted permission for a cargo of food to be sent to Sitka. Promising to return after he was granted permission by the czar to marry, Rezanov returned to Russia. Unfortunately, while crossing Siberia on his way to St. Petersburg, he died. Meanwhile, Concepción waited in vain for the return of Count Rezanov; her vigil lasted 35 years until she finally received news of Rezanov’s death. For the rest of her life she refused all suitors and took on the robes of a beata, a holy woman, devoting herself to acts of charity. In later years, this tragic love story became the subject of poems and novels, par of Spanish California’s romantic past.

Following the Rezanov visit, other Russian ships visited California ports seeking sea otter pelts, sealskins, and provisions. In 1812 the Russian- American Fur Company, after negotiating with the Pomo Indians, built a wooden stockade fort 18 miles north of Bodega Bay. They called it Fort Rossiya, an archaic name for Russia. (Americans later called it Fort Ross.) The purpose of Fort Rossiya was to provide a base to grow food for the furhunting colonies located farther north in Kodiak and Sitka. Eventually, the colony grew to more than 400, a mixture of Aleuts, Russians, and local Indians, and intermarriages between the Aleuts and the local natives promoted peace. The Russian priests were not very active in trying to convert the Indians. Soon the Russians established a seasonal settlement at Bodega Bay as well.

Through the writings of la Pérouse and Vancouver, in addition to the visits of the Russian and American fur hunters, the richness of California’s natural resources became more widely known. The recurring observation that the Spanish authorities were not very successful in exploiting this wealth and that their colony was poorly defended and underpopulated was also of great interest. In subsequent decades, after Mexican independence, California’s mythic name, as an island of unknown wealth, magnetized the imaginations of increasing numbers of non-Spanish speakers.