Notes

In 1821 Mexico won independence from Spain. In 1824, a new Mexican federal constitution granted full citizenship to its Native people, including Native Californians. In practice, the difference in California Indians’ lives was often negligible. Mistreatment at the missions continued, in part out of soldiers’ anger over the Mexican government’s budget cuts imposed on the missions. In 1824, a savage beating of a Chumash worker at the Mission Santa Ynez sparked a bitter revolt there and at the nearby La Purisima Mission, known as the Chumash Revolt of 1824. While the revolt at Mission Santa Ynez was put down relatively quickly, more than 2,000 Chumash warriors captured La Purisima, repelled an attack by Mexican soldiers, held the mission for four months, then looted the mission of its supplies and valuables and headed for the hills.

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This drawing circa 1900 depicts Estanislao, standing at right. | Public domain image via Sunset Magazine
Just three years later, Estanislao, a Yokuts resident of Mission San Jose who had risen to a position of some prominence in the mission’s hierarchy, left the mission with about 400 followers. With an army eventually numbering more than 4,000 escapees from the missions in San Jose, Santa Cruz, and San Juan Bautista, Estanislao led a series of daring raids, using tactics he’d learned from the mission soldiers, that often resulted in no loss of life. Legend has it that Estanislao left his mark at raid sites by carving the letter “S” with his sword, which may have provided inspiration for the fictional character Zorro.

In 1829, the Mexican Army routed Estanislao’s army from a camp on what was then called the Rio Laquisimas. Estanislao escaped, sought pardon from Mexican authorities, then spent the next few years in the Sierra foothills raiding Mexican settlements with a newly growing army. In 1833, a malaria epidemic introduced to the Central Valley by fur trappers killed at least 20,000 California Indians, decimating Estanislao’s band. He returned to Mission San Jose, where he taught the Yokuts language until his death in 1838.

Aside from providing a model for other legends, Estanislao ended up lending his name to the Rio Laquisimas — now called the Stanislaus River — and to the county that shares the same name.

All in all, the impact of the missions on California native life were severe. In the 65 years between establishment of the missions in 1769 and their secularization by the Mexican government in 1834, more than 37,000 California Indians died at the missions — more than lived in the missions in any single year. Around 15,000 of those deaths were due to epidemics aided by the missions’ crowded conditions, while a significant number of the rest succumbed to starvation, overwork, or mistreatment.

The American Nadir

The Mexican-American War, which resulted in the conquest of California by the United States, was very bad news for Californian Indians. As brutal and cavalier as Spanish and Mexican rule had been for Native Californians, it was the onset of American rule that brought with it the worst period in the entire known history of California’s indigenous people.

The barbarism and racial hatred toward indigenous people American settlers brought with them to California can hardly be overstated. Over the 27 years from 1846 — when American settlers started making themselves at home in Mexican California