CALIFORNIA

Outstanding Resource for Native American Research

California Tribes: Main Access Map and Tribe Listing

Another treasure found by Johanna de Soto

California map shows counties in pale colors for reference. The listing below is of California recognized tribes as published in November 1996 in the Federal Register. The BIA only give the tribe's legal name -- often that of its little rancheria -- so I added the tribe or tribes included for each. I've grouped the rancherias by tribe, and arranged the groups roughly from north to south. Tribes with info about them somewhere on-web are clickable from this list below. Scroll down to find tribes and links. My original plan -- to use state maps showing reservations -- is not workable for California, definitely won't work for Alaska, and may not be for Oklahoma, Arizona-New Mexico. Where there are very many small, scattered tribes, I'll follow a procedure like this.

 ALL CALIFORNIA RESERVATIONS in alphabetical order, with BIA address/phone contact info, SACRAMENTO AREA and AGENCY OFFICES (Nov. 1996). Federally-recognized tribes only. Just has the official name (Chicken Ranch and suchlike), not the tribe; tribes and infolinks from the list below on this page.

CA Federally non-recognized Tribes -- names, addresses, from Native Studies at California's Humboldt State University. For any of these that have websites, consult my Non-recognized Tribes index here.

CREDITS: Tribal names and placements on the map come from the maps and data in Veronica Tiller's "American Indian Reservations and Trust Areas", Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996. Listing of Federally recognized tribes was published by the BIA in the Federal Register and used on their own website. I corrected HTML coding errors, added back tribes that were recognized as of late 1995 that had been omitted, and added the tribal (in addition to the BIA's reservation names) and county locations. The map itself is a modification, bleached and with county names and outline marks removed, of the California Indian Libraries Project counties map (which is also provided here as a reference).

For both it and the CILP "Pre-Contact Tribal Territories" maps, I cleaned up the color errors caused by scanning, reduced the colors, and reduced filesizes from 200K to less than 50K, for loading speed here -- a considerable amount of work.. All buttons and icons were made by me, Paula Giese.  I do claim copyright on all of the big maps, in particular the one with the extremely laborious placement of over 100 small rancherias, Paula Giese.

 I also claim copyright on annotating, correcting and arranging in orderly groups, by tribe, the BIA;'s incorrect by-rancheria-names list, Paula Giese.These items, both maps and work-product linklists, are copyright. They may NOT be downloaded  for use on any other website.

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AMERICAN CALIFORNIA'S FIRST 150 YEARS - 

SNAPSHOTS, PART II
Dr. Issac Cardenas, Department Chair, California State University, Fullerton and
Galal Kernahan, Los Amigos of Orange County

Chief of the Dead

One day in 1857, a father, mother and son sat chatting on the shaded verandah of their country home in Sonoma.  the son, Platon, was back from pre-med studies at St. Mary's College.  That was two voyages and a Panama land crossing away in remote Maryland.

The father was California born and bred Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo.  He had already lived a half century of tumultuous California history.  He helped write the original 1849 Constitution in Monterey. He celebrated at the all-night party that ended with the 31-gun salute.

He was a Senator in the brand-new State Legislature in San Jose months before California was admitted to the Union as the 31st State.  After it divided California into 27 counties, he was asked to write a report 3explainingt their Indian or Spanish names.  This he did from memory.

As they talked on that quiet day in Sonoma, he saw the figure of a man approaching.  It was an old, 6-foot-7-inches tall Native American.

It was his friend, Sam Yeto, Mighty Arm, who said, Senor, I have come to offer you my service again.  Vallejo greeted him warmly.  He stayed several days.  They met in battle more than 20 years earlier.  They had not seen each other for twelve.

In early days as an Indian fighter, Vallejo defeated Mighty Arm and his Suisun warriors.  His people numbered 40,000.  Vallejo made him an ally.  He encouraged his conversion. The Christian name given him was "Solano" after the Mission Saint. 

The Suisun were implacable in fighting other tribes.  Atrocities were committed by them while serving Vallejo. Then, in 1838, smallpox swept like scythe of death through California's Native Americans.  Prince Solano found himself chief of a dead tribe.  

He disappeared.  He explained to is old friend, Vallejo, how he wandered alone through the Northwest, even British Columbia.  Finally, he went away to see if any scattered Suisun still lived. Within days, he too, was dead.

The American State of California began in a vast Native American cemetery. 

The Golden Spike

All of us can retrieve the next scene from our school days memory bank.  Two locomotives face each other at Promontory Point, Utah.  Transcontinental rails finally link California with mid-western and Eastern United States.  It is May 10, 1869.

In the wake of the civil War, this was the geographical equivalent of "a more perfect union."  It was tie that binds . . . finally pinned together with a symbolic golden spike.

A high human price was paid for an unprecedented accomplishment.  Ten thousand California Pacific railroad construction gang laborers plowed the right of way through the Sierras and across searing desert.

Nine thousand were Chinese.  Of them, a thousand perished.  They and their sacrifices were ignored at Promontory Point.  The survivors were laid off to straggle back to California on their own.

Central Pacific -- under pressure to keep to a construcit9on timetable set by Congress -- needed dependable , hard-working Chinese la bor.  it recruited directly in China.  Here was the deal:  If -- as was almost always the case -- you didn't have forty dollars for passage across the Pacific, you signed to work it off with unpaid labor for a set period after arrival.

Many, who could not read the contracts, went unpaid well after what contracts stipulated.  They were cheated.

Also, it was the Chinese, who did the original work on which California agri-business is built.  They Delta marshes into rich, arable land.  They drained Salinas Valley field.  By 1880, 86% of farm workers in Sacramento County were Chinese.

Yet, for a half century, one kind of harassment and legal oppr3ession was piled on another to make their lives here unbearable.  Article XIX of California's present 1879 Constitution was monstrously anti-Chinese.  It was not repealed until 1950.  the Federal Exclusion Act of 1882 was not repealed until 1943.

This pitiless discrimination served political purposes: it kept workingmen's organizations in line and occupied pushing to crush any possibility of job competition.

Asian-Americans - the Chinese as well as Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese and other - all paid high dues for their inclusion in today's California community.

--more, next month--                                                                    Return to Table of Contents

Veteran Receives a Purple Heart --- 48 years later

On July 12, Manuel "Manny" Rubio of Pittsburg, California, a  70-year-old combat veteran got the Purple Heart he was owed for wounds sustained in Korea almost 50 years ago. Rubio said he had tried a couple of times after his discharge to get his Purple Heart, but was told his records had been lost. Gary Villalba, a Contra Costa County veterans service officer in Martinez.  Villalba said that because Rubio had been receiving disability payments for battle wounds, it was easy to prove he deserved a Purple Heart. "His case was clearly documented," Villalba said. In addition, Rubio's disability was changed from 10 percent to 40 percent. He also will receive a Korean Service Medal. 

Unknown to his parents, Rubio lied about his age and joined the Merchant Marine at 14 years old.  He continued working for the Merchant Marines until 1950 when he was drafted into the Korean war. On Oct 13, 1951 Pfc. Rubio was firing away at the enemy at "Horseshoe Hill" when he took some shrapnel in his hand. After treatment Rubio, by then a corporal, returned to his comrades and to war. 

The second major battle was referred to as "Chico Hill."  The four-hour battle in driving rain cost approximately 2,000 American casualties.  In addition to gunfire, phosophorous was rained on the American forces.  White phosphorous ignites when exposed to the air and burns at around 2,000 degrees. It also sticks to whatever it touches. A fragment hit the inside of Rubio's legs near the ankles, and when he tried to rub it off, it stuck to the backs of his hands. The phosphorous burned its way to Rubio's bone and then into the bone itself.

