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The most detailed study ever published of Los Angeles' most critical period. . . . An invaluable aid to my understanding of this city.--David Brodsly, author of L.A. Freeway

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The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930

University of California Press

Our inheritance is turned to strangersour houses to aliens. We have drunken our water for moneyour wood is sold unto us. Our necks are under persecutionwe labor and have no rest.
(Juan Bandini, 1855)

Los Angeles, far from being a new settlement, was almost seventy years old when California joined the Union. It was founded in the late eighteenth century when Spain decided to defend its empire and propagate Catholicism by colonizing California. Since the crown lacked the resources and since its subjects showed little interest, the church assumed this responsibility. Its priests, accompanied by government troops and vowing to enhance the glory of God and King, marched north from western Mexico along the Pacific Ocean into coastal California. There they encountered thousands of primitive but peaceful Indians who were intrigued by the mysteries of Christianity and impressed by the devotion of its messengers. The clerics gained the natives' confidence, converted many to Catholicism, and then persuaded or compelled them to leave their tribal villages for sacred communities known as missions.1 Resistance was ineffective against ecclesiastical determination and military power, and between the 1780's and 1830's the Spaniards resettled the California Indians on missions extending from San Diego north to Point Reyes.

To the aborigines, conversion meant confinement and civilization equaled subjugation. While in theory the missions prepared the natives for eventual independence, in fact the priests retained complete control. As missionaries they instructed the Indians in the gospel, as overseers they supervised their work, and as judges they punished their infractions. They exactingly regimented life and labor on the missions in accord with their church's absolute authority, their estates' material advancement, and their wards' spiritual improvement. For the aborigines, slavery in this world was a prerequisite for salvation in the next. And despite the sincerity of the Spaniards, Christian civilization was disastrous for the Indians. Uprooted from cultures

which had accommodated tribal abilities to environmental conditions, they suffered grievously from the clerics' inflexibility and the soldiers' brutality. Thus not only did the aboriginal population decline from 130,000 to 90,000 between 1770 and 1832,2 but, in addition, few Indians survived without irreparable physical and psychological damage that rendered them unfit for independent life.

The missions thrived nonetheless. Endowed with a mild climate and abundant land, California made only modest demands on its sparse and backward population. And the priests possessed adequate knowledge of productive techniques and ample power to force steady work from the Indians. Under clerical supervision, the aborigines planted and harvested cereals and vegetables, pastured and tended cattle and sheep, and then slaughtered and sheared them for meat and wool. They also cut the branches and dug the adobe for their simple huts and the priests' elaborate chapels, and, when finished with their labors, prayed, studied, and slept according to schedules set by the missionaries.3 Although this training was intended to teach the natives to govern themselves and manage the estates, the priests were unwilling to relinquish their authority and property. Conceived of as a temporary means of facilitating colonization, the missions became firmly fixed as California's dominant economic and social institutions in the early nineteenth century.

For the defense of the missions, Spain founded presidios at San Diego, San Francisco, and other sheltered places along the Pacific coast. The presidios were supplied by ship from Mexico, and, to relieve the royal exchequer of this burden, the imperial authorities decided to establish pueblos (agricultural villages) in California. According to Governor Felipe de Neve, the pueblos were supposed to provide the presidios with foodstuffs, wine, and horses, furnish their garrisons with soldiers, and, beyond this, stimulate agriculture, stock raising, and related industries.4 As few gente de razon (people of reason, or Europeans as opposed to Indians) resided in the province, however, the government was obliged to recruit pobladores (colonists) from among the Mexican people. But they displayed so little enthusiasm for the dangerous trip and precarious enterprise that the Governor, following precedents codified in Spain's Laws of the Indies, offered inducements to stimulate interest.

De Neve promised the pobladores a subsidy of money, stock, and tools, a building lot close to the plaza for residence, several tracts of outlying farmland for sustenance, adequate grazing land, and a share in the common water, pasturage, firewood, and lumber. He also ex-

empted them from tithes or any other taxes on their produce for five years. The colonists, in return, were obliged to complete their homes, cultivate their fields, increase their cattle, and construct a dam and other public works. They were also bound to sell their surplus at a fair price to the presidios, and to reimburse the royal treasury for its initial assistance from the profits.5 Since the pueblos were supplemental agricultural units, the authorities instructed that they be located at sites close to the presidios and suited for farming, which, in an arid country, meant near available water. Guided by the institution's rationale and the province's environment, the imperial government then designated several places as pueblos.

Among these was el pueblo de Nuestra Seora la Reina de Los Angeles (the village of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels) which was founded by Governor de Neve in 1781. Following his instructions to select a site in southern California's coastal plain, the pobladores first located Los Angeles near enough to the Porciuncula River to tap its waters yet high enough above it for protection against winter floods. They then took possession of the land and laid out the pueblo, setting aside a parcel two hundred by three hundred feet for the plaza and fixing its corners at the cardinal points of the compass. They also divided the surrounding territory into solares (building lots twenty by thirty varas) and suertes (sowing fields two hundred by three hundred varas) and reserved the remaining property for common use and newcomers. Finally, they held a lottery and distributed one solare, two irrigable suertes, and two dry ones to each poblador.6 Subsequently, the settlers exploited the village's fertile soil, ample water, and warm weather so effectively that Los Angeles prospered beyond expectations, attracted more colonists, and, with about one thousand inhabitants, ranked first in size among California's settlements in the 1830's.7

The missions fared less well. In the 1830's, a decade after Mexico declared its independence of Spain, the republic, in response to claims that the priests were monopolizing the land and exploiting the natives, transferred the missions from the church to the state.8 The Mexican authorities then reversed the Spanish policy of granting little property to individuals and even encouraged people to apply for parcels. Although they...