Indians and Intruders in Central California, 1769-1849

With the beginning of Spanish colonisation in 1769, the lives of the Indians of California changed drastically. The Spanish mission system, established along the Pacific Coast, required that local Indians abandon their traditional homes, live near the missions, follow Christian religious customs, and work in the fields to raise European crops and livestock. Unable or unwilling to adapt, many of these coastal people fled to the interior, where they re-ordered their lives. Spaniards, and later Mexicans, probed the San Joaquin Valley in search of these runaways and the horses they often took with them. In league with the Miwoks and Yokuts of the interior, who had never been colonised, the former mission Indians resisted these incursions vigorously. By the time of the American conquest, they were raiding Mexican ranchos for horses and mules. George Phillips demonstrates that the decline of the rancheros began, not with the American military conquest, but as early as 1830, when raids by Indians increased in numbers and intensity. He explains why the Indians raided the coastal ranchos and describes the damage they inflicted on the Mexican economy.Assigning Indians their rightful place in the history of California before the Gold Rush, Phillips portrays these people not as passive mission refugees but as active members of independent, evolving societies. This book should be of value to students of California history, the history of the American West, and Indian history, as well as to anthropologists interested in early interactions between indigenous people and white intruders.