In intense agony, Rubio waited four long hours among other wounded and dead soldiers until an American patrol found them. Once again, Rubio was shipped to Seoul for medical treatment, and then to Japan for recuperation. But this time, he didn't go back into battle. He arrived in California in October 1952, a civilian, his hands still wrapped and oozing. It took two years before he completely healed.

Abstract from an article sent by Gil Villarreal from the Contra Costa Times

hgilvillarreal@hotmail.com

The Search For A Southern Overland Route to California

by Harlan Hague

The first region known to Europeans in what is now the United States was not at the mouth of the James River nor was it on the western shore of the Bay of Cape Cod. The two-year residence in present-day New Mexico by the Spaniard, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, pre-dated Sir Walter Raleigh's attempted settlement of Roanoke Island in the 1580s by forty-five years and lasted longer.

A significant Spanish presence in New Mexico began in 1598, nine years before the founding of Jamestown. Long before English settlers began to leave their boats to cut paths beyond the fall line of the James River, trails in the Southwest between Spanish settlements in Mexico and New Mexico had been well-established and regularly used.

While settlement of New Mexico continued during the seventeenth century, the Spaniards also turned their attention westward, and eventually the lure of California attracted them, as it would Mexicans and Americans at a later date. Whether traveling from the United States, New Mexico, or Mexico, however, great expanses had to be crossed to reach the fabled land.

When the Spanish discovered that they could not adequately supply and populate their California settlements by a sea route from Mexico's western coast, they pioneered an overland route from Sonora to southern California. The year was 1774, two years before the signing of the American Declaration of Independence and fifty-two years before Jedediah Smith became the first American to enter California by an overland route. The first party of emigrants to enter California overland traveled the southern route in 1775, sixty-six years before the Bartleson-Bidwell party inaugurated the California Trail as an emigrant route.

In contrast to northern trails, the southern route was no single, well-defined path. With some exceptions, it was made up of a number of trails which generally converged at or near the Pima Indian villages on the Gila River in Arizona. From there, the trail followed the Gila downstream to its confluence with the Colorado, then westward across the southern desert to the coast.

Certainly, there was no "Gila Trail," as the term is popularly used today in western literature. The term is a misnomer, and a glance at maps that trace the paths followed by southwestern explorers reveals how little the routes touched the Gila River. California-bound travelers on the various branches of the southern route did not refer to a "Gila Trail";  the term was invented much later by historians in need of a handy reference.

The selection of "Gila Trail" to fill that need was unfortunate, however, for use of the term has generated a myth that there was a single trail to California that ran alongside the Gila River. In reality, the southern route was more complex than the myth, and while the beginnings of the more northerly trails have been discussed and rediscussed, the origins of the southern route are here for the first time explored as an integrated topic.  More thorough study is deserved.

The first leg of the first overland route to California was pioneered by the Jesuit missionary, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino. Arriving in 1687 in the Pimería Alta--the name then applied to today's southern Arizona and northern Sonora--to minister to Indians on New Spain's northern frontier, Kino's spiritual devotion was matched by his zeal for discovery.

Of all the pioneers who trekked southwestern trails from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, Kino is most deserving of the title of pathfinder. On his numerous trips throughout present-day northern Sonora and southern Arizona, he seldom had any military escort and generally traveled with only a few Indian companions who seem usually to have been servants rather than guides. It is obvious, however, that the padre often followed Indian trails and was assisted by local Indians during his journeys.

In the early years of his ministry, Kino devoted his energies to building missions and otherwise extending the influence of the church within the boundaries of present-day Sonora. But in the year 1699, while on an expedition to the Gila River, Kino was given some blue shells that changed all that. The shells were similar to some he had seen on the Pacific coast side of Baja California in 1685. He had never seen them elsewhere. Kino reasoned that the shells must have come overland from the coast. Though he never ceased his quest for souls, from that year the friar occupied himself most fervently in the search for a land route to California.

Kino saw good reason for opening a road between Sonora and California. The Manila Galleon--the trade ship which traveled annually from Mexico to the Philippine Islands and back--could be provisioned from the Pimería, and the upper frontier could participate in the trade with the Galleon. A newly-prosperous Pimería then would be able to expand its commerce with the interior of Mexico and open trade with New Mexico and perhaps even beyond to New France.

According to his own count, Kino made fourteen expeditions to prove that there was a land passage to California and, further, that Lower California was a peninsula rather than an island. Indeed, he crossed the Colorado River to the California side in the course of his explorations. Kino eventually wrote of his findings: "I discovered the land-passage . . . at the confluence of the Río Grande de Gila and the abundant waters of the Río Colorado." As to that land lying west of the Colorado River, Kino added: "I assign the name of Upper California." Kino's dream of an overland route to California lapsed with his death in 1711.

More than fifty years passed before the task was taken up by another missionary, Father Francisco Garcés, a Franciscan. Cast in Kino's mold and stationed at the southern Arizona mission of San Xavier del Bac, which Kino had founded, Garcés made five journeys during his short thirteen-year ministry in the Pimería that earned for him a reputation as one of the greatest explorers in the history of the American West.

Garcés's first two journeys were missionary ventures designed to strengthen the influence of the church as far as the Gila River, but the third expedition was more important as a step toward opening a trail to California. Convinced by the successes of his first two trips that the tribes he had visited were ready for conversion, Garcés set out in 1771 to select the best sites for new missions. He traveled from San Xavier to the Gila, then down that stream. Because the Gila was swollen by recent rains, he failed to recognize the confluence with the Colorado, so he continued downstream toward the gulf. Finally deciding that the Colorado lay westward, the padre crossed the river, still thinking he was on the Gila.

In search of the Colorado, Garcés, now on the California side of the river, made two treks into the desert. Both times, he started with Indian guides; both times, his guides deserted him. How far he penetrated on these solitary journeys is not known. On the second, he came in sight of a range of mountains and saw two passes through it, but he despaired of going on and turned back.

Though he was lost part of the time, Garcés unknowingly had pioneered a new trail from the Colorado toward the Spanish California coastal settlements. The principal significance of his third expedition was its effect on the fruition of another exploration from the Pimería Alta just three years later which would reach the California coast.

The idea for searching out an overland route to California had been a dream of Captain Juan Bautista de Anza for many years. From 1769, when he unsuccessfully sought permission to organize an expedition for that purpose, Anza tried to convince his superiors that a road could and should be opened. Garcés's reports of his expedition supported Anza's view. Eventually Father Junipéro Serra, "father" of the California mission system, spoke strongly in favor of the project. Serra's advice appears to have had considerable influence on the viceroy who shortly after gave his approval to Anza's plan.

Anza's expedition departed Sonora in January 1774. To the Gila, across the Colorado, and into the desert beyond, Garcés guided the column over trails known to him. From there to the California coast, the expedition was guided by Sebastián Tarabal. Tarabal was a "mission Indian" who had run away from the California mission of San Gabriel and made his way overland to Sonora where Anza persuaded him to join the expedition.

The worst stretch of the entire trip for the Spaniards was the crossing of the Colorado Desert where both Garcés and Tarabal had been lost during their previous journeys. As a result, the Spaniards wandered and suffered until Tarabal recognized landmarks and brought the expedition to San Gabriel mission in mid-March 1774.

The first overland route to California had been found. Kino had located the trail as far as the Colorado River. Garcés extended the path across the Colorado and into the desert beyond. Anza, with the help of Garcés and Tarabal, completed the route to the Pacific Ocean.

The first practical use of the new road was made the following year. In 1775, a royal decree recognized the growing importance of Alta California and changed the seat of government from Loreto in Baja California to Monterey. Though the decree was not implemented until 1777, action was taken immediately to increase the Spanish population of Upper California. Anza was directed to lead an expedition of soldiers and colonists to establish a settlement at the Bay of San Francisco.

