The Indians were prominent in early Californian history, but their progress toward their present insignificance began far back in the Spanish period. It proceeded much more rapidly after the restraining influence of the missions was removed, leaving them free to revert to savagery; and the downward progress of the race was fearfully accelerated during the mining period, when they were abused, depraved, and in large numbers killed. There have been no Indian wars in California’s annals, but many butcheries. The natives have declined exceedingly in number since 1830, in 1900 numbering 15,377. They have always been mild-tempered, low, and unintelligent, and are to-day a poor and miserable race. They are all called “Digger Indians” indiscriminately, although divided by a multiplicity of tongues.
Government and Institutions.—In the matter of constitution-making California has been conservative, having had only two between 1849 and 1910. The first was framed by a convention at Monterey in 1849, and ratified by the people and proclaimed by the United States military governor in the same year. The present constitution, framed by a convention in 1878-1879, came into full effect in 1880, and was subsequently amended. It was the work of the labour party, passed at a time of high discontent, and goes at great length into the details of government, as was demanded by the state of public opinion. The qualifications required for the suffrage are in no way different from those common throughout the Union, except that by a constitutional amendment of 1894 it is necessary for a voter to be able to read the state constitution and write his name. As compared with the earlier constitution it showed many radical advances toward popular control, the power of the legislature being everywhere curtailed. The power of legislation was taken from it by specific inhibition in thirty-one subjects before within its power; its control of the public domain, its powers in taxation, and its use of the state credit were carefully safe-guarded. “Lobbying” was made a felony; provisions were inserted against lotteries and stock-exchange gambling, to tax and control common carriers and great corporations, and to regulate telegraph, telephone, storage and wharfage charges. The powers of the executive department were also somewhat curtailed. For the judiciary, provisions were made for expediting trials and decisions. Notable was the innovation that agreement by three-fourths of a jury should be sufficient in civil cases and that a jury might be waived in minor criminal cases, a provision which of course was based on experience under the Mexican law. All these changes in the organic law reflect bitter experience after 1850; and, read with the history of those years as a commentary, few American constitutions are more instructive. The constitution of 1879 corresponds very closely to the ordinary state constitution of to-day. The incorporation of banks issuing circulating notes is forbidden. Marriage is not only declared a civil contract, but the laws expressly recognize that the mere consent of the parties is adequate to constitute a binding marriage. The union of whites with persons of African descent is forbidden. Felons twice convicted may not be pardoned except on the recommendation of a majority of the judges of the supreme court. Judges and state executive officers are elected for terms longer than is usual in the different states (supreme judges 12 years, executive officers 4 years). These few provisions are mentioned, not as of particular importance in themselves, but as exceptions of some moment to the usual type of state Constitutions (see [United States]). The Australian ballot was introduced in 1891. In local government there are no deviations from the usual types that demand notice. In the matter of liquor-laws there is local option, and a considerable proportion of the towns and smaller cities, particularly in the south, adopt prohibition. In most of the rest high licence is more or less strictly enforced.
The total assessed valuation of property grew from $666,399,985 in 1880 to $1,217,648,683 in 1900 and $1,879,728,763 in 1907. In 1904, when the U.S. Census Report showed California to be the twenty-first state of the Union in population but the sixth in wealth, the total estimated true value of all property was $4,115,491,106, of which $2,664,472,025 was the value of real property and improvements thereon. The per capita wealth of the state was then reported as $2582.32, being exceeded only by the three sparsely settled states of Montana, Wyoming and Nevada. In 1898 California had the largest savings-bank deposit per depositor ($637.75) of any state in the Union; the per caput deposit was $110 in 1902, and about one person in seven was a depositor. The state bonded debt in 1907 amounted to three and a half million dollars, of which all but $767,529.03 was represented by bonds purchased by the state and held for the school and university funds; for the common school fund on the 1st of July 1907 there were held bonds for $4,890,950, and $800,000 in cash available for investment; for the university fund there were held $751,000 in state bonds, and a large amount in other securities. The total bonded county indebtedness was $4,879,600 in 1906 (not including that of San Francisco, a consolidated city and county, which was $4,568,600). A homestead, entered upon record and limited to a value of $5000 if held by the head of a family and to a value of $1000 if held by one not the head of a family, is exempt from liability for debts, except for a mortgage, a lien before it was claimed as a homestead or a lien afterward for improvements. A homestead held by a married man cannot be mortgaged without consent of his wife.
