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)
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
After the end of World War I in 1919, a group of thirty Japanese settled in San Joaquin Valley, California making their ethnic community in Cortez. Despite the Alien Land Law of 1913, which prevented Asians from purchasing land or leasing it for more than three years, most of the families were able to establish fruit orchards in large land areas. It is this community that the author of the book conducted her research.
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.
The focus of analysis will consist of Southern Chicago Mexicans and the way by which they established themselves as important features of US civilization. Within the late 1910s and early 1920s the first major waves of Mexican immigrants ventured into the Southside of Chicago. Members of the community overcame the discrimination against them while organizing themselves in way that introduced Mexican pride and community building across their
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.
The early years of colonial Mexico were a time of great change, as the native Indian populations were decimated by disease and increasingly dominated by the Spanish social and economic structure. Under the encomienda system, the initial flood of Spanish immigrants were provided with a support structure in New Spain, as the Indians’ land and labor were put at their disposal in exchange for moral guidance.[3] As Spain sought to reap the benefits of its new colony, the need for dependable labor in Mexico’s agr...
Weber, David J. Foreigners in Their Native Land: The Historical Roots of Mexican Americans. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973.
Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust tells the story of people who have come to California in search
Moving from the unpleasant life in the old country to America is a glorious moment for an immigrant family that is highlighted and told by many personal accounts over the course of history. Many people write about the long boat ride, seeing The Statue of Liberty and the “golden” lined streets of New York City and how it brought them hope and comfort that they too could be successful in American and make it their home. Few authors tend to highlight the social and political developments that they encountered in the new world and how it affected people’s identity and the community that they lived in. Authors from the literature that we read in class highlight these developments in the world around them, more particularly the struggles of assimilating
As many women took on a domestic role during this era, by the turn of the century women were certainly not strangers to the work force. As the developing American nation altered the lives of its citizens, both men and women found themselves struggling economically and migrated into cities to find work in the emerging industrialized labor movement . Ho...
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.
During the late 1840's California did not show much promise or security. It had an insecure political future, its economic capabilities were severely limited and it had a population, other than Indians, of less than three thousand people. People at this time had no idea of what was to come of the sleepy state in the coming years. California would help boost the nation's economy and entice immigrants to journey to this mystical and promising land in hopes of striking it rich.
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.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by the pseudonym Mark Twain, has been central to American literature for over a century. His seemingly effortless diction accurately exemplified America’s southern culture. From his early experiences in journalism to his most famous fictional works, Twain has remained relevant to American writing as well as pop culture. His iconic works are timeless and have given inspiration the youth of America for decades. He distanced himself from formal writing and became one of the most celebrated humorists. Mark Twain’s use of the common vernacular set him apart from authors of his era giving his readers a sense of familiarity and emotional connection to his characters and himself.