The expedition of 240 persons set out from Anza's frontier presidio at Tubac in October 1775. The route followed was essentially the same as the 1774 journey, except that it was straightened out in a number of places. Garcés accompanied Anza as far as the Colorado River but remained there to minister to Indians and to explore. Anza led the expedition into San Gabriel on January 4, 1776. The only death during the entire journey was a woman who died from the complications of childbirth. Indeed, the expedition's numbers had been increased by three babies born during the trip.

While Anza was proving the feasibility of travel between Sonora and California, others were attempting to directly link Spanish settlements in New Mexico and California. In early 1776, Father Garcés set out northward from the Yuma villages on the Colorado River on a journey that took him across the Mojave Desert to Mission San Gabriel, over the Tehachapi Mountains to the San Joaquin Valley, and thence back across the mountains and desert to the Colorado River. He had planned to travel directly between the Colorado and the San Luis Obispo mission on California's coast, but he had been thwarted on both the outward and return journeys.

From the Colorado, the padre satisfied a long-held desire to visit the Hopis in the plateau country of northeastern Arizona. For generations the Hopis had resisted Spanish overlordship, and they gave Garcés a cold, almost threatening, reception. The padre had hoped to fulfill his ambition to travel directly from California to the Zuñi pueblo in New Mexico, but Hopi hostility reluctantly returned him to the Colorado.

Though Garcés failed to complete his intended journey, he nevertheless had proven the practicability, or at least the possibility, of travel between Santa Fé and the Northern California settlements. In California, he had reached a point only a few days' easy march from San Luis Obispo and Monterey. He had personally traveled from the California Central Valley all the way to Oraibi, the principal town of the Hopis. Spaniards had visited Oraibi from Zuñi, and Spanish movement between Zuñi and Santa Fé was commonplace.

Also in 1776, two New Mexico Franciscans tried to locate a northern route directly from Santa Fé to Monterey in California. Though the official head of the expedition was Father Atanasio Domínguez, the Superior of the New Mexico Franciscans, it appears that Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, the missionary at Zuñi, was instrumental in the genesis of the project. At least it was Escalante who kept the journal of the expedition, and, whether justified or not, it is the diarist that history usually remembers.

The Domínguez-Escalante expedition failed to find a trail to California. The party traveled from Santa Fé into western Colorado, then into Utah. At a camp in western Utah, Escalante and Domínguez decided to give up and return to New Mexico. It was early October, the weather had turned colder, and they already had experienced a heavy snowfall. The mountains all around them were covered with snow, and they had failed to find a pass through the rugged San Fran- cisco Mountains, a route which Escalante thought the best to Monterey. A number of the expedition's members nevertheless disagreed with their leaders' decision and wished to continue toward California.

At this point, the party might yet have earned the distinction  of being the first to reach California by a direct route from New Mexico. Or it might have earned the questionable honor of being the first party of white people to die in the snows of the Sierra Nevada. To decide the issue, the two sides agreed to "inquire anew the will of God" by casting lots. The dissenters, noted Escalante, "with fervent devotion . . . said the third part of the Rosary and other petitions, while we said the penitential Psalms, and the litanies and other prayers which follow them." That done, the lots were cast, and the leaders won the toss. Escalante thanked God, the dissenters accepted the result, and the expedition returned to New Mexico.

For the remainder of the period of Spanish sovereignty in Mexico, no further advance was made in development of the trails to California. Two mission-pueblos were established on the Colorado River among the Yuma Indians, the purpose being both to minister to the Indians and to strengthen Spain's hold on this strategic point on the overland trail. Though the Yumas had long asked for missionaries to live among them, they had not asked for Spanish settlers or soldiers. The Yumas soon became exasperated at the offenses of the latter and revolted in 1781. In three days, the Spanish presence on the Colorado vanished, and the Sonora-California road was closed.

Lieutenant Colonel Don Pedro Fages the same year led a somewhat successful punitive expedition against the Yumas, but it had no effect on re-opening the trail. Fages passed through Yuma lands again in 1782 en route to Califomia to deliver messages to the governor, but he made no attempt to re-establish Spain's hold on the region.

At the opening of the nineteenth century, Spanish control in the upper frontier was approaching an end. The Colorado- Gila region by this time had been abandoned. New Mexico continued to exist, but while the Mexican war for independence raged intermittently in the south, it existed more as an autonomous region than as a province of New Spain. As the Spanish military presence in the north declined, Indian depredations grew, and the towns of New Mexico became islands from which settlers rarely ventured far. For about 275 years, Spanish explorers had trekked the upper frontier; by the second decade of the nineteenth century, few of their trails were visible or safe.

Following the successful revolution against Spanish rule and the establishment of the Mexican state in 1821, attention was directed once again to the northern frontier regions. The security of California was seen by the new republic as its  most urgent problem. Russia increasingly appeared to pose a threat to California, and trappers of the English Hudson's Bay Company pushed southward ever deeper into Mexico's territory. When it was decided that California's future as a Mexican possession required strengthening their presence there, the immediate opening of an overland route between California and Mexico became necessary.

The first concrete step in re-establishing a California-Sonora road was motivated by a need for a mail route. In 1823, Father Feliz Caballero traveled from his missions in Baja California to Sonora via the region near the mouth of the Colorado and the Gila River. The same year, Captain José Romero, commandant of the Tucson presidio, returned to Baja California over roughly the same route, but not before being robbed by Indians near the mouth of the Colorado. His later investigations into the feasibility of a trail that would pass through San Bernardino and San Gorgonio Pass and strike the Colorado north of the junction with the Gila were no more encouraging.

When Romero returned to Sonora in late 1825, Romualdo Pacheco, an engineer, accompanied the expedition as far as the Colorado river, then marched back to the coast by way of the southern, or Yuma, route. This last, the San Diego-Yuma route via Warner's Pass, eventually was recognized as the official California segment of the California-Sonora road. Although the route was dangerous, it did in fact become a road of sorts as private persons began to use it in travelling from Sonora.

While the California-Sonora trail was becoming a road, the elusive direct route from new Mexico to California again was sought. Where Garcés and the Escalante-Domínguez party had pioneered paths, Antonio Armijo's journey from New Mexico to California in 1829-1830 on a trail that lay north of the Grand Canyon was the first significant step in the development of the route that later became known as the Old Spanish Trail. A larger portion of the credit for opening the trail must go to William Wolfskill, the American mountain man who led an expedition that included George C. Yount from New Mexico via the Great Basin to California in 1830-1831; the Old Spanish Trail would follow Wolfskill's route more closely than that of Armijo.

The Old Spanish Trail was more of a "central route" than a southern one, but until the opening of shorter routes from New Mexico to California in the early stages of the war between Mexico and the United States in the mid-1840s, the trail, used more for trade than emigration, was the most heavily traveled route between the two provinces. Its principal virtue was that it lay north of hostile Indian territory. But travel over the trail was slow, and it would lose out after 1848 to the more southerly routes because gold-seekers were willing to brave both deserts and hostile Indians to speed their journeys to California.

The remaining variations of the southern route to California were established by Americans. American mountain men who came to northern Mexico after the new republic opened its borders in 1821 spread throughout New Mexico, trapping and becoming familiar with virtually every stream.

Most of their expeditions were round-trips from Santa Fé or Taos. In the fall of 1826, two parties from Santa Fé, including such notables as James Ohio Pattie, Ewing Young, George C. Yount, Michel Robidoux, Milton Sublette, and Thomas "Peg-leg" Smith, traveled to the Gila River by way of the Santa Rita copper mines in southwestern New Mexico. Eventually merging, the combined party worked down the Gila to its confluence with the Colorado to become the first Americans to do so. Then they turned north and eventually returned to Santa Fé.

