Spanish Bordelands1536 -1770’s Settlement of the US Southwest- Cross & Sword

Spanish BordelandsSpanish Borderlands- “Nueva Vizcaya” was the heartland of the northern frontier for some 250 years. It encompassed the area north of Zacatecas and included most of the modern Mexican states of Chihuaha and Durango, and at different times, parts of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Coahuila. The capital of the province was Durango. Exploratory and missionary expeditions launched from Nueva Vizcaya resulted in the settlement of New Mexico, Parras and Saltillo, and Sonora and Sinaloa” (Acuna2007:28).

New Mexico (1598)Under the Crown of Felipe II, created a new kingdom in what is now the US Southwest, and called Kingdom of New Mexico. Juan de Onate was its first governor. He set off with 500 people who included soldiers, women, children, mestizos, black slaves, and some Indians and headed north and after 9 months reached what is now Northern New Mexico. In 1609, a new Spanish governor came to rule this region. His name was Pedro de Peralta. He quickly founded the city of Santa Fe or “Holy Faith”. Santa Fe became the second oldest Spanish town in the present day US (after St. Augustine in Florida in 1565). By the 1630’s some 500 Spaniards and mestizos worked on the ranchos, or small farms around the town. A small trade began with Mexico City some 1,500 miles south through the Camino Real.

Pope’s Revolt and Governor Diego de

Vargas In 1675, officials in Santa Fe captured 47 Native American religious leaders and charged them with witchcraft. They ordered four to be hanged and the rest brutally whipped. One of those was whipped was a native called Pope who vowed to get revenge. In 1680, he was able to convince 2,000 other natives to rebel against the Spaniards who were easily outnumbered. The Spaniards and those that wished to followed them, were allowed to escape south down the Rio Grande and for 13 years the native tribes of Hopi, Zuni, and Acoma lived free of Spaniard influence. But the neighboring tribes of Apaches (who by now had horses and weapons) would often raid the fellow tribes and together with the death of Pope in 1688, the rise of English and French colonies in North America, Spain sent a new governor by the name of Diego de Vargas who marched into New Mexico with only 200 men and retook Santa Fe without firing a shot in 1692

Jesuit Father Eusebio Kino – In 1687, Father Eusebio Kino left Mexico City to head north to find converts and to map the frontier lands. In what is now Sonora, he built a mission which he named Nuestra Senora de los Dolores. He used this as his home base for more than 24 years. He made more than 40 expeditions throughout the borderlands and created some 25 missions. One of these, San Xavier del Bac , still stands in Tucson, Arizona. Father Kino also led the first ground expedition into Baja California.

Early TexasSan Antonio, Established (1731) – Beginning in 1718, a number of mission opened along the San Antonio River. Founded in 1720, Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo in San Antonio was by many accounts the most beautiful and successful Texas mission. Its compound included buildings for living, worshipping, storing grain, spinning and weaving cotton and wool, carpentry, iron working, and tailoring.

Early CaliforniaNew Spain had few resources to populate the northern boundaries and what little they did do, they were able to make it through their Mission System.

“The lapse of 60 years between Cabrillo and Vizcaino, and another 167 years between Vizcaino and actual Spanish settlement of California, emphasizes the utter isolation of California and the low regard in which the Spaniards held it” (Bean and Rawls 1988:17).

San Diego Mission, CA

Father Serra

Father Junipero Serra founded the first California mission in San Diego in1769. By 1823, Spanish priests had founded a string of 21 missions, each one a day’s walk from each other (about 30 miles). Many of the missions were protected by forts called presidios. The aims of the missionaries in California were to convert the Native Americans to Christianity, to educate them in European ways and skills, and to secure the area for Spanish settlements. Many Spanish missions are still standing today and some are still in use. Much controversy still surrounds the lifestyle of the natives who lived in these missions and those that rebelled.

Father Serra’s TripThree ships sailed from San Blas, Sinaloa to La Paz under the leadership of Capt. Gaspar de Portola and then sailed up to Alta California in early 1769. Only two of the ships made it up north. And one of them had taken 110 days to get there and all the men were sick and weak. Two other groups left by land from Baja California including Serra and Portola. About half of all the men that traveled north (300) on this expedition were either too sick to continue or had died during the travel.

San Gabriel Mission, CAIn 1771, the San Gabriel Mission was established but several skirmishes among natives kept it in a state of delicate relations among priests, soldiers, and Indians so much that Juan Batista de Anza (1774) came to Los Angeles with new troops from Sonora to help restore order to San Diego and Los Angeles missions. At its height, the San Gabriel mission, which was one of the richest held: 5,000 natives, 163,000+ grape vines, 2,300 fruit trees, 105, 000 cattle, 20,000 horses, 40,000 sheep, 176,000 acres of grain, and 500 barrels of wine and brandy. The mission system finally ended in 1834 until the US gave them back to the Catholic Church in the 1860s.

La Ciudad de la Reyna de Los Angeles

By April, Portola continued with a few explorers to head on north towards Monterey leaving behind Father Serra to care for the ill. Four days later La Ciudad de la Reyna de Los Angeles en el Rio Porciuncula, site of the future pueblo of Los Angeles, was named by Father Crespi for the day of its discovery and crossing, August 2. This was the day of the festival of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels, one of many titles of the Virgin Mary. This site was about 10 miles southwest of the San Gabriel Mission established later.

Los Angeles (1781)44 Pobladores from mostly poor farmers of Sinaloa gave birth to our City. “For the next 40 years, from the Yuma massacre in 1781 to the final collapse of Spanish rule over Mexico in 1821, New Spain made little effort to strengthen its outposts in Alta California. The mission system continued to expand, but it did not succeed in turning the Indians into genuine colonists (Bean & Rawls 1988:35).

By 1870’s still only 5000 people lived in Los Angeles but by 1900 – 100,000 and by 1920 576,000.

(By 2000 Census- 3.7 million!)