Box 1: Historical Context of the Colonization of California by the Spanish Empire (provided by EaRTh)

Born in Spain in 1485, Hernan Cortes moved to Cuba in 1511, where he assisted Diego Velazquez in his conquest of the island. In 1518, Cortes persuaded Velazquez (both Conquistadors) to make him commander of an expedition to Mexico, which the Europeans had recently ‘discovered’ and believed to contain great wealth. Shortly before Cortes left, Velazquez canceled his commission. But Cortes ignored him and set sail anyway. 

At the time, the major civilization in Central America was that of the Aztecs, led by Montezuma II from the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. Shortly after Cortes’s arrival, he took Montezuma II hostage and demanded a huge ransom from his people. In the meantime, in 1520, Velazquez sent an expedition to capture Cortes. As Cortes fought the expedition, the Aztecs revolted. Montezuma II was struck by a stone and died, but the Spanish were driven out of Tenochtitlan, incurring heavy losses.

Cortes returned in 1521, laying siege to Tenochtitlan for three months. A new Spanish settlement, Mexico City, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan and became the center of the Spanish empire in the Americas. Cortes secured control over Mexico, inflicting great cruelty on the Indigenous peoples. In 1523, he was named governor and captain general of New Spain. However, in 1528, amid Spanish fears that Cortes was becoming too powerful, he was forced to return to Spain. 

Cortes returned to Mexico several years later, when he continued to explore Central America, hoping to find a strait from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ^[1] Cortes obtained information about the peninsula on the west coast of the Americas from Aztec nobles in Mexico City. By the end of 1519, Cortes had obtained sufficient knowledge of the gold-bearing regions in the area of the Gulf of Tehuantepec to interest him in ordering the occupation of this area (later named California). By 1530, Cortes’s men had reached Baja (lower) California and began colonizing it. ^[2]

Not until 1542, did Cortes’s men sail north to Alta (upper) California [the portion north of the Californian peninsula that is now part of the United States of America]. However, more than two hundred years passed by before Spain made any concerted efforts to colonize Alta California. Not until the Seven Years War (1756-1763) realigned European alliances — and, therefore, influenced European colonizing strategies — did Spain seriously attempt to assert control over Alta California. They did this through a combination of military forts (presidios) and mission churches overseen by Christian Franciscan priests led by Junipero Serra. ^[3]

In 1769, a small number of Catholic priests, accompanied by a hundred Spanish soldiers, landed in San Diego (the southernmost large city in present-day California (United States)) to convert the Indigenous people to Catholicism and occupy California, as commanded by the pope and the Spanish empire. Serra led the ‘Sacred Expedition,’ i.e., build a chain of missions along the coast of Alta California, block invasions by British and Russian explorers, and profit from the labor of unpaid Native Americans, who — he hoped — would transform the settlers’ lands into orchards and vineyards. Spain did not invade California for gold or silver, as it had done in Mexico and Peru. Instead, Spanish soldiers and Mexican settlers were ordered to form a human border to protect the silver mines in Northern Mexico from the Russians advancing from the north. Enslaved and conscripted Native Americans worked in the colonizers’ silver mines and grew fruits and grains in "theological plantations of conversion" to feed Spain’s soldiers and priests. The Spanish deliberately planted the missions near traditional native American springs, along riverbanks, next to Indigenous villages, and often on sacred sites. ^[4]