INTRODUCTION The general anthropology and history of the California natives has been exhaustively studied, in particular their archaeology and ethnography. Much is also known concerning the vicissitudes of their existence since the coming of the whi ... Read more

INTRODUCTION The general anthropology and history of the California natives has been exhaustively studied, in particular their archaeology and ethnography. Much is also known concerning the vicissitudes of their existence since the coming of the white man. The mission experience has been thoroughly explored and is admirably documented. The period of the Mexican War and the gold rush has been the subject of hundreds of books and articles. Students interested in problems of human biology, ecology, and sociology centering on the indigenous population of California have readily available certain important sources of information. First, there is a wealth of archaeological data—materials deposited in museums, many archaeological sites which are in their original position, reports, and monographs. Second should be mentioned the long series of ethnographic investigations carried on by various agencies over half a century and based primarily upon the word of living informants. Third are the general historical and mission records, which display the relation between the Spanish-Mexican civilization and the native. These merge into the fourth source of knowledge, the official documents, letters, memoirs, diaries, and contemporary newspaper accounts which give us an exceedingly detailed picture of the Indian during the period of first exploitation by the Americans. The fifth category includes the documentary records since approximately 1855: the reports of the Indian Service and of Army Officers, correspondence of all sorts among Federal and State functionaries, and investigations by Congressional or Legislative Committees. These documents, most of which are to be found in libraries and public archives, bring the student down to the present time. In spite of this wide spectrum of source material there is one area which has been as yet relatively little explored but which merits attention on the part of those concerned with the human development of California. I refer to the contact between the Spanish-Mexican settlers and the aboriginal population, not through the medium of the missions but within the natural environment of the Indians. Over a period of more than fifty years, while converts were being drawn into the mission system, priests, soldiers, and ranchers were continually reaching out into the interior, opening up the country and thus impinging upon native life. A constant succession of expeditions, sorties, raids, and campaigns moved in from the coast, left their mark on the land and its inhabitants, then retreated to the missions and presidios. Most of these forays were undertaken without official sanction and left no record save in the memory of a few old men, who were interviewed by H. H. Bancroft many years after the event. A good many expeditions and military campaigns, however, were sponsored by the government or the church. Of these, diaries were kept and written reports made. A rather long series of such documents still exists. The diaries, reports, letters, and reminiscences of the Ibero-American pioneers in California from 1770 to 1840 give us primary information for which there is no substitute. In the first place, they fill in the gap in our knowledge of the aboriginal peoples between what is deduced from purely archaeological evidence and what is learned from personal informants whose memories can reach back to a time only a little before the year 1850. Moreover we learn a good deal about the location and behavior of village or tribal groups which were entirely extinguished before the memory of modern survivors. In the second place, we see in detail the initial reaction of the Indian to the Spaniard in the wild environment and witness the subsequent struggle for survival on the part of the native population. In the third place, we obtain firsthand knowledge concerning the primitive environment of the interior, the condition of the land, the character and extent of vegetation, the location and capacity of rivers, swamps, and lakes. Such data antedate the memory and written descriptions of the earliest American observers and so are of great value in tracing the changes which have since occurred. The body of literature under consideration is found in only a few places. Some documents are in the Mexican National Archive, with microfilm possibly available. The largest single collection is in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley, with smaller collections at the Huntington Library and elsewhere. A few of the important diaries are in the form of the original manuscripts or contemporary copies. The greater part of the material, however, consists of transcripts of the originals made at the order of H. H. Bancroft in the 1870’s. Despite the very sloppy work done by the paid copyists it is fortunate that the attempt was made, for the documents themselves were nearly all destroyed in the San Francisco fire of 1906. Some effort has been made to bring before the scholarly world and the interested public certain of the outstanding accounts of expeditions and explorations. The period of 1765 to 1776 has been very adequately covered, particularly by the late Professor Herbert E. Bolton, who is remembered for his editing of the diaries of Crespi, Portola, Anza, and others. The later exploration has been the subject of a few works, such as Gayton’s translation of the Estudillo manuscripts. Both Herbert I. Priestley and Donald C. Cutter have contributed to our body of knowledge of the time. Priestley’s little book on the Franciscan explorations, finished after his death by Lillian E. Fisher, is a rather brief general description of the expeditions to the Central Valley. Cutter’s exhaustive thesis (1950) is a very satisfactory exposition of Central Valley exploration from the standpoint of the Spanish-Mexican colonial policy and missionization. Cutter, however, merely paraphrases and condenses the actual documents, thereby omitting much of the detail to be found in the original accounts. Neither Priestley nor Cutter concerns himself with Indian relations or explorations in Southern California and on the Colorado River, nor do they carry their consideration of the Central Valley past 1820. For a complete picture, therefore, the student of the early nineteenth century must seek out the primary documents. The written records within the area under discussion are deposited in a very few libraries and archives and, moreover, the documents, with the exceptions noted, are in handwritten Spanish. For these reasons a valuable body of information can be reached only with relative difficulty by students at large. Thus it seems worth while to assemble this material, translate it into English, and disseminate it in printed form among institutions of learning and research. At the same time a certain minimum amount of editorial organization is necessary, together with some explanation and commentary. The present group of translations embodies all the pertinent documents I can find dealing with the Central Valley of California in the period from 1800 to 1820. Not all the possible correlated references are included. The emphasis is upon the actual progress of exploration and physical contact with the natives—from the point of view of the natives. Consequently, no attempt is made to include papers bearing solely on political background, personal biography of participants, detailed military or logistic preparations, controversies between military, civilian, and ecclesiastical interests, and matters of official policy. For the broad historical setting and the details of organization the works of Bancroft, Bolton, Priestley, and Cutter will be found entirely adequate. All the important diaries are presented, with two exceptions. One is Argüello’s account of his expedition to the upper Sacramento and Trinity rivers in 1821. This manuscript is now being translated and annotated as a separate work by Professor Robert F. Heizer, of the University of California, and Professor Donald C. Cutter, of the University of Southern California. The other is the Estudillo expedition to the southern San Joaquin Valley in 1818. The Estudillo documents have already been translated and edited by Dr. Anna H. Gayton (1936) and can readily be obtained. In addition to the well-known, formal reports to the Central Authority I have translated several excerpts from letters and memoirs. The contemporary correspondence occasionally discusses briefly or extensively expeditions of interest concerning which we have no other knowledge. For completeness, therefore, these accounts must be included. Concerning the memoirs some reservation is necessary. This type of document furnishes a great deal of material for the later period of 1820-1840. There are, however, a number of passages which refer quite clearly to events in the preceding decade. These are the reminiscences of old men, talking about campaigns and battles which occurred more than half a century earlier. The raconteurs were mostly rather ignorant, their memory faulty, their attitude boastful. Their command of fact is definitely unreliable, their personal viewpoint highly colored and biased. Their accounts are nevertheless valuable for the picture they give of the day-to-day personal contact between the white men and the natives, and for the many interesting sidelights on the life and the land of the Central Valley in its original condition. The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks a grant made by the Institute of Social Sciences, of the University of California, for photocopying and clerical assistance. Less