Some expeditions traveled all the way to California. The first group of trappers to reach California from New Mexico was led by Richard Campbell in 1827. Unfortunately, the party's route is not known. The same year, another expedition reached the Gila River via the Santa Rita mines. The Americans trapped down the Gila. Upon reaching the Colorado, they split into two groups. One party, under George C. Yount, returned to New Mexico. The other, including James 0. Pattie and his father, Sylvester, eventually reached California in 1828 after a near-fatal walk through the desert of northern Baja California.

The next year, 1829, Ewing Young led a party of some forty trappers from Taos, bound for the Colorado. Kit Carson was a member of the group. At the headwaters of the Río Verde in northern Arizona, Young divided his party. One group returned to Taos. The other, led by Young and including Carson, headed toward California. They traveled south of the Grand Canyon, crossed the Colorado, then probably followed the dry bed of the Mojave River and crossed the mountains at Cajón Pass to arrive at San Gabriel mission in early 1830. Later, Young returned to New Mexico via the Gila River and the Santa Rita mines, arriving there in early 1831.

Other California-bound expeditions were in the field during Young's journey. It seems that a party including Peg-leg Smith from the Great Basin arrived in Los Angeles early in 1830. The expeditions of Antonio Armijo and William Wolfskill, both of which were important in establishing the Old Spanish Trail, were also out at this time.

The partnership of David E. Jackson, David Waldo, and Ewing Young sent two expeditions to California in 1831. The first, a mule-buying venture under Jackson and including J. J. Warner, traveled via the copper mines to the abandoned mission of San Xavier del Bac and the presidio of Tucson, thence to the Gila at the Pima villages, and down that stream to the Colorado.

Crossing the Colorado just below the mouth of the Gila, the party traversed the desert and passed San Luis Rey mission on the road to San Diego. If, as it seems, they passed through the San José Valley, Warner got his first glimpse of the valley where he would later build his ranch, a mountain oasis on the trail between the Colorado and the ocean.

Meanwhile, the partnership's second expedition got underway in October, 1831. Under Ewing Young, the party of around thirty-seven men included Moses Carson (Kit's brother), Benjamin Day, Isaac Williams of Rancho del Chino fame, Sidney Cooper, and Job F. Dye. Traveling a different route from that of the first group, Young led his party to Zuñi, thence to the Salt River, the Gila, and the Colorado. There, for some unexplained reason, all of the expedition's members except thirteen under Young decided to return to New Mexico. Young led the smaller group into Los Angeles in March, 1832. Later that year, Jackson returned to New Mexico with a herd of mules and horses while Young remained in California, eventually to settle in Oregon.

The last significant expedition traveling from New Mexico to California before the opening of the Mexican War left Santa Fé in 1841. A group of Americans, including Benjamin David Wilson, John Rowland, and William Workman, had decided that it was no longer safe for them to remain in New Mexico. Governor Armijo, it seems, was trying to implicate certain Americans residing in Santa Fé with the unsuccessful conquest of New Mexico by an expedition from Texas.

Little is known of the route taken by the Americans on their journey to California, only that they arrived in Los Angeles in November 1841. The party narrowly missed the distinction of being the first party of American emigrants to enter California by an overland route. Just days before, in October, the Bartleson-Bidwell party had arrived over the more northerly California Trail.

The United States Army expeditions across New Mexico to California in the opening stages of the Mexican War are better known than the earlier journeys of Americans through the Southwest. After the bloodless subjugation of New Mexico, General Stephen Watts Kearny led an advance column of the Army of the West toward California to take part in the conquest of that long-coveted province.

Departing from Santa Fé in September 1846, the column marched down the Río Grande, turning west to pass the copper mines, thence to the Gila, down the Gila, and across the Colorado about ten miles below the junction of the two rivers. The army, in some distress by this time, crossed the desert, passed Warner's Ranch, and finally reached San Diego in December 1846, but not before being battered by the Californians at San Pascual.

Kearny had hoped to open a wagon road between New Mexico and California and had begun his march with wagons. When he was forced to abandon them shortly after leaving the Río Grande, he assigned that task to Lieutenant-Colonel Philip St. George Cooke.

Cooke commanded the Mormon Battalion, a unit of the Army of the West, which was scheduled to follow Kearny's force. Cooke's Mormon volunteers marched out of Santa Fé In October 1846. Though Kearny had ordered him to follow the advance column's trail, Cooke was forced to leave the general's route at the point where Kearny had left the  Río Grande.

Determined to take the wagons through, Cooke and the Mormon Battalion pioneered a road into southwestern New Mexico near the copper mines and across the continental divide in the vicinity of Guadalupe Pass. Striking the San Pedro River, the battalion turned northward along its course, left it to march westward to Tucson, thence northward again to the Gila. From that point, Cooke followed Kearny's trail to San Diego, arriving there in late January 1847.

Neither Kearny nor Cooke had plunged blindly into unknown southwestern wilds. General Kearny had recognized early in his plans for the conquest that American trappers could make an invaluable contribution to the struggle. Among a number of mountain men, some unnamed, who accompanied Kearny's force as guides and interpreters were Kit Carson, Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick, and Antoine Robidoux. Guiding the Mormon Battalion were Antoine Leroux, Pauline (Powell) Weaver, and Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Most had trapped New Mexico streams.

Cooke's route was shortly improved. In 1848, following the end of the war with Mexico, Major Lawrence P. Graham led a battalion of United States Army dragoons from Chihuahua to California. Marching through Janos, Graham struck Cooke's road. Beyond the continental divide, however, Graham left Cooke's route at the San Pedro River and continued westward to the Santa Cruz river before turning north to rejoin Cooke's road to Tucson. In later years, argonauts and emigrants arrived at Janos from many directions, but most of them then followed Graham's route to California, that is, Cooke's road as modified by Graham's detour to the Santa Cruz river.

Cooke and Graham may share the credit for establishing the route, but it is worth noting that Father Garcés thought of it first. Graham's trail all the way from Chihuahua to the Colorado is precisely the route suggested by Garcés in I777 for the purpose of supplying proposed missions on the Gila and Colorado Rivers.

This story of the origins of the southern route is seriously incomplete without consideration of the role played by Native Americans in the discovery and path finding. Historians long ago stopped writing that Spanish, Mexican or American explorers were "first to see. . ." or "first to cross. . .," thereby acknowledging that a great number of Indians had seen first and crossed first. But because of the absence of written records, Indians have received little or no credit for feats of exploration or discovery.

Most white explorers in what is now the United States Southwest were not pathfinders. Ample evidence indicates that Indians traded rather extensively between New Mexico, the interior of Mexico, and California long before the appearance of Europeans in Mexico. Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans who ventured into these lands almost always found local Indians who were willing to point out trails that they knew and traveled often.

Most white explorers in the Southwest depended upon Indian guides. When they did not, their diaries show that they often got lost. Garcés, for example, one of the ablest of explorers, was a master at finding guides who would escort him through their own lands. On at least one occasion, when his native guides refused to go in a direction in which he insisted, Garcés relented and followed them along a path they knew. On two other occasions, when he refused to follow the advice of his guides, he got lost. Even mountain men sometimes found it expedient to employ Indian guides.

While the stories of attacks by Apaches on travelers in 1849 and after are well known, the literature of the Southwest also is full of evidence of friendly contacts between whites and Indians. From Kino through Cooke, the Pimas in their villages along the Gila River welcomed white explorers. Garcés and his Mojave companions of the trail grieved at their last parting. Kino, Garcés, and Anza alike were impressed with the eagerness of the Yumas to associate with the Spanish. Surely no other people in history have ever sought so earnestly to adopt an alien culture as the Yumas sought to place themselves under the sovereignty of the Spanish crown and Church. The Yumas were not the only Indian people so inclined. Most tribes in the Pimería Alta sought to enter the Spanish fold in some fashion.

