By the second half of the nineteenth century, many people rushed to California including Anglo. It can be said that California was entering an era of “Anglo hegemony”. In this paper, I intend to discuss the reason why they traveled to California, their encounters, their remarkable success as well as the role of sex and gender in helping these newcomers assume control of California.
During the Mexican era (before the American-Mexican War), the trade and the lure of land attracted Anglo Americans to travel to California. After gaining independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico (including California) reformed the trade laws of Spain. The hide and tallow trade was very profitable and dominated the Mexican California economy. According to Albert L. Hurtado, it had “a profit handsome enough to attract Yankee investor and competitors from the United States and England” (Hurtado, 23). In addition, Californios were so rich in land because of the new transfer of property created by the government. These irresistibly attractive trade and land made almost Anglo Americans convert to Catholics and married Californians women. One of them was Alfred Robinson, a native of Massachusetts, sailing to California in 1829. His material reason seemed apparent. Moreover, his marriage to Dona Anita, a daughter from an elite family, could secure landholdings and strengthened his social status, which is he could become a part of the gentry.
In the interior, the desire to control house herds - a critical resource in California was the reason for American trappers, horse thieves, Mexican soldiers and rancheros congregate. Sutter’s connection to an Indian woman (p. 39)
Some women came to California with their husbands and children. Men thought of the adventure...
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...’s contentious history. They sometimes saw the implications of race and gender in their stories. Harte ventured to California in 1854, briefly worked in mining, but later decided to become a writer. He flourished here. According to Hurtado, “gold-rush stories like “The luck of Roaring Camp” and “Outcasts of Poker Flat” were best – sellers that brought Harte to the favorable attention of eastern critics as well as western readers” (Hurtado, 137). Mark Twain ventured to California in 1861 where he continued his journalistic career. He wrote about the women’s attire. Ambrose Bierce was the last to come to California. He was not only attracted by California’s local color and the recent gold rush but also by a story of interracial and gender. His bitter story The Haunted Valley “captured some of the icy truths that most Californians wanted to ignore.” (Hurtado 140)
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
Juliana Barr’s book, Peace Came in the Form of a Women: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Dr. Barr, professor of history at Duke University-specializes in women’s role in American history. Peace Came in the Form of A Women, is an examination on the role of gender and kinship in the Texas territory during the colonial period. An important part of her book is Spanish settlers and slavery in their relationship with Natives in the region. Even though her book clearly places political, economic, and military power in the hands of Natives in the Texas borderland, her book details Spanish attempts to wrestle that power away from indigenous people through forced captivity of native women. For example, Dr, Barr wrote, “In varying diplomatic strategies, women were sometimes pawns, sometimes agents.” To put it another way, women were an important part of Apache, Wichita, and Comanche culture and Spanish settlers attempted to exploit
Through visiting La Plaza De Culturas Y Artes, I have learned a lot more interesting, yet, surprising new information about the Chicano history in California. For example, in the 1910’s and on the high immigration of Mexicans and other Chicanos, into coal mines and farms by major corporations, made California one of the richest states in the US. I also learned that most of California 's economy was heavily reliant on immigrants. Immigrants were the preferred worker for major corporations because they didn 't have American rights and were given the harder jobs for less pay.
Once people from all over the world found out about the discovery of gold in California, many decided to try their luck in getting rich. With Luzena and her family, they “had almost nothing to lose” and “might gain a fortune” (Wilson). This was very similar to the thought process of many people back in the 1840s, as they thought they could only rise up from their current lives. As with many migrants from eastern United States, the Wilsons came from Missouri, which meant they had to travel a long way
In the introduction, Hämäläinen introduces how Plains Indians horse culture is so often romanticized in the image of the “mounted warrior,” and how this romanticized image is frequently juxtaposed with the hardships of disease, death, and destruction brought on by the Europeans. It is also mentioned that many historians depict Plains Indians equestrianism as a typical success story, usually because such a depiction is an appealing story to use in textbooks. However, Plains Indians equestrianism is far from a basic story of success. Plains equestrianism was a double-edged sword: it both helped tribes complete their quotidian tasks more efficiently, but also gave rise to social issues, weakened the customary political system, created problems between other tribes, and was detrimental to the environment.
This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states
California represents is not as easy to attain as they once thought. The characters in The Day of the
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
“To discover, understand, and encounter the cultures and intricate natures of the California Indian people, it is necessary to search the past” –Nancy Wahl. Tracing back in California history, Spanish explorers, commanded by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, found the tip of what is now Baja California in the year 1533 and named it "California" after a mythical island in a popular Spanish novel. It is evident that from the time Spanish monarchs set foot in California, the world as Native Americans knew it was never the same again. The late 1700s initiated and marked the colonization of Spaniards in the “Golden State” which in turn provoked the massive persecution and extermination of Native American population as well as the disappearance of Native heritage and culture. As a result, the recurring despairs and adversities of the Indian population began.
Gregory, James N. American exodus: the Dust Bowl migration and Okie culture in California . New
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
Steltzer, Ulli, “The New Americans: Immigrant Life in Southern California.” Kiniry and Rose 346-347. Print.
Additionally, this essay would be a good read for those interested in the topic of sexuality, gender and culture or anyone studying anthropology. This essay contributes to understanding aspects of California history that is not primarily discussed. The reader gets and insight on two different cultures, and the effects of them merging together -- in this case, the cultures of the Spaniards and Indians. I believe that this article supports Competing Visions as the text also discusses how “the object of the missions was to convert the natives to Christianity as well as to Hispanicize them…” and both touch upon the topic of the rapes of
California society, and people as individuals, could not decide whether they relished their newfound freedom or despised it. Some people attempted to recreate the lives they knew at home, while many others threw off the shackles of their old proper lives. Victorian culture emerged in the 1820’s and 1830’s in America. At 1850, the time of the Gold Rush, it was at it’s high point. Anyone who came to California from the states, no matter what their position, would have come from a place influenced by the Victorian way of life. This included strict ideas about the roles of men and women, taboos on drinking and gambling, high value set on hard work, Christian ethics, and ethnic prejudices.2 People who came to California experienced something quite different.
Since 1848 to the present, California has had strong periods of representing the American Dream with its egalitarian advances and times of overwhelmingly democratic positions. Also, California was once a place for economic opportunity, attracting people from all over the nation. Since 1990, however, California has witnessed a reverse migration. Once a land of hope and opportunity, California has slowly been turning into a land of despair.