Under an act approved on the 25th of March 1903 a state board of charities and corrections,—consisting of six members, not more than three being of the same political party, appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the senate, and holding office for twelve years, two retiring at the end of each quadrennium,—investigates, examines, and makes “reports upon the charitable, correctional and penal institutions of the state,” excepting the Veterans’ Home at Yountville, Napa county, and the Woman’s Relief Corps Home at Evergreen, Santa Clara county. There are state prisons with convicts working under the public account system, at San Quentin, Marin county, and Folsom, Sacramento county. The Preston (Sonoma county) School of Industry, for older boys, and the Whittier (Los Angeles county) State School, for girls and for boys under sixteen, are the state reformatories, each having good industrial and manual training departments. There are state hospitals for the insane at Agnew, Santa Clara county; at Stockton, San Joaquin county; at Napa, Napa county; at Patton, San Bernardino county; and, with a colony of tubercular patients, at Ukiah, Mendocino county. In 1906 the ratio of insane confined to institutions, to the total population, was 1 to every 270. Also under state control are the home for care and training of feeble-minded children, at Eldridge, Sonoma county; the institution for the deaf and the blind at Berkeley, and the home of mechanical trades for the adult blind at Oakland. A Juvenile Court Law was enacted in 1903 and modified in 1905.
The educational system of California is one of the best in the country. The state board of education is composed of the governor of the state, who is its president; the superintendent of public instruction, who is its secretary; the presidents of the five normal schools and of the University of California, and the professor of pedagogy in the university. Sessions are long in primary schools, and attendance was made compulsory in 1874 (and must not be less than two-thirds of all school days). The state controlled the actual preparation and sale of text-books for the common schools from 1885 to 1903, when the Perry amendment to the constitution (ratified by popular vote in 1884) was declared to mean that such text-books must be manufactured within the state, but that the texts need not be prepared in California. The experiment of state-prepared text-books was expensive, and its effect was bad on the public school system, as such text-books were almost without exception poorly written and poorly printed. After 1903 copyrights were leased by the state. Secondary schools are closely affiliated with, and closely inspected by, the state university. All schools are generously supported, salaries are unusually good, and pension funds in all cities are authorized by state laws. The value of school property in 1900 was $19,135,722, and the expenditure for the public schools $6,195,000; in 1906 the value of school property was $29,013,150, and the expenditure for public schools $10,815,857. The average school attendance for all minors of school age (5-20 years) was 59.9%; of those native-born 61.5, of those foreign-born 34.6; of coloured children, including Asiatics and Indians, 35.8, and of white, 60.8%. In 1900, 6.2% of the males of voting age, and 2.4% of the native-born males of voting age, were illiterate (could not write). Some 3% of the total population could not speak English; Chinese and Japanese constituting almost half of the number, foreign-born whites somewhat less, and Indians and native-born whites of foreign parentage together less than a tenth of the total. Of the higher educational institutions of the state the most important are the state university at Berkeley and Leland Stanford Jr. University at Palo Alto. The former is supported with very great liberality by the state; and the latter, the endowment of which is private (the state, however, exempting it from taxation), is one of the richest educational institutions of America. In 1906 there were also five state normal schools (at Chico, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and San José), and a considerable number of denominational colleges. There is also a state polytechnic school at San Luis Obispo (1903).
History.—The name “California” was taken from Ordoñez de Montalvo’s romance of chivalry Las Sergas de Esplandian (Madrid, 1510), in which is told of black Amazons ruling an island of this name “to the right of the Indies, very near the quarter of the terrestrial paradise.” The name was given to the unknown north-west before 1540. It does not show that the namers were prophets or wise judges, for the Spaniards really knew California not at all for more than two centuries, and then only as a genial but rather barren land; but it shows that the conquistadores mixed poetry with business and illustrates the glamour thrown about the “Northern Mystery.” Necessarily the name had for a long time no definite geographical meaning. The lower Colorado river was discovered in 1540, but the explorers did not penetrate California; in 1542-1543 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored at least the southern coast; in 1579 Sir Francis Drake repaired his ships in some Californian port (almost certainly not San Francisco Bay), and named the land New Albion; two Philippine ships visited the coast in 1584 and 1595, and in 1602 and 1603 Sebastian Vizcaino discovered the sites of San Diego and Monterey. There was apparently no increase of knowledge thereafter for 150 years. Most of this time California was generally supposed to be an island or a group of islands. Jesuit missionaries entered Lower California as early as 1697, maintaining themselves there until Charles III.’s expulsion in 1767 of all Jesuits from his dominions; but not until Russian explorations in Alaska from 1745-1765 did the Spanish government show interest in Upper California. Because of these explorations, and also the long-felt need of a refitting point on the California coast for the galleons from Manila, San Diego was occupied in 1769 and Monterey in 1770 as a result of urgent orders from Charles III. San Francisco Bay was discovered in the former year. Meanwhile the Jesuit property in the Peninsula had been turned over to Franciscan monks, but in 1772 the Dominicans took over the missions, and the Franciscans not unwillingly withdrew to Upper California, where they were to thrive remarkably for some fifty years.