Even the Apaches, scourge of the Spaniards and Mexicans, were largely friendly to Americans in earliest contacts. Mountain men found that Apaches hated and preyed upon Mexicans but had respect, if not admiration, for Americans. Kearny and Cooke also benefited from this sentiment. They employed Apache guides and traded with them for mules and provisions. Cordiality vanished, however, when the United States declared its sovereignty over Apachería and tried to manage the Apaches of Arizona and New Mexico.

The development of the southern route to California--as if all had been in anticipation of the gold discovery in 1848-- extended over a period of over 150 years, if its origins are traced back only as far as Kino's day. Spanish use of the trail was never heavy. The population of New Spain's northern provinces was too sparse, the financial support by the crown too uncertain, and the Indian problems too complex. Though the Mexicans re-opened the Sonora-California trail that had been closed at the end of the Spanish era, traffic was never extensive until the discovery of gold. Sonorans were among the earliest arrivals at the California mines.

The Old Spanish Trail between new Mexico and California, on the other hand, was regularly used, primarily for commerce, until it lost out to the more southerly trails. In the exodus to California after 1848, the most heavily-traveled branch of the southern route was Cooke's wagon road, including Graham's detour.

Transportation improved rapidly in the Southwest as the rush to California accelerated and the newly-acquired southwestern region began to attract American settlers. Cooke's route was improved, and new roads were opened. Stagecoach travel was inaugurated, and railroads soon entered the Southwest. A rail line spanning the region finally brought the long haul by wagon over the old trails to an end. But the centuries-old lure of California remained, and travel over the southern route continued to expand.

This article was published in the California Historical Quarterly (Summer 1976).

http://www.softadventure.net/roadcal.htm

submitted by Alex King                                                                     Return to Table of Contents

1851-56 and 1865-73
http://www.pt5dome.com/PassHome.html

The information on this site is taken from microfilm copies of the New York Daily Times. Beginning with the first issue of the Times, September 18, 1851, the lists will proceed through the years. When possible, passengers will be linked to the ship they later boarded on the Pacific side of the Isthmus for the final leg of the journey to San Francisco. If you don't locate your relative(s), e-mail me for a lookup in Louis J. Rasmussen's "San Francisco Passenger Lists," Vols. 1, 2, and 4, and "California Wagon Train Lists," Vol. 1. Rasmussen's books cover, roughly, 1850-1865 for ship's lists and April 5, 1849, through October 20, 1852, for wagon train lists.

Name checks can also be made for passengers departing San Francisco for Central America, July 15, 1851, through June 16, 1852, from Peter E. Carr's "San Francisco Passenger Departures," Volumes 3 and 4.

The MARTIME HERITAGE PROJECT site contains an extensive collection of passenger lists from ships arriving at the Port of San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, Pacific Coast maritime history and California history. Passengers found departing New York on the New York Daily Times' lists may also be found arriving in San Francisco on the Maritime Heritage Project passenger lists.

Ships are Indexed by DATE of DEPARTURE

Submitted by Johanna de Soto

                University of California, Berkeley is offering a new course:
                                California: Colonization, Nation-Building, and Annexation:

This course examines the colonization of Alta California, the rise of a Californio identity, and the annexation/internationalization of California. As it pertains to the conquest and colonization of Alta California, the historical role of the mission-pueblo-presidio complex is analyzed. Amerindian and Spanish cultures are also compared pursuant to the changes which accompanied Spanish settlement. The secularization of the missions and the rise of a Californio proto-nationalism is assessed along with other competing visions for the future of California. This delineates the multiple paths which social and political development could have taken in the mid-nineteenth century. The effects of the Gold Rush and the internationalization of California (pre-twentieth- century) are also investigated. The course will conclude with an analysis of nineteenth-century literary texts to explain how the processes of colonization and race relations in California's past were re-constructed by nineteenth century writers."

Books for the course include:
* Jackson, Helen Hunt, Ramona, Signet Classic c/o Penguin
* Starr, Kevin, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 Oxford
* Almaguer, Tomas, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California 
* Gutierrez, Ramon and Richard Orsi, eds. Contested Eden, California Before the Gold Rush 
* Milliken, Randall A Time of Little Choice, The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco 
      Bay Area 1769-1810 Ballena Press
* Monroy, Douglas Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California 
* Paddison, Joshua (ed.) A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush Heyday Books
* Rohrbough, Malcolm J. Days of Gold, The California Gold Rush and the American Nation 
* Tong, Benson Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in 19th Century San Francisco 

--Alexander V. King, Mar Vista, CA  aking@saybrook.net 

NORTHWESTERN UNITED STATES

TEXAS

Mas about Cuidad Guerrero Project

Primos/Parientes

The letter below was sent to me by my cousin Carlos Cuellar, a professor at Texas A&M International University at Laredo who is actively seeking to rescue the Old Guerrero/Revilla archives that are rapidly disintegrating in Guerrero Nuevo. After you read the letter you will find how you can make a tax-deductible contribution to this most important project to protect our
heritage. Anything you can contribute will be much appreciated by the committee working on this project.

Primo Ernesto,
Thank you so much for e-mailing me. Last Tuesday we had a wonderful reunion of Guerrero Viejo friends and descendants here in the Great Room of Texas A&M International University. Our President, J. Charles Jennett kicked everything off with a hearty and warm welcome to 
over 100 guests. Historian and past Vice President of Laredo Community College, Jose Roberto Juarez, served as our master of ceremonies. Dr. Juarez gave an informative capsule history of this entire region, with special focus on the founding of Guerrero Viejo. Historian Dr. Stan Green 
then proceeded to give several examples of the kinds of stories and information that is available in the Old Guerrero archives. Then it was my turn to give a slide presentation of Old Guerrero together with pictures of the archives and their deteriorating conditions. As you may well know,
the archives are located in two rooms at the Palacio Municipal of Guerrero Nuevo. One of the rooms was a former jail, with a plywood covering the bars on a window. There is no air conditioning, nor is there any humidity  control. Para acabarle de amolar, rats, cockroaches, and silverfish are having a ball nibbling at the edges of these documents. My goal in showing all of this was to demonstrate the urgency in which we all have to act in order to "save" this precious archive. There are more than 250,000 documents, both in the Palacio Municipal and at the rectory of the Catholic Church. Both parties are extremely motivated in having the University
take charge of this project to microfilm all the documents and then to digitize them onto CD-ROM format, so that they are accessible to whomever on whatever side of the border. The cost to undertake this project will be roughly $93,000. We were fortunate to raise over $7,000 that Tuesday night alone! I am applying to three or four foundations for funds, and I 
am optimistic that we will be able to raise the entire amount. We have to.......we have no choice.

Primo, if you are interested in helping us with whatever amount you can afford, then please e-mail me with your mailing address so that I can mail you a large envelope that contains all pertinent information. I appreciate it very much and I'll stay in touch with you. 

Take care, God bless,
Carlos

So, Primos/Parients/Familia:

You can make your check payable to: Texas A&M International University (be sure and put on the memo line below that it is for the Guerrero Viejo Archives Preservation Project). You can send it at your convenience to:

Michelle Alexander
Vice President for Institutional Advancement
Texas A&M International University
5201 University Boulevard
Laredo, Texas 78041-1900

Thank you,
Ernesto Uribe
3800 Bent Branch Road
Falls Church, VA 22041-1010
703/750-2458 


Sent by Walter L. Herbeck,  Jr.wherbeck@juno.com ( 210) 684-9741 Return to Table of Contents

Thanks to those wonderful primos that share their pedigrees via the Internet or published books.

