**This class will be taught on Zoom**
The popular picture of California during the 19th century often tends to be romanticized. The Mexican era is presented as a “lotus land” --rodeos, gallant caballeros, and fetching and passive señoritas. The US conquest became the arrival of progress, with the heavily masculine activities of the gold rush and the construction of the transcontinental railroad. But the experience of California's Indigenous and Mexican women during this time in California tells a fuller story. The thirteen diverse women-- of enormously varied backgrounds and social positions-- interviewed by Hubert Howe Bancro’s staff in the 1870s and the women of the Vallejo family of Sonoma recall living through trying circumstances before, during, and aer the US conquest. Their experiences-- of initiative and enterprise, of occupation and resistance, of love and sorrow, of triumph and tragedy– offer an essential look into the dynamics of the multicultural past that has created contemporary California.
Week by Week Outline
Week 1: Bancro Interview Process; Northern California women, including:
Isidora Filomena (Indigenous widow of Suisun chief Sem-Yeto, whose Spanish name was Chief Solano)
She talks about the ways in which the Mexican and Anglo newcomers to California generally brought with them racist views of the indigenous people which prevented them from understanding life in California before the European incursions.
Rosalía Vallejo Leese
As a woman whose husband was locked up at Suer’s Fort during the Bear Flag rebellion, she represents the manner in which a number of Mexicans in California never reconciled themselves to the takeover of their country by Anglo outsiders. As she said concerning the Americans, “Since I have not wanted to have anything to do with them, I have refused to learn their language.”
Teresa de la Guerra Hartnell
Married to an important English immigrant (William Edward Pey Hartnell ) who came to California in the 1830s, she represents the part of the Mexican community which benefited from American and other immigration before the gold rush, but who were shunted aside, often violently, when more Americans came in aer 1848.
Francisca Benicia Carrillo Vallejo
A nave of San Diego who married one of the most important military commanders in Mexican California, her role in raising a large family and trying to keep the family together during American rule is an important example of the fact that Mexican women were anything but passive during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Week 2: Southern California Women, including:
Eulalia Pérez
One of the few women who were ranch owners during the Mexican era, she fulfilled a variety of roles at Mission San Gabriel. Her multilevel activities there offer unique light upon how the California missions actually operated on a day-to-day basis.
Apolinaria Lorenzana
Raised in an orphanage in Mexico City, she was sent to California with a number of other orphans as the Spanish colonial government attempted to increase the population of what was for them a very distant territory. She served in a variety of positions at Mission San Diego, from midwife to negotiate with American sea captains. Her experiences offer a unique glance into the ways in which women were able to establish important and indispensable roles for themselves in a male-dominated environment.
Angusas de la Guerra
The daughter of the military commander of Santa Barbara, she was married first to a Mexican military officer, and then to an American. Her story tells more fully than any other story the opportunities and challenges that came with family life before and aer the US conquest.
María Inocenta Pico
As the wife of a soldier, he offers unique testimony about the ways in which the military in Spanish and Mexican California were clothed, fed, and maintained. In the same way that Eulalia Pérez complicates and expands the story of the missionary experience, María Inocenta Pico complicates and expands the story of the military experience in pre-US California.