This is the mission period—or from an economic standpoint, the pastoral period—of Californian history. In all, twenty-one missions were established between 1769 and 1823. The The rule of the missions. leader in this movement was a really remarkable man, Miguel José Serra (known as Junipero Serra, 1713-1784), a friar of very great ability, purest piety, and tireless zeal. He possessed great influence in Mexico and Madrid. “The theory of the mission system,” says H.H. Bancroft, “was to make the savages work out their own salvation and that of the priests also.” The last phrase scarcely does justice to the truly humane and devout intentions of the missionaries; but in truth the mission system was a complete failure save in the accumulation of material wealth. Economically the missions were the blood and life of the province. At them the neophytes worked up wool, tanned hides, prepared tallow, cultivated hemp and wheat, raised a few oranges, made soap, some iron and leather articles, mission furniture, and a very little wine and olive oil. Such as it was, this was about the only manufacturing or handicraft in California. Besides, the hides and tallow yielded by the great herds of cattle at the missions were the support of foreign trade and did much toward paying the expenses of the government. The Franciscans had no sympathy for profane knowledge, even among the Mexicans,—sometimes publicly burning quantities of books of a scientific or miscellaneous nature; and the reading of Fénelon’s Télémaque brought excommunication on a layman. As for the intellectual development of the neophytes the mission system accomplished nothing; save the care of their souls they received no instruction, they were virtually slaves, and were trained into a fatal dependence, so that once coercion was removed they relapsed at once into barbarism. It cannot be said, however, that Anglo-Americans have done much better for them.
The political upheavals in Spain and Mexico following 1808 made little stir in this far-off province. Joseph was never recognized, and allegiance was sworn to Ferdinand (1809). When revolution broke out in Mexico (1811), California remained loyal, suffering much by the cessation of supplies from Mexico, the resulting deficits falling as an added burden upon the missions. The occupation of Monterey for a few hours by a Buenos Aires privateer (1818) was the only incident of actual war that California saw in all these years; and it, in truth, was a ridiculous episode, fit introduction to the bloodless play-wars, soon to be inaugurated in Californian politics. In 1820 the Spanish constitution was duly sworn to in California, and in 1822 allegiance was given to Mexico. Under the Mexican Federal constitution of 1824 Upper California, first alone (it was made a distinct province in 1804) and then with Lower California, received representation in the Mexican congress.
The following years before American occupation may be divided into two periods of quite distinct interest. From about 1840 to 1848 foreign relations are the centre of interest. From 1824 to 1840 there is a complicated and not uninteresting movement of local politics and a preparation for the future,—the missions fall, republicanism grows, the sentiment of local patriotism becomes a political force, there is a succession of sectional controversies and personal struggles among provincial chiefs, an increase of foreign commerce, of foreign immigration and of foreign influence.
The Franciscans were mostly Spaniards in blood and in sympathies. They viewed with displeasure and foreboding the fall of Iturbide’s empire and the creation of the republic. They were not treasonable, but talked much, refusing allegiance to the new government; and as they controlled the resources of the colony and the good will of the Indians, they felt their strength against the local authority; besides, they were its constant benefactors. But secularization was in harmony with the growth of republican ideas. There was talk in California of the rights of man and neophytes, and of the sins of friars. The missions were never intended to be permanent. The missionaries were only the field workers sent out to convert and civilize the Indians, who were to be turned over then to the regular clergy, the monks pushing further onward into new fields. This was the well-established policy of Spain. In 1813 the Spanish Cortes ordered the secularization of all missions in America that were ten years old, but this decree was not published in California until 1821. After that secularization was the burning question in Californian politics. In 1826 a beginning toward it was made in partially emancipating the neophytes, but active and thorough secularization of the missions did not begin until 1834; by 1835 it was consummated at sixteen missions out of twenty-one, and by 1840 at all. At some of the missions the monks acted later as temporary curates for the civil authorities, until in 1845-1846 all the missions were sold by the government. Unfortunately the manner of carrying it out discredited a policy neither unjust nor bad in itself, increasing its importance in the political struggles of the time. The friars were in no way mistreated: Californians did not share Mexican resentments against Spaniards, and the national laws directed against these were in the main quietly ignored in the province. In 1831 the mission question led to a rising against the reactionary clerical rule of Governor Manuel Victoria. He was driven out of the province.