Alfredo Delgado Arredondo:  www.angelfire.com/tx4/adelgado/ancestors.html
Author Ruben Lozano of  Viva Tejas:    www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dwitt/vivatejas.htm
Las Familias de Marin (NEW address) http://www.geocities.com/jofogo/ 

SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES

      The New Mexico Genealogical Society 
Celebrates its 40th Anniversary 
in coordination with the opening of

The National Hispanic Cultural Center

                                                            November 11th 
                                               http://www.nmgs.org/workshop.htm

Congratulations to the leadership and members of  the New Mexico Genealogical Society for their monumental accomplishments.  Their Research and Literary Arts Program has developed a model for making information accessible to both scholars and family researchers. 

The mission of the Research and Literary Arts Program is to support, preserve, develop, promote, and share the Hispanic literary tradition as manifested in the literary expression of Hispanic writing worldwide. Within the Research and Literary Arts Program is the Genealogy Resource Center which will accommodate the materials necessary to conduct genealogies and historical study at the individual, family, community, and institutional levels common to all New Mexicans. This is a momentous milestone in their organization because of the tremendous changes in genealogy research in the last few years.

The following components make up the Research and Literary Arts Program: 
| Research Library | Special Collections | Genealogy and Family History Center | Oral History and Videography | Listening Room | Publications Unit | Scholar-in-Residence |  

There's some minimal information about the entire center at http://www.nhccnm.org/. 
at www.nhccnm.org/res_literary/index.html).

The New Mexico Genealogical Society, is commemorating its 40th year of serving New Mexico genealogists with an open house and  reception at the new centeFor details and directions to attend the open house and reception at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Saturday, November 11, 2000:  www.nmgs.org/workshop.htm. 

Sent by Johanna de Soto

Twelve Indian Tribes reached a historic agreement to repatriate remains of 350 unidentified Indians stored for a century in boxes at the Colorado History Museum. The remains range from single bones to entire skeletons. Lt. Gov. Joe Rogers, state chairman of Indian affairs, helped broker the accord, which he said grew out of more than six years of debate and frustration.

"It's no different than the way any Americans feel about somebody unearthing the grave of their grandparents or great-grandparents," Rogers said. "The issue of respect and honor and sense of decency in burial of these human beings is of deep importance. There was a will to do what's right. As a result of that, we found a way.

Extracts from article by Kevin Simpson, Denver Post, 10-18-00

Documentary Relations of the Southwest

(DRSW) in the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona has now placed its Master Bibliography and Index online.

The Master Index is a finding aid for researchers using Spanish Colonial documents concerning northern New Spain from the 1500s until the 1820s. It contains more than 17,000 records about what is now the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. In all, the Master Index summarizes an estimated 500,000 pages of colonial documents.

Each record contains detailed information about a document or a group of related documents in archives around the world. The documents summarized come from a total of thirty-one archives 
in Europe and the Americas. Copies of most of these documents are available on microfilm in DRSW or elsewhere in Tucson.

A link to the new, online searching is available at: http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/drsw

Just enter a search term, such as, "Sinaloa", and you will see a list of all the records that contain that term (in this case, there will be 762 matches). Click on a title, and your screen will display the full record. You can select records to save, print, or email.

We would appreciate your feedback about this new service - especially since we are still writing the "help" page. Also, please do not hesitate to ask for help.

In the future we plan to make at least four more databases searchable simultaneously with the Master Index: 1) the Biofile, a collection of 19,000 biographical descriptions; Biodex and Biodex2, compilations of index entries from secondary sources; and the SMRC Books & Articles, an annotated bibliography with about 14,000 items.

We would like to thank the University of Arizona Libraries for donating staff time and expertise in putting these databases online. In particular, Metadata Librarian Jeremy Frumkin has overseen this process. Happy hunting!

Tracy Duvall, Ph.D.
Documentary Relations of the Southwest
Arizona State Museum
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
duvallt@u.arizona.edu

tel: (520)621-6280, fax: (520)621-2976

The importance of this site is recognized by the fact that all of the following individuals forwarded it:
Gloria Cordova, George Gause, Sam Padilla Gonzales, Donie Nelson,  Mira Smithwick, and Josie Trevino Trevino.
                                                                                                     Return to Table of Contents

THE OLD SPANISH TRAIL - A Brief History 

Written by Frank Wright
Curator, Nevada State Museum and Historical Society
For more historical Accounts
http://www.lvrj.com/communitylink/zoo/story-spanishtrail.html

Two aspects of  these journal entries are noteworthy:

1. The route traverses Las Vegas Valley at its southern edge making no mention of Las Vegas Creek or Las Vegas Springs. Fremont's route of 1844 (Mountain Springs-cottonwood Springs-Las Vegas Springs-Muddy River) has often been read backward into history and assumed to be the Armijo route.]

2. The role of Raphael Rivera cannot, on present knowledge, be determined with certainty. It has long been assumed that during his thirteen-day absence from the main party, he discovered the route described by Fremont[!]. Time and geography make it extremely unlikely that he traveled either the Fremont route or the route interpreted above from Armijo's journal. He likely advised his superior, Armijo, to take the cutoff to the Amargosa River to avoid the difficult terrain on the Colorado below Las Vegas wash. Rivera was undoubtedly a capable and courageous guide, but his role as the European discoverer of the "Meadows" (Las Vegas) is almost certainly based on a misinterpretation.

1830-1831
During the fall and winter of 1830-1831, American fur trappers William Wolfskill and George Yount set the basic outlines of the "Old Spanish Trail". Traveling to California from Santa Fe, they substantially shortened the Dominguez-Escalante leg in its Utah portion and continued along the Smith-Garces extensions via the Virgin and Colorado Rivers, Needles and the Mojave River, bypassing Las Vegas. Until 1848 when commercial traffic ceased, most commercial caravans followed this route.

1841
In 1841, the same year that the famed Bartleson-Bidwell party made the first overland emigrant crossing of the California Trail through northern Nevada, the "Old Spanish Trail" also saw a large emigrant party. The so-called Workman- Rowland party, a disparate group of trappers and emigrants, traveled the trail to southern California. They appear to have stopped briefly at Las Vegas, but they apparently returned to the Colorado River to continue their journey. A group known as Pope-Slover party may have made the emigrant journey as early as 1837.

1844
John C Fremont explored what he took to be the "Old Spanish Trail: from Cajon Pass to Parowan, Utah. Kit Carson was one of the guides on this expedition. Fremont described the Trail as "the roughest and rockiest road we had ever seen in the country, and which nearly destroyed our band of fine mules and horses...Travelers should never venture on it without having his mule shod and also carrying extra shoes." On May 2, he described the area of Cottonwood Valley (Red Rock Canyon) after camping at the pass: "Descending to a small valley plain, encamped at the foot of the ridge, on the bed of a creek, where we found good grass in sufficient quantity and abundance on water holes. The ridge is extremely rugged and broken, presenting on this side a continued precipice, and probably affords very few passes. Many Digger tracks are seen around us, but no Indians were visible." The following day, they camped at Las Vegas Springs.

1846
Ten thousand copies of Fremont's report of his exploring expedition were published and widely circulated, arousing intense interest. Most wagon trains coming west would carry a copy of the report.

1847
Following the first settlement of Great Salt Lake Valley by Mormons, a small party under the leadership of Jefferson Hunt was sent southward over the Fremont trail to secure seeds and grain for spring planting. What now could be call the "Mormon Road" became an important alternate route to and from the coast for supplies and Mormon emigrants. Gradually, Mormon communities were established along the road as wagon stops (e.g., at San Bernardino in 1851) thus creating a "Mormon Corridor".

