In 1603, Philip III. of Spain sent out Sebastian Viscaino to examine the coast of Upper California in search of suitable harbours for the Spanish East India ships. He discovered and took possession of San Diego and Monterey, giving on his return glowing descriptions of the beauty and fertility of the country. The Spaniards, however, made but little progress in colonisation, owing in part to the hostility of the natives. Their principal, and in fact first permanent settlement was at San Diego, but the coast, nevertheless, was frequented by their ships on account of its valuable pearl-fisheries. Although the Spanish government did not consider the colonisation of Upper California worth the expense, priests of the Franciscan order established several missionary stations, in the hope of converting the natives. Twenty-one stations were thus formed on the most fertile lands, each occupying about fifteen square miles. The buildings of those stations were contained in an enclosure of adobe or sun-dried brick. To the principal missions was attached a presidio, where was a quadrangular fort, in which was placed a company of soldiers for the protection of the missionaries, and to assist them also in bringing the refractory natives under their influence. The result was, that about half the Indians in the missionary district became nominal Christians and menial labourers at the same time. The very constitution of these missions, however, was calculated to prevent any effectual colonisation of the country by the whites, inasmuch as, while the missionaries themselves were monks and nuns, the soldiers at the presidios were not permitted to bring their wives with them; so that homes did not immediately spring up there as among the wiser colonists, who understood by this means how to attach the settler at once to the soil. Neither was money allowed to be in circulation, and the Padre of the mission held everything under his control. As might be expected, therefore, these missions never took deep root in the country, and only the few places where families were allowed to settle, are those in which towns sprung up, of which Ciudad de Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco were the principal, no one of which, in the year 1840, contained 1,000 inhabitants. Of the general population of Upper California, Humboldt states, that in 1802 it consisted of 15,562 converted Indians and 1,300 of other classes; in 1840 it is estimated that the number of whites was 5,000, of mistigoes or mixed 2,000, and of natives about 18,000. From this time, when the American exploring parties, of which we shall speak presently, had opened as it were a door into these hitherto unknown regions, and the advancing tide of western emigration reached its threshold, population began rapidly to increase; so that the Hon. Butler King states, in his official report, that “in 1846 Colonel Fremont had little difficulty in calling to his standard some 500 fighting men, and that, at the close of the war with Mexico, from 10,000 to 15,000 Americans and Californians, exclusive of converted Indians, were then in the territory. The immigration of American citizens in 1849, the year following the cession of California to the United States, was estimated at 80,000, that of foreigners at 20,000.”
We are indebted to Mrs. Willard for the greater portion of the following rapid sketch:—
“This country during the Spanish rule constituted a part of the viceroyalty of Mexico or New Spain. When Mexico became a federal republic, not finding California sufficiently populous to form a state, she established over it a territorial government. The Californians, like the Mexicans, sometimes had their revolutions, and declared themselves independent; but they always returned again to their allegiance, and till the opening of the war between the republics of America and Mexico, they were governed as a territory of the latter. Los Angeles was the seat of the territorial government; a member of the eminent family of Pico was at its head, and General Castro, the military chief, made Monterey his residence.
“A few years since the country between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific was as little known as the centre of Africa. In the years 1803 and 1804, Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, sent out by President Jackson, explored the Missouri to its sources, crossed the Rocky Mountains in latitude 47°, then struck upon the head waters of the Columbia, and followed its source to the Pacific Ocean. Settlements succeeded these discoveries and those subsequently of Captain Grey. The purchase of Louisiana from France, in 1803, carried the American dominion from the Mississippi to the heights of the Rocky Mountains. All the country beyond those mountains and south of Oregon was, previous to the late war with Mexico, in the possession of that country, and in 1840 its place on the map of the world was a blank.
“The American government in 1838, sent out, chiefly for the benefit of trade and commerce, a naval exploring expedition under Captain Charles Wilkes, to coast the American continent to the south and west, and to explore the islands of the Pacific. Captain Wilkes was directed to make surveys and examinations of the coast of Oregon and the Columbia River, and afterwards along the coast of California, with especial reference to the Bay of San Francisco. After executing this order in August and September, 1841, he pronounced the harbour of San Francisco to be ‘one of the finest, if not the very best in the world.’ The town, then called Yerba Buono, he said, consisted of one large frame building, occupied by the Hudson Bay Company; the store of an American merchant, a billiard-room and a bar; the cabin of a ship occupied as a dwelling; besides out-houses, few and far between. The most prominent man in the region was Captain Sutter, a Swiss by birth, and once a lieutenant in the Swiss guards of Charles X. of France, but who had immigrated from Missouri to California. Having obtained from Mexico a grant of land thirty leagues square, he located his residence within it and near the confluence of the American river with the Sacremento; here he built a fort at the junction of the rivers and laid out a town, to which he gave the name of New Helvetia, but which has since been called Sacremento City. Captain Wilkes reported favourably of the soil and productions of the country.
“In 1842, John C. Fremont, at that time a lieutenant of topographical engineers, being ordered on an exploring tour, left the mouth of the Kansas in the month of June with a party of about twenty. He travelled along the fertile valley of this river; struck off upon the sterile banks of the Platte River, followed its South Fork to St. Vrain’s Fort, and thence northerly to Fort Laramie, on the North Fork of the same stream. Following up, from this point, the North Fork and then its affluent the Sweet Water River, he was conducted by a gentle ascent to that wonderful gateway in the Rocky Mountains called the South Pass. He had found on his lonely way a few straggling emigrants bound to Oregon, but not one to California. Having explored the vicinity of the South Pass, his orders were executed, and he returned.
“The next year, again under the auspices of government, and with a party of thirty-nine, he set out earlier in the season, with special orders to examine and report upon the country between the Rocky Mountains and the line of Captain Wilkes’s explorations on the Pacific coast. He now crossed the Rocky Mountains further south, and where they were 8,000 feet in height. He then examined and laid open, by his report, the region of the Salt Lake, having reached that extraordinary expanse of salt water by following its beautiful affluent, the Bear River.
“Fremont, now brevet captain, was, on September 19th, at Fort Hall, on his way to Oregon. Here he met a Mr. Chiles, the only emigrant he had yet seen to California. Having, in the manner dictated by his orders, explored Oregon, he turned south and commenced his route to California, by traversing in winter the terrible and dangerous snows of the Sierra Nevada. From this seemingly interminable way, the lost and famished wanderers emerged upon the waters of the Sacremento, and they followed its affluent, the American Fork, to Sutter’s Fort, ignorant of the golden treasures beneath their feet, soon to set in motion a rapidly concentrating population from every corner of the world. After their wants had been kindly supplied by Captain Sutter, the party travelled south and beheld and enjoyed the vernal beauties of the flowery valley of the San Joaquin. Turning then to the southern extremity of the Sierra Nevada, they next passed the arid waste of the Great Desert Basin.
“They had discovered and named on their way new rivers and mountain passes; and had laid open regions which had heretofore, except to the hunter and the savage, been but the hidden recesses of nature. They had explored California and made known an overland route.”
Mr. Polk entered upon the presidential office resolved to carry out the Mexican war, as well as to make its results advantageous to his country by putting her in possession not only of New Mexico but of California also, the importance of which he fully estimated as opening up a great commercial state on the Pacific, even before its almost fabulous wealth of gold had become known.