For the main article, see Los Angeles.
For its first 70 years, Los Angeles was a Mexican city, part of a serene and confident nation long established in the arts and letters. Fifty years before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, the people of Mexico had founded a university and printed books on their own presses.
The city changed rapidly after 1848, when California was transferred to the U.S. as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War. Much greater changes were to come from the completion of the trans-continental railroad in 1876. For the next 120 years of the city's growth, it was plagued by often violent ethnic and class conflict, reflected in the struggle over who would control the city's identity, image, geography and history.
Prehistory
Recent archeological studies show there was a seafaring culture in Southern California in 8,000 B.C.
By 3,000 B.C. the area was occupied by the Hokan-speaking people of the Milling Stone Period who both fished, hunted sea mammals, and gathered wild seeds. They were later replaced by immigrants—probably fleeing drought in the Great Basin—who spoke a Uto-Aztecan language.
By the time of the arrival of the Spaniard in the 18th century A.D., there were 250,000 to 300,000 native people in California and 5,000 in the Los Angeles basin. Since contact with Europeans, the people in what became Los Angeles were known as Gabrielinos and Fernandeños, after the missions associated with them.
The land occupied and used by the Gabrielinos covered about four thousand square miles. It included the enormous floodplain drained by the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers and the southern Channel Islands, including the Santa Barbara, San Clemente, Santa Catalina, and San Nicholas Islands. They were part of a sophisticated group of trading partners that included the Chumash to the north, the Cahuilla and Mojave to the east, and the Juaneños and Luiseños to the south. Their trade extended to the Colorado River and included slavery.
The lives of the Gabrielinos were governed by a set of religious and cultural practices that included belief in creative supernatural forces. They worshipped a creator god, Chinigchinix, and a female virgin god, Chukit. Their Great Morning Ceremony was based on a belief in the afterlife. In a purification ritual similar to the Eucharist, they drank tolguache , a hallucinogenic made from jimson weed and salt water. Their language was called Kizh or Kij, and they practiced cremation.
Generations before the arrival of the Europeans, the Gabrielinos had identified and lived in the best sites for human occupation. The survival and success of Los Angeles would depend greatly on the presence of a nearby and prosperous Gabrielino village called Yaanga. Its residents would provide the colonists with seafood, fish, bowls, pelts, and baskets. For pay, they would dig ditches, haul water, and provide domestic help. They often intermarried with the Mexican colonists.
History
Spanish Era 1769–1821
Main articles: Pueblo de Los Angeles and Los Angeles PobladoresIn 1542, the first Europeans to visit the Los Angeles region were Captain Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his crew. They were sailing up the coast looking for a new passage to Asia. In 1602, Captain Sebastián Vizcaíno dropped anchor at Santa Catalina Island and near San Pedro. It would be another 166 years before another European would visit the region.
The Spanish expedition of Alta California
Los Angeles had its beginnings between 1765 and 1771 in the plans of a royal bureaucrat visiting New Spain, General José de Gálvez. He was in charge of implementing Bourbon administrative reforms. His reorganization included plans for the further exploration of Alta California and the settlement of a whole line of missions and presidios ("military forts"). The military forts were not self-sustaining, and the missions would supply them with goods and food.
Galvez petitioned the king to approve these plans with these arguments: 1. It would provide new revenues for the Vice Royalty governing New Spain. 2. It would protect the Spanish Empire in North America, especially from the encroaching Russians. 3. It would provide a base for increasing trade with Asia. The plans also had the support of the Franciscans who wanted to open new missions in Alta California.
Galvez's petition resulted in the formation of a joint land-and -sea expedition. Its primary purpose was to occupy Monterey (which had been visited by Vizcaíno in 1602) and establish new missions and presidios there and in San Diego.
To lead the expedition, Galvez appointed the new governor of California Lieutenant Colonel Gaspar de Portola and Father Junipero Serra, Franciscan head of the former Jesuit missions in Baja California.
During the land expedition from San Diego to Monterey, engineer Michael Costanso and Father Juan Crespi accompanied Portola. They kept careful notes of all they observed. Reaching the future site of Los Angeles, the party camped out along side a river. Portola named the river Porciuncula.
The name came from an approaching Franciscan religious celebration that honored the mother church of the Franciscans, the Porziuncola ("small piece of land") in the Italian frazione of Saint Mary of the Angels.
Father Crespi made these observations:
Thursday, 3, 1769. At half past six, we left the camp and forded the Porciuncula River, which runs down from the valley, flowing through it from the mountains to the plain. After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rosebushes in full bloom. All the soil is black and loamy, and is capable of producing every kind of grain and fruit which may be planted. We went west, continually over good land well covered with grass. After traveling about half a league we came to the village of this region, the people of which, on seeing us, came out to the road.
Plans for the pueblo
The one person most responsible for the founding of Los Angeles was the new Governor of California, Felipe de Neve.
In 1777, Neve toured Alta California and decided to establish civic pueblos for the support of the military presidios . Neve was a Renaissance person. The new pueblos would reduce the secular power of the missions by reducing the dependency of the military on them. At the same time, they would promote the development of industry and agriculture.
Neve identified Santa Barbara, San Jose, and Los Angeles as sites for his new pueblos. His plans for them closely followed a set of Spanish city-planning laws contained in the Laws of the Indies promulgated by King Philip II in 1513. Those laws were responsible for laying the foundations of the largest cities in the region, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, and San Antonio—as well as Sonoma, Monterey, Santa Fe, San Jose, and Laredo.
The royal regulations were based on the ancient teachings of Vitruvius, who set down the rules for founding of new cities in the Roman Empire. Basically, the Spanish laws called for an open central plaza, surrounded by a fortified church, administrative buildings, and streets laid out in a grid, defining rectangles of limited size to be used for farming ( suertes ) and residences ( solares ).
It was in accordance with such precise planning—specified in the Law of the Indies—that Governor Neve founded the pueblo of San Jose de Guadalupe , California's first municipality, on the great plain of Santa Clara on 29 November, 1877.
The Los Angeles Pobladores
The Los Angeles Pobladores ("townspeople") is the name given to the 44 original settlers, 22 adults and 22 children, who founded the town.
In December, 1877, Viceroy Antionio María de Bucareli y Urusa and Commandant General Teodoro de Croix gave approval for the founding of a civic municipality at Los Angeles and a new presidio at Santa Barbara. Croix put the California lieutenant governor Fernando Rivera y Moncada in charge of recruiting colonists for the new settlements. He was originally instructed to recruit 55 soldiers, 22 settlers with families and 1,000 head of livestock that included horses for the military. After an exhausting search that took him to Mazatlan, Rosario, and Durango, Rivera y Moncada only recruited 12 settlers and 45 soldiers. Like the people of most towns in New Spain, they were a mix of Indian, Spanish, and African backgrounds. Croix instructed Rivera y Moncada to delay no longer and proceed north. The soldiers, settlers, and livestock were assembled at Alamos, Sonora, before departure.
They were divided into two groups. One group, under Alfèrez Josè de Zúñiga and Alfèrez Ramon Laso de la Vega, set out for the coast. They crossed the Gulf of California on launches and then travelled overland to San Diego and up to San Gabriel.
The second group, under Rivera y Moncada, took an overland route over the desert, passing by the new missions on the Colorado River, La Purísima Concepción and Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer. The group arrived at the Colorado River in June 1881. Rivera y Moncada sent most of his party ahead, but he stayed behind to rest the livestock before their drive across the desert. His party would never reach San Gabriel. The Quechan and Mojave Indians rose up against the party for encroaching on their fa
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