Overview
Map of the Port of San Francisco from the diary of Fray Juan Crespi; 1772; ink and watercolor; courtesy the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley
The Spanish and Native Californians
Spanish missionaries treated the native people differently from the way the British colonists on the east coast did. That does not mean that one form of treatment was kinder than another. Both the Spanish and the British used force, and each was supported by a great European military power. The British colonists removed Indians from ancestral lands and separated them from the white population. On the west coast, the Spaniards focused on forcibly converting the native population to Christianity and used the people as free labor for the mission system. California natives were made to live and work on mission land and had to leave their beliefs, dress, foods, customs, and culture behind. With their way of life stripped from them, a great many native people perished in the mission system, dying of mistreatment, hunger and disease.
From 1769 to 1821, a total of 21 missions and four presidios were constructed along the coast from San Diego to Sonoma. By the 1780s, the missions had become the center of social and commercial life in California. With the forced labor of Indians, the missions provided much of the livestock, corn, wheat, and other food and goods used by soldiers and settlers. Three pueblos, or towns — Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Jose — were also established during this period.
For decades, the Spanish priests were the most powerful group in California, but the Spanish plan to settle California was not completely successful. The Spanish hoped to colonize a vast area of land and convert thousands of Indians to Catholicism, but they tried to reach these goals thousands of miles from the center of power in Spain. California was the most distant outpost on the Spanish frontier, and Spain had difficulty attracting soldiers and settlers to the new land. With few exceptions, the settlers and their descendants stayed close to the coast. This left a major portion of California to the Indian tribes that had lived there for untold centuries.