1848
With the end of the Mexican War, commercial traffic ceased over the Old Spanish Trail. During 
the period of 1829-1848, trade caravans traveled to California more or less regularly, though there were years for which there was no documented trade expedition. Most used Needles-Mojave River route which bypassed Las Vegas. After Fremont's 1844 trip, the route through Las Vegas was used more heavily, particularly by the Americans.

1849
The 1848 discovery of gold in California stimulated increased use of the Mormon Road by gold rushers, particularly those late in the season fearful of snowy passes through the Sierra Nevada on the northern route. Jefferson Hunt led one large party of gold rushers and emigrants down the rout 
in 1849. The several groups which stumbled into Death Valley with unfortunate consequences that year were off-shoots of Hunt's party.

1855
Mormon missionaries sent by Brigham Young in the spring on 1855 created the first settlement of Las Vegas. Its leader, William Bringhurst, was instructed to befriend the Southern Paiutes and teach them hygiene and farming techniques. The missionaries began immediately to construct an adobe fort, and the settlement served as a way station on the Mormon Road. The missionaries survived difficult circumstances their first summer, and their numbers were increased by a new contingent in the spring of 1856. With the discovery of lead ore at Mt. Potosi, Nathaniel Jones arrived to direct a lead mission in conjunction with the Las Vegas Mission. Manpower was insufficient to support both missions, the lead ore was particularly difficult to smelt, and there were serious differences between the two leaders. Given these problems, combined with the harsh environment, the mission was officially disbanded early in 1857.

1861
The Potosi mine was reopened and briefly worked as a silver mine. (It became a productive lead and zinc mining operation after the arrival of the railroad in 1905.) The old Mormon fort at Las Vegas was occupied by a few men, including Albert Knapp, one of the original Mormon missionaries. Las Vegas provided supplies and agricultural products for the miners at Potosi and Eldorado Canyon.

1865
Octavius Decatur Gass acquired the property of the old Las Vegas Mission and established the Las Vegas Rancho. He remodeled the original fort structure for a ranch dwelling. In 1882, Gass failed to meet a note on a loan and lost control of the ranch to Archibald Stewart. Meanwhile, Conrad Kiel, a friend and associate of Gass, established the Kiel (sometimes erroneously spelled Kyle) Ranch about two miles north at what had been the site of the Mormon Indian farm in the 1850's.

1882
Archibald Stewart and his wife Helen occupied the Las Vegas Ranch. Archibald was killed in an altercation at the Kiel Ranch in 1884, and Mrs. Stewart operated the ranch until it was sold to William Andrews Clark in 1902. As construction progressed on Clark's San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad in 1904, Las Vegas became a bustling construction camp. It was also a transshipment point for goods destined for the booming Bullfrog Mining District centered at Rhyolite.

1905
With the auction of lots in Clark's Las Vegas Town Site on May 15, 1905, the city of Las Vegas was officially born.

Thumbnail Las Vegas Chronology

1905-1931
Las Vegas remained a small railroad town for about twenty-five years, mostly confined to its original forty square blocks (Stewart to Garces; Main Street to Fifth Street). The area west of the railroad tracks (Westside) where the first settlement of freighters and railroad workers had taken place, was largely deserted after a fire in September 1905. The railroad, through its land and water company, strictly controlled the growth of the community, but a few outlying areas were developed as farms and ranches supplied by artesian wells.

1931-1941
In 1928, Congress and the President authorized the construction of Boulder (Hoover) Dam. Population growth caused the small town to burst its seams. New neighborhoods developed east of Fifth Street and ambitious construction projects included a new high school, hospital and federal post office. Construction work on the Dam kept Las Vegas booming through the early years of the Great Depression. Gambling was legalized state-wide in 1931, but only five or six clubs centered on Fremont Street took advantage of the opportunity. (Gambling had been common in any event during the illegal period 1910-1931) The cities of Boulder City and North Las Vegas both trace their roots to the growth period of 1931. The post-construction period after 1935 brought economic depression and the conscious attempt to create tourism by advertising Las Vegas as "Still a Frontier Town". (Hundreds of thousands of tourists to the dam site taught Las Vegas the value of tourism.) The Helldorado celebration, for example, traces to 1935.

1941-1945
World War II brought about a major transformation of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Army Gunnery School (renamed Nellis Air Force Base in 1950) brought a large payroll and stimulated population growth. Construction on the giant Basic Magnesium, Incorporated plant at what became the city of Henderson began in September 1941, and the plant began production about a year later. The population growth caused by the air base and defense plant led to a tripling of southern Nevada's population almost over night. (Las Vegas's population in 1940 was just over eight thousand.) Because of labor shortages during the war, much of the new labor force was African-American from the Deep South. Westside, up until then the most under populated area of the city, became a predominantly Black community. Racial attitudes hardened in Las Vegas during the war and in the years following. Las Vegas became a rigidly segregated city where Black patrons were not permitted to patronize any of the resorts downtown or on the emerging Strip. (Resort development of the Los Angeles Highway had begun with the construction of the El Rancho Vegas Hotel in 1941 and the Hotel Last Frontier in 1942.) Pressures from local civil rights organizations and prominent Black entertainers finally led to a significant lowering of the racial barriers after 1960.

1946-1969
The Flamingo Hotel was the first hotel on the Strip to be constructed in the postwar period. 
Actually conceived by Las Angeles entrepreneur Billy Wilkerson, it was brought to fruition by underworld figure Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. The casino of the Flamingo opened briefly just after Christmas, 1946, lost money extravagantly, and closed a few weeks later. The hotel and casino opened for good in March 1947. Siegel's gangland-style slaying in Beverly Hills in June 1947 only served to increase the exotic allure of Las Vegas. With millions of servicemen and servicewomen demobilized after the war, gas a rubber rationing ended, and a travel craze sweeping the country, Las Vegas's future as a resort destination was off to a good start. This was facilitated by and expensive and high-powered publicity campaign. Las Vegas's growth continued generally unabated through the 1960's.

1969
In 1969, the Nevada State Legislature acted to permit the issuance of gaming licenses to publicly-traded corporations. Until then, licensing had been impossible because of the large 
numbers of stockholders. Since 1969, only owners of 10% or more of a corporation's stock need to be licensed. This, of course, has allowed the entry into Nevada gaming of the gigantic international corporations which have fueled Nevada's explosive growth ever since.

 http://www.lvrj.com/communitylink/zoo/story-spanishtrail.html

Submitted by Johanna de Soto                                                   Return to Table of Contents

EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Richard Tapia, Mathematician Honored

Extracts from article in FOCUS, the Newsletter of the Mathematical Association of America
August/September 2000, Vol. 20, No. 6

Richard Tapia was one of two honored by Cornell University.  Cornell has established a lecture series in honor of two of the nation's most eminent mathematicians:  David Blackwell (African-American) of the University of California at Berkeley and Richard Tapia  (Hispanic) of Rice University.  The lecture series will provide a forum for research by African-American, Latino and American Indian scientists working in the mathematical and statistical sciences.

Carlos Castillo-Chavez, director of the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute at Cornell and professor of biomathematics, said that the objective of the lecture series are multiple.  We feel that it is critically important that current and future generations of African American, Latinos and Native Americans, as well as current and future generations of non-minorities, learn and remember the achievements of these two extraordinary talented and productive mathematicians. The series was inaugurated in May and the Cornell campus, to be called the "David Blackwell and Richard Tapia Distinguished Lecture Series in the Mathematical and Statistical Sciences."

David Blackwell has taught at the faculties of Southern University, Clark College and Howard University, where he was chairman of the mathematics department before joining the faculty of UC Berkeley in 1954. He is an author of the classic book "Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions."

Richard Tapia, who was born in Los Angeles to parents who emigrated from Mexico as teenagers, received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles.  In 1992, he became the first native-born Hispanic to be inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.  Under Tapia, the computational and applied mathematics department at rice has become a leader in promoting women and under-represented minority Ph.D. recipients in the mathematical sciences.

Submitted by Ron Arms

Canary Islanders - Forgotten Patriots of Louisiana

 by Dr. Granville Hough

A recent article in The Los Angeles Times, entitled "Spanish Cajuns' Win Place in History Books," dated 2 Sept 2000 lauds the fact that, after over 200 years of no mention, the Canary Islanders of Louisiana now get who pages in the eighth grade history books of Louisiana  this is almost an insult to people who came to Louisiana as soldiers to fight for Governor Gálvez when Spain was supporting the United States in its effort to gain independence.

Soon after Colonel Bernardo Gálvez took over as Governor of Louisiana Province, he took a census of his soldiers and militia and found he had less than one soldier for each mile of frontier he was to protect.  He desperately needed soldiers and population if he was to hold Louisiana from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.  He sent an urgent message to authorities in Spain, including his uncle, Minister Jose de Gálvez, asking for soldiers and settlers, actually soldier--settlers.  Having observed and fought alongside the Presidial soldiers of the Southwest against Apaches and another Indian tribes, he believed more in soldier-settlers than in the soldiers who served an enlistment and then moved on to other areas.

The Crown was sympathetic to his plea and decided to do a recruiting effort in the Canary Islands, which was somewhat poor and overpopulated.  In a few months, 700 Canary Island men volunteered as soldiers, along with their wives and children, 2300 in all.  They went on the payroll for the Louisiana Infantry Regiment, which paid all their expenses for travel and upkeep.  They began their move in 1778, as ships became available.  The first five ships were the Santísimo Sacramento, La Victoria, San Ignacio de Loyola, San Juan Nepomuceno, and the Santa Faz.  These ships all arrived in Louisiana before war started, and Governor Gálvez was able to form four more companies, with Canary Islanders both going into the new companies and replacing the soldiers moved from the old companies.  482 soldiers had arrived along with 1100 dependents.  The older solders, or those encumbered with large families were settled into new town of St. Bernard, Galveztown, Barataria, and Valenzuela. There they were paid militia on call to defend their areas if required to do so.  The other soldiers were those providing the manpower nucleus which enabled victories at Manchac, Baton rouge, and Mobile.  These Louisiana companies served on through the Pensacola Campaign, and also saw service at Natchez, Arkansas Post, and some many have been at St. Louis.

The sixth ship bring Canary Island volunteers with families, the El Segrado Corazón de Jesús, reached Havana in July, 1779 with 423 passengers, just as news of war with England reached that port.  Because the British had naval superiority in waters between Havana and News Orleans, the Governors of Cuba and Louisiana decided to hold these soldiers and their families in Havana until it was safe to travel.  This stretched into four years.  Eight young bachelors enlisted or trans3erred in Havana to the Matanzas Dragoons.  the others were held in readiness near Havana.

The remaining 99 soldiers in the Canary Islands and their families came in three smaller ships, the San Carlos, San Pedro, and Nuestra Señora de los Dolores.  Only the Dolores arrived safely in Havana with its 17 volunteers and families.  These joined those already held in Havana.  The San Carlos was captured by the British in Caribbean and its 47 volunteers and their families were deposited at Tortosa.  These people were able to go to Puerto Rico first, then alter to Havana, where they joined the others.  The San Pedro went astray and landed at La Guaira, the port for Caracas, Venezuela.  What happened to its 33 soldier and their families has not been recovered.

Towards the end of the war, when it became safe for sea travel, the 178 soldiers and their families in Havana, less those who had died or deserted, patiently awaited transportation to Louisiana.  The first opportunity occurred in early 1782 when 36 families, 145 persons in all, from the de Jesús, were given homes in Pensacola.  They were not supported or given land, so they eventually retuned to Cuba.  The others in Havana came to New Orleans in August, 1783 on the Margarita and the Santísima Trinidad.  The last group came on the Delfin in December, 1783.  These last arrivals were mostly settled on Terre-aux-Boeufs, in St. Bernard Parish, near the earlier settlement of St. Bernard., southeast of New Orleans, though other also were given land there.  This becalmed the settlement which most retained the Canary Island culture and dialect.  Barataria only lasted a short time, and Galveztown and Valenzuela lasted about one generation.  The settlers there gradually merged into the general population, retaining only their Spanish surnames and their Catholic religion.

So it is that about 600 Canary Islanders became soldier-settlers who were to help hold Louisiana for the Crown and then became part of the cultural melting pot which Louisiana is, still, to this day.  However, the memory of Canary Islanders, as Patriots of Louisiana, has been mostly lost.  So far as can be determined, only three persons from the Canary Islands have been listed as ancestors for DAR or SAR members.  Several thousand potential members live in St. Bernard Parish, alone, and others are scattered throughout Louisiana and other states.

References: Din, Gilbert C. The Canary Islanders of Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA, 1988.  This is the best reference now available on these people.

Villere, Sidney Louis. The Canary Island Migration to Louisiana: 1778-1783, Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, MD, 1972. This is an older reference best used for its listing of 207 settlers at Terre-aux-Bouef in St. Bernard Parish.

                                                                                                          Return to Table of Contents

Sent by Johanna de Soto

Slave History Trove Unearthed

Extracts from an article by Brett Martel, Associated Press

Retired history professor, Gwen Midlo Hall is on a mission to shed light on America's slaves and their personal histories through thousands of pages of handwritten colonial-era documents salvaged from court-house basements across Louisiana and as far away as France and Spain.

The records, now compiled on a CD-ROM database, cover more than 1000,000 slaves in what is believed to be the largest collection of its kind. Unlike slave transactions in the English colonies, which were kept private between buyers and sellers, Louisiana transactions were recorded in detail and filed by notaries, often in Spanish or French, Hall said.

In her searches, she has found court transcripts with testimony from slaves, documents that recount how slaves either bought or were granted their freedom, and even papers listing their birth countries and languages they spoke: Creole, French, Spanish, English, African languages and even American Indian ones among them.

Hall's project began in 1984 when she was professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey doing research for her 1992 book "Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the 18th Century."

While searching court records in New Roads, La., she found documents written by French-speaking notaries detailing the specific African origins and ethnicities of slaves.  By the time her book was published, she had collected 3,000 slave names and was determined to expand the project.  The National Endowment for the Humanities contributed to a total of $3,000 in grants.

Some colonial governments had taken their files with them, so Hall traveled overseas to continue digging.  What she found, she translated and transcribed to computer files that the Louisiana State University Press released on CD-ROM in March.

"The data she provided is totally revolutionary and we didn't know it existed until she discovered it," says Tony Burroughs, who teaches genealogy at Chicago State University. 

Submitted by Sandra L. Lizarranga-Hojo 

THE DAWES COMMISSION 
AND THE 
ALLOTMENT OF THE FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES 1893-1914
by Kent Carter

Read the Foreword and Preface from "The Dawes Commission" at:
http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/articles/1876.asp
This article also contains links to Native American databases at  http://www/Ancestry.com

Ken Carter's thorough research of the Dawes Commission delves into its reorganization and procedures to clarify enrollment and allotment decisions for the thousands of people who applied. It points out the difficulties Congress had in implementing its plan and the disastrous effects the program had on the people it was designed to help. Rich in historical photographs, thoroughly
footnoted, and containing actual documents of the commission's records, the book will provide anyone interested in the Dawes Commission or Native American ancestry with a heightened understanding of the Dawes Commission and the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole). The book includes a list of the various tribal rolls that are available from the Dawes Commission records.

Join Ancestry.com and access 600 million names in 2,500 databases. Annual memberships start at only $59.95  View various membership plans at: http://www.ancestry.com/subscribe/main.htm

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